Was a dog once nominated for the ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ Oscar?
The Oscar for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ has never had the pull of the ‘Best Actor’ or ‘Best Picture’ awards. In Hollywood, actors and directors are lavished with praise, while writers are frequently treated as an afterthought. That wasn’t the case at the 56th Academy Awards in 1984, however, where, for the very first time, a dog was (kind of) nominated in the screenplay category.
To understand this peculiar incident, we need to jump back to 1975. Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter for Chinatown, was busy working on his latest script: Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Warner Bros had bought the rights to Tarzan in 1974, allowing Towne to develop a serious drama based on the pre-existing intellectual property.
The early draft he came up with was, according to an interview for the Los Angeles Times, “very sensual”. Focusing on Tarzan’s relationship with his foster mother, the film was given a budget of $6million and the working title of Lord Greystroke. When he’d finished his first draft, Towne realised he was the only person able to make heads or tails of the script’s lengthy descriptive passages. So, rather than letting some director screw it up, he decided to direct the picture himself.
Towne would go on to make his directorial debut with Personal Best, which he also co-wrote and directed. It was intended to serve as a trial run for Greystroke. The project was incredibly difficult to make, and when it was finally released, it was a commercial flop. Having lost Warner Bros a not insignificant amount of money, Towne decided to sell his interest in Greystroke.
Chariots of Fire director Hugh Hudson was subsequently installed as Towne’s directorial successor. In his hands, Greystroke was altered beyond recognition, with the director hiring Michael Austin to do an overhaul on Towne’s original script. The film was later nominated for the ‘Best Adapted Screenplay Academy’ at the 1985 Oscars, where P.H Vazak and Michael Austin’s names sat alongside Petter Shaffer (Amadeus), Bruce Robinson (The Killing Fields), David Lean (A Passage to India) and Charles Fuller (A Soldiers Story).
Voters were familiar with Michael Austin. P.H. Vazak, on the other hand, was completely unknown. In reality, Vazak was the name of a Hungarian sheepdog belonging to Towne, who, outraged by the alterations to his script, asked for his name to be removed from the project and replaced by that of his dog, making Vazak the only Oscar nominee with fluffy ears and a tail.
