On Adaptation II, or With A Name Like Harvey Milk, He Couldn't Be Made Up

A little while back the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out their annual awards, The Oscars. A few moments before Mickey Rourke was thoroughly robbed, the screenwriting awards were handed out. The Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published (commonly known as Best Adapted Screenplay) went (deservedly) to Slumdog Millionaire, by Simon Beaufoy while Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (commonly known as Best Original Screenplay) went to Milk, by Dustin Lance Black.

You've hurt me deep down yet again, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Something feels weird here. Surely writing a screenplay based on the life of somebody real counts as adapting a screenplay from existing material. If we look at the other nominees in the Original Screenplay category- Frozen River, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges and Wall-E- we see films whose screenplays were conjured from thin air, sourced from nothing but the imaginations of their writers. The screenplay for Milk, however, required Dustin Lance Black to sit down with research material; documentaries, interviews, articles, etc, and adapt the information he found there into a screenplay.

The key to this seeming balls-up on the Academy's behalf is in the full names of the awards given- "Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published" seems to specify that to qualify, a screenplay needs to be based on an existing work (like a book, as was the case with Slumdog or its fellow nominees The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, or a play, like Frost/Nixon or Doubt). A biopic (like Milk) apparently gets to fall right through this loophole and land squarely in the category of Original Screenplay.

Which, of course, is bullshit. The process of adapting a person's life into a screenplay is much closer to that of adapting a book than it is to that of writing something completely original (like Wall-E. I loved Wall-E.). It's not like Dustin Lance Black was in the shower or on the toilet one day and shouted "Eureka! A gay politician with a stupid name! That's my ticket to success!" before dropping a doody then rushing to his typewriter.

Please note that I'm not knocking Black, or his screenplay. I'm just arguing the categorisation.

Things would be different if I ran the Oscars, I tell ya'.