Jordan Peele won the Writers Guild of America Award for best original screenplay for his script for “Get Out” Sunday evening while James Ivory won for best adapted screenplay for “Call Me By Your Name.”
“I think this means so much because writers know how (expletive) hard it is to write something,” Peele said on stage at The Beverly Hilton. “This was a passion project. It was something that I put my love into, I put my soul into, so getting this from you means so much.”
The other nominees were Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani for “The Big Sick”; Steven Rogers for “I, Tonya,” Greta Gerwig for “Lady Bird” and Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor for “The Shape of Water.”
All but Rogers also are nominees for the best original screenplay Oscar, which will be awarded March 4.
Peele said he started writing the script for “Get Out” in 2008.
“There was a lot of ups and downs,” said Peele, previously best known for co-starring with former “Mad TV” castmate Keeegan-Michael Key in their 2012-15 Comedy Central sketch series “Key & Peele.”
Peele declined to answer reporters’ questions backstage.
Peele has received best original screenplay, best director and best picture Oscar nominations for “Get Out,” the third person to receive the three nominations for a debut film, following Warren Beatty and James L. Brooks.
Brooks received the guild’s Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement Sunday.
The 89-year-old Ivory said backstage, “To win a writers award is an incredible thing. I can’t describe it. It means an awful lot to me.”
The other nominees were Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber for “The Disaster Artist”; Scott Frank, James Mangold and Michael Green for “Logan”; Aaron Sorkin for “Molly’s Game”; and Virgil Williams and Dee Rees for “Mudbound.”
All but Williams and Rees are nominated in the best adapted screenplay category for the Oscars.
Ivory said the script was the first he wrote for a film he didn’t direct. He received best director Oscar nominations for “A Room with a View,” “Howards End” and “The Remains of the Day.”
Ivory told City News Service he first became involved in the project around 2012 when neighbors of his in upstate New York who had bought the film rights “and they wanted me to be an executive producer,” an offer he accepted.
“They thought if I was an executive producer it might help them raise money,” Ivory said. “It didn’t really, but eventually they got it going. Then I was offered to chance to co-direct it with Luca Guadagnino. I said I would, but I wanted to write my own screenplay if I was going to co-direct. That was agreed to.”
Guadagnino became the film’s sole director.
The award was the second in two days for Ivory. He and Andre Aciman — who wrote the novel of the same name from which “Call Me By Your Name” was adapted — received a USC Libraries’ Scripter Award, which honors authors of printed works and the screenwriters who adapt their stories.
–City News Service