screenplay

If only Johnson’s complexity were matched anywhere else in the screenplay.

Baumbach and Mortimer write the character and his actor as closely together as possible so as to make the honest, emotional swings of their screenplay feel immediately resonant.

Spawning not one but two soundtrack releases, the film had the air of a cultural phenomenon about it and anointed Anderson as a generational talent, earning him his first Academy Award nomination for the screenplay.

It also landed Gyllenaal her second Academy Award nomination for adapted screenplay.

There’s certainly precedent: Johnson was nominated for each of the first two “Knives Out” screenplays.