WGA Lifts Dustin Lance Black In Oscars’ Only Remaining Good Race

Most-shirtless Oscar-nominated screenwriter Dustin Lance Black made his deepest inroads yet to awards-night glory, claiming two WGA prizes Saturday for his work on Milk.

While Slumdog Millionaire (writer Simon Beaufoy won the WGA’s Adapted Screenplay prize) and the usual acting suspects spent the weekend tightening their chokeholds on Academy voters, Black was the Guild’s only dual-winner: First for the previously announced Paul Selvin Award honoring attention to social issues, and a few minutes later, in the West Coast awards’ last hand-off of the night, the Best Original Screenplay trophy. He delivered the modestly tear-streaked acceptance speech he hopes to deliver Feb. 22, assuming he can fend off In Bruges’s BAFTA award-winner (and fellow Focus Features stablemate) Martin McDonagh, Happy-Go-Lucky’s Mike Leigh and ultimate underdog Courtney Hunt, whose own Big Issues movie Frozen River has a small but intensely devoted constituency in the writer’s branch.

Meanwhile, Breaking Bad, 30 Rock and Recount were honored as well, thus putting a seasonal end to TV’s cute but annoying imposition on the Slumdog juggernaut. We’ll see them back on their own diluted awards home front this fall.

• ‘Milk,’ ‘Slumdog’ top WGA Awards [Variety]