Forget the "Battle of the Exes" (Bigelow vs. Cameron); actually, with all the hype and analysis there were no real surprises in the Big Six categories (Best Picture, Director, Lead and Supporting Actors). But there were a few in some other categories: The Secret in Their Eyes beat frontrunners The Prophet and The White Ribbon for Best Foreign Film, Logorama beat the shoo-in Wallace & Gromit entry A Matter of Loaf and Death for Best Short Film (Animated), and the biggest surprise of the night, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire beat sure-thing favorite Up in the Air for Writing (Adapted Screenplay).
Up in the Air had already been the critical and box office favorite, the lone front-runner for every big award since its initial release. its writer (co-writer, actually) , Jason Reitman, had won raves for this movie and his previous efforts, Juno and Thank You for Smoking-—and he was second-generation Hollywood. (His father is director/producer Ivan Reitman—Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, Stripes, Meatballs, Dave, Junior...). The subject was timely, it was a new-fangled old-fashion screwball comedy and it had George Clooney. It had already won a screenplay Golden Globe; Precious wasn't even nominated.
But the Academy chose Precious, and nobody was more stunned (even more than the telecast's director and camerapeople) than the writer, Geoffrey Fletcher. Before announcing Kathryn Bigelow Best Director, Barbra Streisand said "History is made." But it has already been made about an hour earlier: Fletcher is the first African American to win an Oscar for writing.
Geoffrey Fletcher, 38, began making films as a child using a video camera and toys and action figures for actors. After graduating from Harvard (where he majored in psychology and made short documentaries and noir films) some of this "earlier" work helped him be accepted into New York University's Tisch Graduate Film Program. One of his films at NYU, Magic Markers, received numerous accolades and has been instituted as part of NYU's Graduate and Undergraduate Film Programs. It also caught the attention of both John Singleton and Lee Daniels, who asked him to adapt Sapphire's novel for the screen. Although considering himself a director first, Fletcher said, "I thought that writing was not only a good way into the industry, but probably a good way to stay there."
Lee Daniels said, "Push is a very gritty book, and Geoffrey brought his elegance to it. It's a woman's story, but he wrote it in the way that a very elegant man would write it. He's a very classy act." Among Fletcher's inventions was the male nurse played by Lenny Kravitz. "There's maybe one sentence in the book that mentions this character, but I thought it would be a great opportunity to bring in a male character that was positive."
Fletcher has been profiled by industry newspaper Variety as one of the "10 Screenwriters to Watch" in 2009. Based on the overwhelmingly positive reception for Precious, Fletcher (who was working as an adjunct professor at Columbia and NYU when Daniels approached him) was fielding number of offers even prior to winning the Oscar. He is working on another adaptation (which he can't talk about) and two of his scripts are slated to begin production soon: Dreamers and Killers and Violet and Daisy, a coming-of-age story about teenage hitgirls. He lists among his influences his family and the films The Godfather (Parts I and II), The Bicycle Thief, Raging Bull... and Dolemite. He is also set to make his directorial debut, working from an original script.
So, history has been made and unfortunately, none of us in this group can be the first. But we can still be the next. So stop reading and start writing!
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