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| Vol. 24, No. 17 | March 10, 1999 |
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| Vol. 24, No. 17 | March 10, 1999 |
BY ULRIKA BRAND
When the 1998 Academy Awards are presented on March 21, two Columbians will be in the running for screenwriting Oscars.
Bill Condon, a 1976 Columbia College graduate, and Scott B. Smith, who received his MFA in 1990 from the Writing Division in Columbia's School of the Arts, have both been nominated for "best screenplay based on material previously produced," for Gods and Monsters and A Simple Plan, respectively.
Condon, nominated for Gods and Monsters, not only wrote the screenplay based on Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein, but also directed the movie. Reached at his home in Los Angeles for comment, Condon said of the nomination: "It was very surprising. We had to fight so hard just to get the movie released-it took five months to get a distributor after its initial screening at Sundance-that just that seemed like a victory."
Not only did the independently produced Gods and Monsters ultimately gain distribution by Lions Gate, but it received rave reviews as well as two Oscar nominations in addition to Condon's: Ian McKellan for best actor and Lynn Redgrave for best supporting actress.
In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "an unalloyed success." The movie is a fictionalized account of the last year in the life of James Whale (played by McKellan), the director of Frankenstein and Showboat. Set in the late 50s, it portrays Hollywood's gay subculture and Whale's complex relationship with his gardener, a straight ex-marine, played by Brendan Fraser.
Writer-director Condon was a philosophy major in the College, studied Greek and Latin, and audited Andrew Sarris's film classes.
"I always knew I would make films-I was obsessed in high school; my four years at Columbia seemed like my last chance to concentrate on something else," he said. After graduation, Condon went to Los Angeles on money saved from working as a busboy. Intending to go to film school, he never got that far. A producer who had read an article Condon wrote for Millimeter magazine called to ask if he had any ideas for movies, and his career was off and running.
"It was a lucky break," he recounts. Still, Condon was not anxious to list any of his early credits. "Gods and Monsters is the first project I've been really proud of," he said. "It's the first one I've had real control over."
Condon returns to New York City several times a year and often visits Columbia to see the new campus architecture. He said it was especially gratifying to walk into his old work-study haunt, the Starr East Asian Library, and see his old bosses, Ken Harlin and John McClure. "They recognized me right away," he said.
The delight was mutual: "Ken and I have been following his film career since he left Columbia," McClure said. "And I've noticed that he always includes a library scene in every one of his pictures-usually in the stacks. In Gods and Monsters, though, it's in a main reference room."
Columbia's second Oscar contender, Scott B. Smith, received his MFA in 1990 from the Writing Division in the School of the Arts, and wrote the screenplay for A Simple Plan based on his own successful novel. A story about three regular guys who find $4.4 million in a plane wreck, David Denby in The New Yorker described it as "a study of the nasty effects of greed and of the weakness of civilization's bonds."
The original idea came to Smith in a Columbia screenwriting class. "The other students already had screenplays in progress, so I jumped into the middle of the story. I wanted to write about a violent occurrence in a remote farmhouse that was covered up," Smith explained.
He took the screenwriting idea, and began to write a novel. A year after finishing his MFA, Smith completed it. He came full circle- to make the novel into a screenplay-when director Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Primary Colors) optioned the book and asked him to write the script. Said Smith: "It was a very generous offer-I thought he had made a grave mistake."
Smith, in characteristic self-deprecating fashion, said the first draft scared Nichols off the project. The screenplay then went through revisions and more than five prospective directors, ultimately landing director Sam Raimi.
Asked about the difference between the novel and the movie, Smith said: "The screenplay is significantly deeper. The book is more of a thriller; it's about keeping the reader turning the pages. The screenplay is more about character."
When asked how Columbia's Writing Division had affected him, Smith said: "Someone said an MFA program can't teach writing, but it can speed up the maturation process ... I think it allowed me to think of myself as a writer in a way that I probably didn't deserve."