My chat with Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy, a nominee again this year for “127 Hours” screenplay

Simon Beaufoy has been through all of this Oscar hoopla before.

Two years ago, he was nominated for and won the adapted screenplay Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire. He had also been nominated in 1998 in the original screenplay category for The Full Monty.

This year, Beaufoy is nominated along with Danny Boyle, for best adapted screenplay for 127 Hours.

“I think last time, that is as well as [awards season] will ever go in our lives,” he said of the Slumdog’s award success which included a best picture win.

Does that mean things are more relaxing this time around?

“You know it is more relaxing,” he told Greg In Hollywood. “The Slumdog trail was really extraordinary and it built up momentum so fast. There was a point not many months before that nobody wanted to release the film at all. Suddenly it’s winning all these awards and the pressure was actually huge for the momentum to go all the way to the Oscars. That’s three months of what is apparently parties but is actually a lot of business for the movie really. This time, it’s a lot more relaxed.”

Beaufoy and I chatted at last month’s BAFTA/LA Awards Season Tea Party in Beverly Hills. It was nice to meet face-to-face two years after our first interview. That took place in December of 2008 on the morning the Golden Globe nominations were announced. He had been nominated for Slumdog and we chatted on the phone as he was riding in a taxi in London. He was heading home to celebrate with some champagne.

Okay, back to the present day.

What did he think of leading man James Franco’s Oscar-nominated performance in 127 Hours which has been nominated for six Academy Awards this year including best picture?

“He inhabited that role totally,” Beaufoy said. “That’s what makes a really great actor, he just totally immersed himself in that part to the point where you never see a person acting, you never question what he’s doing. It feels utterly believable throughout.”

He’s not real bullish on his chances of adding another Oscar to his shelf this year remarking that Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network was “a very good screenplay.”