Screenplay Winners from 2009 Oscars
Academy Awards for Screenwriters Dustin Lance Black & Simon Beaufoy
© JD Eames
Feb 22, 2009
The Best Picture Oscar was awarded to Slumdog Millionaire. Nominated in ten different categories, the film received eight Academy Awards, which included Danny Boyle for Best Director, and Simon Beaufoy for Best Adapted Screenplay. Slumdog Millionaire tells an affecting story about a young man growing up in Mumbai, who against all odds, under intolerable circumstances, never lost the focus of his destiny.
Other Notable Awards
For an honest, stark portrayal a Nazi prison guard in The Reader, Kate Winslet won the Best Actress Academy Award. The Best Actor Oscar went to Sean Penn for his role in Milk.
Dustin Lance Black
Thirty-year-old American screenwriter Dustin Lance Black won for his original screenplay Milk, about San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. The first openly gay man elected to office in California, Harvey Milk was assassinated in 1978. In a November 2009 NPR Fresh Air interview, Black credits Harvey Milk’s example for enabling Black to come out as a gay man.
Black wrote and directed his first feature film in 2000, The Journey of Jared Price. Black has written since 2006 for Big Love, an HBO television series about polygamist Mormons. Of note, Black grew up in a Mormon family.
In a 2008 interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Black cites the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, as inspiring him to write his now Oscar-winning script. Black spent over four years developing Milk on spec. Black graduated from UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film and Television.
Simon Beaufoy
British screenwriter Simon Beaufoy won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay with Slumdog Millionaire. Earlier this year Beaufoy’s script earned him a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.
Beaufoy has written several films, most recently Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (with Frances McDormand and Amy Adams). In 1997, Beaufoy was nominated for an Oscar for his original script, The Full Monty. According to the Telegraph.co.uk, despite the fact The Full Monty film was the “most profitable ever to come out of Britain... Beaufoy is rumoured to have made only £30,000” for his award-winning script.
About adapting Slumdog Millionaire, Beaufoy wrote he felt the idea of writing a script about money left him cold, and “only love can overwhelm the seductive narrative of money that threatens to swamp the story.” ("Life on the hard Shoulder," The Guardian, Dec. 12, 2009.)
Beaufoy was born in Yorkshire, England in 1967. In 1991 he graduated from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth where he studied documentary filmmaking.
Writers Guild Awards
Both Beaufoy and Black won 2009 awards from The Writers Guild of America for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay, respectively.
Neither Beaufoy nor Black is also a playwright.
For a complete list of the winners of the 81st Academy Awards, visit the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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