Screenwriters at the Roundtable: Gillian Flynn for Gone Girl, Graham Moore for The Imitation Game and more

Today is not only my usual Slacker Sunday, it's a drizzly Sunday morning here in LA which means I'm not walking my usual two miles today, and I'm not going to feel guilty about it either. Hundreds of thousands of people are walking today though, in Paris, marching against terrorism, gathering by the thousands at Place de la République in Paris, shouting Liberte! Liberte!

It's also Golden Globes Sunday. The Paris march — and the incidents that prompted it at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the hostage situation at the Kosher market — makes the silliness of the Golden Globes seem especially trifling. And yet as always, art — books, painting, music, movies, dance — both illuminates the issues and gives the world a break from the often sad realities of life on this beautiful planet;  terrorism, poverty, violence, racism, anti-semitism, anti-Islamism, global warming, animal cruelty, sexual and physical abuse, sexism, ageism, gender discrimination (should I go on?) and, all too frequently, the simple loneliness of being someone looking for someone to love. Art does all that, and just as often, paints the opposite picture, celebrating life as well.

It all begins with a pen so perhaps today's writer's roundtable is especially fitting. Of the group of writers featured in The Hollywood Reporter Roundtable, two are Golden Globe nominees: Gillian Flynn for the Gone Girl film screenplay she wrote, based on her own novel, and Graham Moore for his The Imitation Game script, based in part on the book Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Joining them at the roundtable are Jon Favreau (Chef), Jonathan Nolan (Interstellar), Anthony McCartern (The Theory of Everything) and Chris Rock (Top Five), the last four not being Golden Globe nominees but all are successful Hollywood scribes, among other things.

It's worth noting that unlike the Oscars, the GG's doesn't differentiate between 'original' scripts and 'adapted screenplays'. Flynn and Moore's fellow GG nominees are Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Richard Linklater for Boyhood and for Birdman, a veritable committee of writers: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo.

Enjoy!

I'll be posting the full list of Golden Globe film nominees in a later post.