'Moonlight,' 'Atlanta' Win At 2017 Writers Guild Awards
The 2017 Writers Guild announced its winners this past weekend, with Moonlight winning the top award during the ceremony.
The film, directed by Barry Jenkins, took home the Original Screenplay award, beating out films La La Land, Manchester By the Sea, Hell or High Water and Loving.
"A lot of people back home are watching this and they see me doing these things and they get inspired," Jenkins said upon taking the stage to receive the award. "But what I want to say is, I can’t say that writing will get you from where you are to this stage, but my experience is that it will get you closer to who you are."
Atlanta took home some awards too, including best Comedy Series and best New Series, beating out Silicon Valley, Transparent, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Veep for the former, and Better Things, Stranger Things, This Is Us and Westworld in the latter.
Moonlight is currently up for eight awards at this year's Oscars, including Best Picture. The movie was a favorite here at Okayplayer, with contributor Myles Johnson offering:
"It would be an error to frame Moonlight as a flawless achievement, and it would be an error to conflate flawlessness with excellence. Moonlight is excellent. The flaws are subtle, but still remind me that this should not serve as the ultimate pedagogy for the black gay male experience. Instead, Moonlight is the first crack to break the dam that floods the world with stories about the black queer male into the zeitgeist. There are moments where the story talks over my shoulder to the white person behind me. There are elements in the story that I feel use queerness and irony as a way to disrupt the white imagination’s perception of the dangers of the black man. This was a very specific story device that was designed for universal appeal in order to show humanity and complexity behind those usually only regarded as super predators in the white person's imagination...Simply put, Moonlight is a brilliant star that invites storytellers to help in the making of a galaxy, while forcing the more general public to gaze at parts of the universe too often ignored."
