People Who Read People: Adapted Screenplay, 1980

Though I pride myself on being a reader, I'm reminded of how little I know, how little I've read, every time I look at the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay. And what's fascinating about this lineup is how many options each nominee offers!

For instance, Breaker Morant. The true story of three Australian lieutenants in the Boer War, courtmartialed for executing prisoners - and murdering a civilian. The film itself is mainly adapted from a hit 1978 stage play by Kenneth G. Ross, but also tips a hat to the non-fiction book The Breaker by Kit Denton - even though Ross and the production had just won a lawsuit against Denton for claiming to be the film's source. Why two credits, then? Girl, I don't know.

The Elephant Man, another true story, is likewise adapted from multiple sources. Following the true story of famously deformed Victorian personality Joseph "John" Merrick, the film's main inspiration is the memoir by Merrick's physician, Dr. Frederick Treves - yet it also takes from the anthropologist Ashley Montagu, the man appointed by UNESCO to investigate The Race Question. It bears no relation to the stage play of the same name, which was contemporaneously running on Broadway, a fact that stuck in the craw of the show's producers.

Ordinary People is straightforward, based as it is on Judith Guest's debut novel about a family dealing with the aftermath the death of one son and attempted suicide of the other. No confusion there, especially as it became a critically-acclaimed bestseller. But I do want to point out: it was later adapted into a stage play by Nancy Gilsenan. Mind, that was after the film won its Oscars - including this one.

Coal Miner's Daughter comes from the same-titled autobiography by Loretta Lynn (co-authored with George Vecsey), following the life and sometimes tribulations of the First Lady of Country Music. Loretta remained very hands-on, hand-picking Sissy Spacek to play her - and it doesn't end there! Last year, it was announced that Coal Miner's Daughter was heading to Broadway, and once again Ms. Lynn picked the new her: Zooey Deschanel.

The Stunt Man is the only nominee to stay away from the stage - for now. Based on Paul Brodeur's novel, the film follows a fugitive who hides out on a movie set, only to discover the director may be a greater threat to his physical and mental well-being than any cop. Don't expect to see this on 42nd Street any time soon - the flick is pure cinema.

And do those screenplays do their sources justice? Read on...

Who's the New Guy?: Best Director, 1983

It's the new guy versus the vets in the battle for Best Director.

Well, OK, the new guy was James L. Brooks, and while Terms of Endearment was his first film, this was hardly amateur hour: he was the writer-producer who brought us TV shows like Mary Tyler Moore and Phyllis and Taxi. He had even dipped his toes into film producing with Starting Over, which received two Oscar nominations years before.

Bruce Beresford, surprisingly enough for the director of a Texas-set, country music-concerned film like Tender Mercies, was an Australian filmmaker! He had been nominated for his Breaker Morant screenplay just three years earlier - he also has the rare honor of having directed a Best Picture-winning film (Driving Miss Daisy)...without being nominated himself.

Yates also directed Krull in 1983

Peter Yates was back making films like The Dresser in his native England, having been nominated four years earlier for directing and producing the American bicycle dramedy Breaking Away. He performed similar double-duty with The Dresser.

Mike Nichols was back in the game after more than a decade of nada, following his Oscar win for The Graduate. Silkwood was less obviously stylistic, but brought him back and served as his first collaboration with Meryl Streep. The two would later team up for Heartburn, Postcards from the Edge, and the HBO mini-series Angels in America.

And then there's Ingmar Bergman, with his own spotty record of Academy love. The most revered of Swedish filmmakers, Bergman's previous efforts had been relegated to either Foreign Film (this was the third of his films to win the category) or Original Screenplay (curiously, a common place for foreign auteurs to find their work honored - A Separation, anyone?). Fanny and Alexander proved to be his most Oscar-friendly work since Cries and Whispers in 1973, though like Scenes from a Marriage, it was a mini-series edited down to feature-length.

Beginner's luck: Brooks won. And it's interesting: he would be back twice as the producer-writer of Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets, but this proved to be his only at-bat for Directing. Good thing he got it, eh?

OR WAS IT?