2012 Writers Guild Awards, West: Finding The Right Words

Co-host Zooey Deschanel waves to the press

As awards season begins rounding to a close, the events leading up to Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony rightfully revere the less glamorized niches of the film industry that comprise the core of what makes the year’s best movies and television series as creatively successful as they are. Nothing takes this notion to heart quite like the Writers Guild Awards, held simultaneously in Los Angeles and New York each February to herald the best screenplays and scripts of the year in movies, television, video games and new media. While the onscreen stars of these projects receive the most rapturous attention from the press and public, it’s the authors of the underlying stories who are given the spotlight at the WGA Awards, and the rare chance to both celebrate and explain their craft.

The West Coast fete at the Hollywood Palladium February 19 featured co-hosts Joel McHale and Zooey Deschanel, and a slew of the industry’s most commemorated writers, producers, directors and actors, many of whom talked to reporters at the red carpet prior to the show and in the press room following their wins. A large number of the nominees and winners can actually boast all four showbiz facets to their resume, something Tate Taylor, writer, director and executive producer of The Help, says is the only way he knows how to maneuver his way within the entertainment industry.

“I moved out here and started in The Groundlings program,” the Best Adapted Screenplay nominee began. “It’s funny, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Jim [Rash] and Nat [Faxon] were all Groundlings [too], so my first introduction to performance was writing, directing and acting simultaneously, so that’s all I know.” When asked if he prefers writing or directing, Taylor affirmed his multitasking tendencies by stating, “I prefer filmmaking.”

One colleague of Taylor’s who might have a narrower focus in his career is David Seltzer, Original Long Form winner for the HBO movie Cinema Verite, a chronicle of the Louds, arguably America’s first reality stars in the 1970s documentary An American Family. Unlike relative newcomer Taylor, Seltzer is a Hollywood veteran and primarily focuses his energy on screenwriting, but his drive to make a movie that offers commentary on society’s increasing tendency to idolize fame mirrors Taylor and other nominees’ ambitions to tell the stories that resonate with them.

“Basically, there’s an avalanche of degradation of the arts in society,” Seltzer declared, explaining the motivation behind exploring the importance of An American Family. “So I think it’s natural that all of the worst tendencies of the media and everybody wanting to be famous, everything got heated up. I think people have just very little belief that they can get through life without being famous and are willing to do anything.”

Fame is not something most screenwriters prioritize, but to know that an audience understands their point of view is perhaps the closest equivalent. WGA winner Vince Gilligan, creator of the critical and commercial AMC hit Breaking Bad, expressed gratitude for the impact his unconventional subject matter has with fans of the show.

“I’m amazed the show is even on the air,” Gilligan exclaimed after his win for Best Drama Series and Best Episodic Drama. “It’s a show about a middle-aged guy who’s dying of cancer who cooks crystal meth. On paper, it should not work at all, so I am impressed and pleased as punch.”

Another awards favorite, Modern Family, has also enjoyed runaway success, albeit on a different scale than Breaking Bad. The ABC single-camera family comedy involves admittedly safer topics and tone than more provocative cable darlings, but Modern Family creator and 2012 WGA winner for Comedy Series and Episodic Comedy Steven Levitan explained a worry that surely plagues the minds of any accomplished showrunner as their series reach extended shelf lives.

“You always worry about that sort of thing,” Levitan confessed, talking about the challenge of keeping viewers captivated. “You worry that people get a little tired and they want to see somebody new come along … but we get it, we understand it. All we can do at this point is work as hard as we can to keep the show as good as we can and let the rest take care of itself … We hope to live up to everybody’s expectations.”

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan

In the case of Breaking Bad, Gilligan has the fortune of having a final 16-episode order on deck, and he voiced his gratitude as a writer for being lucky enough to have prior knowledge with which to structure the series finale.

“We are very lucky to know how many more episodes we have. It’s a wonderful blessing, because a lot of shows don’t get that opportunity to know when they’re going to end and therefore be able to write and construct toward a specific, finite end date,” Gilligan declared.

One of Bad’s winning staff writers, Peter Gould, also won individually for his adapted screenplay Too Big to Fail, an HBO movie that recounts the country’s economic downfall in 2008. During his time with reporters, Gould let slip that Bad will have a “Season 5 and Season 5A,” a notion that Gilligan would neither confirm nor deny meant the final 16 episodes would indeed be split into two eight-episode mini-seasons as already suspected.

Like Cinema Verite, Too Big to Fail is based on a true story and follows the events surrounding real people. Gould talked about the process of making sure his script was both factual and engrossing, an important notion that doesn’t pertain as strongly, or at all, to pure fiction.

“Because we wanted to get it right and to be fair, I went in with a lot of misconceptions about what the [financial] crisis was about and what the solution was about, and what the billion dollars, the trillion dollars, was for, and I was constantly surprised by what really happened,” Gould said, elaborating on his rapport with former treasury secretary Henry Paulson to add the finishing factual touches. “He had a lot of comments about the script. Some of them, he had a lot of corrections, but then there were a lot of things that he wanted to do that we didn’t do, so we really had to decide what was accurate. We were trying to make something accurate, but also dramatic.”

For Taylor, the opportunity to adapt his friend Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel essentially occurred backward, and he says both the script and his experience writing it benefited as a result.

“When I got the rights to The Help from Kathryn, she had no publisher, no agent, nobody wanted it. So I got it, and had finished the screenplay before [the book] even hit the shelves, which was another blessing,” he revealed. “I wrote what I wanted.”

2012 WGA Laurel Award recipient Eric Roth shared some insight on his legendary, life-spanning career that includes penning Oscar-winning and nominated films like Forrest Gump, The Insider, Ali, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and this year’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. While writing what you want is certainly important, Roth explained that striking a certain balance within one’s content is also crucial in achieving good storytelling.

“I’m more comfortable with my writing now, but I still probably write too much,” Roth confessed. “Somebody told me once … ‘If you write too long you don’t know what you’re writing about, and if you write too short you have nothing to write about,’ so I’m probably on the long side. I need people … to help me keep it honest.”

As Taylor continued answering questions, honest answers proved to be no problem for him. When asked what his dream project would be now that he has major awards success under his belt, his response drew sympathetic laughs from nearly everyone in the room.

“One that’s financed,” he wryly quipped.

For more on the WGA Awards, check out Lots of Funny People by Kody Keplinger.

For a full list of the 2012 WGA Award winners, click here.

Images courtesy of Keith Kuramoto for Poptimal.

Bridesmaids co-writer and nominee Annie Mumolo Bridesmaids co-writer and nominee Annie Mumolo	Annie Mumolo Annie Mumolo	Game of Thrones creator David Benioff and wife Amanda Peet (r) join Lisa Kudrow on the WGAw Awards red carpet Game of Thrones creator David Benioff and wife Amanda Peet (r) join Lisa Kudrow on the WGAw Awards red carpet
Lisa Kudrow, nominee for online series Web Therapy Lisa Kudrow, nominee for online series Web Therapy	Lisa Kudrow Lisa Kudrow	Nominee Lisa Kudrow Nominee Lisa Kudrow
Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner	Mad Men's Matthew Weiner and Kiernan Shipka Mad Men's Matthew Weiner and Kiernan Shipka	Mad Men co-star Kiernan Shipka Mad Men co-star Kiernan Shipka
Kiernan Shipka, better known as Sally Draper on AMC's Mad Men Kiernan Shipka, better known as Sally Draper on AMC's Mad Men	Oscar nominee Octavia Spencer Oscar nominee Octavia Spencer	The Help co-star Octavia Spencer The Help co-star Octavia Spencer
WGAw Awards co-hosts Joel McHale and Zooey Deschanel WGAw Awards co-hosts Joel McHale and Zooey Deschanel	Zooey Deschanel Zooey Deschanel	Zooey Deschanel waves to the press before heading inside the Hollywood Palladium Zooey Deschanel waves to the press before heading inside the Hollywood Palladium
Community co-star and The Descendants co-writer Jim Rash Community co-star and The Descendants co-writer Jim Rash	Jim Rash, WGA Award winner for The Descendants Jim Rash, WGA Award winner for The Descendants	Henry Bromell (L), Gideon Raff, Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Meredith Stiehm, Alexander Cary, Homeland writers and WGA Award Winners for New Series Henry Bromell (L), Gideon Raff, Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Meredith Stiehm, Alexander Cary, Homeland writers and WGA Award Winners for New Series
Alex Gansa (L), Howard Gordon, Meredith Stiehm, Alexander Cary Alex Gansa (L), Howard Gordon, Meredith Stiehm, Alexander Cary	Peter Gould, winner for Too Big To Fail Peter Gould, winner for Too Big To Fail	David Seltzer, winner for Cinema Verite David Seltzer, winner for Cinema Verite
Heath Corson (L) and Richie Keen, WGA Award Winners for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Original New Media Heath Corson (L) and Richie Keen, WGA Award Winners for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Original New Media	Producer/writer Greg Nicotero, WGA Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Derivative New Media Producer/writer Greg Nicotero, WGA Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Derivative New Media	Simpsons writer and WGA Award Winner for Animation Joel H. Cohen Simpsons writer and WGA Award Winner for Animation Joel H. Cohen
The Help writer and director Tate Taylor The Help writer and director Tate Taylor	Tate Taylor is flanked by The Help co-stars and Oscar nominees Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis Tate Taylor is flanked by The Help co-stars and Oscar nominees Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis	Octavia Spencer (r), Tate Taylor and Viola Davis Octavia Spencer (r), Tate Taylor and Viola Davis
Marshall Herskovitz (r) and Edward Zwick Marshall Herskovitz (r) and Edward Zwick	Modern Family wins again Modern Family wins again	The Modern Family writing staff pose with their WGA Awards The Modern Family writing staff pose with their WGA Awards