March 9, 2003
OSCAR FILMS
OSCAR FILMS; 75 Years of Bribes, Lies and Overkill
By DAMIEN BONA
Campaigning has been an integral part of the Academy Awards almost from the beginning. As early as 1943, the Hollywood columnist Edith Gwynn mused, ''Why not give a statuette for the best 'we want an Oscar' publicity campaign?'' Here are some seminal examples of this singular art form.
MARY PICKFORD
The Academy Awards were just a year old when Mary Pickford decided she should have a little gold statuette. Anticipation had been high for ''Coquette,'' because it was Pickford's initial talking picture and presented her in an adult role for the first time. Pickford had cut off her trademark curls, which were then sent to two Southern California museums.
Neither the melodrama nor Pickford's performance was well received. But Pickford was too cagey to let negative notices get in the way. At the time, Academy Award winners were chosen by the five-member Board of Judges, and Pickford had the quintet over for tea. An invitation to Pickfair, the estate she shared with her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, was the greatest status symbol in Hollywood, and the committee was duly appreciative, naming Pickford best actress at the 1928-29 Awards. Protests over this blatant bribery led to the opening of balloting to all academy members; voters could still be bought off, but it would take a much greater effort.
'AH, WILDERNESS!'
Oscar ads are now such a staple that it's easy to forget that the practice actually had to have originated at some point. The visionary studio was MGM, the date was Jan. 14, 1936, and the movie first accorded special treatment, in the pages of The Hollywood Reporter, was ''Ah, Wilderness!'' Along with eight pages of pictures and critical quotations (''Eric Linden's work should receive the utmost consideration when choosing the academy prize performance of the year'' -- Film Daily) was a drawing of MGM's Leo the Lion wearing white tie and tails. Also present: an Oscar statuette. The copy stated, ''LEO . . . you've given so much . . . get ready to RECEIVE!'' Self-aggrandizement notwithstanding, ''Ah, Wilderness!'' received no nominations. It would be five years before a studio again tried an Oscar ad.
'REBECCA'
After ''Gone With the Wind'' won for 1939, David O. Selznick was lusting for a second best-picture victory. But his best shot, ''Rebecca,'' directed by Alfred Hitchcock, had been released in March 1940, and nine months of other releases had come along to tempt voters. To remind the citizenry about his film, Selznick rented a second-run Hollywood Boulevard theater and held a second ''premiere'' for ''Rebecca.'' He read an official proclamation temporarily changing Hollywood Boulevard's name to Rebecca Lane, and he placed a chair of Brobdingnagian dimensions in the theater lobby, with a sign saying ''Reserved for Alfred Hitchcock.'' Whether or not this hoopla actually helped, it didn't hurt: ''Rebecca'' gave Selznick a bookend for his ''Gone With the Wind'' Oscar. It's also a Selznick legacy: every December brings the return engagements of long-gone movie hopefuls.
'TENDER COMRADE'
Outright chicanery is surprisingly rare in Oscar campaigning. One instance stands out. RKO held sneak previews of its 1943 home-front drama starring Ginger Rogers, ''Tender Comrade,'' at two theaters called the Academy, one in Pasadena and the other in Inglewood. Trade-paper ads then boasted, ''Academy reaction: It's the finest picture of the year'' and ''The Academy awarded Ginger praise such as we (or you) have not heard -- or read -- in a long, long time.'' The implication was that these reactions belonged to esteemed members of the motion picture academy, not hoi polloi who happened to be at the movies that night. Reaction of the actual academy: no nominations.
'MARTY'
In 1955, United Artists sold ''Marty,'' in which a butcher looks for love in the Bronx, as American neo-realism. But when it came to Oscar publicity, all was pure Hollywood ballyhoo. The star, Ernest Borgnine, appeared as a ''guest butcher'' at the opening of a Santa Monica supermarket. As a meat cutters' union gave him a commemorative urn in gratitude for his helping to portray butchers as ''accredited members of the human race,'' starlets wearing bathing suits waved placards reading ''I love Marty!''
Even though ''Marty'' had been playing for close to a year, the studio wanted to make sure that no Oscar voter missed it. Trade-paper ads called out, ''Attention Bel Air Circuit!,'' indicating that the producers would deliver a print to academy members so that they could enjoy ''Marty'' in the comfort of their very own screening rooms -- the forerunner of the videotapes and DVD's that are mailed out today.
''Marty'' became the only picture whose Oscar budget ($400,000) was higher than its production costs ($343,000). It was money well spent: the movie won four Oscars, including best picture.
CHILL WILLS
Known as the voice of Francis the Talking Mule, Chill Wills received a supporting-actor nomination for ''The Alamo,'' the 1960 film starring John Wayne as Davy Crockett. He hired a publicist named W. S. (Bow-Wow) Wojciechowicz, who launched the most misguided Oscar campaign ever.
Wojciechowicz, like a political boss looking to cash in chits, created an ad naming the people for whom Wills had voted in past Oscar races. He then ran a series of ads listing all the academy members, with a personal greeting from Wills: ''Win, lose or draw, you're all my cousins and I love you all.'' Groucho Marx took out his own ad: ''Dear Mr. Chill Wills, I am delighted to be your cousin, but I voted for Sal Mineo.''
Finally, a photo of Wills was superimposed over a picture of the other actors from ''The Alamo.'' The accompanying text proclaimed: ''We of the Alamo cast are praying harder than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo for Chill Wills to win the Oscar as the best supporting actor. Cousin Chill's acting was great.'' It was signed, ''Your Alamo cousins.''
Wayne, also the producer and director of ''The Alamo,'' used a personal advertisement to express his righteous indignation at Wills, while conceding, ''I am sure his intentions were not as bad as his taste.'' Wojciechowicz shelled out for his own trade-paper mea culpa, swearing that Wills had had no advance knowledge of the ad. But the actor knew fatal damage had been done, and he vowed to the columnist Sheilah Graham, ''One day I'll get even with that so-and-so if it's the last thing I do.'' The last thing he did Oscarwise was sit in the audience and listen to a joke from Bob Hope: ''I didn't know there was any campaigning until I saw my maid wearing a Chill Wills button.'' And he remained seated when Peter Ustinov won for ''Spartacus.''
Photos: Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier in ''Rebecca,'' pioneer of the return engagement. (Everett Collection); After her tea party for the voters, Mary Pickford received an Oscar in 1930. (Everett Collection)
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Damien Bona Interview for Salon.com
Friday, Mar 24, 2000 12:00 PM EST
A chat with Mr. Oscar
Damien Bona talks about "American Beauty" and Warren Beatty, "Titanic" and Roberto Benigni and more than 70 years of the academy's hits and misses.
By Bill Wyman
In the library of books published on Hollywood and the movies, few combine scholarship and voyeurism to the thrilling degree of “Inside Oscar.” Poring through the press of the time, charting the progress of favorite sons and dark horses and then gleefully dissecting each year’s ceremony, authors Mason Wiley and Damien Bona crafted arguably the most potent history of Hollywood’s love affair with itself. The result is a compulsively readable, fascinatingly detailed and endlessly amusing chronicle of our best-loved annual confluence of celebrity evanescence.
Bona and Wiley met in college — they both wrote movie reviews for the Columbia University Spectator. Bona eventually became a lawyer, but retained his affection for the movies and their excesses. “We both had Oscar books,” he recalls, “but they were all sort of straightforward and dull. We thought that someone should do a fun history of the Oscars.” The first edition was published in 1982; it’s now in its fifth. (Sadly, Bona’s friend Wiley died in 1994.)
Bona graciously accepts compliments on the book’s thoroughness and commitment to accuracy: “We thought if you set out to do something, you can’t do it half-assed.” I conducted the following e-mail exchange with the accommodating author over a period of three days the week before the Oscars. He said he would spend Sunday night as he usually does: hosting a party, watching with friends and taping the show for his archives.
I have to compliment you on your book, “Inside Oscar.” It seems to be a history of the Academy Awards, but it’s actually a secret history of Hollywood. Each chapter follows the year’s releases — which were acclaimed, which were not, which made money and which did not. Then comes the nominations, and then the big night. Did you intend for it to be quite as epic in scope when you started?
When Mason and I began “Inside Oscar” back in 1982, we didn’t really have a clear idea of the form it would take. What we intended to do was to create a humorous history of the Oscars that gave background information, included gossip and conveyed a sense of the personalities involved.
As we began work on it, we also decided we wanted to communicate a sense of why the various results occurred — not simply who and what won, but the reason they won.
To accomplish this, we realized we had to give an overview of an entire year’s worth of movies. And on top of that, to some degree we needed to elucidate what was going on in American society at a given time — how the movies reflected society and vice versa. So, before we knew it, we were actually writing something of a social history.
Originally, we thought we’d just be covering the period from the announcement of the nominations to Oscar night, but it didn’t take us long to see that such a book would be lacking in detail and insight.
I suppose the result for us today is so interesting because the week-to-week — indeed, the day-to-day — coverage of Hollywood has become such a staple of pop culture. We tend to lose perspective. It’s nice to be reminded of something like “Wilson” [a two-and-a-half-hour biopic of Woodrow Wilson, the pet project of mogul Darryl Zanuck], the most-talked-about movie of its time and of Oscar night, but then aced out of the main awards and since forgotten. Is history fair to movies like that? Will “Titanic” last?
One of the nice things about the Oscar nominations lists — and it’s one reason we included all of the nominations in “Inside Oscar” — is that they make you remember films that are otherwise forgotten, and to get an overview at what was popular at a given time. For instance, in one of the “minor” categories, who today would ever guess that “Singin’ in the Rain” would have lost best score to “With a Song in My Heart” — a forgotten movie biography about a forgotten singer, Jane Froman? But in 1952, “With a Song in My Heart” was huge (and made a star out of Robert Wagner).
And from 1944, the year of “Wilson” and the big winner, “Going My Way,” the two films people today think of most fondly are probably “Double Indemnity” (nominated for best picture) and “Laura” (not up for picture, but nominated for director and screenplay).
In “Inside Oscar,” we also have lists of eligible movies that were not nominated. Today, the two films of 1958 that are generally considered the greatest of that year are [Alfred] Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and [Orson] Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” Neither was up for best picture. In fact, “Touch of Evil” received no nominations; “Vertigo,” only for sound and art direction (and not a nomination for Bernard Herrmann’s score!). Although three of the best picture nominees from ’58 are remembered fondly and are still well liked (“Auntie Mame,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and the winner, “Gigi”), two of the nominees are hard to sit through today: the painfully earnest gimmick film “The Defiant Ones” and the stodgy “Separate Tables.”
Other notable films not nominated for best picture include “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Searchers,” “Rear Window,” “Psycho,” “Victor/Victoria,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “Laura,” “Gods and Monsters” and “The Shop Around the Corner.”
Films that were nominated for best picture and are either dismissed or forgotten today include “Fanny,” “One Foot in Heaven,” “The Pied Piper,” “Dr. Dolittle,” “Anne of the Thousand Days,” “The Prince of Tides,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Three Smart Girls” and “One Hundred Men and a Girl.” For some reason, they spoke to contemporary audiences (or at least academy members, who in the case of “Dr. Dolittle” and “Anne” were responding to the lavish Oscar campaigns). They don’t speak much to audiences today, although all of them undoubtedly have some fans.
I think that, before long, “Titanic” will be considered in the same light as “The Greatest Show on Earth” — a ludicrous movie that’s an embarrassment to Oscar annals. (Someday, people will actually listen to the dialogue of “Titanic” and gasp at how atrocious it is.) Future generations will be at a loss to explain the popularity of the film, much as people today can’t figure out why “Love Story” was a phenomenon. (At least when we look back on something like “Mrs. Miniver,” we can point to the wartime period as a reason for its appeal.)
Do you make predictions for Oscar night? Do you have special insights? Or is it always a surprise to you? Do you attend the ceremonies or watch on TV?
I’m pretty good at predicting the Oscars (though better at predicting the nominations than the winners). One thing that makes the Oscar so fascinating is that there often seems to be no rhyme or reason to some of the awards. I thought Lauren Bacall was the surest thing in Oscar history back in 1996. When she lost supporting actress to Juliette Binoche, I concluded that henceforth all bets are off.
I make my predictions after talking to people in the industry and people who live in L.A. Getting a handle on the “buzz” certainly helps.
I’ve never been to the Oscars. (I’ve been told they’re a terrible bore unless you win, and even then it’s a long sit.) I almost always host an Oscar party.
Do you have a candidate for most outrageous Oscar, the most undeserved major award? Any pet oversights?
My choice for the worst Oscar was Roberto Benigni’s win last year as best actor for “Life Is Beautiful” over Ian McKellen for “Gods and Monsters.” It was a terrible performance — the guy’s slapstick timing is all off, and his character was supposed to be an intellectual (a bookseller) but came off as idiotic. Academy members voted for him because they were — for reasons unfathomable to me — charmed by his indulgent behavior as he did talk shows and the party circuit. McKellen’s performance in “Gods and Monsters,” on the other hand, is transcendental — one for the ages. (And don’t get me started about Benigni jumping on the seats of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. When I was a kid, if we had behaved like that, the matron patrolling the aisles of the movie theater would have tossed us out.)
And in my opinion, the worst best picture winner is “Rocky,” with “Titanic,” “The Greatest Show on Earth,” “Marty” and “Ben-Hur” not far behind.
The best winners? “Casablanca,” “How Green Was My Valley” (even though it beat a better film, “Citizen Kane”), “All About Eve,” “The Apartment” and “Unforgiven.”
My favorite movie is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” so that would have to be my pet oversight. And among the great performances that lost, I’d cite Leslie Ann Warren in “Victor/Victoria,” the best dumb blond ever. She lost to Jessica Lange for a nothing performance in “Tootsie,” only because Lange was also nominated that year for “Frances,” but was doomed to be defeated by Meryl Streep in “Sophie’s Choice.”
Let’s talk about last year and then this year. I thought the contretemps over “Shakespeare in Love” edging out “Saving Private Ryan” captured the continental divide in a Hollywood that despite its name has two halves, one in Los Angeles (represented in this case by Steven Spielberg) and one in New York (Harvey Weinstein and Miramax). You could even see angered members of the New York Times film bureaus in both cities defending their respective homies. Is this a perennial split or something new? Do you see companies like Miramax as authentic “indies” or just studios in art-house clothing?
There certainly has traditionally been somewhat of a dichotomy between the two coasts, but I think Miramax is an individual case and that the negative feelings engendered by the company aren’t so much based on its being based in New York as they are by what is perceived by the abrasive personality of Weinstein — although his personality is seen by people as stereotypically New York. Similarly, the massive Oscar campaigns engaged in by Miramax can also be seen as emblematic of what is considered aggressive New York behavior. (As someone who has lived in New York for 27 years, let me go on the record as stating that most New Yorkers I know do not behave in this manner.)
I think that whereas there was a definite split between the two coasts (which was pretty much “movie people” vs. “theater people”), that has for the most part dissipated, part of the reason [being] that travel between the two coasts is so easy that they don’t seem 3,000 miles apart, more as if they were different neighborhoods. Sidney Lumet always prided himself on spending almost no time in Hollywood (but, in my opinion, he made awful movies). My favorite quote on the subject came from Peggy Cass after she lost supporting actress in 1958 for “Auntie Mame.” A stage actress, she told the press, “I’m going back to New York tonight. These Westerners — what do they know?”
Do you have an opinion on the relative merits of “Shakespeare in Love” and “Saving Private Ryan”?
I thought “Shakespeare in Love” was a charming movie, and easily the best of the five nominees last year. I did not like “Saving Private Ryan” at all and found the film dull and uninvolving. (But, then, I haven’t liked a Spielberg movie since “Jaws.”) Even the much-heralded opening D-Day sequence in “Ryan” was, I thought, all wrong. It was simply a grab bag of cheap effects. Spielberg’s use of different film stocks and film speeds was a cheat, and an easy way out — the sign of someone who couldn’t get across the horror of war through basic film elements themselves (such as editing and camera placement). And since we didn’t know who any of the characters were yet (other than recognizing Tom Hanks), we had no emotional involvement in the scene beyond our own previous knowledge of World War II soldiers. Thus, the whole sequence was just another Spielberg thrill ride.
In addition, the whole basic premise of the film was, I felt, unconvincing — and nothing that happens in the film makes it any less so. A more intelligent and thoughtful director might have plumbed some fascinating themes from the issue weighing the lives of eight men vs. one, but the lightweight Spielberg is not that person. And the present-day wraparounds were embarrassingly schmaltzy.
This year’s considered an open field, with “American Beauty” having a slight edge. What’s your favorite movie this year? Your assessment of the nominations? Does Hilary Swank really have a lock on best actress? And will Warren Beatty say anything interesting when he gets his Thalberg?
It had seemed like a wide-open race in most categories when the nominations were made. It certainly had felt as if “American Beauty” was a slight favorite, but that its support was soft and that things were pointing to a “Cider House” upset. But over the last few weeks, “American Beauty,” with its victories in the various guild awards, has solidified its lead. Its chances for picture and director look very strong, and it will probably also win original screenplay (although the much more original and clever “Being John Malkovich” or, especially, “Sixth Sense” could triumph there). Support for Denzel Washington [the star of "The Hurricane"] seems to lessen each day, and Kevin Spacey has emerged as the favorite, even though he hadn’t won a single award from the critics. Swank should be a lock for her brilliant, multilayered performance, but Annette Bening’s win at SAG [Screen Actors Guild] for her glib one-note acting shows that it’s not open and shut for Swank. If Swank doesn’t win, it will be one of those embarrassments the academy will be trying to live down for years.
My favorite movies this year were “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The End of the Affair,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Election.”
I thought the nominations were pretty typical, with academy voters more or less reflecting choices of the critics, although edgier fare like “John Malkovich” and “Boys Don’t Cry” didn’t do too well with the general membership. And “American Beauty” is undoubtedly the academy’s idea of a cutting-edge movie, though it’s just a bland version of Todd Solondz’s “Happiness,” and goes after very easy, tired targets in the most superficial way. Thus, it’s a typical Oscar winner.
Beatty is very articulate, so he will undoubtedly say something of interest about his career and maybe about the state of the industry and the state of the country. But what I’d really like to know is why he’s being given an award for his achievements as a film producer, when producer is probably the least of his many talents. I can’t figure out why the academy isn’t giving him an honorary lifetime Oscar — which would encompass his achievements as actor, director and writer as well as producer — rather than giving him a bust of Irving Thalberg.
I’ve always thought that the much-maligned acceptance speeches are the best moments of the show — the most real and the most human, not to mention the most likely to provide a little drama. The Vanessa Redgraves and Paddy Chayefskys, the Bernardo Bertoluccis and Kevin Costners, are to me the Oscars’ true heroes. But often the show itself can be excruciating. I think you quote Vincent Canby saying, “The Oscar ceremony is now intentionally designed to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible on both its participants and its viewers.” Do you feel that way? And when you did the first edition of your book, was it hard to go back and watch the old ceremonies? Has anyone ever said anything nice about the dance numbers?
I agree about the acceptance speeches, because it is the unscripted moments that provide spontaneity and true drama and excitement. One such moment was when Chayefsky was onstage accepting for the late Peter Finch — per Oscar producer William Friedkin’s mandate [banning his widow, Eletha Finch, from accepting for him if he won] — when he called Eletha onstage for a very emotional speech. There was also Louise Fletcher signing her speech for her parents.
I also love when political statements are made by the likes of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, giving Charlton Heston apoplexy. (Of course, it helps that my politics are close to theirs.) I even loved when Richard Gere made that nonsensical plea that everyone in the audience “send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping” so that he’d spontaneously decide to free Tibet.
Actually, I believe it was Andrew Sarris, not Vincent Canby, who had the above-mentioned quote. [Bona was right.] But I don’t necessarily agree with him. There are years when the show is close to unendurable. Gilbert Cates was a producer with a singular lack of imagination, and most of his shows were torture. But the show Quincy Jones produced in 1995 was terrific, and the Stanley Donen show of 1985 was nicely done. (Even Sarris liked it.) And then there was that one-of-a-kind show Allan Carr produced (1988), which was so incredibly tacky and low-class that it was absolutely fascinating. It’s remembered as the Snow White-Rob Lowe show, but it also had dancing tables and Merv Griffin singing “I Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”
Mason and I saw all the Oscar shows going back to 1948. (That was the earliest one the academy had on tape.) It was not hard at all to watch them because we found it all fascinating. However, up until the late ’50s, the production values on the show were fairly minimal, and the shows played more like recordings of news events rather than a real show.
It’s been a long time since anyone praised the dance numbers — and certainly nothing that Debbie Allen has been associated with received a nice word. (She was one of Cates’ blind spots — despite the pans, he rehired and rehired her.) But in 1967, there were raves for Angela Lansbury’s song-and-dance rendition of the nominated song, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” which she performed with the Ronald Field Dancers. And the previous year, Mitzi Gaynor also got great reviews for her version of a nominated song, “Georgy Girl,” done with the Ernie Flatt Dancers.
“All you rock people down at the Roxy and up in the Rockies, rock on!” Jack Nicholson’s acceptance speech in 1984 for “Terms of Endearment” may be my favorite. What’s yours?
My favorite speech is probably Emma Thompson’s when she won for adapted screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility”: “Before I came, I went to visit Jane Austen’s grave in Westminster Cathedral, to pay my respects and tell her about the grosses.”
And also, Fernando Trueba, director of the best foreign film winner, “Belle Epoque” (1993): “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder, so thank you, Mr. Wilder.”
There are of course the immortal Oscar sensations, from Sacheen Littlefeather accepting Marlon Brando’s Oscar to the streaker behind David Niven. Are there any Oscar moments you treasure that others may have forgotten?
Two that most people may have forgotten are:
The group of girls, supposedly from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf, who were doing sign language of the lyrics while Debby Boone sang “You Light Up My Life.” Each of the 11 children seemed to be signing to an entirely different song, and it later turned out that they weren’t deaf and had been bused in from a local public school.
And Ronald Reagan in 1947 narrating a silent-film montage of the first 20 Oscar winners, intoning that the clips “embody the glories of our past, the memories of our present and the inspiration of our future.” He was unaware that the film was being shown upside down and backward and was projected on the ceiling.
A chat with Mr. Oscar
Damien Bona talks about "American Beauty" and Warren Beatty, "Titanic" and Roberto Benigni and more than 70 years of the academy's hits and misses.
By Bill Wyman
In the library of books published on Hollywood and the movies, few combine scholarship and voyeurism to the thrilling degree of “Inside Oscar.” Poring through the press of the time, charting the progress of favorite sons and dark horses and then gleefully dissecting each year’s ceremony, authors Mason Wiley and Damien Bona crafted arguably the most potent history of Hollywood’s love affair with itself. The result is a compulsively readable, fascinatingly detailed and endlessly amusing chronicle of our best-loved annual confluence of celebrity evanescence.
Bona and Wiley met in college — they both wrote movie reviews for the Columbia University Spectator. Bona eventually became a lawyer, but retained his affection for the movies and their excesses. “We both had Oscar books,” he recalls, “but they were all sort of straightforward and dull. We thought that someone should do a fun history of the Oscars.” The first edition was published in 1982; it’s now in its fifth. (Sadly, Bona’s friend Wiley died in 1994.)
Bona graciously accepts compliments on the book’s thoroughness and commitment to accuracy: “We thought if you set out to do something, you can’t do it half-assed.” I conducted the following e-mail exchange with the accommodating author over a period of three days the week before the Oscars. He said he would spend Sunday night as he usually does: hosting a party, watching with friends and taping the show for his archives.
I have to compliment you on your book, “Inside Oscar.” It seems to be a history of the Academy Awards, but it’s actually a secret history of Hollywood. Each chapter follows the year’s releases — which were acclaimed, which were not, which made money and which did not. Then comes the nominations, and then the big night. Did you intend for it to be quite as epic in scope when you started?
When Mason and I began “Inside Oscar” back in 1982, we didn’t really have a clear idea of the form it would take. What we intended to do was to create a humorous history of the Oscars that gave background information, included gossip and conveyed a sense of the personalities involved.
As we began work on it, we also decided we wanted to communicate a sense of why the various results occurred — not simply who and what won, but the reason they won.
To accomplish this, we realized we had to give an overview of an entire year’s worth of movies. And on top of that, to some degree we needed to elucidate what was going on in American society at a given time — how the movies reflected society and vice versa. So, before we knew it, we were actually writing something of a social history.
Originally, we thought we’d just be covering the period from the announcement of the nominations to Oscar night, but it didn’t take us long to see that such a book would be lacking in detail and insight.
I suppose the result for us today is so interesting because the week-to-week — indeed, the day-to-day — coverage of Hollywood has become such a staple of pop culture. We tend to lose perspective. It’s nice to be reminded of something like “Wilson” [a two-and-a-half-hour biopic of Woodrow Wilson, the pet project of mogul Darryl Zanuck], the most-talked-about movie of its time and of Oscar night, but then aced out of the main awards and since forgotten. Is history fair to movies like that? Will “Titanic” last?
One of the nice things about the Oscar nominations lists — and it’s one reason we included all of the nominations in “Inside Oscar” — is that they make you remember films that are otherwise forgotten, and to get an overview at what was popular at a given time. For instance, in one of the “minor” categories, who today would ever guess that “Singin’ in the Rain” would have lost best score to “With a Song in My Heart” — a forgotten movie biography about a forgotten singer, Jane Froman? But in 1952, “With a Song in My Heart” was huge (and made a star out of Robert Wagner).
And from 1944, the year of “Wilson” and the big winner, “Going My Way,” the two films people today think of most fondly are probably “Double Indemnity” (nominated for best picture) and “Laura” (not up for picture, but nominated for director and screenplay).
In “Inside Oscar,” we also have lists of eligible movies that were not nominated. Today, the two films of 1958 that are generally considered the greatest of that year are [Alfred] Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and [Orson] Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” Neither was up for best picture. In fact, “Touch of Evil” received no nominations; “Vertigo,” only for sound and art direction (and not a nomination for Bernard Herrmann’s score!). Although three of the best picture nominees from ’58 are remembered fondly and are still well liked (“Auntie Mame,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and the winner, “Gigi”), two of the nominees are hard to sit through today: the painfully earnest gimmick film “The Defiant Ones” and the stodgy “Separate Tables.”
Other notable films not nominated for best picture include “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Searchers,” “Rear Window,” “Psycho,” “Victor/Victoria,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “Laura,” “Gods and Monsters” and “The Shop Around the Corner.”
Films that were nominated for best picture and are either dismissed or forgotten today include “Fanny,” “One Foot in Heaven,” “The Pied Piper,” “Dr. Dolittle,” “Anne of the Thousand Days,” “The Prince of Tides,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Three Smart Girls” and “One Hundred Men and a Girl.” For some reason, they spoke to contemporary audiences (or at least academy members, who in the case of “Dr. Dolittle” and “Anne” were responding to the lavish Oscar campaigns). They don’t speak much to audiences today, although all of them undoubtedly have some fans.
I think that, before long, “Titanic” will be considered in the same light as “The Greatest Show on Earth” — a ludicrous movie that’s an embarrassment to Oscar annals. (Someday, people will actually listen to the dialogue of “Titanic” and gasp at how atrocious it is.) Future generations will be at a loss to explain the popularity of the film, much as people today can’t figure out why “Love Story” was a phenomenon. (At least when we look back on something like “Mrs. Miniver,” we can point to the wartime period as a reason for its appeal.)
Do you make predictions for Oscar night? Do you have special insights? Or is it always a surprise to you? Do you attend the ceremonies or watch on TV?
I’m pretty good at predicting the Oscars (though better at predicting the nominations than the winners). One thing that makes the Oscar so fascinating is that there often seems to be no rhyme or reason to some of the awards. I thought Lauren Bacall was the surest thing in Oscar history back in 1996. When she lost supporting actress to Juliette Binoche, I concluded that henceforth all bets are off.
I make my predictions after talking to people in the industry and people who live in L.A. Getting a handle on the “buzz” certainly helps.
I’ve never been to the Oscars. (I’ve been told they’re a terrible bore unless you win, and even then it’s a long sit.) I almost always host an Oscar party.
Do you have a candidate for most outrageous Oscar, the most undeserved major award? Any pet oversights?
My choice for the worst Oscar was Roberto Benigni’s win last year as best actor for “Life Is Beautiful” over Ian McKellen for “Gods and Monsters.” It was a terrible performance — the guy’s slapstick timing is all off, and his character was supposed to be an intellectual (a bookseller) but came off as idiotic. Academy members voted for him because they were — for reasons unfathomable to me — charmed by his indulgent behavior as he did talk shows and the party circuit. McKellen’s performance in “Gods and Monsters,” on the other hand, is transcendental — one for the ages. (And don’t get me started about Benigni jumping on the seats of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. When I was a kid, if we had behaved like that, the matron patrolling the aisles of the movie theater would have tossed us out.)
And in my opinion, the worst best picture winner is “Rocky,” with “Titanic,” “The Greatest Show on Earth,” “Marty” and “Ben-Hur” not far behind.
The best winners? “Casablanca,” “How Green Was My Valley” (even though it beat a better film, “Citizen Kane”), “All About Eve,” “The Apartment” and “Unforgiven.”
My favorite movie is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” so that would have to be my pet oversight. And among the great performances that lost, I’d cite Leslie Ann Warren in “Victor/Victoria,” the best dumb blond ever. She lost to Jessica Lange for a nothing performance in “Tootsie,” only because Lange was also nominated that year for “Frances,” but was doomed to be defeated by Meryl Streep in “Sophie’s Choice.”
Let’s talk about last year and then this year. I thought the contretemps over “Shakespeare in Love” edging out “Saving Private Ryan” captured the continental divide in a Hollywood that despite its name has two halves, one in Los Angeles (represented in this case by Steven Spielberg) and one in New York (Harvey Weinstein and Miramax). You could even see angered members of the New York Times film bureaus in both cities defending their respective homies. Is this a perennial split or something new? Do you see companies like Miramax as authentic “indies” or just studios in art-house clothing?
There certainly has traditionally been somewhat of a dichotomy between the two coasts, but I think Miramax is an individual case and that the negative feelings engendered by the company aren’t so much based on its being based in New York as they are by what is perceived by the abrasive personality of Weinstein — although his personality is seen by people as stereotypically New York. Similarly, the massive Oscar campaigns engaged in by Miramax can also be seen as emblematic of what is considered aggressive New York behavior. (As someone who has lived in New York for 27 years, let me go on the record as stating that most New Yorkers I know do not behave in this manner.)
I think that whereas there was a definite split between the two coasts (which was pretty much “movie people” vs. “theater people”), that has for the most part dissipated, part of the reason [being] that travel between the two coasts is so easy that they don’t seem 3,000 miles apart, more as if they were different neighborhoods. Sidney Lumet always prided himself on spending almost no time in Hollywood (but, in my opinion, he made awful movies). My favorite quote on the subject came from Peggy Cass after she lost supporting actress in 1958 for “Auntie Mame.” A stage actress, she told the press, “I’m going back to New York tonight. These Westerners — what do they know?”
Do you have an opinion on the relative merits of “Shakespeare in Love” and “Saving Private Ryan”?
I thought “Shakespeare in Love” was a charming movie, and easily the best of the five nominees last year. I did not like “Saving Private Ryan” at all and found the film dull and uninvolving. (But, then, I haven’t liked a Spielberg movie since “Jaws.”) Even the much-heralded opening D-Day sequence in “Ryan” was, I thought, all wrong. It was simply a grab bag of cheap effects. Spielberg’s use of different film stocks and film speeds was a cheat, and an easy way out — the sign of someone who couldn’t get across the horror of war through basic film elements themselves (such as editing and camera placement). And since we didn’t know who any of the characters were yet (other than recognizing Tom Hanks), we had no emotional involvement in the scene beyond our own previous knowledge of World War II soldiers. Thus, the whole sequence was just another Spielberg thrill ride.
In addition, the whole basic premise of the film was, I felt, unconvincing — and nothing that happens in the film makes it any less so. A more intelligent and thoughtful director might have plumbed some fascinating themes from the issue weighing the lives of eight men vs. one, but the lightweight Spielberg is not that person. And the present-day wraparounds were embarrassingly schmaltzy.
This year’s considered an open field, with “American Beauty” having a slight edge. What’s your favorite movie this year? Your assessment of the nominations? Does Hilary Swank really have a lock on best actress? And will Warren Beatty say anything interesting when he gets his Thalberg?
It had seemed like a wide-open race in most categories when the nominations were made. It certainly had felt as if “American Beauty” was a slight favorite, but that its support was soft and that things were pointing to a “Cider House” upset. But over the last few weeks, “American Beauty,” with its victories in the various guild awards, has solidified its lead. Its chances for picture and director look very strong, and it will probably also win original screenplay (although the much more original and clever “Being John Malkovich” or, especially, “Sixth Sense” could triumph there). Support for Denzel Washington [the star of "The Hurricane"] seems to lessen each day, and Kevin Spacey has emerged as the favorite, even though he hadn’t won a single award from the critics. Swank should be a lock for her brilliant, multilayered performance, but Annette Bening’s win at SAG [Screen Actors Guild] for her glib one-note acting shows that it’s not open and shut for Swank. If Swank doesn’t win, it will be one of those embarrassments the academy will be trying to live down for years.
My favorite movies this year were “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The End of the Affair,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Election.”
I thought the nominations were pretty typical, with academy voters more or less reflecting choices of the critics, although edgier fare like “John Malkovich” and “Boys Don’t Cry” didn’t do too well with the general membership. And “American Beauty” is undoubtedly the academy’s idea of a cutting-edge movie, though it’s just a bland version of Todd Solondz’s “Happiness,” and goes after very easy, tired targets in the most superficial way. Thus, it’s a typical Oscar winner.
Beatty is very articulate, so he will undoubtedly say something of interest about his career and maybe about the state of the industry and the state of the country. But what I’d really like to know is why he’s being given an award for his achievements as a film producer, when producer is probably the least of his many talents. I can’t figure out why the academy isn’t giving him an honorary lifetime Oscar — which would encompass his achievements as actor, director and writer as well as producer — rather than giving him a bust of Irving Thalberg.
I’ve always thought that the much-maligned acceptance speeches are the best moments of the show — the most real and the most human, not to mention the most likely to provide a little drama. The Vanessa Redgraves and Paddy Chayefskys, the Bernardo Bertoluccis and Kevin Costners, are to me the Oscars’ true heroes. But often the show itself can be excruciating. I think you quote Vincent Canby saying, “The Oscar ceremony is now intentionally designed to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible on both its participants and its viewers.” Do you feel that way? And when you did the first edition of your book, was it hard to go back and watch the old ceremonies? Has anyone ever said anything nice about the dance numbers?
I agree about the acceptance speeches, because it is the unscripted moments that provide spontaneity and true drama and excitement. One such moment was when Chayefsky was onstage accepting for the late Peter Finch — per Oscar producer William Friedkin’s mandate [banning his widow, Eletha Finch, from accepting for him if he won] — when he called Eletha onstage for a very emotional speech. There was also Louise Fletcher signing her speech for her parents.
I also love when political statements are made by the likes of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, giving Charlton Heston apoplexy. (Of course, it helps that my politics are close to theirs.) I even loved when Richard Gere made that nonsensical plea that everyone in the audience “send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping” so that he’d spontaneously decide to free Tibet.
Actually, I believe it was Andrew Sarris, not Vincent Canby, who had the above-mentioned quote. [Bona was right.] But I don’t necessarily agree with him. There are years when the show is close to unendurable. Gilbert Cates was a producer with a singular lack of imagination, and most of his shows were torture. But the show Quincy Jones produced in 1995 was terrific, and the Stanley Donen show of 1985 was nicely done. (Even Sarris liked it.) And then there was that one-of-a-kind show Allan Carr produced (1988), which was so incredibly tacky and low-class that it was absolutely fascinating. It’s remembered as the Snow White-Rob Lowe show, but it also had dancing tables and Merv Griffin singing “I Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”
Mason and I saw all the Oscar shows going back to 1948. (That was the earliest one the academy had on tape.) It was not hard at all to watch them because we found it all fascinating. However, up until the late ’50s, the production values on the show were fairly minimal, and the shows played more like recordings of news events rather than a real show.
It’s been a long time since anyone praised the dance numbers — and certainly nothing that Debbie Allen has been associated with received a nice word. (She was one of Cates’ blind spots — despite the pans, he rehired and rehired her.) But in 1967, there were raves for Angela Lansbury’s song-and-dance rendition of the nominated song, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” which she performed with the Ronald Field Dancers. And the previous year, Mitzi Gaynor also got great reviews for her version of a nominated song, “Georgy Girl,” done with the Ernie Flatt Dancers.
“All you rock people down at the Roxy and up in the Rockies, rock on!” Jack Nicholson’s acceptance speech in 1984 for “Terms of Endearment” may be my favorite. What’s yours?
My favorite speech is probably Emma Thompson’s when she won for adapted screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility”: “Before I came, I went to visit Jane Austen’s grave in Westminster Cathedral, to pay my respects and tell her about the grosses.”
And also, Fernando Trueba, director of the best foreign film winner, “Belle Epoque” (1993): “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder, so thank you, Mr. Wilder.”
There are of course the immortal Oscar sensations, from Sacheen Littlefeather accepting Marlon Brando’s Oscar to the streaker behind David Niven. Are there any Oscar moments you treasure that others may have forgotten?
Two that most people may have forgotten are:
The group of girls, supposedly from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf, who were doing sign language of the lyrics while Debby Boone sang “You Light Up My Life.” Each of the 11 children seemed to be signing to an entirely different song, and it later turned out that they weren’t deaf and had been bused in from a local public school.
And Ronald Reagan in 1947 narrating a silent-film montage of the first 20 Oscar winners, intoning that the clips “embody the glories of our past, the memories of our present and the inspiration of our future.” He was unaware that the film was being shown upside down and backward and was projected on the ceiling.
EW Article by Mason Wiley and Damien Bona
Puh-Leez, Academy
The Oscar campaign trail -- Studios push to get ''The Silence of the Lambs,'' ''Bugsy,'' and others nominated
By Mason Wiley, Damien Bona, Benjamin Svetkey, Jeffrey Wells | Mar 27, 1992
Michael Lerner was working his way through the celebrity-studded crowd at Liz Taylor's birthday bash at Disneyland last month when Shirley MacLaine rushed over and gave him a big, gushy hug. ''Actors I've never met before have been running up to me with nice things to say,'' the 50-year-old character actor reports. ''I've been at it for 24 years, but now I'm an overnight success.''
One little Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor for Barton Fink) has turned Lerner into the most celebrated semi-obscure actor in America. Job offers and party invitations are piling up. Of course, his comic portrayal of a voracious movie mogul had a natural appeal to the film capital. ''Everybody in the industry knows this character,'' Lerner says. ''I based him on Louis B. Mayer'' — the MGM founder who, incidentally, helped start the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927.
Still, Lerner's nomination for a small part in an arty film seen by few people was one of this year's biggest surprises. How did he get it? Simple: Like many movie actors these days, he campaigned for it. Last November, Lerner hired a PR specialist, and they began mapping out a personalized Oscar strategy. His agent bought ads in the Hollywood trade papers (listing Fink's screening schedules for the many Academy members who hadn't seen the $10 million film) and sent Lerner on schmoozing sorties to industry parties and premieres. ''It helped me get known,'' he says.
Oscar politicking is a venerable sport in Hollywood, and its stakes are high: The additional box office that movies can earn after claiming Oscars, and the increased salaries winners can command in the future, make the annual Academy competition, as The Columbus Dispatch called it a few years ago, ''the biggest Greased Hog Chase in six decades.'' ''Win or lose,'' says MGM marketing president Greg Morrison, ''the studios are looking to enhance the value of their films and their filmmakers.'' Not to mention enhancing the résumés of studio execs whose films win big.
According to an Entertainment Weekly tally of advertising and promotion, the major studios collectively spent about $7 million chasing after this year's Oscars. That paid for full-page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, exclusive screenings of little-seen films, and mailings of videocassettes and glossy brochures to the roughly 5,000 voting members of the Academy. The studios won't confirm how much they shelled out, but our estimates indicate the biggest spenders were TriStar (around $1 million to promote Bugsy, The Fisher King, and Terminator 2, among others), Disney (nearly $1 million, mostly for Beauty and the Beast, plus The Rocketeer), and Columbia (almost $900,000 for The Prince of Tides, City Slickers, Boyz N the Hood, and others). But there were plenty of rivals. Orion didn't let bankruptcy stand in the way of promoting The Silence of the Lambs with a campaign costing about $325,000. Its nifty, jet black gift boxes containing videocassettes and soundtrack tapes helped Silence overcome the handicap of an early-'91 release and pull in seven nominations.
Of course, not all the drumbeating pays off in nominations or wins: A splashy campaign for Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon netted that L.A. story only one nomination. And not every plug is meant to pay off, at least not at the Oscars. ''They're for people who don't have a chance in hell of getting a nomination but the studio wants to romance their relationship,'' says one producer. Disney, for instance, ran four ads touting Don Johnson as Best Actor for Paradise; he happens to be starring in the studio's remake of Born Yesterday later this year. And TriStar's plug for Schwarzenegger as Best Actor was (one surmises) merely the studio's way of thanking Ah-nuld for the $204 million Terminator 2 brought in at the box office. ''They're scratching the backs of the talent,'' says MGM's Morrison, ''and looking to be scratched back in the future.''
Budgets for Oscar campaigns have been trimmed since the high-living '80s, when studios served up lavish banquets at Academy screenings, which means some filmmakers have had to foot the bills themselves. Carolco, for instance, had little money for an Oscar war chest this year, so Rambling Rose executive producer Edgar J. Scherick dipped into his own pocket to buy an Oscar promo in the trades. Rose director Martha Coolidge chipped in too and helped pay for Academy screening cassettes. Their efforts paid off in the Oscars' first mother-daughter nominations, for Rose's Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. And like Michael Lerner, many actors spring for their own campaigns these days. Jack Palance hired a personal publicist to flog his performance in City Slickers and managed to lasso a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Cutbacks or not, though, studios are still spending what's necessary when they believe a film has a genuine chance of winning. Columbia bought at least 24 pages of prenomination trade ads for Boyz N the Hood, more than was spent for any other film but TriStar's Bugsy. The campaign may have helped Boyz' 24-year-old director, John Singleton, who has a four-year deal with the studio, in this year's biggest Oscar coup: his nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. And in addition to its Oscar ads, Disney spent heavily on an image-building strategy to convince the public that Beauty and the Beast should be seen as a legitimate grown-up film as well as a kid's movie. Beast previewed as a work in progress at the prestigious New York Film Festival, went on to become the top-grossing movie of the holidays, and is the first animated movie ever nominated for Best Picture.
Of course, not every nomination has a big-bucks campaign behind it. Robert De Niro's role in Cape Fear earned him his sixth Oscar nomination. What, aside from his chilling performance, did he do to convince the Academy to vote for him yet again? Absolutely nothing.
The Oscar campaign trail -- Studios push to get ''The Silence of the Lambs,'' ''Bugsy,'' and others nominated
By Mason Wiley, Damien Bona, Benjamin Svetkey, Jeffrey Wells | Mar 27, 1992
Michael Lerner was working his way through the celebrity-studded crowd at Liz Taylor's birthday bash at Disneyland last month when Shirley MacLaine rushed over and gave him a big, gushy hug. ''Actors I've never met before have been running up to me with nice things to say,'' the 50-year-old character actor reports. ''I've been at it for 24 years, but now I'm an overnight success.''
One little Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor for Barton Fink) has turned Lerner into the most celebrated semi-obscure actor in America. Job offers and party invitations are piling up. Of course, his comic portrayal of a voracious movie mogul had a natural appeal to the film capital. ''Everybody in the industry knows this character,'' Lerner says. ''I based him on Louis B. Mayer'' — the MGM founder who, incidentally, helped start the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927.
Still, Lerner's nomination for a small part in an arty film seen by few people was one of this year's biggest surprises. How did he get it? Simple: Like many movie actors these days, he campaigned for it. Last November, Lerner hired a PR specialist, and they began mapping out a personalized Oscar strategy. His agent bought ads in the Hollywood trade papers (listing Fink's screening schedules for the many Academy members who hadn't seen the $10 million film) and sent Lerner on schmoozing sorties to industry parties and premieres. ''It helped me get known,'' he says.
Oscar politicking is a venerable sport in Hollywood, and its stakes are high: The additional box office that movies can earn after claiming Oscars, and the increased salaries winners can command in the future, make the annual Academy competition, as The Columbus Dispatch called it a few years ago, ''the biggest Greased Hog Chase in six decades.'' ''Win or lose,'' says MGM marketing president Greg Morrison, ''the studios are looking to enhance the value of their films and their filmmakers.'' Not to mention enhancing the résumés of studio execs whose films win big.
According to an Entertainment Weekly tally of advertising and promotion, the major studios collectively spent about $7 million chasing after this year's Oscars. That paid for full-page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, exclusive screenings of little-seen films, and mailings of videocassettes and glossy brochures to the roughly 5,000 voting members of the Academy. The studios won't confirm how much they shelled out, but our estimates indicate the biggest spenders were TriStar (around $1 million to promote Bugsy, The Fisher King, and Terminator 2, among others), Disney (nearly $1 million, mostly for Beauty and the Beast, plus The Rocketeer), and Columbia (almost $900,000 for The Prince of Tides, City Slickers, Boyz N the Hood, and others). But there were plenty of rivals. Orion didn't let bankruptcy stand in the way of promoting The Silence of the Lambs with a campaign costing about $325,000. Its nifty, jet black gift boxes containing videocassettes and soundtrack tapes helped Silence overcome the handicap of an early-'91 release and pull in seven nominations.
Of course, not all the drumbeating pays off in nominations or wins: A splashy campaign for Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon netted that L.A. story only one nomination. And not every plug is meant to pay off, at least not at the Oscars. ''They're for people who don't have a chance in hell of getting a nomination but the studio wants to romance their relationship,'' says one producer. Disney, for instance, ran four ads touting Don Johnson as Best Actor for Paradise; he happens to be starring in the studio's remake of Born Yesterday later this year. And TriStar's plug for Schwarzenegger as Best Actor was (one surmises) merely the studio's way of thanking Ah-nuld for the $204 million Terminator 2 brought in at the box office. ''They're scratching the backs of the talent,'' says MGM's Morrison, ''and looking to be scratched back in the future.''
Budgets for Oscar campaigns have been trimmed since the high-living '80s, when studios served up lavish banquets at Academy screenings, which means some filmmakers have had to foot the bills themselves. Carolco, for instance, had little money for an Oscar war chest this year, so Rambling Rose executive producer Edgar J. Scherick dipped into his own pocket to buy an Oscar promo in the trades. Rose director Martha Coolidge chipped in too and helped pay for Academy screening cassettes. Their efforts paid off in the Oscars' first mother-daughter nominations, for Rose's Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. And like Michael Lerner, many actors spring for their own campaigns these days. Jack Palance hired a personal publicist to flog his performance in City Slickers and managed to lasso a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Cutbacks or not, though, studios are still spending what's necessary when they believe a film has a genuine chance of winning. Columbia bought at least 24 pages of prenomination trade ads for Boyz N the Hood, more than was spent for any other film but TriStar's Bugsy. The campaign may have helped Boyz' 24-year-old director, John Singleton, who has a four-year deal with the studio, in this year's biggest Oscar coup: his nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. And in addition to its Oscar ads, Disney spent heavily on an image-building strategy to convince the public that Beauty and the Beast should be seen as a legitimate grown-up film as well as a kid's movie. Beast previewed as a work in progress at the prestigious New York Film Festival, went on to become the top-grossing movie of the holidays, and is the first animated movie ever nominated for Best Picture.
Of course, not every nomination has a big-bucks campaign behind it. Robert De Niro's role in Cape Fear earned him his sixth Oscar nomination. What, aside from his chilling performance, did he do to convince the Academy to vote for him yet again? Absolutely nothing.
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