“Death By Lightning” Wins Big at USC Scripter Awards, Dominates One Battle After Another

At the 38th edition of the USC Libraries Scripter Awards held last Saturday night, the teams behind Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and the Netflix mini-series Death By Lightning emerged victorious.

The USC Libraries Scripter Award is presented both to the original creator and the screenwriter responsible for the adapted screenplay.

In the movie category, the award was clinched by Anderson and Thomas Pynchon for the film One Battle After Another, a complex crime drama inspired by Pynchon’s novel from 1990. This script has previously garnered acclaim, securing awards at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice, and contributing to the film’s 13 Academy Award nominations.

This is not the first accolade for Anderson and Pynchon from the USC Scripters; they were nominated in 2014 for Inherent Vice, another of Anderson’s films based on a Pynchon novel published in 2009.

One Battle triumphed over other nominated works from films such as Frankenstein, Hamnet, Peter Hujar’s Day, and Train Dreams.

In the television series category, Mike Makowsky and Candice Millard received the award for Death by Lightning, adapted from Millard’s factual book Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President. The series, which spans four episodes, dramatizes the assassination of President James Garfield (portrayed by Michael Shannon) by Charles Guiteau (played by Matthew Macfadyen).

They surpassed other nominees that included the creators behind Dark Winds, Death by Lightning, Dept. Q, Slow Horses, and Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.

The evening’s event, which was a formal affair hosted by USC Libraries dean Melissa Just, took place in the university’s Town and Gown ballroom. Notably, crime author Michael Connelly was honored with the USC Libraries Scripter Literary Achievement Award. Titus Welliver, who portrays Connelly’s renowned detective Harry Bosch on Prime Video’s Bosch series and its spinoffs, presented the award.