5. Cormac McCarthy - The Counselor
Author Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, The Road) is more or less the Crowned Prince of contemporary American literature. He won the National Book Award in 1992 for his novel, All the Pretty Horses, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his post-apocalyptic tale, The Road (both of which were subsequently turned into films). He was also declared by literary critic Harold Bloom to be one of the four major American writers of his time (the other three being Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Phillip Roth, just in case you were wondering). You would suspect then, writers likely being avid fans of literature, that the Academy's Writers branch would be only all too eager to reward an Oscar nomination to a literary giant such as Cormac McCarthy for his first foray into original screenwriting. What then would prevent them from doing so? I have one good reason and his name is Ridley Scott. I hate to be so sensationally hyperbolic when it comes to a director as well respected as Mr. Scott, lest we forget he was the man behind such classics as Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down, but he hasn't been on the best of streaks lately. Now I'm sure there may be many of you who will want to defend this or that film is his recent oeuvre, and that's fine, I thought a few of them were okay myself (although no one should defend the atrocity that was Robin Hood), but even avid Scott fanatics have to admit his films haven't quite lived up to their potential. Particularly in terms of awards season traction, Scott has been absent for quite some time. This is then what makes me nervous about The Counselor and its chances at a Best Original Screenplay nomination. If Scott's direction comes off as too hokey, forgoing the stark nature of say the Coens' adaptation of McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, I'm afraid the Academy may overlook whatever brilliance may lie within the script itself. McCarthy's tale is reportedly about a lawyer who gets caught up in a drug trafficking scheme, which sounds like Grade-A Oscar material to me, but as they say, it's all in the presentation, which has me fretting.