‘Barbie’: Original? Adapted? Depends who you ask

The Queen Mary is ... turning a profit? The old Westside Pavilion ... might be put to practical use again? I am emotionally invested in ... Taylor Swift? (This terrific essay convinced me that, yes, I am.)

The year is only a handful of days old. What other surprises await us? I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter. Any ideas where I can find a decent triple berry cake?

‘Barbie’ screenplay will compete at the Oscars in adapted category

Some time before Greta Gerwig’s imaginative and ingenious take on “Barbie” opened in July, the Writers Guild of America, as part of its process of credit designation, labeled its screenplay as original.

Warner Bros. and the awards consultants in their employ weren’t about to argue and have been campaigning for “Barbie’s” screenplay — written by Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach — in the original category. All the while, though, they knew full well that the motion picture academy’s writers branch might see things differently. And it did, announcing this week that “Barbie” would be considered an adapted screenplay, competing in that category alongside “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Poor Things” and, of course, its old friend “Oppenheimer.”

On the one hand, the academy’s decision makes complete sense. Eight minutes into “Barbie” during its opening credits, a title card reads: “Based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel.” Can’t get much clearer than that. The movie uses preexisting fictional characters, and the academy typically considers that as an adapted screenplay.

But Gerwig and Baumbach weren’t adapting a book or a video game or working with characters from a previous movie. They were riffing on a brand of toys, much as 2014’s “The Lego Movie” did, which the academy classified as an original screenplay. The counterargument would be that “Barbie” uses broad character traits associated with the characters, whereas “The Lego Movie” had no such issue, because Legos are just a bunch of interlocking plastic bricks. (But what a bunch!)

“Barbie” will still pick up a screenplay nomination. But its path toward winning an Oscar for its writing is now more difficult, as the original screenplay category — which includes favorites like “Past Lives” and “The Holdovers” — contains fewer powerhouse contenders. I wouldn’t underestimate “Barbie,” though. It has a history of shaming its naysayers.

Margot Robbie as Barbie in “Barbie.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Cillian Murphy on the ‘most Irish experience’ of ‘Oppenheimer

Cillian Murphy had just spent the day filming what felt like 30 scenes on “Oppenheimer” with the desert sand kicking up and blasting into his eyes when his co-star Robert Downey Jr. greeted him, trying to boost his spirits. And — this is how Downey remembers it, and when the legend becomes fact, print the legend — Murphy launched into a lament about how, when he had returned to his “18-dollar-a-night hotel room” the previous evening, he found his bags in the hallway and thought, “F—! I haven’t checked out yet. I have to sleep!”

“Every indignity that could befall someone who’s trying to do something .... It was like the tears of Job,” Downey related after a recent screening of the Christopher Nolan blockbuster. “Forget the call sheet and the job. It was everything else. It was the most Irish experience I’ve ever witnessed.”

Nearly two years later, Murphy and I are talking on a late-autumn day in L.A. He’s removing his coat and pulling his chair into the sun because, yes, he’s Irish, and part of the Irish experience is to soak up as much sun as possible when the opportunity presents itself. As to what Downey is ascribing to his native land, Murphy can do nothing but laugh.

“I don’t know if that means that Irish people are more predisposed to suffering,” Murphy says, smiling. “I think he’s being very sweet and saying we were like a troupe, moving at quite a pace. We were just staying at motels by the freeway and moving around. It was not glamorous. The way Chris works is that everything is equitable. No one has trailers or personal makeup. Everyone gets in a bus. It feels like independent filmmaking, but on a f—ing grand scale. And that’s the way I enjoy working.”

After we talked and the story ran — which you can read in its entirety here — I discovered there’s a great many people obsessed with Murphy as a cat dad as well as a few who believe that he is, yes, a literal cat. If that’s the case, I am too as I’m writing this sitting in the warmth of the dying sun. Hey, it gets cold in L.A. this time of year!

Cillian Murphy, star of “Oppenheimer” and cat dad.

(Ryan Pfluger / For The Times)

Shortlists reveal front-runners for doc, international feature

When the motion picture academy announced the shortlists for 10 categories for the 2024 Oscars, you could hear the usual rumblings and grumblings around town. Ignoring “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” in hair and makeup — despite the movie’s world-record 22,500 prosthetics — feels like a choice, just the latest sign that people have moved past Marvel fatigue and entered a new stage: complete and utter indifference.

The other thing you might have been hearing went a little something like this:

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches
Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches

Were you shedding a tear for Bowser and Jack Black or breathing a sigh of relief that this one-note (almost one-word) piano ballad from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” did not make the original-song shortlist? I started the day somewhere in the middle. But since I can no longer get the song’s chorus out of my head and will be hearing it for the rest of the time I spend writing this column, I’ll be happy to be rid of it sooner than later.

What did the shortlists tell us about how some of the Oscar races might pan out this year? I recently surveyed the international feature and documentary feature categories to see what — Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches — sorry ... this is turning into a problem — we might learn.

Jon Batiste in “American Symphony,” a leading Oscar contender for documentary feature.

(Netflix)