Shakespeare in Love (1998 John Madden)

Tom Stoppard's brilliantly imaginative, clever and funny story of how Romeo and Juliet came to light and how Queen Elizabeth saved his bacon. Geoffrey Rush keeps narrowly avoiding buckets of piss; Tom Wilkinson becomes not a moneylender but a theatre aficionado; Ben Affleck is one of many to give Will ideas (another is Rupert Everett); Jim Carter is a theatrical nurse; Judi Dench a scene stealing queen; Gwyneth Apple a cute heroine. Joseph Fiennes is fine as the bard.

Won seven Oscars including best screenplay, by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman* (who wrote the initial idea and was one of the producers - previous credits include Cutthroat Island and The Killer Elite). Here's Norman in interview for the 'LA Times':

"Elizabethan drama reminds me of the early days of movies, a bunch of guys holding this tiger by the tail, the tiger of popular entertainment. The idea of theaters, a place where people would actually pay for a ticket as opposed to throwing money in a basket for street buskers, was a radical and revolutionary idea. I did a lot of research and I came across a lawsuit, in 1610, in which an English company sued a writer for not writing the three plays he was contracted to write. His excuse was the plague, and the company argued back, "That's no excuse.'

Attached to the lawsuit was a copy of his contract: He had to turn in three plays, he had to be available for rewrites on other plays, he had to be available to write insert jokes, songs, prologues and epilogues, etc. I told my wife, "Hell, I signed this contract last year with Disney!"

Q: So if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be a screenwriter?

Norman: That's how this idea started, Shakespeare as a screenwriter. I made an appointment with Stephen Greenblatt at Berkeley, who's one of the foremost Shakespearean scholars in the country, and told him what I was doing and he was very gracious. He thought it was a totally legitimate and accurate way of looking at him."

Art direction, costumes and music won Oscars, as did Paltrow. Richard Greatrex and David Gamble were nominated for camerawork and editing, as were Madden and Rush. BAFTA gave it for film, Dench and editing but best actress was Kate Blanchett in Elizabeth, best screenplay The Truman Show; and Rush won for Elizabeth also. Note special thanks to Mick Audsley, who we deduce must have helped with the editing. (Postscript 30/9/21. Mick told us today that the editor David Gamble suffered an aneurism so Mick was brought in. The film had been mucked about with, but David's original edit had been fine, so he went back to that. Then identified the ending didn't work (she originally wakes up on a beach and there's modern Manhattan visible behind her - WTF??). Stoppard wrote a new ending which was filmed and Mick cut that - the last ten minutes. But he felt as David had done the bulk of the work and was ill that he didn't want to take any of the credit.)

* An industry insider later told us that Stoppard had completely re-written the screenplay.

P.S. And, having subsequently spoken to Madden, we know he also works extensively on scripts, though never - well, rarely - takes a credit.