Best Screenplay

Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman
Adaptation

Continuing the two-way battle throughout most of these awards, About a Boy and Adaptation were the top two finishers in Best Screenplay, with Adaptation landing on top in this battle by a very narrow margin.

The reflexive nature of Charlie Kaufman's (and his fictional twin's) script obviously struck a big chord with our voters, as it won an overwhelming portion of the first place votes available. Alternatively clever, touching and insightful, Kaufman's meditation on the creative process and the passion involved was one of the more unique scripts to come along the pipes since, well, Being John Malkovich.

In what nearly became a demonstration of the power of group voting, About a Boy nearly won this category without a single first place vote. The Weitz brothers, along with Peter Hedges, did a terrific job of bringing Nick Hornby's insightful commentary to the screen. It doesn't take much to see that there's a bit of "lost boy" syndrome among this group.

Charlie Kaufman placed his other major script of the year in the top three, with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind sitting comfortably in third place. Quirky enough to be a Kaufman original, it was in fact taken from Chuck Barris's unauthorized autobiography (heh) of the same title. Taking Barris's claims at face value, it makes up the baseline of a film that is rich in metaphor but also works of its own accord as a thriller.

The screenplay for the latest edition of The Lord of the Rings makes an appearance in this list again, taking one step down from last year from third to fourth. The most altered of the three films from the source (so says Peter Jackson), The Two Towers had a lot of work to do, a lot of plot to convey and a lot of rearranging, with proper interlacing important to the multiple stories present.

Fifth place goes to the character drama About Schmidt, a quiet but hard-hitting drama about Midwest life and late-life crises. Reflecting the strength of the year, all of the top five scripts were adapted efforts, the opposite of last year's group of four originals and one adapted.

Just missing the top five were a few love-it-or-hate-it screenplays; PT Anderson's twisted love tale Punch-Drunk Love, M. Night Shyamalan's Signs and Steven Soderbergh's Solaris. All had their fans but not enough to push them into the top group. A script that probably could have gotten higher with more exposure is Dylan Kidd's Roger Dodger, which got only three votes, but all of them were for first place. At number ten was the screenplay for Frailty, the twisty and suspenseful supernatural thriller.

Among some major Oscar contenders, The Hours sat just outside the top ten at number 11, and Chicago just a bit lower at number 14. The general ignoring of Gangs of New York continued here, with no votes at all going to it. (Reagen Sulewski/BOP)

Top Ten
Position	Actor	Film	Total Points
1	Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman	Adaptation	110
2	Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz	About a Boy	104
3	Charlie Kaufman	Confessions of a Dangerous Mind	73
4	Frances Walsh, Peter Jackson, Stephen Sinclair and Philippa Boynes	The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	65
5	Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor	About Schmidt	56
6	Paul Thomas Anderson	Punch-Drunk Love	51
7	M. Night Shyamalan	Signs	49
8	Steven Soderbergh	Solaris	40
9	Dylan Kidd	Roger Dodger	39
10	Brent Hanley	Frailty	36