Writers on Writers

Every year, Variety asks prominent playwrights, authors, journalists and screenwriters to talk about writers and screenplays they admired over the past year. This year’s contributors bring a wide range of experience, from Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman to astronaut Buzz Aldrin; from journalists Cheo Hodari Coker, Bill Keller and Lawrence O’Donnell to gridiron star turned novelist Tim Green; from Oscar winners Christopher Hampton and Steven Zaillian to organized crime expert Gus Russo. Each shines an emotional light on 2015’s contenders.

Carol

(The Weinstein Co.)

Screenplay by Phyllis Nagy, from the novel “The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith

By Erin Cressida Wilson

Cate Blanchett’s stockinged feet are featured in an early scene from “Carol,” flirtatiously tucked to the side as she sits by the fire, wrapping her daughter’s Christmas present. Across the room from her, the Shopgirl perches at the piano, improvising a subtle music that hit me hard, overwhelming me with melancholy and recognition:

As a child, I saw Sylvester perform at the Castro Street Fair. I held a candle and marched when Harvey Milk was killed. Back then, San Francisco was probably one of the easiest places to love who you wanted to love. But even so, there were pockets of society bathed in the hues of the world in which Carol finds herself — a world of white gloves, polite behavior and “tomato aspic lunches.” I grew up in one of those neighborhoods.

Several years ago, when I was back home visiting my mother, I bumped into our elderly neighbor. It was late at night, and he was getting out of his car with a younger man (mid-60s, beautiful). As soon as they saw me, they broke into a strange and uproarious laughter. My neighbor introduced me to the younger man, saying they had business together. But I recognized him as my neighbor’s “roommate” from 30 years prior. The three of us pretended. But we knew what this was, and that their love had been hidden for decades.

Phyllis Nagy’s heart-breaking script resonates with stories we all have of secret longings. But Cate Blanchett’s character decides to not stay hidden, to not lock up her desire and to live in her “own grain.” Thus, the film is a triumph as she openly drinks a martini, smokes a cigarette and gazes across the Oak Room at her “endless sunrise,” her beautiful creature “flung out of space.”

Playwright Erin Cressida Wilson received the Independent Spirit Award for her first screenplay, “Secretary,” and adapted “The Girl on the Train” for Marc Platt & DreamWorks. Current projects include “Maestra” for Amy Pascal & TriStar, “The New Winter” for Working Title & Universal and HBO’s new series “Vinyl.”

Spotlight

(Open Road Films)

Written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy

By Bill Keller

At the end of “Spotlight,” before the credits rolled, I waited for the inevitable postscript to appear on the screen: “For exposing the crimes of predatory priests and the coverup by high-ranking Catholic clergy, the Boston Globe in 2003 won journalism’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.”

But no such self-congratulatory message appeared, and that omission — deliberate, the writers say — confirmed for me the central virtue of the film. It gets that good journalism, especially great investigative journalism, is more grit than glory, and that the rewards that matter are not handed out by prize juries. In the case of “Spotlight,” the rewards that mattered were the emotional liberation of hundreds of closeted victims and a (somewhat) chastened Church.

In the era of every-journalist-is-a-brand and journalism-as-clickbait, “Spotlight” pays tribute to old-fashioned skills and attributes: patience, persistence, empathy, teamwork, enough humility to ask a stupid question and enough arrogance to ask an impertinent one.

Even impersonated (quite credibly) by the Hollywood likes of Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, the journalists are human. They get discouraged. They make mistakes. It turns out the Globe had been offered abundant evidence of the church scandal five years earlier, but dismissed it as a wild conspiracy theory. They are unglamorous people doing unglamorous work.

The achievement of “Spotlight” is that from this story, lacking in bloodshed,

car chases or superheroes, the screenwriters have made what may be the year’s most genuine thriller.

Bill Keller left the New York Times after 30 years as a correspondent, editor and columnist. He is editor-in-chief of the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on criminal justice.

Truth

(Sony Pictures Classics)

Screenplay by James Vanderbilt, based on the book ‘Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power” by Mary Mapes

By Rod Lurie

What Jamie Vanderbilt understood with “Truth” was he was writing about journalists more than about journalism. He was writing not about an institution, but human beings — and not just any human beings, but ones with a crushing responsibility: To tell the truth and shame the devil (as Shakespeare wrote). Vanderbilt’s tale is about what happens when a journalist’s intentions are more potent than the facts — which is when, of course, the devil shames you.

Vanderbilt structures his film just so. It begins with Mary Mapes meeting an attorney. She’s obviously in trouble and on the verge of defeat. But in a few lines, Vanderbilt projects her courage and resolve. We root for her without knowing the dimensions of her failure. When Vanderbilt goes back in time, we know, before Mapes does, that the success of her “60 Minutes” team is to be short-lived, the legacy of her mentor Dan Rather is to be extinguished, and her career will suffer a fatal crash. It was Mapes’ character flaws — her overzealousness and self-righteousness — that got her into trouble. But it is the other side of her — the steel in her blood and bones — that we saw in that opening, that will help her survive.

When Vanderbilt returns to that scene there is a full third of the film to go.

Most audience members know very little about journalism. Or politics. Or corporations. What they do know is personal failure. In that final act, Vanderbilt has given us a film that aspires not to any one profession and not necessarily to bringing down the bad guys. It is aspirational to overcoming failings, and indeed, the devil in all of us.

Rod Lurie is the writer-director of “The Contender,” “Nothing But the Truth,” and “Straw Dogs.” He created the TV series “Commander in Chief.” He is also a former journalist.

Room

(A24)

Screenplay by Emma Donoghue, from her book

By Marsha Norman

Reading Emma Donoghue’s novel “Room” was an experience both ecstatic and terrifying. What if my own lifelong fear of being trapped really happened to me, as it did to Joy? What if I was locked in a shed, the prisoner of Old Nick, who came in to rape me now and then and bring groceries. And what if I had a child, Jack, and he lived there with me until I realized his only hope of escaping was to pretend to be dead? So I drilled him on what to do, wrapped him in a carpet and asked Old Nick to carry him out of Room and bury him under some trees. What then? The anguish I felt when 5-year-old Jack left Room wrapped in a carpet, was greater than anything I had ever felt in one moment of reading a novel. Seriously.

So when that moment came along about 45 minutes into the movie, I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough story left to fill a whole film. But what Ms. Donoghue tells next is how Joy and Jack actually recover once they are set free. Because as we keep forgetting, being free is way more difficult than we can ever imagine during our time in our prison.

“Room,” the movie, is an astonishingly beautiful story about how we can love someone enough to let him go, knowing we might never see him again. And then how we can finally forgive ourselves for the evil we have endured. That last piece is the transcendent miracle of the movie, for which I am deeply grateful.

Marsha Norman is the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning playwright of “’night, Mother” as well as librettist and occasional lyricist of Broadway musicals including “The Color Purple,” “The Secret Garden,” “Bridges of Madison County” and the upcoming “King Kong.”

Brooklyn

(Fox Searchlight)

Screenplay by Nick Hornby, from the book by Colm Toibin

By Christopher Hampton

Simplicity, of course, is one of the hardest qualities to achieve. It’s one of the most attractive features of Colm Toibin’s limpid novel; and it’s preserved in John Crowley’s seemingly effortless direction and Saoirse Ronan’s marvelously open and transparent performance. Most of all, it’s there in the film’s bedrock, Nick Hornby’s artfully understated screenplay, which remains faithful to the novel, invisible as the best translations, discriminating impeccably between the moments where dialogue is essential or entertaining and those where silence and the actors’ faces can be even more eloquent.

I may have reacted particularly strongly to “Brooklyn” because of certain childhood experiences; but the themes of exile, self-imposed or otherwise, and adjustment to a new and initially threatening environment are among the most universally recognizable in the repertoire. Here they’re explored with a rare subtlety, humor and, most of all, via the minutely shifting and profoundly telling expressions on a young woman’s sensitive face. These draw us in until we are, to an exceptional degree, involved in and affected by Eilis’s individual but emblematic dilemma.

The decision to film in the streets and environs of Enniscorthy, where much of the story is set, gives an added authenticity to “Brooklyn’s” entirely convincing atmosphere. Listing those qualities his readers might reasonably expect to find, Joseph Conrad came at last to “that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.” Here it is: truth and simplicity, ingredients rare enough in a screenplay to deserve a warm welcome and a public celebration.

“Ali & Nino,” with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, will be in cinemas next year. Hampton’s translation of “The Father” opens in April on Broadway.

Inside Out

(Disney/Pixar)

Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; original Story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen

By Ron Suskind

Movies mirror humanity, for better or for worse.

We see ourselves in the flickering light and, in rare cases, we see within ourselves. I place Pixar’s “Inside Out” among those rarities.

My family, and others like us, felt an especially powerful expression of its artistic value. Our youngest son, Owen, is autistic and, like other “differently abled” kindred, he relies on movies, quite intently, to reflect his innermost feelings.

We all have something called “mirror neurons,” that primarily mirror waves of inputs from someone else’s face so we can, literally, feel what they feel. It actually works the same way with movies, which is why so many of us walk around with characters and scenes in our heads. Mirror neurons of folks with autism tend to get overwhelmed by face-to-face interactions, but still manage to be fired by videos. They feel movies even more powerfully than the rest of us.

By actually charting the interior landscape of emotion and memory in a vivid and accessible way — turning it into a heart-stopping adventure story — “Inside Out” becomes a cinematic gift. My son, now 24, has seen it five times and uses it to manage emotions like sadness and fear (both characters from the movie) in his real life. Wrestling with a thorny problem a few weeks back, he said, “I want to put joy back in charge of my life.” He did.

Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, is now a member of our family. And we welcome her.

Hey Amy, free for the holidays? We’re serving joy.

Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of six bestselling books, most recently, “Life, Animated, a Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism.”

Steve Jobs

(Universal)

Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, from the book “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

By Lawrence O’Donnell

Before “The West Wing” premiered on NBC, after the read through of the fourth episode, which, like all of our read-throughs, got a huge round of applause for the writing, I said to one of the other writers, “After four hours of this, the audience is gonna know nothing happens in this show — nothing they recognize as TV drama, no shots fired, no baby dying in the emergency room, just people talking.” I thought we might be headed for the most noble failure in TV history. Then “The West Wing” went on the air and we discovered the (huge) audience accepted that drama is what Aaron Sorkin says it is.

If there was a movie in Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biography of Steve Jobs, it was going to be a movie of just people talking, no shots fired. Everyone knew Steve Jobs needed an Aaron Sorkin screenplay.

Aaron searched for the movie in the book, then reached beyond it with his own research but ultimately found the story very close to home. His home.

I worked with Aaron before he was a father and after he became a father. I saw how his daughter changed him. But if she changed his work, the differences were too subtle for me to detect. Until now.

At its core, “Steve Jobs” is a deeply moving father-daughter story like none we’ve ever seen before, richly textured in idiosyncrasy, surprise, pain, loyalty and love. The father thinks he’s the teacher, but the daughter teaches him more than he could ever teach her. We fathers of daughters live the truth of that story every day. It’s a story Aaron Sorkin could not have written without the most important co-writer of his life, 15-year-old Roxy Sorkin.

Lawrence O’Donnell Jr. is the author of “Deadly Force.” He was a writer and executive producer of “The West Wing.” He is now the host of “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” on MSNBC.

Sicario

(Lionsgate)

Written by Taylor Sheridan

By Simon Moore

OK, so here’s the pitch for “Sicario”: Heroine Kate is insecure, conflicted, powerless, kept in the dark, duped, threatened, used and almost murdered, then gets completely marginalized in the third act (where even wounded heroes invariably come good). At the end of the story she realizes she has done nothing except help to facilitate action that is totally abhorrent to her. This breaks pretty much every rule of commercial filmmaking, and it’s one reason why Taylor Sheridan’s “Sicario” is so riveting, different and brave.

The fact that we cannot rely on our heroine to save the day adds to the already suffocating sense of powerlessness and dread that “Sicario” creates. And dread is at the heart of this bleak, whispered world. Dread is a slow-motion emotion — and usually dramatic anti-matter in a thriller — but here it becomes the pulsing, stomach-churning prelude to all the violence and chaos.

Great screenplays are not always about Sorkin-esque speeches, and “Sicario” lingers in the memory not for what it says but what it doesn’t say. It’s no surprise that Sheridan is also an actor — he knows the power of simple, understated dialogue that leaves the characters real feelings for them to convey wordlessly.

The most powerful moments in “Sicario” are all silent. We know from the fear and despair on people’s faces that something awful is going to happen, but we don’t know what … or even why. This is the rare achievement of this fine and gripping screenplay.

Simon Moore is a multi-award winning writer-director whose credits include “Traffik,” “The 10th Kingdom,” “Under Suspicion” and “The Quick and the Dead.”

Black Mass

(Warner Bros.)

Screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth; Based on the book “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal” by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill

By Gus Russo

A cynic might emerge from a viewing of “Black Mass” proclaiming that it has all been done before: the tribal rivalries, the sociopathic wiseguy who nonetheless loves his mother, and, most recently, the gritty realities of South Boston. In fact, the movie offers some rare insights into mob mentality and official corruption.

The story concerns the toxic relationship between South Boston’s Winter Hill Gang boss James “Whitey” Bulger and FBI agent John Connolly, and the writers employed a winning device to tighten the screws on these two bad guys: informants emerge periodically like a Greek chorus to slowly build the case for federal prosecutors. Of course, it’s more than a device — it’s a peek inside the unglamorous work that builds most prosecution cases (to wit, the taxman, not Eliot Ness, got Capone). The writers manage to make this mundane legal tradecraft engrossing, and at times, hysterical. The opening scene, in fact, lets the viewers know the wild ride that awaits: the first informant says, “I’m no rat,” then quickly proceeds to give up the goods on everybody in South Boston, including Whitey.

It’s a brilliant set-up, and it only gets better as the screenwriters accurately recreate a decidedly unromantic world. How unromantic? The movie has Bulger breaking every gangster “code” (which typically grants a pass to family and women) when he savagely kills a young girl in front of her own stepfather. I can’t recall a more disturbing depiction of gangster degeneracy. And the fact that the boss himself meted it out makes it even more unique; bosses get their hands bloodied on the way up the ladder, not after they assume the throne. But such was the depth of Bulger’s depravity, and “Black Mass,” for better or worse, nails it.

Gus Russo is the author of eight books including “The Outfit” and “Supermob.” He has produced or written many network documentaries, both in the U.S. and abroad. He can swim on his back.

Concussion

(Sony)

Written by Peter Landesman; based on the GQ article “Game Brain” by Jeanne Marie Laskas

By Tim Green

When I heard “Concussion” was coming to the screen I wondered if Hollywood would finally capture the true essence of the NFL experience. It does not, but that’s only because “Concussion” isn’t about life inside the NFL. It’s the story of an off-the-field hero who has no knowledge or love for the game, rather an American dream of honesty and justice.

Because I played against and knew Mike Webster (whose terrible death is the impetus for this story) I was horror-stricken by the movie’s early scenes and the mortal price he and others have paid for their lives in the NFL.

Like the world around Dr. Bennet Omalu, the brilliant Nigerian-born doctor who stumbled onto Webster’s Swiss-cheese brain in an autopsy, I didn’t want the science to be true. I kept hoping that I hadn’t put myself in the path of this nightmare disease Omalu named CTE. Apparently, I had, despite rigorous insistence to the contrary by those whose love of the game also blinds them.

Yet, despite the undercurrent of dread, Peter Landesman’s spare and powerful dialogue propelled me through this modern David and Goliath story. Whether you love or hate the NFL, you’ll be moved. What may be most impressive is that Landesman doesn’t portray the league as that self-centered corporate behemoth we’ve seen in so many different guises before. He leads us to understand that our entire society is complicit in this modern day gladiatorial system. The NFL only gives us what we demand, and he correctly hints that the players themselves must also share in the blame. Doctors Omalu and (Julian) Bailes argue players deserve to know the risks, so they can choose. Both doctors risked their careers to make it so.

In the end, Landesman hints that life goes on. We are who we are. The NFL will continue to thrive and grow in its power and influence. And, despite the risks, players will continue to play, because that too is an American dream.

Tim Green is a former first round draft pick and eight-year starter for the Atlanta Falcons. He is now the New York Times bestselling author of 32 books, many of them sports-based novels for young readers.

“

Straight Outta Compton

(Universal)

Screenplay by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff; story by S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus and Andrea Berloff

By Cheo Hodari Coker

I was a little late to the N.W.A party. And by late I mean the summer of 1989. And I admit to being skeptical when I stood in the middle of Sam Goody holding the cassette single for “Straight Outta Compton” in my hands.

Outside the record store, I popped the cassette into my Walkman. “You are now about to witness the ‘Strength of Street Knowledge.’” Bap boom boom boom, “Nigaaz With Attiude.” It was the first time I ever heard that word used, with pride and with power. By the time I heard the whole song, and later the whole record, my life had changed. I wanted to dedicate my life to writing about the music, and I had to, just had to sit down and talk with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre.

Somehow, all of that happened, numerous times as a journalist and later as a screenwriter. Which is why the film “Straight Outta Compton” is such a joy to me.

It’s the first hip-hop biopic that’s allowed to be real to itself and to the music. To be epic, because it had a proper budget. No heavy explantations about “why” or “how” — it just does it. It captures the era perfectly without ever feeling like a “costume” drama, even though the costumes aren’t all that old.

The screenplay manages to capture the creation of the myth, the human moments during the rise and the texture in between. This is my era. It’s real. It was something I was close to, something that informs me every day, no matter what I’m writing. It’s my life and always will be.

Cheo Hodari Coker is an award-winning hip-hop journalist who wrote the linear notes of N.W.A’s Greatest Hits and the chapter on the group in Vibe’s history of hip-hop. He is the showrunner and executive producer of “Marvel’s Luke Cage” on Netflix.

Bridge of Spies

(Disney/Dreamworks)

Written by Matt Charman and Ethan Cohen & Joel Cohen

By Andrew Kaplan

During the Cold War, the Glienicke Bridge over the Havel River was used for clandestine exchanges between the Soviets and the Americans and became known as the “Bridge of Spies.” But in Matt Charman’s screenplay, sharpened with cutting insight and their trademark dark humor by the Coen brothers, it becomes a bridge from a dangerous past to our disconcertingly uncertain present – and it comes with a warning.

Steven Spielberg is and has always been both a history buff and an ambitious filmmaker. When he’s gotten serious, he has sought to bring to audiences moments when history — and with it, our world as we know it — hung by a thread on the actions, the moral courage of individuals.

In this moody take on the classic spy film, insurance lawyer James B. Donovan is called upon to defend Soviet sleeper agent Rudolf Abel and negotiate a swap with the Russians for the downed American spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers. The writers give Donovan some great set speeches, as when a twitchy CIA agent wants him to break attorney-client privilege rules to reveal anything Abel tells him, and Tom Hanks as Donovan tells him, “It’s those rules,” meaning the Constitution, “that make us American.” Corny as Capra and just as true.

But it’s in Berlin, as Donovan negotiates his way across the bleak and wintry no-man’s land between East and West that the film truly lives — and we see, in the interplay of wits and dialogue, the shaky moral precipice that both sides feel their way blindly along — and from which only the courage and decency of a single person can save us. A perfect film? No. But one of Spielberg’s best – and that is very good indeed.

Andrew Kaplan is the author of two bestselling spy thriller book series: “Scorpion” and “Homeland,” original tie-in novels to the hit “Homeland” TV series. His standalone spy novels include “War of the Raven,” cited by the American Library Assn. as one of the 100 best books ever written about World War II.

The Martian

(Fox)

Screenplay by Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir

By Buzz Aldrin

I saw the future in my viewing of Ridley Scott’s “The Martian,” an entertaining, exciting and thought-provoking science “fiction” film. The challenge ahead is to transform that fiction into fact.

I was very impressed with the script’s realism, admittedly played a little over the top in certain places for drama and suspense purposes. It showcases what any sound plan for sending humans to Mars must deal with: radiation; Martian whirl-winds of sand; the need to create all the necessities of life, down to oxygen and food; the vast distance from Earth that plays havoc with speedy back-and-forth communications and the resulting loneliness and isolation; and both the individualism and the teamwork required to overcome serious trouble on another planet.

In my mind, there’s another comforting and compelling fact about “The Martian.” It is not a saga of aggression and combat like “Star Wars.” Nor does it imagine travel to Mars beginning centuries from now. It is set just a few years from now and portrays international cooperation — a mission drawing upon the talents and competence of numerous nations. That is the blueprint for success in reaching the Red Planet, then nurturing an ever-increasing human presence there. In short, survive and thrive.

On my travels, I constantly meet future Martians: young adventurers hungry for space exploration. Indeed, there are 10-year-olds today that in 2030 will be getting ready for travel to Mars. I sense that many of those intrepid explorers were impelled to plant their feet on Mars because they read and watched “The Martian.”

Buzz Aldrin, best known for his Apollo 11 moonwalk, is co-author (with Leonard David) of “Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration,” published in 2013 by the National Geographic Society, and the new children’s book, “Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet,” (with Marianne Dyson).

Ex Machina

(Universal)

Written by Alex Garland

By Kazuo Ishiguro

Alex Garland’s ground-breaking, coolly brilliant “Ex Machina” holds open the way for a new kind of science-fiction film. Intimate, relationship-based, philosophically probing, it feels more a fresh take on the tradition of “Island of Lost Souls,” “Forbidden Planet” and “Frankenstein” than something spawned by “Star Wars.” This tale of a megalomaniac Silicon Valley genius, the alluring super-intelligent “femme fatale” robot he has invented, and the naive young techie guest lured into their secluded lair achieves a genuine dramatic depth while ensnaring us in a maze of potential betrayals and double-dealings worthy of the most sophisticated noir.

And we’re given here something that’s these days four-leaf-clover rare: a beautifully conceived three-way relationship between the main characters in which each side of the triangle is properly fascinating — and hard to predict. Garland isn’t just bringing us the usual warnings about AI. He understands its excitements and potentials, but asks how our indelible human traits — violence, sexuality, compassion, ego, our need to fall in love — can survive and be contained in the kind of world we’re now rapidly creating.

“Ex Machina” portrays, in microcosm, better than anything I’ve yet seen, our current obsessive, ambivalent love affair with innovative science: the hero-worshipping of its gurus, which then turns so quickly to paranoia; our capacity to be blinded by the sheer wonder and beauty of the new; the compulsion to stride recklessly into uncharted territory. Garland shows us too the intimate link between Big Data and AI. “Ex Machina,” which Alex Garland has both written and directed, is an important, seriously searching film as well as an entertaining one. It deserves to be highlighted in our film history books for years to come.

Kazuo Ishiguro is the Booker Prize-winning author of “The Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go.” His latest novel, “The Buried Giant,” published earlier this year, has been optioned by Scott Rudin Productions.

The Danish Girl

(Focus Features)

Screenplay by Lucinda Coxon, based on the book by David Ebershoff

By Anthony McCarten

There is a superb scene midway through this superb screenplay where Gerda, the wife of transgender Lili Elbe, begs Lili to leave the room and to allow Gerda’s husband to walk back in. Lili — in wig and dress and make-up — is, of course, that husband. So we, the audience, wait for Lili to abide, to exit as a ‘she,’ dress again in a man’s clothes and return as a ‘he,’ as Einar, the gentle man loving Gerda married.

We fully expect this to happen, even require it to happen, especially as Gerda’s innocent, heart-broken tears fall … but in a brave and finely calibrated scene — and all the scenes in this hugely courageous film are, and needed to be, finely calibrated, so delicate is the drama — Lili refuses to give Gerda what she so clearly deserves: happiness. Lili can no longer provide this. Why? Because it’s no longer in Lili’s power to make Gerda happy, for Lili will never again be Einar. Never.

In this powerful hinge moment, Lucinda Coxon’s screenplay denies us what we want: by subverting standard conventions, her script comes exemplary, for as it took courage for Lili to risk her life to be the person she was born to be, it took no small courage for Ms. Coxon to render her telling of this tale with an originality commensurate with her subject.

London-based playwright and screenwriter Anthony McCarten received an Oscar nomination for “The Theory of Everything.” His upcoming projects include writing and producing the Churchill biopic “The Darkest Hour” for Working Title, and writing the untitled Freddie Mercury biopic for producer Graham King.

Love & Mercy

(Roadside Attractions)

Written by Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner

By Steven Zaillian

The film biography genre is a minefield littered with casualties. Any misstep in the writing or casting — to single out two of the dangers — leads to disaster. Many try. Few succeed.

One way to improve the odds is to approach it in a new way, which is what Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner have done with their screenplay for “Love & Mercy.” A biography of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, the script dispenses with the traditional womb-to-tomb structure, focusing instead on just two short periods in the composer’s life. But this interesting approach comes with its own peril. It requires double-casting — here, Paul Dano and John Cusack, whom no one would mistake for brothers, much less the same person.

It defies all logic, yet not only works, but distinguishes the work.

Like so many others before it, the script could have taken a simpler approach, letting us enjoy the story of Wilson’s life in the way we enjoy, say, the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA” album. Instead, Moverman and Lerner have written an unconventional, sophisticated, progressive, experimental high-wire act of a screenplay that’s more like, well, “Pet Sounds.”

Steven Zaillian received an Oscar for his screenplay of “Schindler’s List.” His other screenplays include the Academy Award nominated “Awakenings,” “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” “American Gangster,” and “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” He is in post-production on an HBO miniseries that premieres next year.

The End of the Tour

(A24)

Screenplay by Donald Margulies; from the book “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself” by David Lipsky

By Jane Anderson

There’s a scene near the beginning of Donald Margulies’ “The End of the Tour” that is brilliant in its brevity. The writer, David Lipsky, is sitting on the couch in his messy post-grad apartment reluctantly reading “Infinite Jest,” the thousand-page book by David Foster Wallace that has just been declared by the literary establishment as a work of undisputed genius. We had just seen Lipsky at his own book opening, reading from his novel to an indifferent crowd. Lipsky hates this Wallace guy for being the anointed one. He wants to be able to turn to his girlfriend who’s sitting on the couch beside him and declare, “He’s overrated.” But Lipsky is blown away by the man’s writing. And Margulies has him utter a single, despairing expletive that expresses all the despair a writer feels when he realizes that another writer’s brilliance has left him in the dust.

What follows is a fraught and tender dance between these two competitively heady men that Margulies, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, orchestrates with astounding stretches of stage-worthy dialogue. But what makes this such a remarkable script is that underneath these nimble exchanges lies the searing, human need to connect. It is astoundingly deep.

Screenwriter and playwright Jane Anderson recently won Emmy and Writers Guild awards for her teleplay “Olive Kitteridge.”

45 Years

(Sundance Selects)

Screenplay by Andrew Haigh; based on the short story “In Another Country” by David Constantine

By Brian Yorkey

There’s a moment in “45 Years” that finds Charlotte Rampling’s Kate in her attic, clicking through slides taken by her husband before she knew him, photos of the woman he loved and lost before meeting Kate. The images burst and disappear, alternating light and darkness, until with one more unremarkable click an image appears that shatters Kate’s world and calls into question everything we’ve seen so far, and everything Kate has lived for 45 years.

It is a beautifully framed shot, capturing Kate’s face and the face of the other woman at once, containing in one image the entire film, the entirety of the gulf between what is and what might have been in all of our lives. We linger on it as we often linger in Kate’s face in “45 Years,” holding fast on her with a gaze that in another film might be called relentless. But Haigh’s gaze is gentle, even loving; if it is insistent, it is not impassive, not judgemental, but concerned, human, aware.

Just like his writing. And there’s an easy mistake to make considering his writing, which is not to consider it writing at all: The matter-of-fact honesty, the accidental beauty and just plain lived-in-ness of his work suggests that he’s just reporting, but he’s not. He’s showing us just what he means to, and if his authorial voice tends to the transparent, his humanity dazzles. He’s a genius of compassion.

Like that slide show in Kate’s attic, Andrew Haigh takes us gently, unremarkably, through flashes of light and moments of darkness, happening without fanfare on the most remarkable revelations.

Brian Yorkey received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama, as well as the 2009 Tony Award for score, for “Next to Normal.” He was also nominated for the Tony Award for book of a musical for “Next to Normal,” and his work on the show earned him the Outer Critics Circle Award for score.

Suffragette

(Focus Features)

Written by Abi Morgan

By Anna Deavere Smith

The fight for the vote was hard won and with bloodshed.

In the wonderful “Suffragette,” Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is a working-class woman who toils in a laundry full of hazards — heat/chemicals — and it is not surprising that she, like her colleagues, had to deal with sexual harassment and violence from their male bosses. It happened then and it happens now. But without one powerful scene in the film, one might not realize that a husband had the right to put a child up for adoption without the mother weighing in. Maud comes home to find her young boy in the hands of a couple she’d never seen before.

One standout scene is between Maud and one of the villains, Inspector Arthur Steed, (Brendan Gleeson). Though he is her adversary, there’s a profound connection between the two, an understanding from across the sides of the aisle. He recognizes her humanity in spite of what history allows. Our enemies they say, make heroes of us.

In another scene, one of the suffragettes throws herself in front of King George V’s horse at a derby. That really happened. The fight for freedom throughout history has taken tragedy. However there’s another tragedy and it’s real right now. In America, it takes so much to bring out the vote. While viewing the film, I thought of those sacrificed in this country to get the vote — not just for women but also for men and women of color.

Bloodshed. Even torture.

And we don’t vote?

Actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith has pioneered “verbatim theater,” the performance of testimony from interviews with real people to explore issues of race, community and identity. She has received two Tony nominations and was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2012 by President Obama.

Beasts of No Nation

(Netflix/Bleecker Street Media)

Written for the Screen by Cary Joji Fukunaga; based on the book by Uzodinma Iweala

By Nick Payne

The opening image of Cary Fukunaga’s “Beasts of No Nation,” based on Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 novel of the same name, is deliciously complex. We are shown “the plastic exterior of a screen-less television,” through which we see “children running in circles on a football pitch.” We are in an unnamed West African country, and the children in question are aged ten or so. It would be all too easy to label “Beasts’” opening as knowing, or perhaps even meta. But something far more interesting, far more honest, far more humane is going on here: there is a devotion to, and a questioning of, cinema’s (in)ability to inhabit a particular point-of-view.

This screen-less plastic exterior is both our ally and our enemy. Fukunaga acknowledges and yet wishes to challenge, our increasingly desensitized response to ongoing international conflict. “Beasts’” unwavering commitment to a sustained point of view — arguably its most startling and moving characteristic — is an empathetic call to arms. How else would we survive its brutal and bruising violence, were it not for the bright, burning, wide-eyed innocence of the film’s central character: 10-year-old Agu; his benevolent, “clever eyes” gazing in constant wonder, and indeed horror, at the seemingly ceaseless felling of life and landscape. Character and environment are inexplicably linked.

There is an inscrutable, Malick-like search for the untarnished amongst the defamed, Fukunaga challenging us to accept that every form of behavior, no matter how seemingly irredeemable, is inseparable from a very particular set of circumstances. This is wise, urgent and heartfelt screenwriting and filmmaking. Asking us to keep looking, when we might ordinarily wish to look away.

London-based playwright Nick Payne recently completed his first screenplay, an adaptation of Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending.” His play “Incognito” will be staged by Manhattan Theatre Club in spring 2016.

The Revenant

(Fox)

Screenplay by Mark L. Smith & Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

By Scott Z. Burns

Revenge has starred in almost as many movies as love. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, sayeth the Lord” — but Charles Bronson, Uma Thurman and Liam Neeson have said it since and audiences have applauded.

Because revenge masquerades as a kind of justice in the world.

But, is it? Revenge fills a character with purpose. It is both righteous and reflexive; binary and time-honored. It is inherent to humankind — between individuals and tribes. It is not self-defense, but self-destruction. And it is the grim engine that turns the action in “The Revenant.”

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Mark L. Smith follow this primal imperative on a relentless march across a brutal landscape. And it is thrilling to watch from up close. They show us that vengeance gives you courage, but insists on your soul in return (in 1822 as it does today). It drags Hugh Glass on his belly across icy rivers and mountains— as he becomes retribution’s loyal servant. And we find ourselves his accomplice.

Inarritu and Smith lead us to a reckoning and then leave us staring at the face of our own hopeless pursuit of things we can’t get back.

There are very few words here. What there is instead is a faith in the profound ability of cinema to stand on the coalescing of images. We are left to decide for ourselves, because we have to. Besides, the words we already know. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye, leaves the whole world blind.”

Scott Z. Burns is a screenwriter, director and producer whose film credits include the original screenplay for Steven Soderbergh’s “Side Effects,” “Contagion,” and the screen adaptation of Soderbergh’s “The Informant!.” He co-wrote the “Bourne Ultimatum” and was a producer on the Academy Award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”