The film follows a family as they head to a beauty pageant Film clip

The road-trip comedy was named best original screenplay, while Martin Scorsese's tale of police corruption received best adapted screenplay.

Steve Carell, who played an academic in Little Miss Sunshine, took two further prizes for his work on TV's The Office.

The Sopranos and Big Love were honoured for dramatic writing, while Ugly Betty was named the best-written new TV show.

Long-running TV show Saturday Night Live received an honour for comedy-variety series writing.

And there was a documentary screenplay award for writer-director Amy Berg.

Her Oscar-nominated work Deliver Us From Evil portrayed families targeted by a Catholic priest who admitted to sexually abusing at least 25 children.

Script 'protected'

Little Miss Sunshine was the debut feature script by Michael Arndt, while The Departed was the work of William Monahan.

The US version of The Office was developed from the British original

Arndt said he wrote his screenplay when he had no job and no major credits to his name.

He thanked his producers for taking a chance on him and for keeping his work away from Hollywood's mainstream studios, where he believed it might have been changed.

"They spent five years trying to protect this script from studio notes," he said.