For Screenwriters,the Oscars are a cliffhanger

John Logan was already three years into adapting the complicated screenplay for Hugo when he learned that Martin Scorsese wanted the film to be in 3-D.

Logan,a Tony-winning playwright turned screenwriter (Any Given Sunday and Aviator,set about reworking the story,based on Brian Selznicks book about an orphaned boy who lives in a train station. He had Hugo traverse the stations innards; scenes with dogs were also added. An electrifying 3-D moment when a train crashes through the station was added late in the process. I had to find a way to justify it,to justify the train crash,and so we came up with a dream-within-the-dream sequence, Logan said. Hugo was far and away the hardest movie he had ever worked on,he added. He was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay,his third nomination. Logan is one of the few veterans in the screenplay categories this year; many of the other hopefuls are first-time screenwriters.

On Oscar night,Feb 26,the writing categories may remain a toss-up. Will the Oscar go to veterans like Woody Allen,who received his 15th screenplay nomination for Midnight in Paris,or Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian,who adapted Moneyball? Or will they reward unorthodox original-screenplay nominees like Asghar Farhadi,the writer-director of the Iranian family drama A Separation,or J. C. Chandor,for the financial thriller Margin Call? For many hopefuls,a nomination is beyond their expectations. When Judd Apatow invited Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig to try writing a screenplay,the two longtime friends came up with the idea for Bridesmaids,an original screenplay nominee. A few days after pitching Bridesmaids to Apatow,they told him they had another idea. And he said,Oh,I already sold the other one to Universal, Mumolo recalled. We were like: What?

The inspiration came from bits and pieces of their own lives. As first-time screenwriters,they had few expectations. We were hoping to get it made, Mumolo said. That was kind of our main goal. Oh my gosh,it would be crazy if we got this movie made!

The director,Paul Feig,had the cast do the scenes as written and then improvise,while Wiig and Mumolo handed him notes. Since 2000,only 11 screenplays that credit women as writers or co-writers have been nominated,and only two of those My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Bridesmaidsare true comedies.

Jim Rash and Nat Faxon did The Descendants,also written by the director,Alexander Payne. Jim Burke,a producer of The Descendants,asked Rash and Faxon to adapt Kaui Hart Hemmings novel. But the book is written in the first person,with interior monologues from Matt King (George Clooney). Getting out of that perspective was certainly a challenge, Faxon said,you wanted to understand this character,and in the book it was so well described,because he could tell you exactly how he was feeling. Payne solution? An opening voice-over that gives the background. Payne,the writer-director of Sideways,for which he won a screenplay Oscar,schooled Rash and Faxon on how to balance comedy and emotion.

For Chandor,the writer-director of Margin Call,the test was finding any sentiment in the financial meltdown of 2008. It was also difficult to structure: it mostly takes place after hours in an anonymous office building,as Wall Streeters talk complicated financial failings to one another. Chandor wrote the script while he worked as a real estate broker,keeping it a secret even from his family.