Cathy Reed, who heads the credit department at the Writers Guild West, confirms that the first writer does get weight for ''cracking the back of the novel,'' but adds that isn't the sole consideration. ''It's an imperfect process,'' she says. ''You have to objectify something that's inherently subjective.''
For his part, Brooks is livid at being accused of plagiarism by implication. ''I don't care if there are 25 of those little coincidences,'' he says. ''You don't get a credit because someone steps down out of the carriage in the rain or someone hides money under a floorboard! That's not the kind of work you do to get credit for a movie.''
''I'm not accusing Richard LaGravenese,'' replies Busia. ''I'm not even accusing Adam Brooks. I don't know who did it. I just know it was done.''
But Brooks doubts that elements of Busia's script could have been reincorporated into his drafts via suggestions from those who'd read it: ''I can't imagine it happened that way, but I don't know. I can't remember every suggestion that was made. It wasn't like a big committee. People make suggestions, people have ideas, some of them are used. Is it possible? Well, I guess it's possible.''
He also echoes the question asked by many associated with Beloved: ''She's been wronged because of...what? She got credit! Why is she now compromising her own success and the success of the whole movie?'' One answer: self-promotion. ''I'm not going to be phony,'' says Busia. ''My ideas for getting publicity were twofold. One, I wanted people to see the movie. And, two, was to say I had a part in what's up there.''
The irony is that despite the sound and the fury, early word has Beloved being prime Oscar material — which could make for an electrically tense Best Adapted Screenplay award presentation next spring. It shows that the old saying ''Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan'' is dead-on — it's just that in this case, it's been one hell of a custody battle.
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