1996: Sling Blade

Screenplay by Billy Bob Thornton
Adapted from the short film Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade written by Billy Bob Thornton

Abused, developmentally disabled Karl Childers has been in a psychiatric hospital since he was about 12, when he killed his mother and her lover. Now, he is set to be released, whether he's ready or not.

A couple of earlier winners were based on TV movies, but this is the first, and so far only, time when a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner was based on a short film. As such, it shouldn't be surprising that the nature of this adaptation is completely different from any I've seen so far. The plot of the short was adapted into the first 20 minutes or so of the feature film, functioning as a prologue, and the remaining two hours of the movie reveal what comes after the short ends. The movie's opening credits don't even start until after the events of the short. A viewer could almost jump straight from the short to 20 minutes into the feature without even realizing it wasn't a continuous movie. The only differences that would really prevent this are that the short is in black and white while the feature is in color, and the director of the hospital, who comes back later in the feature, is played by a different actor. Billy Bob Thornton and J. T. Walsh play the only other two characters who come back in the feature in both versions.

The short leaves viewers with two main questions: Can Karl make it in the outside world? and Will he kill again? The feature answers both those questions in a way that is both fascinating and perfectly reasonable given the way his character was established in the short. It feels as though Thornton knew exactly where he wanted to go with Karl Childers before he even wrote the short, and just needed a slightly larger budget to pull it off. So even though this movie contains about two hours of content that wasn't in the original at all, it's still one of the more faithful adaptations to win this award.

This is the second year in a row when the screenwriter who won this award also starred in the film they wrote, which is particularly interesting because I think those are the only two times that's ever happened. This is certainly the only time when someone has written both the original and the adaptation and also starred in both. Well done, Billy Bob Thornton.

Coming up next: L.A. Confidential, based on the novel by James Ellroy