One topic that comes up every year is how the Oscars have a narrow focus with what they’re looking for. This is particularly true with regard to genres, where comedies, horror, and action, among others, rarely get their due. In my opinion, comedies, in particular, get a raw deal.
The Oscars will recognize comedies on occasion, but usually there’s an element of something else, drama, relationships, etc. The movies that get acknowledged often contain more of a highbrow element. Curse words and raunchy behavior are, by and large, ignored. In their eyes, a “frat pack” movie is much different than a Woody Allen movie, or a British comedy. While I can understand that the Academy wants to think of itself in a certain light, doing so sometimes results in nominations that are tired, and in many cases, lesser choices than some comedic movies that are left out.
Wikipedia defines acting as, “An activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character. Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama.” Why would this definition be any less applicable to an actor playing a college frat member than a person playing a king? All of the same skills are used. Why would writing a comedy be less impressive than writing a drama? Directing? Editing?
I’m not here to tell you all comedy is on the level of 12 Years A Slave or The Social Network, but not all of the nominated drama is either. For this list, I am trying to figure out a few works in comedy that had an opportunity to be nominated based on the quality of the work and the quality of the competition. It is worth noting that the year/competition matters.
As usual, I will show a video where I can, and SPOILERS are a possibility.
To the list!
Most Honored of Honorable Mentions: This goes to all of the scene-stealing supporting actors and actresses who have been electrifying and funny. Very often, the funniest character in a movie, line for line, is the wacky neighbor, or the best friend who can take bigger swings. The main character often has to be somewhat grounded in order to be likeable or interesting enough for the audience. This isn’t just the case in comedies. Villains, family members, etc, in dramatic movies are often the supporting role to the hero, and they can go bigger with their performance. The difference is that in dramas, these performances are rewarded.
The Academy finally came through on one of these nominations in 2011, when Melissa McCarthy was deservedly nominated for Bridesmaids. McCarthy was explosively funny, basically owned every scene she is in. There wasn’t much emotional weight to the character, and the character’s role in the story wasn’t really that important. It was just a terrific comedic performance that deserved recognition. My claim here is that there have been many of these: Walter (The Big Lebowski), Dr. Evil (Austin Powers…), Regina George (Mean Girls), there are so many more! This is less specific than usual, but I believe that there are a ton of supporting roles in comedies that should’ve at least been in the conversation.
11.) The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) – Best Picture, Original Screenplay, maybe even Directing
The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a title that lays out the comedic premise of the movie. It’s a title that’s too forthright to provide gravitas, and it is not something one would expect to see at the Oscars. But this movie has good acting, well-written dialogue, and an emotionally compelling story. The main character is silly, but he’s a man who is struggling with a real problem, and as seen in the above clip, his issues with intimacy and his fear of moving forward in his life are threatening a real relationship.
It’s easy to chalk this movie up as a bunch of dick jokes and gay jokes, but that undersells the emotional arc that Carell’s character is on. We see his character cut off from the world, with walls up, and they start to slowly come down until it all becomes too much for him and he lashes out. Catherine Keener is great in this movie. She was already nominated for Supporting Actress at this Oscars for Capote, for her role as Harper Lee (the author of To Kill a Mockingbird). I would argue she could’ve just as easily been nominated for this movie.
Therein lies the problem for comedies. The Academy hears The 40 Year Old Virgin and they think of Carell getting his chest waxed until he looks like a “Man O’ Lantern”.
This feels distinctly un-like a scene we would see in an Oscar movie, but there’s no reason for that. If we want to get pretentious and highbrow, this is more than a slapstick scene about waxing chest hair. This is a scene about an immature, naive, defensive man trying to grow up, trusting his friends about the best ways to do that, and taking a risk for the first time in 10+ years.
The great Bill Simmons, someone I reference quite a bit on this blog, has mentioned that the Oscars for each movie year should take place 5 years in the future. The reason for this is that we have a lot of nominations and winners that look like incorrect choices by the time we are 5 years removed from the ceremony (sometimes even sooner). That is to say, the performances/movies don’t endure, they were flavors of the week. Or, more likely, they were the result of a heavily subsidized and well-crafted campaign, complete with marketing narratives and publicity tours where nominated actors go around “kissing babies”, so to speak.
Looking back at 2005, the easy movie to attack is that year’s winner of Best Picture, Original Screenplay, and a nominee for Director – Crash. It’s often referenced as one of the worst Best Picture winners, and could easily be removed in favor of The 40-Year-Old-Virgin in any of those three categories. It’s worth noting that the other four nominees for Best Picture were: Munich, Good Night, and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain, and Capote (these four were also nominated for Best Director, and for one of the screenplay awards).
Brokeback is a very good movie, it was actually the favorite to win at the time, and looking back it should have won. Munich is a true story and it was made by Steven Spielberg, so that’s definitely garnering nominations.
I saw Capote once, a while ago, I’m not going to knock it in terms of quality, but it feels very much like a biopic that the Academy nominates every time, and the public forgets about it one year later. I’ve never seen Good Night, and Good Luck, and I don’t want to doubt its quality. It is also a biopic about a famous news anchor, Edward R. Murrow. In addition to being another biopic, it was co-written and directed by George Clooney, and any time a movie star does work behind the camera like this, the Academy can’t help themselves.
The 40-Year-Old-Virgin is probably too upbeat – the main character is a man struggling, but his struggles and demeaning behaviors are silly and immature, which plays more easily for comedy rather than drama. This movie had what it takes to be nominated, but was too easily discarded by the Academy because of what it seems like. “SHUT…UP…DAAAAAAVE.”
10.) Shrek (2001) – Best Picture
The inaugural winner of Best Animated Feature was Shrek, an absolute juggernaut. Per Wikipedia, there were rumors that Shrek would receive a Best Picture nom., which didn’t end up happening. Instead, it had to settle for the new award for animated movies, which feels like a bit of a slight. While it’s dangerous to put stock in rumors when we’re in middle school, the idea that a movie was rumored to be nominated suggests that it at least belonged in the conversation.
The nominees in 2001 were: A Beautiful Mind (winner), Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and Moulin Rouge!. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen most of these movies. From a popularity standpoint, Shrek is clearly superior to four of them, with LOTR being the only movie there that might hold a candle to it. By popularity, I don’t just mean box office, applying the Simmons rule, Shrek has pretty clearly aged the best of all of these movies.
Gosford Park I haven’t seen, but it is from a legendary director, Robert Altman. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it is a period drama in 1930’s Britain. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, Altman is great, it just makes it more awards-friendly, in my opinion. LOTR probably should’ve won, in retrospect. I’m not necessarily a diehard fan, but it was the first entry of a trilogy that were all very well-done fantasy epics that were based on literature. I’ve never seen Moulin Rouge!, a period musical drama, which was rare by 2001, and had a popular soundtrack. I didn’t see In the Bedroom, an intense family drama with wonderful actors that received a nomination for Adapted Screenplay, and multiple acting nominations. It is likely a good movie.
That brings us to the winner, A Beautiful Mind. There is always debate about how true to life a biopic needs to be. That’s a separate conversation, but it seems that A Beautiful Mind took some liberties. In retrospect, it is a shakier nomination, which hasn’t aged particularly well.
So why not Shrek? It is a family comedy, which is probably the only reason it was “in the conversation” to begin with. The important point being that it isn’t a “gross out” comedy, it isn’t raunchy, so the academy should’ve elevated it. From a literary standpoint, it has a clear hero’s journey story arc, perhaps the most classic type of story in this history of stories. Even if the story notes were familiar, it was a new delivery system and set of characters. Shrek is one of the best and most enjoyable movies one could watch. I’m not technically a movie critic, but it is a pretty tight movie – there are minimal flaws, great characters, and a well-paced story. This feels like an easy choice looking back, “come on, Shrek!”
9.) Clueless (1995) – Best Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design (maybe even Picture and Director)
Speaking of literary adaptations, Clueless is a clever take on Jane Austen’s Emma, a work that was more literally adapted one year later (1996’s Emma), and also, would’ve represented the second Jane Austen novel garnering consideration in 1995 – Sense and Sensibility was one of the five movies nominated for Best Picture.
One thing about direct literary adaptations that kind of bothers me is that there is source material. I know that it cannot be easy to adapt a book into a screenplay, design costumes, etc., but people already know what the story is. That’s why I think a movie like Clueless should garner more consideration. Yes, it is an adaptation just the same as Sense and Sensibility, but it is set in an entirely different world, one which writer-director Amy Heckerling has to create for an audience that is completely unfamiliar with it. I believe it to be a more creative endeavor than a direct period adaptation like Emma or Sense. Clueless is a classic story, but with largely new dialogue that not only satirized 90’s rich kids from Beverly Hills, but also informed popular culture. It is whip smart, and despite the SoCal lingo, more elevated than typical high school movies.
The winner of Best Adapted Screenplay in 1995 was Sense and Sensibility, so while I think it’s awesome that actress Emma Thompson has a screenwriting Oscar, as I noted before, I think it is more impressive to adapt a story to a new framework and still hit the same notes, like in Clueless. The other nominees are movies I either saw a long time ago (Apollo 13, Babe, Leaving Las Vegas) or haven’t seen (Il Postino). It’s tough for me to critique the screenplays directly, other than to say, Clueless is more culturally relevant than all of these movies, while maintaining its impressive literary routes. A big reason it’s still thought about today is the satirical dialogue (and world).
Another thing I don’t love with with direct period adaptations, or any period movie really, is that they’re at least guaranteed a nomination for their period costume design. Again, I’m sure that isn’t easy to do, but there are plenty of reference points for the designers, and it seems to happen every year. The nominations for Best Costume Design in 1995 are four period dramas that take place in the UK (Sense, Restoration, Braveheart, Richard III) and one futuristic sci-fi movie (12 Monkeys). The category just feels a bit gimmicky, to me.
Generally speaking, literary adaptations superficially feel more dramatic and weightier. It seems like they’re more readily considered for Oscars. Clueless is a smart comedy with literary routes, and though it has aged very nicely, it is a period piece in that it is particular to a time (90’s Beverly Hills). I think it should’ve been nominated, the Academy said, “as if!”
8.) Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) – Best Actor
What else do we need to see from Robin Williams in this movie? In Mrs. Doubtfire, Williams has to oscillate back and forth between frustrated, out of work, divorce’ (di-vor-say), a man pretending to be tough English nanny, a devastated father who lost custody of his kids, and all of these micro-characters have elements of humor. Despite being a slapstick, silly comedy, there are moments of tense family drama.
This movie actually did win an Oscar for Best Makeup, which was well-deserved. The trouble is that most movies that aren’t high-brow or serious are limited in the which categories they could be nominated for. Action movies are limited to acclaim for visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing; Romantic comedies are limited to best song and sometimes acting; raunchy-ish comedies are stuck with just makeup.
The peculiar thing here is that by the time of Mrs. Doubtfire’s release, Robin Williams had already been nominated for Best Actor three times (!), all in the previous six years! So, it isn’t like he was an unknown, or a comedic actor who had never been taken seriously before. He had their respect as long as the movie wasn’t a comedy. The easiest comparisons for this role/movie are Tootsie, for which Dustin Hoffman was nominated, and Some Like It Hot, for which Jack Lemmon was nominated. So, there was a precedent for this. Williams won a Golden Globe for this movie.
One thing that must be acknowledged that drops this entry to #7 – it was a loaded field that year. This was the 1993 Best Actor race: Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, winner), Daniel Day-Lewis (In The Name of Father), Laurence Fishburne (What’s Love Got to Do with It), Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day), Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List). Woah! Who does Williams replace?
a) We have Tom Hanks, a previous Oscar nominee, in a serious role portraying a gay lawyer with HIV suing his old law firm after being fired because of his medical condition. Per Wiki, Philadelphia was one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to acknowledge homosexuality, HIV/AIDS, and homophobia, making this role culturally important. He also underwent a physical transformation throughout the movie to simulate HIV. This is the stuff the Academy dreams about. Sorry Robin.
b) We have Daniel Day-Lewis, a previous Oscar-winner, in a biographical courtroom drama about four men wrongfully convicted of an IRA bombing. Sorry Robin.
c) We have Laurence Fishburne, in a popular biopic performance that was described as powerful and menacing. Years later, are people talking about What’s Love Got to Do with It? No, not really. Fishburne had been in some critically acclaimed movies before, it’s hard for me to estimate the zeitgeist here, but I imagine it was a recognizable actor with a weighty (villainous) performance in a popular biopic. Might’ve been tough to take this one out, but I don’t think it’s looked back upon very often. Robin could sneak in here.
d) We have Anthony Hopkins, a previous Oscar winner, in a British period drama where he is a head butler that takes on his wealthy employer. Hopkins is my guy, and I haven’t seen this movie in full, but on the surface, it certainly appears to be another British period drama dealing with manners and wealth that I’m not always so fond of. Robin could sneak in here.
e) Liam Neeson, playing Oskar bleeping Schindler in one of the most highly acclaimed movies of all-time, for Steven Spielberg. Nope, sorry Robin.
Still, that leaves two slots Williams could’ve had a shot at. I think looking back, it’s a tougher argument to make, but it is important that this role be acknowledged as more than just “slapstick in drag” comedy. This is a man in dire straits, doing something desperate just to see his children. In a different setting, including one without comedy, this is an Oscar role. “P-p-p-p-p-p-p-piss off Lou.”
7.) Step Brothers (2008) – Best Director
I’ve written about Step Brothers before, it is in my top 5 all-time hardest laughs. I have a soft spot for it. Every scene is funny. How rare is that? This movie is a comedy, and every scene that they show is funny. It has a perfect Quarterback Rating! How many other movies could claim something like that for their respective genres?
Adam McKay went from the Head Writer at SNL to now being an Oscar-winning screenwriter, and an Oscar-nominated director and producer. The movie he directed after Step Brothers, 2011’s The Other Guys, was another laughter-heavy comedy, but was armed with a message about the financial crisis. Step Brothers represents the last purely, joyously funny project he’s worked on. An oral history of the movie speaks to McKay’s encouragement of improvisation, his involvement in that improvisation, his role in the original writing, the way he works with actors, and his eye for casting.
The director always gets the most credit at the Oscars, and just generally with regard to movies; I would guess that the average movie fan could name more directors than they could name writers, producers or cinematographers. Step Brothers is a terrific movie, comfortably one of the best comedies of the last fifteen years. Now that McKay has gone on more acclaim, and is considered a directing talent, we can look back on what was achieved with Step Brothers and give him due credit.
2008 was a tidy year at the Oscars, the five Best Director nominees each oversaw one of the five Best Picture nominations. The nominations were Danny Boyle (winner, Slumdog Millionaire), David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon), Gus Van Sant (Milk), and Stephen Daldry (The Reader).
I thought about listing them out, similar to what I did for the Robin Williams entry above, but director is different from actor in that they’re more closely tied to these movies. The fact is that these were the directors of the movies that the Academy was into at the time, and frankly, they’ve all been somewhat forgotten since 2008. This movie year is most thought of now as the last year we were limited to 5 Best Picture nominees, and it is rumored that the Academy made this change because the most memorable movie of the year, The Dark Knight, wasn’t nominated. The nominees were just the “highbrow”, Oscar-y choices.
Slumdog was very charming, I liked it when I saw it. The trouble is that there just isn’t much talk about it now. That seems to happen with a lot of the “charming” movies, like The Artist, Forrest Gump, and I’m guessing Rain Man and Driving Miss Daisy. They’re movies that capture attention and make people feel good in the short term, but are less memorable over time. ANYWAY, Slumdog was definitely a unique premise, and I personally am okay with this movie/director being nominated, just maybe not winning.
Benjamin Button is not talked about at all. I think there was a lot of technical achievement with the movie, for which Fincher was rewarded with a nomination. This movie was a long, slow love story, that was lighter and featured the technical wizardry of Button aging in reverse. My family saw it in the movie theater, I’m pretty sure my sister fell asleep. Also, as a big fan of David Fincher, seeing him get nominated for this movie and not Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, or Gone Girl feels silly. I won’t remove Fincher as a nominee because I think he’s awesome, but this movie hasn’t aged well.
Frost/Nixon was a pretty good movie. I think it is kind of typical Ron Howard fare, which unfortunately is both a compliment and an insult. I think Ron Howard is a good, rarely great director. If Howard makes a movie, it’ll probably be pretty good. It probably won’t be awesome. I don’t know if this is Howard’s fault as a filmmaker or just the material itself. If someone put a gun to my head and said choose a director to make a solid B+, mass appeal movie we could watch one time, Howard would be a viable choice. There aren’t many totally unlikable Ron Howard movies, but there aren’t many great ones either. I’d be fine removing Howard in lieu of McKay.
I remember liking Milk a lot at the time. I think it was probably a really well-made movie, and Van Sant is a really good director. I have not seen it a second time. To me, it’s typical Oscars fare, a biopic about an important person, in this case, a gay rights activist, and the first openly gay person elected to public office. Well-acted, well-made, not worth another viewing. Whereas the other movie he has been nominated for, Good Will Hunting, is always an interesting viewing that I revisit each year. I’d probably keep Van Sant on the list of Director nominees, but I wouldn’t fight it if he was removed.
Stephen Daldry, director of The Reader, was nominated twice previously (Billy Elliot, The Hours). The Reader is interesting in that it is historical fiction with a seemingly unique story. It is Oscar fare-y in that it shows us someone coping with what happened during the Holocaust, but it isn’t based on a true story, and comes from a different perspective than we’re used to seeing, a German soldier. Kate Winslet was great, as usual. From my perspective, this one comes down to another Oscar movie that I’ll never watch again, but that doesn’t mean Daldry didn’t do great work. I’d be fine removing him from the list, but I suppose it’d be fine if he stayed.
The major problem I seem to have with these nominees is that I saw each movie at the time, I thought they were all pretty good, and then I haven’t watched them since. That shouldn’t be the lone metric for critiquing a nomination, but the truth is that I don’t really know what directing is. Like, I technically get it, but I don’t always know how to differentiate it from cinematography, editing, and in some cases, even writing or acting. Since the nominations for director are often tied to the movies that get nominated, if I don’t think the movies are an “A”, then I’m fine removing the movie and the director. Step Brothers is an “A”. Just because there’s a scene where someone puts their testicles on a drum set, doesn’t mean the movie isn’t impressive. And when movies are impressive, usually, we credit the director.
6.) When Harry Met Sally (1989) – Best Picture (maybe Director)
1989 is an Oscar year that is met with a lot of scrutiny looking back. The biggest controversy comes for the movie that won Best Picture and the movie that is often deemed one of the biggest award snubs in the history of the Oscars. The movie that won was Driving Miss Daisy, a hokey, oversimplified movie about overcoming racism. The snub was Do The Right Thing, which may have the exact opposite theme, showing that racism is still very much a problem in 1989.
Comparing the Picture and Director nominees, there are actually 2 movies nominated for Picture whose directors were not nominated at all. I don’t know how often this happens, but it feels pretty rare. Likewise this means that there were 2 nominated directors whose movies weren’t nominated for Best Picture. One oddity is that Crimes and Misdemeanors was nominated for both Directing and Original Screenplay (Woody Allen for both), but not Best Picture. How does that happen? If the story was considered one of the 10 best screenplays of the year, and the director is considered one of the top 5 directors of the year, how does that movie not end up being thought of as one of the 5 best movies of the year? This isn’t supposed to be about Crimes and Misdemeanors, it is just to say the 1989 Oscars were wonky.
When Harry Met Sally was actually nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Nora Ephron) in what has to be one of the most loaded category years ever: Dead Poets Society (winner, Tom Schulman), Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen), Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee), and Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh). It’s a murderers’ row, and tough to make a definitive argument that WHMS should’ve won. However, unlike a lot of the previous entries on this list, the Academy acknowledged this movie with that prestigious nomination, but seemed to miss the importance of the movie altogether.
I’m not a diehard WHMS fan, I’ve only seen it once from beginning to end, but this is considered by many (including Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone) to be the best and defining movie of the Romantic Comedy genre. There are some movies that come along, and even if they’re not typical Oscar fare, their status is such that the Oscars need to give them due recognition. WHMS is one of those movies. In some cases, these movies are completely ignored, but what makes this confusing is that this movie did get recognition for one of the “bigger” Oscars (screenplay). So, it seems like it should’ve been in contention for the big prize. Especially since WHMS, though a rom-com, deals directly with bigger ideas like gender dynamics, and also has dramatic moments with serious topics like divorce.
As noted above, the 1989 Best Picture race isn’t recalled fondly. Driving Miss Daisy won, which many thought was ridiculous at the time, and I’d be surprised if it even received a nomination today. Born on the Fourth of July and My Left Foot are both Oscar-y biopics – the first is a true story about a soldier who gets paralyzed in Vietnam and becomes a Human Rights activist (true story, important person/topic, disenfranchised person/group looking for redemption, high drama); the other is the true story of a courageous man born with cerebral palsy who learned to paint and write with the only limb of his that he could control (true story, inspiring story, disabled person, high drama) – to be fair, they may both be good movies. Dead Poets Society may be a bit Oscar-y too, though it is a good movie. Field of Dreams is not a typical Oscar choice, a sports movie with a fantasy element.
Again, from a stature perspective, none of the above 5 movies is as highly regarded in their genre as When Harry Met Sally. That doesn’t make them bad movies, it just means that they’re semi-replaceable, and should never receive a nomination over a movie that left an indelible mark on all movies that came after it.
5.) Team America: World Police (2004) – Something, anything
Team America is a puppet movie made by the guys behind Southpark and Book of Mormon (Trey Parker and Matt Stone). It is largely a satire of how the USA dealt with its foreign policy – policing the world and causing a lot of damage.
This movie is an amazing achievement. The entire thing is made with puppets, meaning someone has to control and choreograph the movements of each of the characters in the movie. There are matching set pieces, which all had to be crafted to look like various cities and landmarks around the world.
There is both gross out humor, as well as smarter, more critical humor. There are the goofy movements of the puppets and a lot of the voices that make Southpark funny, but there’s also the same satirical spirit as the long-running cartoon, where Parker and Stone challenge everyone and everything.
How was this not nominated for anything? 2004 isn’t exactly a flush Oscars year. I guess puppets are technically live action, and therefore, this movie can’t be nominated in the animated category? They only nominated 3 movies for Best Animated Feature, would it have been a big deal if they threw Team America in as a fourth?
What about Best Art Direction/Production Design? Are the set pieces not creative or impressive enough? I guess they can keep nominating period pieces and lesser fantasy movies.
What about the screenplay? Again, a couple of “important” biopics and a fictional period drama got nominations.
What about best song? Parker and Stone were nominated for Best Song in 1999 for “Blame Canada” from Southpark: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, so there’s a precedent there. These guys are great songwriters, Book of Mormon cleaned up at the Tonys. No love for “America, Fuck Yeah!“? What about all of the other songs they wrote and performed?
Finally, directing. I admitted earlier that it’s hard to parse out the job of the director from the editor, cinematographer, etc. For Team America, Trey Parker had to communicate a specific vision for the set pieces, the look of the puppets, their movements, he also co-wrote the screenplay and the songs, and while that isn’t directing, we can throw that into the whole package of jobs he had to do along with likely roles in the editing and cinematography.
Alas, no nominations for a great, memorable movie, from a crappy year of movies. Maybe it’s because of this…
Or this…
Or this…
4.) The Hangover (2009) – Best Original Screenplay
The Hangover is an all-time great raunchy comedy with plenty of crass humor, and a breakout performance for Zach Galifianakis, a hilarious standup comic who was largely unknown to the public before 2009. It starts out as four guys going to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, which feels pretty common, but it actually subverts typical genre expectations in quite a few clever ways, and is generally well-structured.
a) The focus is on the next day, not on their crazy night. The vast majority of movies are going to show that crazy night of the bachelor party to maximize the shenanigans with the help of alcohol, drugs and strippers. It is thought that these wild situations are where the comedy comes from. However, The Hangover turns this on its ear, and we skip the crazy night! We see them toast on the roof, and then we pick up the morning after when they are viciously hungover. This feeling is relatable for most people, and the audience is hooked because we have to know how this destruction happened.
b) There is a strong and specific external goal. A lot of raunchy comedies like this are more nebulous, someone got dumped or fired, maybe they don’t know what to do with their life, etc. The Hangover has a clear trajectory – they can’t remember what happened, and they can’t find their friend, the bachelor, who is getting married the next day. The immediacy and stakes of that plot line almost feel more like a thriller or an action movie.
c) They don’t use flashbacks. Very often, a story that jumps through time like this will flash back to show us something important or funny to get the audience up to speed. However, since none of these guys know what happened, there isn’t really a reason to show a flashback, since it would then just be the audience knowing what happened while the characters try and figure it out. Instead, they run into new problems while trying to piece together everything from the night before. In some ways, it’s like a noir movie, where a detective is investigating something or someone and the audience and the detective are piecing it together at the same time, while being faced with some of the consequences of investigating.
d) We get the camera reveal in the credits. The movie is clever for not showing us the party either live or in flashbacks, and we’re at the wedding and we think the movie is over. The guys find their camera and scroll through the pictures. The audience didn’t need this, we already had a ton of laughs, but this allows us to enjoy what happened after the fact. It is a clever way to have shown us the oft-done crazy party scene.
Unfortunately for The Hangover, 2009 is a loaded year for Best Original Screenplay. The winner was The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal), an excellent modern war movie that dealt with an elite bomb squad unit, an aspect of war we don’t usually spend a ton of time with in movies, and also touches on the difficulties readjusting to life upon returning home. Also nominated: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino), a masterpiece; A Serious Man (Coen Brothers), an underrated dark comedy by the best dark comedians of all time; Up (Bob Peterson and Pete Docter), a beloved animated movie that was good enough to be nominated for Best Picture as well; and The Messenger (Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman) a military/romance drama.
I haven’t seen The Messenger, so I have no problem saying it should lose its nomination in favor of The Hangover, but that feels kind of cheap. However, I do feel confident saying that The Hangover likely wasn’t even in consideration for a nomination, which is another example of a comedy getting shortchanged because of its genre and content.
3.) Ace Venture: Pet Detective (1994) – Best Actor
I’m so serious, reader. Yes, Ace Ventura is big, ridiculous, slap-sticky, and completely over the top in the most Jim Carrey way possible. However, does that mean Carrey is not acting? Did he not create a character from the source material and become the character to service the story?
In this article, Jim Carrey talks about a time he and Anthony Hopkins were sharing a meal, and after talking they found out that their methods for constructing Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lector were the same – they were both pretending to be animals (Carrey a bird, Hopkins a tarantula and a crocodile). So, from a technical perspective, Ventura was conceived of the same way as an Oscar-worthy character. The movie was such a big hit (as was Carrey), that they immediately made a sequel that came out the very next year.
This brings us to the competition. The 1994 Best Actor race was as follows:
Tom Hanks (winner, Forrest Gump) – alright, that’s a tough one to beat and remove. Even if I don’t like the movie, Hanks was awesome and charmed the heck out of everyone.
Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) – My only argument here is whether he was the “lead actor” of the movie? I’m sure being the narrator helped sell that idea. Freeman was fantastic, and deserved the nomination.
Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness of King George) – I haven’t seen it, I feel bad judging it and I don’t mean to belittle it, but how many times are we going to nominate someone for playing English royalty in a movie that no one is going to care about in 3 months? Totally replaceable as a nomination.
Paul Newman (Nobody’s Fool) – Obviously Newman is a legend. This certainly isn’t an iconic Newman performance. Again, I haven’t seen it, and I don’t doubt Newman was good, because he was always good, but from the outside, it feels a bit like a throw-in. I wasn’t really in-tune with the zeitgeist in 1994, but I’m wondering whether Newman was really being talked about as a possible winner, or if they were rounding out their five nominees with a strong performance from one of the greatest movie stars of all-time. As far as I’m concerned, Carrey could get this slot.
John Travolta (Pulp Fiction) – I think this one is category fraud. I love Pulp Fiction, and that includes Travolta’s performance. I’m good with him getting a nomination for his work in the movie, but this movie wasn’t about Travolta’s character, so why was he nominated for lead actor? Move him to Supporting, and give his slot to Jim Carrey.
I know that the Academy doesn’t want to reward someone who pretends to talk with their butt, or who pelvic thrusts the air, but Ace Ventura is such a singular character and performance. I cannot imagine anyone else in the role, and Carrey’s chops as an actor weren’t really recognized until later on when he took a few dramatic roles. He was completely written off because he was in a goofy comedy.
2.) Tropic Thunder (2008) – Quadruple threat Ben Stiller
Hollywood loves nominating actors-turned-auteurs: stars who didn’t want to settle for moviestar-dom, but also wanted to work behind the camera.
Just last year, Bradley Cooper, was nominated for co-producing, co-writing, and acting for the fourth iteration of A Star is Born, a movie that he also directed, and was very much in the conversation for receiving a nomination as a director.
On two separate occasions, Clint Eastwood has been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby).
Warren Beatty and Orson Welles share the distinction of being the only two people to “hit for the cycle” – nominated for producing, directing, writing and acting all for the same movie. Welles achieved this for Citizen Kane, while Beatty achieved this twice (Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
Similar to Warren Beatty, Ben Stiller has, on two separate occasions, co-produced, directed, co-written and starred in the same movie (Zoolander, Tropic Thunder). He didn’t receive a single Oscar nomination for either movie, which, I guess coincidentally were both comedies. Zoolander is a goofy comedy, which doesn’t take away from what he achieved, but makes it impossible to ever expect a nomination for that – even though the argument I made above for Ace Ventura would apply to Derek Zoolander. Tropic Thunder, on the other hand, is a smart satire of Hollywood, and received a nomination for Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.). This means that the Academy acknowledged that the movie existed, and didn’t think Stiller deserved anything.
There are two things that slightly distinguish Stiller’s situation from the others mentioned: 1) Stiller is 5’7″ and is often cast as a neurotic; as opposed to the tall, strapping leading man; 2) His movies were comedies (Heaven Can Wait is listed as Comedy/Fantasy/Romance, just take my word for it: it’s not funny).
Regarding #1, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the Academy hates short people, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary (see: Allen, Woody – 23 nominations). My note is just that the idea of this star-turned-auteur seems to be more intoxicating for the Academy when it is a stereotypical leading man-type: the tall, strapping hero of the story.
Reason #2 is more what this post is about. Yes, Woody Allen gets nominated for comedies, but he’s kind of doing his own thing. By and large, comedies don’t garner the appropriate respect. If Tropic Thunder was a serious war movie of equal quality, I believe Stiller would’ve gotten at least one nomination for wearing all of those different hats while creating a great movie.
1.) The Big Lebowski (1998) – Best Actor (maybe picture, writing, directing and supporting actor as well).
The Big Lebowski is said to have achieved “cult” status. That is when a movie comes out, isn’t popular, and then over time people watch it and decide they like it until it becomes an underrated classic. So, I guess it wasn’t popular at the time. I have a hard time understanding why this is.
The Coen Brothers were coming off of Fargo (1996), for which they received an Oscar for their screenplay, and were nominated for directing, editing and producing (aka Best Picture). So, I would imagine there was a lot of anticipation for their next movie. Lebowski is kind of a quirky genre blend – comedy/crime/noir, which potentially means that people/critics who went into it with expectations for a certain genre came away disappointed. That certainly could lead to a no-show at the Oscars. Though their movies were always a mix of genres, usually darkly comedic takes on crime.
That brings us to Jeff Bridges. He gained weight and obviously changed his appearance quite dramatically to play the part. The Dude was different than other characters he had played prior to that, so it isn’t like he was mailing it in, portraying “Jeff Bridges”. Prior to the movie, he had been nominated for 3 Oscars, and was working with acclaimed auteurs in the Coen Brothers. Everything seemed to line up well for him to be nominated, except for the fact that apparently critics didn’t like this movie.
The Best Actor nominees in 1998 were:
Roberto Benigni (winner, Life is Beautiful) – I haven’t seen it, but it is apparently an inspiring and sad movie about the Holocaust. Benigni was also nominated for writing and directing it. The Academy couldn’t resist. Though people now say it was a bit of an over the top performance. It could go either way. Certainly from a popularity standpoint, Bridges is in.
Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan) – fair enough.
Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters) – A British period drama about the last living days of a movie director, who is reflecting on his time in WWI. Oscar bait. I won’t knock the actor, but this is not a performance or movie anyone talks about now. Give it to The Dude.
Nick Nolte (Affliction) – Nolte is a great actor, and I don’t want to take a nom. away from him. I would definitely say this isn’t a movie/role that anyone talks about after the fact. Give it to The Dude.
Edward Norton (American History X) – Absolutely insane performance, totally deserved the nomination.
So there was definitely room here for Bridges. Again, it comes down to how poorly the movie was received at the time, which leaves my argument in kind of a tough spot because it certainly appears to be respected now. In addition to Bridges, who should’ve been a pretty obvious Best Actor nominee, John Goodman (Supporting Actor) and the Coen Brothers (writing/directing/producing) would’ve also been potential nominees in a do-over.
Honorable mentions: Zoolander (2001, writer/director/actor); Anchorman (2004, something!); Dumb and Dumber (1994, actor or supporting actor); Baseketball, (1998, screenplay); Spy (2015, directing, acting); Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, screenplay, acting); Dazed and Confused (1993, picture, director).
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