How ‘Past Lives’ can take down ‘The Holdovers’ for Best Original Screenplay Oscar

Jeffrey Kare
·3 min read
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As of this writing the frontrunner to win this year’s Oscar for Best Original Screenplay is “The Holdovers” with 69/20 odds based on the combined predictions of Gold Derby users. What was previously behind it in second place was “Barbie,” yet the Academy recently declared that script to be adapted despite Warner Bros. campaigning it as original. With “Barbie” out of the way, “Past Lives” is now in second place in this category with 4/1 odds. But I think it actually has a shot of taking down “The Holdovers” for the win.

When it comes to Alexander Payne movies at the Oscars, they’ve so far gone one of two ways. They’ve either only won one award for screenplay (as was the case for “Sideways” and “The Descendants”), or they’ve gone home empty-handed (as was the case for “Election,” “About Schmidt,” and “Nebraska”). Many are currently predicting “The Holdovers” will fall into that first category, though it’s also the odds-on favorite to win Best Supporting Actress for Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who would be the first acting winner from a Payne film.

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However unlike “Sideways” and “The Descendants,” “The Holdovers” does not have Payne credited as a writer. It was instead written by David Hemingson. It is worth noting that every Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay since 2011 was written or co-written by the film’s director:

2011 — “Midnight in Paris,” written by Woody Allen (director)

2012 — “Django Unchained,” written by Quentin Tarantino (director)

2013 — “Her,” written by Spike Jonze (director)

2014 — “Birdman,” written by Armando Bo, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Nicolás Giacobone, and Alejandro González Iñárritu (director)

2015 — “Spotlight,” written by Tom McCarthy (director) and Josh Singer

2016 — “Manchester By the Sea,” written by Kenneth Lonergan (director)

2017 — “Get Out,” written by Jordan Peele (director)

2018 — “Green Book,” written by Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly (director), and Nick Vallelonga

2019 — “Parasite,” written by Bong Joon-ho (director) and Han Jin-won

2020 — “Promising Young Woman,” written by Emerald Fennell (director)

2021 — “Belfast,” written by Kenneth Branagh (director)

2022 — “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” written by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (directors)

SEE‘Past Lives’ wins Best Picture at National Society of Film Critics Awards: Full winners list

The last Best Original Screenplay winner that wasn’t penned by the film’s director was “The King’s Speech” (written by David Seidler, helmed by Tom Hooper) back in 2010. That bodes well for “Past Lives” as its script was written by its director, Celine Song.

Be mindful, though, that Song did just lose the Golden Globe for Best Film Screenplay — which combines both adapted and original scripts — to “Anatomy of a Fall,” which is also credited to its director, Justine Triet (along with Arthur Harari). But since 2015 only two Golden Globe winners for writing went on to repeat at the Academy Awards: “Green Book” in 2018 and “Belfast” in 2021.

If either Song or Triet prevails, we’d also have the fourth consecutive year with a female writer/director winning a screenplay Oscar, following the aforementioned Emerald Fennell (original), Sian Heder (“CODA,” adapted), and Sarah Polley (“Women Talking,” adapted).

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