The Oscars were a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t really care because I haven’t seen any of the movies over the last two years. However, one thing that even the pandemic can’t shutdown is the sense of annoyance I feel when the Oscars mess up.
I don’t know why. I don’t have any real personal stake in anything winning, and I think this is especially true of any awards handed out before I was born. In many ways, these awards can’t ever get it right, every category is interconnected and the whole thing is too messy to really measure who the best actor was from a given movie. What’s the difference between directing and cinematography? What about acting vs the screenwriter just writing a character with cool lines and a meaningful arc? Or the editor cobbling together the performance, cutting out the bad parts? It’s totally biased, unscientific, often skewed by the narratives created by PR teams, agents and studio marketing departments.
But still. There’s something about the injustice of it all. Not personally, I don’t always feel bad for the losing party, but it just doesn’t feel right. The awards people are all high and mighty, and they mess up ALL.THE.TIME. I feel the same way with sports awards and draft picks. I want them to get it right!
Bill Simmons has talked, on many occasions, about the “Five-year Oscars.” A reference to the fact that we should hand these awards out five years after the movie comes out so that the dust settles and we can see what achievements have stood the test of time. This is a great idea that will never, ever happen. So, instead, we will continue to bitch about the Oscars, both the ceremony and the awards. Let’s go to the list.
Most honored of honorable mentions:
Citizen Kane not winning Best Picture is at the top of every list. Crash winning Best Picture was also a low moment. These two are mentioned all the time as the the most deserving snub and the least deserving winner, respectively. I’m giving them their due here, as the most obvious, oft-cited missteps.
23). No Editing nomination for The Godfather: Part II
I put this one at the end because it’s something I discovered when researching a later entry that bothered me more. So, this one isn’t personal, it’s only business. Editing is hard to understand (for me, at least). I know when a scene changes that’s a cut, but judging good editing from multiple movies seems impossible.
Having said all of that, The Godfather: Part II is a movie that cuts back and forth between two timelines. In order to do this effectively, where both stories are being served, I’d expect the editing would have to be strong. Given that Part II won Best Picture, a sign that the Academy thought it was an excellent movie, one would think that the editing must’ve been elite, in order to balance the two storylines to the extent that it was considered the best movie of the year. So why no nomination?
As an aside, the original Godfather received a nomination for editing. While I have no doubt that the editing in the first movie was stupendous, it almost seems like it had to be that much better for Part II given the more demanding structure of the story. Also worth noting, going back to 1960 (an arbitrary date, but spans 62 Oscars), there have been only 7 Best Picture winners that didn’t score a nomination for editing. That’s 11% of the winners during that time, including one of the best Best Picture winners of all-time.
I don’t know, this seems like a huge miss to me.
22). – “Eye of the Tiger” (Rocky III) does not win Best Original Song in 1982
Let me just start by saying that I don’t like this particular category. It ends up leading to Three Six Mafia winning an Oscar before Martin Scorsese. But if we’re going to have this award, let’s get it right.
This happened for the first Rocky, which won Best Picture in 1976, but did not win Original Song for “Gonna Fly Now”. Obviously that song became synonymous with sports montages and athletic training. But it didn’t win the Oscar, losing out to the song from A Star is Born. So, you’d think that in 1982, when the franchise is on its third installment and has a kick-ass new song to up the ante, it would be a no-brainer. But no, it lost out to “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman. You know, this song. Assholes.
21). Alien is not nominated for Best Picture, Director or Cinematography (1979)
Alien won Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Art Direction. These awards are well-deserved, but they’re also typical consolation awards for action/sci-fi/horror/thriller genre movies that don’t meet the Academy’s criteria for what a “great” movie is. Although ’79 is a pretty good movie year, led by Kramer vs Kramer, Apocalypse Now and All That Jazz, Alien is better than all of them.
The atmosphere created is a best-in-class viewing experience. Tense, ominous, futuristic, and of course, scary as all heck, how many other movies invoke that kind of emotional response? It’s quiet and claustrophobic on the Nostromo, leaving the viewer waiting on edge for the Xenomorph to stalk and pick off each member of the crew. Director, Ridley Scott, and Cinematographer, Derek Vanlint warranted at least a nomination for their masterpiece.
Ripley also has a quintessential hero’s journey character arc. Best Picture was never in the cards, given the genre, but this movie has held up better than all of them.
20). No screenplay nomination for Rashomon (1953)
The Academy wasn’t recognizing foreign movies to the same extent that they do now; in fact, Rashomon only garnered an honorary award for “most outstanding foreign language film”.
But it’s one of the most uniquely structured movies of all-time. Repeating a story from different perspectives to muddy the waters of what actually happened is something that’s influenced many movies, and the OG deserved at least a nod on Oscar night.
19). Nothing for Body Heat, particularly Kathleen Turner for Best Supporting Actress (1981)
Body Heat is a steamier, sweatier reimagining of the 1944 classic, Double Indemnity. For my money, it actually surpasses the original for a few reasons:
-The Hays Code held back the original, making the story less plausible to me. Fred MacMurray agrees to kill a husband for a woman he’s not even having an affair with? Silly. Body Heat doesn’t hold back, making William Hurt’s decisions and struggle much more believable.
-The sweaty, dirty, Floridian atmosphere is palpable, much more so than the Los Angeles setting in the original. It’s one of those movies where the setting is a character in the movie.
-The original is told in flashbacks which betrays that things go south in the relationship very early on.
Double Indemnity was nominated for 7 Oscars including Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Best Actress for Barbara Stanwyck. 1981 isn’t a great year for movies; you’re telling me they couldn’t make room for Kathleen Turner, who plays a smarter and sexier version of the Barbara Stanwyck role? It’s one of the best femme fatales of all-time. This was a no-brainer.
18). No Visual Effects nomination for The Thing (1982)
This is a personal one for me, but I do think, objectively, this was a huge miss. The Thing was not liked when it came out. The movie eventually became a cult classic, and is considered one of the best horror movies of all-time. Much of this initial distaste came from Rob Bottin’s practical effects, which were haunting and disgusting displays of bodies being ripped apart by an alien.
Even if the Academy was grossed out and put off by The Thing, doesn’t that mean Bottin did his job at a high level? The effects were so convincing and bothersome that critics and audiences hated the movie. That sounds like the visuals were highly impactful, which is kind of what they’re supposed to be awarding right? Nowadays, The Thing’s practical effects (a component of visual effects) are considered to be among the best in movie history. What’s more? There were only three nominations that year; so, it’s not like they just had too many nominees and someone had to be left out. Big miss.
17). Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor for Pulp Fiction (1994)
Jules Winnfield is one of the most awesome movie characters ever. In some ways, the character blurs the line between whether it was just a wonderfully written character with great dialogue and a strong arc and/or phenomenal acting. It seems likely that it’s both.
Samuel L. Jackson is an underrated actor, quite possibly because after this Pulp, his movies (and roles) have been a bit more up-and-down. But this was an awesome role in an all-time great movie, and he brought it to another level.
He lost out to the late veteran actor, Martin Landau, for his turn as Bela Lugosi in the movie, Ed Wood. Cinefix recently cited Landau’s performance as one of their favorite Supporting Actor Oscar winners ever, which grabs my attention, however, this movie hasn’t maintained any relevance in the years to follow. And though Landau may have been a worthy actor, Jackson was undoubtedly the better longterm decision.
16). Paul Newman doesn’t win Best Actor for Cool Hand Luke (1967)
I don’t know if there’s a better “movie star” performance than Newman in Cool Hand Luke. His combination of anarchy and stoicism was insanely magnetic, and literally everything he did was…cool. I know that sounds obvious, but you can’t take your eyes off Newman in this role. For one of the most handsome and charismatic stars of all-time, this was his pinnacle, and I’m bummed that it didn’t win.
Newman lost Best Actor to Rod Steiger, from that year’s Best Picture winner, In the Heat of the Night. Steiger was a terrific actor, and Mark Harris, in his fantastic book about the 1967 Oscars, suggests that this decision may have been a “make up” Oscar for Steiger when he lost out on the award in 1965. Be that as it may, that doesn’t make this a good decision. The odd thing to me about this performance is that Steiger isn’t the most memorable or obvious part of this movie, yet his performance isn’t subtle. He loudly chews gum, he’s openly racist, and speaks with a thick Mississippi drawl. So, he’s doing a lot, and yet, this character isn’t exactly indelible. I think another possibility for this decision is that Cool Hand Luke just didn’t get the respect it deserved…
15). Cool Hand Luke is not even nominated for Best Picture (1967)
The movie received Oscar nominations for Actor, Supporting Actor (winner), Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, but was snubbed for Picture.
Mark Harris’ book does a wonderful job outlining the context of Hollywood at that time, and how that particular Best Picture race of 1967 marked a transition from “Old Hollywood” to “New Hollywood”. He also mentioned how Doctor Dolittle was a disastrous production that was received poorly by critics. Several important publications including the New York Times, the L.A. Times and Time Magazine, gave the film poor reviews for lacking substance and basically being a kid’s movie. And yet…the film garnered nine Oscar nominations and nabbed the fifth slot for Best Picture. It’s bad enough when a movie is heavily promoted in the moment and then forgotten about within a year, but this movie wasn’t even considered good when it came out.
Granted, movie remakes happen because of money, but this movie has been remade six times, and none of them are good. It’s just a difficult concept to pull off. Quite possibly, it’s just not an engaging concept at all. Cool Hand Luke losing out here is a slap in the face.
14). Roberto Benigni winning Best Actor over Tom Hanks and Edward Norton (1998)
One thing that I (over)value with these entries is whether or not a movie (or performance) holds up over time and/or is re-watchable. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a fair criteria to determine who the “best” candidate is, but as someone who likes to re-watch movies, this trait separates work that is still talked about, from candidates that may have been good, but a marketing blitz during awards season drove the perceptions that the work was great, in order to garner nominations.
It’s not a perfect summation of who was the “best”, but we don’t have a scientific way to measure that anyway. So for me, the idea that no one really talks about Life is Beautiful anymore, or Benigni’s role, may be an indication that it may have been good, but not great.
I mentioned this in my 90’s Best Picture post, I haven’t seen Life is Beautiful, but I have heard that it was good. So, there is a part of me that isn’t totally comfortable stating that Roberto Benigni should not have won this award. However, I feel extremely comfortable saying that Tom Hanks or Edward Norton should have won.
The Academy had already celebrated Tom Hanks two times during that decade. It’s possible there was some Hanks fatigue that cost him the award – though they did still nominate him. However, Captain John Miller is my favorite Hanks performance. While there are plenty of dramatic moments, the performance is much more low key than and less “afflicted” than the two roles that had previously won him Oscars.
It’s one of the best every-man performances of all-time. He is totally believable as a leader of men on the battlefield, and yet, he’s also scared and confused about what they’re doing. He misses his wife and despite being a patriot, just wants to pull something good out of the horrors they’ve all experienced. He’s not mentally-challenged, or a persecuted gay man suffering from HIV, he’s just a humble teacher from Pennsylvania, trying to make sense of all the carnage of the war. Between the D-Day scene, and that speech posted above, it seems impossible that he didn’t win.
On the complete opposite side of the coin is Edward Norton from American History X. A budding star, Norton, turns is a powerhouse performance charting a young man’s journey from white supremacist to a reformed man trying to get his family back on track after spending three years in prison. Norton also portrays leadership as both a physically imposing alpha dog, as well as a sensitive, regretful, family man. He is believable in both capacities, as well as every step in between on his character arc. In addition to his stellar acting, this was a perfect combination of the role, his physical and energetic youth, as well as his budding star power. I don’t know if Norton will ever win an Oscar, and while he’s a great actor, it’ll be really difficult to turn in a tour de force like this ever again.
13). Gordon Willis is not nominated for Cinematography for either The Godfather or Part II (1972, 1974)
I must admit, I find it difficult to distinguish the work of directors and cinematographers. Certainly, the director’s job spans the whole movie and acts as one of, if not the alpha on set. The trouble of course is that the cinematographer’s job is basically to lead/collaborate with the director on the visuals of the movie. So if a movie looks awesome, then who should get the credit?
Going back to 1967 (the year they started giving out only one cinematography Oscar; there used to be one award for black and white and one award for color), there have only been 14 instances where the movie that won Best Director didn’t receive a nomination for cinematography. That’s 14/55 years = 25.4%. One of these instances was in 1974 for The Godfather: Part II, where our man, Gordon Willis got snubbed for the second time in three years, while working on two of the ten greatest American movies ever made. So, what gives? There can only be a couple of reasons for this.
Did the Academy think that only Francis Ford Coppola was responsible for blocking the actors in order to convey power dynamics in each of the scenes, or only Coppola was responsible for all of the dark, shadowy shots that the movie is so known for? I guess it’s possible for that to be the case, Coppola is a fantastic storyteller. But it’s worth noting that for Coppola’s other two Best Director nominations, Apocalypse Now and…ugh…The Godfather: Part III, the cinematographers were also nominated, including…Gordon Willis for Part III.
Or was this an issue of there being too many other good nominees? In 1972, The Godfather was not nominated in favor of Cabaret (winner, also the winner of Best Director), 1776, Butterflies Are Free, The Poseidon Adventure, and Travels With My Aunt. I haven’t seen any of these movies, but I will say this:
–1776 was a musical that was only nominated for cinematography and nothing else. Not even Best Song. So, an amazingly shot musical with unworthy music.
–Butterflies Are Free is based on a play and also garnered nominations for Supporting Actress and Best Sound.
Seems like those are the two weak links for 1972. Though, I suppose the bigger issue is with the nominees in 1974. The Oscars make mistakes, as we all know, and often there’s not really a true second chance to make it right; normally they have to give a make-up nomination (or award) for work that is less worthy, from a movie that is less worthy, so the artist is being acknowledged for work that is not their best.
But in The Godfather: Part II, the Academy was given a gift – many of the same collaborators worked on Part II, and so long as the movie turned out well, the Academy could make up for snubbing anyone the first time around. For example, Coppola was snubbed for Director in ’72, and they were able to sort of make up for it by awarding him in ’74. Additionally, Supporting Actress, Score, and Art Direction picked up nominations they didn’t get the first time around. What about Gordon Willis? They had to wait until Part III to make it right? Bleh.
12). No Original Screenplay nomination for Se7en (1995)
I write about Se7en a bunch, it’s one of my favorite movies, but hear me out. First, the quality of the screenplay. I think Se7en has held up and is now respected by movie lovers. Detective Somerset is a great character with a really strong arc, and John Doe is an all-time great villain. Mills and Somerset could’ve easily been an “odd couple”, as has been done many times with cops, but the two men complement each other well within the context of the story and as it relates to the theme.
Perhaps most importantly, how many serial killer stories have there been? I know many have happened since 1995, but there were plenty beforehand as well. There’s been so much ground covered it’s hard to think of a new hook. Se7en is quite unique and audience-friendly in this regard.
Second, the competition clearly has some holes. The Usual Suspects won, totally deserved. Toy Story is great, leave it in. Mighty Aphrodite, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but where does it rank among Woody Allen’s nominations? Braveheart, historical epic, whatever, not holding up well. Nixon, who’s heard of Nixon, the movie? I know Oliver Stone was an Academy darling, but it’s just another biopic about someone “important”. Se7en could’ve replaced any of them.
11). The Dark Knight isn’t nominated for Best Picture (2008)
It’s rumored that this snub was the reason the Best Picture category expanded to ten movies. There isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said. The movie is well-structured, with strong acting, excellent action sequences and the rest of the field in 2008 was not great. It’s the best and most memorable movie from that year. Nominate it.
10). Robert Deniro doesn’t win Best Actor for Taxi Driver (1976)
I’ve brought this up before too. 1976 was a loaded year for Oscar movies, there are legitimately 4 worthy Best Picture nominees that were great at the time and have held up beautifully.
Peter Finch ended up winning a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for his role in Network, a terrific satire of television that ended up being a way-too-accurate prediction of how things would unfold in that industry. Finch was a really good actor, in a really good role, in an excellent movie.
My issue with the decision is two-fold. Firstly, Finch is only in the movie for 27% of the movie’s runtime. He absolutely owns that portion of the movie, but I don’t think the story of Network is specifically about him. I think he is a supporting character. William Holden was also nominated for Best Actor in Network for a part that only required 34% of screen time. It’s one of the great ensemble casts of all-time, and I don’t know if the story rests on any one of the performances alone.
I haven’t seen Network in a bit, but I don’t recall it necessarily being a layered performance/role, not Finch’s fault, it’s just the role. He was wildly entertaining and totally believable.
On the other hand, Travis Bickle is the center of Taxi Driver. It is a first person character study of a man losing his mind after returning home from Vietnam. The character’s arc is longer, requiring Deniro to start off as a socially awkward guy who doesn’t like what he sees of society to a violent terrorist determined to leave his mark before making his exit. He thinks Betsy is a whore because she doesn’t want to see him again, but he wants to help an actual prostitute, albeit, an underaged runaway who he feels bad for.
Both actors are great, both roles are great, both movies are great. I think Deniro’s role is harder to play than Finch’s is to play, and it’s more essential to the movie he’s in. I think these two points were obvious at the time, and the Academy whiffed on it.
9). Francis Ford Coppola does not win Best Director for The Godfather (1972)
There was a time when this would’ve been my #1 snub of all-time. It seems insane that Coppola wouldn’t have won Best Director for many reasons:
a) This movie is a masterpiece. It was considered a masterpiece at the time. Often the directors of masterpieces are rewarded.
b) Although it’s not a total rarity, they don’t often split Best Director and Best Picture, particularly at that time. It only happened three times in the 1950’s, one time in the 60’s, and this was the only such instance in the 1970’s. From 1960 – present (62 Oscars), there have been 14 instances where Best Picture and Director weren’t awarded to the same movie, ~23% of the time. So, considering it isn’t that common, this seems like an odd time to go that route.
c) I couldn’t find the whole interview for the video above, but suffice it to say, The Godfather wasn’t a slam dunk of a production. Coppola, himself, wasn’t their first choice. He was relatively inexperienced as a director, and was nearly fired several times.
In the above video, Coppola outlines how the studio didn’t want Marlon Brando for the lead role because of his erratic behavior. Coppola basically had to screen test Brando behind their back, and then they basically had to say ‘yes’ once they saw what Brando did with the role. They made Brando put up a bond on his house as insurance.
The studio also wanted to fire relatively unknown, Al Pacino. The studio didn’t like the dimly lit, shadowy scenes.
Suffice it to say, there was a lot of attempted studio intervention on some pivotal aspects of the movie. The fact that Coppola was able to navigate that while directing a masterpiece is astonishing.
So, why only #8? Well, because the movie that won Best Director, Cabaret, is also considered a classic. The Director who won, Bob Fosse, is a very good filmmaker. Though I think this was a gigantic error on the part of the Academy, their choice was not horrible, even if it wasn’t as deserving.
8). Moneyball doesn’t win Best Adapted Screenplay (2011)
I can’t believe I’m putting this ahead of Coppola, but the more I think about it, the crazier it feels that this didn’t win.
Adapted Screenplay often matters less to me because I don’t read a ton of the books that get made into movies, so it’s even harder for me to really determine which one is best. I’m struggling with an example, but what if a book was already pretty cinematic, and minimal changes were needed? How do we know? Frankly, how does the Academy know? Do they read every book that’s adapted in a given year?
However, I read Moneyball as a teenager. I loved it. I’m a sports fan, and it was about an awesome topic, a statistical revolution in baseball. My friends and I were very excited when it was announced that it was being adapted into a movie, though we weren’t sure what that movie would look like. There was further excitement after the various big names were attached to the movie, Steve Zaillian and Steven Soderbergh, but the production was eventually shut down and it seemed like the subject was too esoteric to be made into a mainstream movie.
Michael Lewis’s other sports book, The Blindside, had far less in it about football than what Moneyball had in it about baseball. It was much easier for those screenwriters to parse out the sappy Hollywood story because the book is primarily about Michael Oher and the family that took him in. Football is merely the backdrop. Moneyball has a Hollywood underdog story in it, but there is more about statistics and the stories of the different undervalued players.
One of the genius elements of the Moneyball screenplay is that they actually get technical and explain both the revolutionary statistic (On base percentage) and the team-building strategy to the audience. They explain what on base percentage is, why it’s important, and how they can revamp their team with these players to create a winning team on a budget. As an esoteric topic, these explanations are a huge risk. What about people who aren’t familiar with baseball? Will they understand or become disengaged?
Going back to The Blindside, the football aspect of the book (the emergence of the Left Tackle position to protect the Quarterback’s blind side) is barely dealt with. Basically a throwaway scene at the start of the movie showing Lawrence Taylor break Joe Theismann’s leg, and that’s the last we hear of it. On the other end, there’s Draft Day, a movie about the NFL Draft. Granted, it’s a more complicated topic, but given that it’s also technically about a General Manager building a team, they over-explain certain aspects and don’t touch others. Moneyball actually enhances the story by adding in the explanation of the statistical component.
Since we’re saying it should’ve won the Oscar, I suppose we should touch on the actual winner, The Descendants. It’s adapted from a popular novel, and ultimately became a good, if forgettable, movie. I didn’t read the source material, but going on this one 5-star review of the book from MaineLarryCrane, “First I saw the movie…Then I read the book. It was better than the movie because the movie missed the key reason why Matt made the decision he did in hanging on to the ancestral land that he was shepherding.”
First, it’s hard to ignore that he thinks the movie missed the key reason why George Clooney’s character made the decision he did with the land. It’s tough for me to say whether or not that’s true, but that seems like a pretty big miss since the dilemma over the land was the entire B story in the movie.
Secondly, this reviewer saw the movie first, and liked it, but then read the book and liked it more. It’s just one review, but I think one of the reasons people often like the book version better than the movie version is because they read the book first. They have a picture of the story in their head when they see the movie, and then the story looks different on film than how they pictured it, which is disappointing. While a totally understandable bias, I think it’s interesting that this reviewer saw the movie first, liked it enough to read the book, and then ended up preferring the book.
It was only one review, but it sounds to me like Moneyball was not only the harder book to adapt, but that the adaptation ultimately enhanced the story, which may not have been the case for The Descendants.
7). No nominations for Stanley Kubrick for The Shining (1980)
A mainstay on lists like these is the fact that Stanley Kubrick was never awarded a Best Director Oscar. Given that Best Picture and Director are often tied together, it’s noteworthy that Kubrick never helmed a movie that won Best Picture. To some degree, it isn’t totally surprising that the Academy never rewarded him since his movies often tended to be darker and left more questions than answers for the audience.
By 1980, Kubrick had received nominations for his last four movies: 1964 – Dr. Strangelove (writing, directing, and picture), 1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey (writing, directing, and won for special visual effects), 1971 – A Clockwork Orange (writing, directing, and picture), and 1975 – Barry Lyndon (writing, directing, and picture). He didn’t make as many movies as some of his contemporaries, but it seemed like he had achieved a status over the previous 15 years that if he came out with a movie, it was very good, and the Academy was going to at least give him a nomination.
Then in 1980, The Shining comes out and bombs. Critics were not impressed. Kubrick was actually nominated for a Razzie for directing.
Oddly, many of the negative reviews actually praised the technical aspects of the film, perhaps worthy of a nomination for cinematography, editing, or dare I say…directing? Many issues were cited, but most seemed to not like the story or the lack of substance.
A poster child for why the Oscars should reward movies a few years after they come out in order to remove the politicking and see which movies stick with the zeitgeist, The Shining eventually garnered cult status and was recognized by the AFI on their list of 100 best thrillers.
Reviewers once said, “…the film is too grandiose to be the jolter that horror pictures are expected to be. Both those expecting significance from Kubrick and those merely looking for a good scare may be equally disappointed.” Now it is thought of as one of the best “jolters“, and perhaps no movie is discussed more in terms of “significance“.
Kubrick lost out on a directing nomination in favor of:
-Robert Redford won for Ordinary People; a movie star’s directing debut, hard for the Academy to resist; though, it is actually a very good movie, so a respectable nomination.
-Martin Scorsese for Raging Bull; an all-time great director helming what some call his best movie; very good choice.
-David Lynch for The Elephant Man; Lynch is an under-appreciated director whose movies are similar to Kubrick’s in that they always have a lot simmering below the surface. Good nomination.
-Roman Polanski for Tess; I haven’t seen Tess. Polanski is a supremely talented filmmaker. From a pure merit standpoint, I’m sure this is a good nomination, but this is barely two years after he fled the U.S. to avoid a prison sentence for his completely heinous and disgusting crimes. If only the Academy didn’t care so much about merit…anyway…
-Last, and definitely least, Richard Rush was nominated for The Stunt Man, which I haven’t seen. The movie was nominated for 3 Oscars: Peter O’Toole for acting, and then Rush for co-writing and directing. It wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, Editing, or Cinematography, but apparently it was one of the five best directorial jobs of the year? Also, look at the rest of Rush’s IMDb, there aren’t any noteworthy movies prior to 1980 where he had a strong legacy and was due. And though this happened after the fact (and therefore shouldn’t be mentioned now), his movie in 1994, Color of Night, is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, despite a solid performance from Bruce Willis.
So…we don’t nominate Kubrick, who even despite the criticism was praised for his technical work. But rather, we nominate a mediocre director for a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture and a great director who was fresh off fleeing the country after drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. Goooooood grief!
6). Martin Scorsese is not nominated for directing Taxi Driver (1976)
We talked about Deniro not winning Best Actor for this movie, now let’s talk Scorsese not even being nominated!
Best Picture-wise, 1976 was a banger at the Oscars. I haven’t seen Bound for Glory, but I legitimately would’ve been fine with any of the other four nominees winning the big prize. How often does that happen? Rocky, Network, Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men – just a historically great haul for one year. However, that year the Academy nominated two directors whose movies weren’t nominated for Best Picture, which resulted in Scorsese being the “odd director out”.
Oddly, Taxi Driver’s additional nominations only came for Best Actor, Supporting Actress, & Original Score; all well-deserved, but not exactly a precursor to a Best Picture nomination. Frankly, if this movie wasn’t so great, and I didn’t love it so much, I would probably be criticizing how a movie not nominated for Directing, Screenplay, Cinematography, or Editing would’ve received a Best Picture nomination. After all, great acting and score, alone, do make a great movie.
However, I think the tough thing for me with this directing snub, besides my love of the movie and Scorsese, is that more than the other nominees, his point of view on this movie is so singular. I know it’s a Scorsese-Deniro-Paul Schraeder (the screenwriter) collaboration, but I look at Taxi Driver as a movie that no one else could’ve directed this way.
All the President’s Men is a fantastic movie about journalism, and one of its strengths is that it’s much more steak than sizzle. Story over style. It takes a great director (Alan Pakula) to have the discipline to refrain from adding too many flourishes. However, it also means that story-wise, it’s a movie that likely could’ve been helmed by a few directors and achieved a similarly good result.
Sidney Lumet is a great director whose place in history is highly underrated because he’s a chameleon; he doesn’t have a particular style, he just knows the best way to tell any story whether it’s a jury room debate, or an unconventional bank robbery or a satire of the television industry. His signature doesn’t necessarily stand out, other than that he makes great movies.
John Avildsen revamped the sports movie genre with Rocky. I’d like to think others could’ve done this since it’s been replicated many a time since, but that’s hard to know.
The other two nominees, Ingmar Bergman and Lina Wertmuller, garnered nominations for foreign language films. Both are accomplished and respected directors, but one peculiarity is that the movie Bergman was nominated for, Face to Face, wasn’t nominated for Best Picture OR Best Foreign Language film. Obviously, the movies nominated for Best Picture and Best Director aren’t always 100% aligned, but Bergman’s film basically had ten shots to be nominated as an overall movie, and it wasn’t. Per Screenrant, Face to Face isn’t even a top ten film in Bergman’s catalog. I’m not saying he’s not a great director, but being nominated over Scorsese for Taxi Driver? Suspect.
5). Forrest Gump wins Best Picture and Director over Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
I wrote about this in my 90’s Best Picture post, so I don’t want to belabor the point too much.
Pulp and Shawshank are two of my ten favorite movies of all-time, and I do believe they’ll stand the test of time. One is a fun, non-linear L.A. crime story with awesome characters, great dialogue and cool scenes that was unlike anything moviegoers were seeing at the time. The other is a cathartic story of friendship and hope that is dark enough not to be too corny.
My issues with Forrest Gump stem from the fact that overall, it just feels shallow to me:
-The Jenny role is very underwritten so as to not make her particularly deep or nuanced. She’s just a person that bad things always happen to, and because of this, she treats Forrest like crap.
-Although there are many great songs in the movie, the choices of when they played are too on the nose with whatever’s happening in the scene. It isn’t clever, it just feels silly.
-I know the story is adapted from literature, but it just feels ridiculous. Forrest teaches Elvis how to dance, inspires John Lennon, becomes the basis for the smiley face? Really? It’s just silly to me.
Hanks is great and the visual effects were ground-breaking, but the surface level charm and Americana captured the Academy’s attention and caused them to overlook two all-time great movies. Just a bummer of a choice.
4). Goodfellas doesn’t win Best Picture or Director (1990)
4a). The Social Network doesn’t win Best Picture or Director (2010)
I hate to group them together, but it’s really the same crime here; an all-time great movie is snubbed in favor of some Oscar bait.
If The Godfather is an operatic tale about family and power through the lens of the mafia, Goodfellas is it’s scrappier, drug-fueled cousin. It’s not about birth family, but one’s adopted family, the family they desperately wanted to be a part of, and did whatever they could to rise up through the ranks. It felt like a unique perspective on a mafia story.
Like Forrest Gump, there’s amazing music, but unlike Gump, the lyrics of the songs don’t sync up exactly with what’s happening on screen. The characters feel very real, Scorsese brings the viewer into this world.
It lost out to Dances With Wolves, a Civil War-era epic about a white soldier who goes to Sioux land, becomes one of them and ultimately saves them from other white men. Suffice it to say, the Academy loves any time someone fights on behalf of a disenfranchised group. Add to that, it was the directorial debut of a movie star, that was a period piece, and a grandiose epic, and it’s not a surprising choice.
However, Scorsese gets snubbed for entirely for Taxi Driver, one of the best movies ever. Then, he makes, arguably his masterpiece, Raging Bull, and he gets passed over for a handsome movie star making his directorial debut. He continues to make great movies in the 80’s, culminating in another masterpiece, Goodfellas, only to get passed over for another handsome movie star making his directorial debut. The decision hasn’t stood the test of time. While Goodfellas continues to be wonderful.
The Social Network is a well-constructed movie that is basically good at everything. Great dialogue, music, a strong character arc stemming from a tight script, lots of tension between characters, and the fact that it was a modern story that has gotten more interesting as Facebook is in the news.
It lost out to The King’s Speech, a charming movie with good acting, but typical Oscar bait in that it’s an “important true story”, a European period drama, about British royalty leading up to WWII. I don’t think anyone’s said a word about The King’s Speech since 2011.
3). Bernard Hermann is not nominated for Best Original Score for Vertigo (1958) or Psycho (1960), [and doesn’t win for Taxi Driver (1976)]
If we run through the most recognizable movie scores of all-time, how long before we get to Psycho? Of course, there’s Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, 2001, Chariots of Fire, The Godfather, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, maybe Batman, Superman, Jurassic Park, E.T. and Halloween? Harry Potter? Does Rocky count, since technically they’re songs and not scores? The shrieking violin score that provides piercing auditory cohesion with Marion Crane getting stabbed to death in the shower is quite well-known. The hurried, frantic portion that plays while she’s on the run with the money perfectly encapsulates her impulsive runaway.
Psycho is a well-known movie. Even those who haven’t seen it, likely know a few things about the movie: the shower scene, the fact that the killer is a man who dresses as a woman, and, I’d have to think, the score. I mean, it’s playing during the aforementioned shower scene and the reveal at the end that it’s been Norman Bates all along. It’s also very…unlike anything else.
I’m not looking to throw shade, but the five movies that were nominated (Exodus, The Alamo, Elmer Gantry, The Magnificent Seven, Spartacus), not a terrible crop of movies, but how many of these scores are noted in popular culture? I have to imagine at least one of them isn’t superior from a musical perspective, that it could’ve been swapped out.
Bernard Hermann won an Oscar in 1941, so he wasn’t a no-name composer. The movie was nominated for four Oscars, so it wasn’t like it was ignored entirely by the Academy. This just seems like it would’ve been a no-brainer, even in 1960.
Vertigo’s score may be less well-known among the general public, but once you hear it, you will never forget where it’s from. It stands out to me because of how well it echoes the feeling of what’s happening on screen. The score’s cyclical nature is the auditory embodiment of a dizzying spiral, which is the visual symbol of vertigo.
In 1958, the nominated movies were even less impressive than 1960. Vertigo was nominated for two other Oscars. Again, it’s such a visceral and notable part of the movie, from a respected composer and director. It just seems like another obvious choice. Then again, the Academy didn’t seem to love Vertigo…
2). James Stewart is not nominated for Best Actor for Vertigo (1958)
Vertigo was not well-liked at the time. That opinion has since been revised, however, it feels kind of like low-hanging fruit to argue that it should’ve been nominated for Best Picture and Director when clearly, there was a disconnect at the time. But missing on nominating James Stewart for Best Actor is less understandable to me.
First off, he was a highly decorated movie star, having already won an Oscar by this point. So he was on their radar.
The surprise to me though is that there was no recognition that Stewart played against type. Normally he’s the righteous, heroic, in-control everyman, but in this movie he embodies a man who was both emasculated by his condition and then obsessive and domineering.
There have been plenty of actors nominated for movies that didn’t receive any other nominations besides acting – including James Stewart in 1950 for Harvey. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Academy disliked those movies to the extent that they may have disliked Vertigo, but the point is that there was plenty of precedent for acknowledging a great performance in a “mediocre” movie.
Besides, it’s kind of a meh year at the Oscars. David Niven won Best Actor in just 15 minutes on screen(!). The linked article does an interesting job noting that despite his short screen-time, it was an ensemble movie and his character is apparently the one who kicks everything off. I guess, it still seems weak.
Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier both got nominated for The Defiant Ones, I can’t say they didn’t deserve it, but I can say that The Defiant Ones is not a movie I’ve heard much about years later. Poitier was a great actor, I haven’t seen any Tony Curtis movies, but I’m sure he was at least a worthy consideration.
Spencer Tracy for The Old Man and the Sea, okay, respect.
Paul Newman for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I haven’t seen it, I don’t know where it ranks in Newman’s catalog, you don’t hear much about it now, but he’s obviously a fantastic actor.
The point being, they could’ve made room for James Stewart without screwing anyone over. The Picture and Director were clearly misunderstood at the time, however crappy that looks in hindsight. Stewart gave a great performance, one of the best of his acclaimed career, and it’s silly he was snubbed.
1). Al Pacino doesn’t win for playing Michael Corleone (1972, 1974)
Obviously. This is inexplicable.
In 1972, Pacino was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather. Marlon Brando was nominated for Best Actor, which to me is a bit suspect in terms of the category; I’d argue he should’ve won Supporting Actor. The story is about Michael.
You could argue The Godfather is about Vito transferring his empire to Michael. But to me, the story is about Michael: initially looking to go his own way and avoid the family business, but he gets pulled in when he sees his father isn’t safe in the hospital. Then he commits the hit on the Turk and the Capt. McCloskey. He slowly assumes power and turns darker. The actual story, is about a man breaking bad.
Brando cast a huge shadow over the movie, so Pacino had to settle for a Supporting Actor nomination. He was nominated alongside his co-stars, James Caan and Robert Duvall, all of whom lost out to Joey Grey for Cabaret. The explanation is likely that they split the vote among Godfather fans, ruining all of their chances to win. The thing is, why would they split the vote? Pacino was clearly the best and most pivotal of the three characters. Caan and Duvall were awesome, but the role of Michael is more nuanced and important than the roles of Sonny and Tom Hagen. All three were excellent, but the role of Michael demanded more and we got it from Pacino. The vote shouldn’t have split, if you liked The Godfather, Pacino was the clear choice.
And Joel Grey, I mean, I noted earlier that Cabaret is also a classic, so I don’t want to knock it down. But Michael Corleone and The Godfather were too important and impressive to overlook. However, it would only get worse…
Now it’s 1974. The Godfather: Part II comes out and despite crazy expectations, the movie is at least as good as the original. In an earlier entry I noted that 1974 presented an interesting opportunity for the Academy: all of the artists who were ignored for their work on the first Godfather could get their due the second time. Now, it’s Pacino’s movie, there’s no question who the lead actor is. But the Academy gives the Oscar to Art Carney. Are you kidding me?
Art Carney was a celebrated TV actor, most notably for The Honeymooners and The Jackie Gleason show. He won Best Actor for a movie called Harry and Tonto. Look it up. The crazy thing is who he beat that year:
-Obviously, Pacino for Godfather II, another nuanced performance of a complicated character in one of the best movies of all time.
-Jack Nicholson for Chinatown. My favorite of his performances, in another one of the best movies of all time.
-Dustin Hoffman for Lenny. Had already been nominated twice by that point. He played groundbreaking comedian, Lenny Bruce, in a biopic that the Academy usually eats up.
-Albert Finney for Murder on the Orient Express. Had already been nominated by that point (5 total nominations), in a hammy role leading an ensemble cast in an enjoyable murder mystery.
And they gave it to Art Carney for a completely forgettable role in a forgettable movie.
Pacino must’ve pissed some people off. That’s really the only explanation for 1974. He did something that soured the Academy. It’s a tremendous performance, continuing his fantastic work from two year earlier. The movie and character had the legacy, and exceeded the highest of expectations. It’s a shame he was never acknowledged for this particular performance. It remains the biggest blemish on the Academy’s sometimes spotty record.
Movie Opinions 
Leave a comment