The authors and screenwriters behind the film "The Big Short" and the television miniseries "Show Me a Hero" received the 28th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Award in a ceremony inside USC's Doheny Library on Saturday, Feb. 20. The Scripter Award recognizes the year's best adaptations of the written word for the screen, honoring both the screenwriters and the authors of the original source material.
In its coverage, Variety featured comments from Adam McKay, director and co-screenwriter of "The Big Short," about libraries:
Having watched the primary returns roll in from Nevada and South Carolina, McKay — an avowed Bernie Sanders supporter — said he had been depressed earlier in the afternoon, but that coming to the USC campus was comforting, “because I feel like there’s a meditative quality to thought and reading, and coming to this library slows things down,” he said. “I think that’s kind of what our country needs to do right now, is slow things down. And I think that’s kind of what this movie was about. It’s about outsiders that weren’t a part of our crazy, fast-paced culture, and they were able to think and look at facts. The job of this place is to think and slow things down and look at things.”
Alex Hsieh of the Daily Trojan, USC's student newspaper, highlighted remarks by Howard Rodman, chair of the Scripter selection committee and president of the Writers Guild of America, West:
For Rodman, a good adaptation is both innovative and faithful to the original piece.
“Books are the single best medium that I know for getting inside people’s heads, an act forbidden to screenwriters who can only rely on what can be seen and what can be heard,” Rodman said. “A great adaptation elevates more than it betrays, sharpens more than it forces, brings more than it leaves behind … It brings the book to a new audience.”
The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, Deadline Hollywood, Indiewire, and Entertainment Weekly also covered the event.