Capote And Syriana Tie At Scripter Awards

The writers of Capote and Syriana tied at the annual University Of Southern California Scripter Award, which honours the year's best film adaptation of a book, novella or short story.

Capote, based on the biography of Truman Capote by Gerald Clarke with a screenplay by Dan Futterman, and SYRIANA, adapted from journalist ROBERT BAER's book See No Evil with a screenplay by Stephen Gaghan, achieved an equal number of votes at the 17th annual awards.

A second ballotting procedure will go ahead to determine the winner, to be announced on Wednesday (18JAN06).

Other finalists included author Annie Proulx and screenwriters LARRY McMURTRY and Diana Ossana for Brokeback Mountain, author John Le Carre and writer Jeffrey Caine for The Constant Gardener, and authors JOHN WAGNER and VINCE LOCKE and scriptwriter Josh Olson for A History of Violence.

This isn't the first time a tie-breaker has been required - the writing teams for Seabiscuit and Mystic River drew even at the 2004 nominations. A run-off vote resulted in a second tie.