The writers of the feature film One Battle After Another and the TV series Death by Lightning, as well as the authors of the written works from which they were adapted, were recognized with the top prizes at the 38th USC Scripter Awards, a black-tie affair held in the Town & Gown ballroom on the campus of USC, on Saturday night.
One Battle After Another was adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson from the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. Death by Lightning, a limited series that was adapted from the 2011 nonfiction book Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, was written by Mike Makowsky.
Anderson previously was Scripter-nominated for 2007’s There Will Be Blood and 2014’s Inherent Vice, the latter of which also was adapted from a Pynchon novel. Makowsky previously was nominated for the film adaptation Scripter Award for 2020’s Bad Education.
The Scripter winners, like the nominees from which they were chosen, were determined by a jury chaired by USC professor and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences vp Howard Rodman. Other jurors included critics/journalists Justin Chang and Leonard Maltin (as well as, full disclosure, yours truly); authors Janet Fitch and Jonathan Lethem; screenwriters Eric Roth and Tyger Williams; producers Gail Mutrux and Jennifer Todd; and Elizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
In addition to One Battle After Another, this year’s other film adaptation nominees — selected from a field of 43 options — were:
Guillermo del Toro for Netflix’s Frankenstein based on the novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell for Focus’ Hamnet based on O’Farrell’s novel of the same name
Ira Sachs for Janus’ Peter Hujar’s Day based on the book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar for Netflix’s Train Dreams based on the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson
Frankenstein, Hamnet, One Battle After Another and Train Dreams are also nominated for the best adapted screenplay Oscar; Bugonia claimed the fifth slot. The Scripter and the best adapted screenplay Oscar have gone to the same project on 17 occasions: Schindler’s List, Sense and Sensibility, L.A. Confidential, A Beautiful Mind, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, The Social Network, The Descendants, Argo, 12 Years a Slave, The Imitation Game, The Big Short, Moonlight, Call Me by Your Name, Women Talking, American Fiction and, last year, Conclave.
Hamnet nominee Zhao was previously nominated for — and won — the best film adaptation Scripter Award for 2020’s Nomadland. Train Dreams nominees Bentley and Kwedar were nominated for it at the most recept Scripter Awards, for Sing Sing. And Frankenstein nominee del Toro was previously nominated for it for 2022’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which was the first-ever animated nominee.
And in addition to Death by Lightning, this year’s other TV adaptation nominees — selected from a field of 64 options — were:
Max Hurwitz and Billy Luther for the episode “Ábidoo’niidę́ę́ (What He Had Been Told),” from AMC’s Dark Winds, based on the novels Dancehall of the Dead and The Sinister Pig by Tony Hillerman
Chandni Lakhani and Scott Frank for the untitled first episode of Netflix’s Dept. Q, based on the novel The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen
Will Smith for the episode “Scars,” from Apple’s Slow Horses, based on the novel London Rules by Mick Herron
Peter Straughan for the PBS series Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, based on the novel The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light nominee Straughan was a winner of the most recent film adaptation Scripter Award, for Conclave, and was also nominated for it for 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; he would have become the first person to win Scripter awards for both a film adaptation and a TV adaptation. Slow Horses — and specifically, its writer Smith — has received Scripter nominations in each of the past three years, winning in the first two of those. (No other TV program has won more than once.) And Dept. Q nominee Frank won this award for 2000’s The Queen’s Gambit, and was also nominated for the film adaptation Scripter Award for 1995’s Get Shorty and 2017’s Logan.
Death by Lightning overdoes the depiction of James Garfield as a sort of Cincinnatus called from the fields to save his country. Perhaps it was to reinforce our sympathy with the slain president, or maybe it’s a product of the show’s sometimes labored parallelism between Garfield and Guiteau — which was also a theme of Candice Millard’s source material — but the series definitely downplays Garfield’s significance before he was nominated president.
James A. Garfield, Republican Candidate for President, and Chester A. Arthur, Republican Candidate for Vice President, in 1880. Photo: Vic Arnold, A.S. Seer’s Printing Establishment/Glasshouse Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
When the series’ Garfield, played by Michael Shannon, leaves his Ohio farm to attend the 1880 Republican National Convention, he comes across as a bucolic figure who was on the margin of politics after obscure but brave service in the Civil War. When Treasury secretary John Sherman asks Garfield to place his name into nomination in Chicago, you wouldn’t know Garfield was a veteran of 17 years in Congress whose reputation as an orator rivaled that of Roscoe Conkling (more on him in a minute). You also wouldn’t know that Garfield, despite his humble upbringing, had been a college president and an ordained minister before rising to the rank of major general in the war. In fact, he was the only president ever to have served as clergy.
Garfield was a pretty big deal in Republican politics in 1880, even if no one thought of him as a presidential contender. According to Kenneth Ackerman’s book, the future president Benjamin Harrison had tracked down Garfield in Chicago to ask if he’d be willing to accept the nomination if a deadlock between Ulysses Grant and James Blaine developed, which is exactly what happened. It wasn’t as wild an idea as the miniseries suggests, though Shannon as Garfield convincingly conveys a humility that makes his elevation seem semi-miraculous.
Netflix is set to premiere the historical drama Death by Lightning on November 6th, 2025, offering viewers an in-depth look at one of America’s lesser-known presidential histories. The series explores the life, achievements, and tragic death of James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States.
Directed with attention to historical detail, Death by Lightning traces Garfield’s remarkable journey from his humble beginnings in rural Ohio to the highest office in the nation. Born into modest circumstances, Garfield rose from being a schoolteacher and Civil War general to a respected statesman, known for his vision, integrity, and commitment to political reform. The series highlights how his ideals aimed to unite a nation still healing from the Civil War.
Here’s what makes Death by Lightning a must-watch
While Garfield’s rise was inspiring, his presidency was tragically short. The series introduces Charles J. Guiteau, a minor political figure whose personal grievances led to Garfield’s assassination. Guiteau, who believed he played a key role in Garfield’s election, turned resentment into obsession when recognition never came. Convinced of divine orders, Guiteau’s delusion culminated in the fatal attack that shocked the nation.
The show goes beyond historical events, exploring the psychological and moral dimensions of ambition, power, and delusion. It provides viewers with a gripping account of how personal ego and obsession can alter the course of history. Through careful storytelling, the series presents Garfield not only as a historical figure but as a man of principles whose life and death left a lasting impact on American politics.
Set against the backdrop of post-Civil War America, the series also provides insight into the political tensions and personal ambitions that shaped the era. Viewers can expect a detailed portrayal of the social, political, and psychological dynamics that led to one of the most shocking events in U.S. history.
Death by Lightning Season 1 will be available exclusively on Netflix starting November 6th, 2025. The series is anticipated to draw attention from history enthusiasts and general audiences alike, offering a thoughtful and compelling look at a critical moment in American history.
“This is a true story about two men the world forgot. One was the 20th president of the United States. The other shot him.”
That’s the bitter epigraph that opens this invigorating first episode of Death by Lightning, and one important aspect of the book on which this miniseries is based, Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, is that the 20th president didn’t deserve to be forgotten. The Garfield of the book is, so far anyway, the Garfield of the show, carrying a humility and nobility that’s frankly disconcerting coming from Michael Shannon, who’s usually cast as more wayward types. (I did a double take when learning Matthew Macfadyen, not Shannon, had been tapped to play Charles Guiteau, though that decision is justified the moment Macfadyen opens his mouth.) In Millard’s telling, Garfield truly was a potential successor to Lincoln, a great orator and sturdy Midwesterner who abhorred slavery and spoke to the country’s highest ideals.
Except that Garfield died 200 days into his presidency. Eighty of those days were spent in agonizing pain from a gunshot wound. Destiny of the Republic tells many different stories about America, but one is about how easily the nation’s progress can be undone by the actions of a single deranged, fame-seeking asshole.
The deranged, fame-seeking asshole here is Charles Guiteau, and it’s a small masterstroke for Death by Lightning to open in 1969, in a warehouse at the Army Medical Museum, with his preserved brain rolling around in a box. If this were Igor in YoungFrankenstein, Guiteau’s jar would be the one marked “Abby Normal.” There’s a sense right away in this series that Garfield, a happily married congressman with a generous homestead in rural Ohio, would have been happy to be forgotten. By contrast, the words that greet this discovery at the museum, “Who the fuck is Charles Guiteau?!,” would have infuriated Guiteau, a man who envisioned the “destiny of the Republic” as one he’d have a hand in shaping.
But to reach his historical moment, Guiteau would have to climb out of a deep hole, and Death by Lightning takes that literally by opening with him serving out his latest prison sentence in a Manhattan detention facility called “the Tombs.” The chief judge in the five-man panel considering his case looks through Guiteau’s account of a “mix-up” with his landlord, pointing to a letter from Guiteau’s own father saying the two have been long “estranged” and assessing his shaky moral character, which includes a stretch among the hedonists of the Oneida Free Love Colony. Displaying a rhetorical gift that reflects Garfield’s like a carnival mirror, Guiteau likens himself to a great tradition of “rogues and migrants and freethinkers.” “Here and only here,” he says of America, “a man can be anyone.”
Though Guiteau and Garfield share a handshake at the end of “The Man From Ohio,” the episode elegantly sets them on the path to their crash course in Chicago, where they are pursuing important individual ambitions. Having been scooped up from prison by his sister Franny (Paula Malcomson), the sole family member with any affection for him, Guiteau announces a grand plan to raise seed funds for a newspaper called The Daily Theocrat. When he attempts to get those funds from a proper bank, he’s apparently counting on the loan manager to forget the man who threw a paperweight at his head a few years earlier. Meanwhile, Franny’s husband, George (Ben Miles), a well-to-do patent lawyer, doesn’t share his wife’s faith in her brother. When Guiteau inadvertently attacks her with an axe in a fit of unhinged rage, Franny quietly suggests that he check himself into an institution to work on his mental health. He’s merciful enough to his sister to agree, but he knows that all faith in him has been lost. He steals all the money from George’s safe and burns the last remaining bridge to anyone who cares about him.
Yet the real highlight of this episode is all the goings-on at the 1880 Republican National Convention, which is far from the multi-night commercial for party solidarity that they’ve become in the modern age. The presumptive favorite for the nomination is Ulysses S. Grant, the war hero who’d already served two terms in office and was seeking an unprecedented third. But in a presidency plagued by corruption and graft, the real power rests in his New York City cronies who, as Garfield’s wife, Lucretia (Betty Gilpin), colorfully phrases it, “parade [Grant] around their banquets like some puffed-up old totem.” Chief among Grant’s backers is Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham), a New York senator who benefits from the federal money funneled through the port and various other political favors.
Though Grant’s ultimate failure to secure the nomination underscores his weakness within the party, his challengers at the convention, James G. Blaine (Bradley Whitford) and John Sherman (Alistair Petrie), are weaker still. Blaine is not quite as feckless, but Sherman has an ace in the hole in Garfield, who agrees to endorse him in a speech. Garfield’s speech, with its eloquent and fiery plea to the values of the Republicans under Lincoln, proves to be a little too good for Sherman’s purposes, leading some delegates to wonder if this dynamic representative from Ohio might be interested in the job. When a delegate from Pennsylvania gives him a single vote on one of the many, many ballots needed to get a majority, Garfield is furious and tries to take steps to prevent his name from coming up again, but he’s denied. He doesn’t want to be president, but he’s told he has no choice in the matter.
Garfield offers an apology to Sherman, who’s deeply humiliated by this turn of events, but Sherman isn’t having it, and he offers perhaps the most important line of the episode: “Nobody makes a speech like that unless he craves it for himself.” The line feels true, and Shannon’s face suggests that Garfield is perhaps learning something about his ambition that he didn’t know. Lucretia seems to have known it before he does, too, because she says, “Whatever you do out there, don’t forget this” as she sends him away. While he does seem genuinely content with his family in Ohio, Garfield still came from abject poverty to get there, and his courage in battle for the Union cause speaks to a larger sense of duty. He may also have the slightly less noble quality of narcissism, which is the common denominator of every world leader who has ever lived.
The reluctant nominee also has two snarling adversaries in Conkling and Chester A. Arthur (Nick Offerman) and one big new fan by the name of Charles Guiteau. It won’t be long until all three are gunning for him.
• Referring to the Oneida community as a “free-love colony” makes it sound like a proto-hippie commune, but that could not be farther from the truth. This religious perfectionist group practiced group marriage, a sinister eugenicslike practice called “stirpiculture,” and “male sexual continence,” which is an orgasm-control principle. The founder, John Noyes, fled to Canada in the summer of 1879 to dodge statutory-rape charges.
• That Hanni El Khatib cover of “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You)” really hits hard after that cold open. The robust energy of this show, in general, is hugely encouraging. History can be fun!
• The director of the episode (and the series) is Matt Ross, who HBO watchers will remember well as Alby Grant, the closeted son and heir to the Juniper Creek compound on Big Love, and Gavin Belson, the CEO of tech giant Hooli on Silicon Valley. More relevant to this show, Ross also directed the fine 2016 film Captain Fantastic, starring Viggo Mortensen as a domineering father who isolates his six children from society.
• Guiteau’s dodgy argument to the bank manager about the dent left in the wall by the paperweight: “Well, that was clearly a throw performed by a right-handed man, and I am a lefty.” Macfadyen channels much of the dim enthusiasm of his Tom Wambsgans character on Succession, and it gives this show the same comic lift.
• Already hard at work installing potential members of Grant’s next Cabinet, Conkling floats the secretary of the interior gig to Garfield in the bathroom. “I’m hardly qualified for that job,” says Garfield. To which Conkling retorts, “You own a fucking farm, don’t you?”
• It may be a bit much, but crosscutting Garfield’s stirring convention speech with Guiteau furiously chopping up wood is what we in the business call foreshadowing.
• There’s not even five minutes of screen time between Guiteau hearing of the new Republican nominee (“Who the hell is Garfield?”) to him wearing a Garfield campaign pin.