Best Writing (Adapted) – 1976

Official Nominations: All The President’s Men. Bound For Glory. Fellini’s Cassanova. The Seven Percent Solution. Voyage Of The Damned.

An obvious front-runner and inevitable winner this year. All The President’s Men – even without a huge number of iconic one-liners or memorable dialogue it’s one of the most famous screenplays of its era – William Goldman adapting Bernstein and Woodward’s game changer. Goldman’s own game-changer in defining how cinematic the film should be, was removing most of the second half of the source material, focusing on the the initial investigation rather than the downfall. Bound For Glory is an engaging enough adaptation of Woody Guthrie’s pseudo-biography while The Seven Percent Solution is a star-studded Sherlock Holmes story based on a book not written by Doyle.

Voyage Of The Damned feels like a ‘we have to nominate this because the book was important’ nomination while Cassanova is Fellini’s adaptation of Cassanova’s autobiography, twisting the character into a more self-obsessed character with tragic traits.

My Winner: All The President’s Men

My Nominations: All The President’s Men. Family Plot. The Last Tycoon. Marathon Man.

Only the official winner follows the money over to my list. Family Plot – it’s not the best Hitchcock movie but it’s still a worthy, and funny, thriller – it wasn’t the best year for adaptations so when I couple that with the fact that this was Hitchock’s final movie, it seems fitting to see one last nomination. The Last Tycoon takes the brave approach of adapting an unfinished F Scott Fitzgerald novel, using the non-ending as an opportunity to convey a disjointed plot. Goldman gets a second nomination, this time adapting his own novel Marathon Man with terrifying results.

My Winner:All The President’s Men

Let us know your winner in the comments!