BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Top honors from the Writers Guild of America went to the screenwriters of Gosford Park and A Beautiful Mind on Saturday night, adding momentum to both films' screenplay bids at the Academy Awards.
Julian Fellowes won the best original screenplay prize for Gosford Park, a class-warfare satire about murder among the wealthy at an English country manor.
Akiva Goldsman claimed best adapted screenplay with A Beautiful Mind, based on Sylvia Nasar's best-selling biography of the schizophrenic mathematics professor John Forbes Nash Jr.
Both movies are also nominated in those categories at the Oscars, which will be awarded on March 24. Gosford Park has seven Oscar nominations while A Beautiful Mind has eight, and both are also contending for best picture.
Winners of the Guild's 54th annual awards, which are considered a bellwether for the Oscars, were announced in ceremonies held in Beverly Hills by the WGA-West, and in New York by the WGA-East.
Gosford Park defeated the revisionist musical Moulin Rouge; The Man Who Wasn't There, a black-and-white thriller about a laconic blackmailer; Monster's Ball, in which a racist white man and a black woman fall in love; and The Royal Tenenbaums, a quirky comedy about a family of failed geniuses.
Competition for A Beautiful Mind included Black Hawk Down, based on Mark Bowden's book about a deadly U.S. battle in Mogadishu, Somalia; Bridget Jones's Diary, from Helen Fielding's novel about a single woman's romances in London; Ghost World, based on Daniel Clowes' graphic novel about a disenchanted teen-ager; and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, adapted from the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy.
David Angell, the co-creator of the NBC sitcoms "Frasier" and "Wings" who died Sept. 11 as a passenger on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, received a special posthumous award for excellence.
"In life, David Angell was a real gentleman, bringing a kindness and warmth to his scripts, his shows and his staff," said WGA-West President Victoria Riskin. "In death, he has become an inspiration to many who never knew him personally."
Other WGA winners announced Saturday:
© 2002 Associated Press