Dave McNary and Jeff Sneider of Variety take you inside the dual event:
Opting for recent awards-season favorites, the Writers Guild of America presented its top screenplay trophies to Michael Arndt for "Little Miss Sunshine" in the original category and William Monahan for "The Departed" in the adapted category.
Arndt's dysfunctional family comedy bested "Babel," "The Queen," "Stranger Than Fiction" and "United 93." Monahan's crime drama -- adapted from the 2002 Hong Kong thriller "Infernal Affairs" -- topped "Borat," "The Devil Wears Prada," "Little Children" and "Thank You for Smoking."
Both Arndt and Monahan were first-time WGA nominees, together with the rest of the field.
"I think the only thing that is standing between me being up here and living in my mom's basement is my agent Bill Weinstein," Arndt said, noting that Weinstein was the first person in Hollywood to peddle his script six years ago as Arndt crashed at his mother's house.
Kudos were announced Sunday night in simultaneous ceremonies for the 59th annual Writers Guild Awards at the Century Plaza in Los Angeles and the Millennium Broadway in [in New York City]
Based on voting by the 13,000 WGA members, the victories maintain recent momentum for Fox Searchlight's "Sunshine" and Warner Bros.' "The Departed," which are vying for the best picture Oscar along with "Babel," "Letters From Iwo Jima" and "The Queen." "Sunshine" won the Producers Guild and SAG ensemble awards, and Martin Scorsese drew the DGA trophy for "The Departed" on Feb. 3.
Arndt's WGA award is for his first produced screenplay and comes half a dozen years after he first penned "Little Miss Sunshine." He noted at the guild's panel discussion Thursday that it was crucial in the road-trip comedy that the characters face seemingly unsolvable dilemmas.
"The problem with comedy is that it's not serious enough," Arndt said. "There have to be problems the audience can't see a solution to, so it comes as an epiphany. As you watch the film, it feels like a comedy because you're laughing, but the characters feel like this is the worst weekend of their lives."
Monahan's script centered on mobsters in Boston, where he grew up, and its Irish Catholic culture. The pic's mob boss, played by Jack Nicholson, was partly modeled on James "Whitey" Bulger, who was eventually revealed to be an FBI informant.
A nervous Monahan's acceptance speech was simply, "I can't thank you enough; I did not prepare anything to say."
Arndt and Monahan head into the Feb. 25 Academy Awards as front-runners, although this year's screenplay races are viewed as especially competitive.
WGA winners have matched Oscar winners in the original category in seven of the past 12 years, including last year, when Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco won for "Crash"; the guild's winner in the adapted category has doubled as Oscar winner eight times in the past 12 years, including last year's Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for "Brokeback Mountain...
Amy Berg won the documentary feature writing award for Lionsgate's "Deliver Us From Evil." Pic, which centered on a former priest and convicted pedophile, was the only docu among the finalists with an Oscar nomination.
Find out who else took home WGA awards on Sunday...
Kudos to William Monahan on his win for The Departed...I will post a review of the Martin Scorsese crime drama soon after my pre-ordered DVD of the movie arrives in the mail... The Oscar nominated flick hits store shelves in the U.S. tomorrow.
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