When Oscar Blew It
The Academy Awards Broadcast is the Egg McMuffin of award shows. Grammy, Emmy, Tony and all their friends are great, but when you think Red Carpet, and when you think Glamour, when you’re thinking of the most coveted award– you’re thinking of Oscar. Of course all that adulation comes with a price. The Academy is expected to get it right, and when they don’t feelings are hurt, egos are bruised, and accusations fly. But everyone makes mistakes right? Here are some of the more egregious errors,oversights and snubs in Academy history.
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The Year and Award: 1960 Best Lead Actor
Who Won: Burt Lancaster for Elmer Gantry
Who Got Screwed: Jack Lemmon, Spencer Tracy, Laurence Olivier
In 1960, Burt Lancaster took home the Oscar for Elmer Gantry. Yes, another “we’re sorry we didn’t give you an Oscar the last time you were nominated” winner (that time for From Here To Eternity). How many people remember Gantry, let alone his performance? Now, Burt Lancaster is all well and good- and nominating him in Elmer Gantry is no great travesty. But to think that he was up against Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind and Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer and won is in the neighborhood of blasphemy.
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The Year and Award: 1968 Best Director
Who Won: Carol Reed for Oliver!
Who Got Screwed: Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey
There are very few films made that are so iconic that they end up leaving their imprint throughout our culture. 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of those films. Not only did Kubrick lose Best Director, but the film wasn’t even nominated for best picture. Maybe Kubrick’s mistake was not putting enough scruffy little orphans in his movie. Maybe if Dave had a cockney accent then the Academy would finally take some interest.
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The Year and Award: 1972 Best Leading Actor
Who Won: Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger
Who Got Screwed: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, and even Jack Lemmon himself
Although he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his turn in Mister Roberts in 1955, the Leading Actor Oscar managed to elude Jack Lemmon until his role in 1972’s Save the Tiger. Now, of course Lemmon was always a fine actor, always did a great job and deserved at least 4 Oscars. But was Save the Tiger one of the films he deserved it for? Here we go again with another apology/career Oscar for them blowing it and not giving it to Jack for any number of better performances he was nominated for – Some Like it Hot, The Apartment or the amazing and heartbreakingly realistic Days of Wine of and Roses. Nope, it was for this tv-movie of the week-ish flick that brought him the big gold over performances like Pacino in Serpico, Brando in Last Tango in Paris and Nicholson in The Last Detail.
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The Year and Award: 1990 Best Picture
Who Won: Dances with Wolves
Who Got Screwed: Goodfellas
Yes,Dances With Wolves made hundreds of millions of dollars and had the most nominations of any film in 1991. But, is it better than Goodfellas? No way! DeNiro, Pesci, and Liotta make this film a true classic. Put it this way…anyone can quote lines from Goodfellas, but how many people do you know anyone who throws Dances With Wolves lines into a conversation?
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The Year and Award: 1994 Best Picture
Who Won: Forrest Gump
Who Got Screwed: Everyone including the general public.
If I gave you a list of 5 films, and the movies I listed were Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Quiz Show, would anyone choose Forrest Gump as the best film? Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction created its own style of cinema, and Shawshank is consistently near the top of all-time favorite film lists. But, hey, choosing a winner is like a box of chocolates…sometimes you accidently grab the shitty one.
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The Year and Award: 1996 Best Supporting Actor
Who Won: Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire
Who Got Screwed: Ed Norton, William H. Macy, James Woods
How this travesty happened, who knows. Cuba Gooding Jr. playing a wise cracking obnoxious athlete was able to best performances by Edward Norton for Primal Fear, William H Macy in Fargo and James Woods for Ghosts of Mississippi all who were in great films that year. Woods Norton and Macy still haven’t won Oscars..
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The Year and Award: 1996 Best Picture
Who Won: The English Patient
Who Got Screwed: Fargo
Elaine Benes should have been allowed votes in 1996, then maybe Fargo would have gotten its due over The English Patient. It’s just too pretentious and cumbersome, while Fargo is a cold and bleak vision of the American Midwest. The humor peeks out from around the morbid and mundane, like a really dark episode of A Prairie Home Companion. Best picture movies should be amazing and enjoyable, not a task.
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The Year and Award: 2003 Best Picture
Who Won: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Who Got Screwed: Mystic River and Lost in Translation
I’ll give Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings trilogy all the credit for visual effects and technical awards. But to say it was the best film of that year is completely nuts. It just wasn’t! The ending to the film alone was horrendous, best left in the pages of a book and not drawn out on the screen. Either Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River or Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation would have been a better choice. Both were better films with out a doubt.
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The Year and Award: 2010 Best Lead Actress
Who Won: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side
Who Got Screwed: Meryl Streep for Julie and Julia
Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy scores a win over one of the greatest actors of this or any generation, Meryl Streep. But choosing Sandra isn’t the only mistake Oscar has made when it comes to Streep. We would have liked to see her win for a number of her performances that didn’t make the cut including Out of Africa,and A Cry in the Dark, to name a few. But in 2010 it hurt even more. Streep not only portrayed Julia Child, she became her.
