The Early Bird: 1991, Part One

We start 1991 not in January, but in February. Partly because it just happened to work out that way. And partly because 1991's movie year - full of legends, beauty and the Beast and Thelma & Louise and JFK and Paris is Burning and Soapdish - can be said to center around the February box office smash that became a home video sensation, with enough heat to win Best Picture a year and a month after its initial release. Yes, yes: The Silence of the Lambs.

The film has an interesting pedigree for a blockbuster and Oscar winner. Based on a pulp paperback thriller, The Silence of the Lambs follows FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she hunts down a serial killer who skins his female victims; in her mission, she consults with the imprisoned murderer-psychiatrist-cannibal-genius Hannibal Lecter, who plays his own mind games with her. The director is Jonathan Demme, who by this time had become more known for his critically-acclaimed comedies like Melvin and Howard and Married to the Mob, though he initially broke through with exploitation pictures for Roger Corman, such as Caged Heat and Crazy Mama. The stars are Jodie Foster, a former child star who, with her Oscar-winning turn in 1988's The Accused, graduated into Serious Adult Actor, and Anthony Hopkins, a Welsh actor more known to the US for serious prestige work like The Lion in Winter or 87 Charing Cross Road. Together with writer Ted Tally, they made what could have been a lurid thriller and turned it into a hit with critics and audiences - and an enduring cinema classic.

Oh, yes, classic. We don't like to think of anything made after the 1960s as a classic, but it's been 35 years, I think we can say it, and The Silence of the Lambs more than qualifies, if just for how ubiquitous the film's iconography has become. Yes, the book series by Thomas Harris was already popular, and Michael Mann adapted Red Dragon into Manhunter in 1986, but it's the success of The Silence of the Lambs that gives us a four-film franchise, two television series (Hannibal and the short-lived Clarice), a musical parody (Silence! The Musical), decades of references (Zootopia 2 just last year paid homage), and even an "unconventional biography" (Brian Raftery's Hannibal Lecter: A Life, published just this February). Even during the film's first month of release, you could feel it: Foster and Hopkins presented the writing awards at the Academy Awards for 1990, just one month after The Silence of the Lambs came our, and were introduced with great fanfare and greeted by loud applause. When the VHS came out in October, it became the most rented video in the country. When the Academy Awards for 1991 were held the next year, the film became the third (and, so far, final) to win The Big Five: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay (adapted, in this case). That's a lot of momentum to carry for a year, but it had the goods.

And to think, in some places it played alongside these films:

The Best and the Worst: May 2000 (contd)

May 2000 continues from yesterday.

The month of May was fruitful for awards season, seeing the release of two films whose popularity and infamy, respectively, lasted well into March of the next year. I refer, of course, to Gladiator and Battlefield Earth.

Gladiator was a hit, Battlefield Earth was a bomb. Gladiator was the #1 film in the USA two weeks in a row, the #3 film of the whole year; Battlefield Earth bankrupted its studio, the #100 film of the whole year.  Gladiator won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Battlefield Earth "won" the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture. Are their reputations warranted?

Read on:

1990: Snobs

Let's talk about Penny Marshall.

Penny Marshall is best known as one-half of Laverne & Shirley (she was Laverne) alondside Cindy Williams, characters they originated on the television sitcom Happy Days. Her brother Garry Marshall (who would eventually direct Pretty Woman) created Happy Days, having been a veteran of the TV side of show business; it was he who pushed her into acting, but it was her own independent work with writing partner Williams that inspired the Laverne and Shirley characters. A popular show, Laverne & Shirley ran eight seasons, during which time Marshall received three Golden Globe nominations and started directing: first a pilot of a different, then four episodes of Laverne & Shirley. Set to make her cinematic directorial debut with Peggy Sue Got Married, she left due to creative differences, but the same year got another directing job: the comedy-thriller Jumpin' Jack Flash with Whoopi Goldberg - a modest hit! She followed it up with the fantasy Big with Tom Hanks - an insane hit, and an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Her next film: Awakenings.

Awakenings tells the incredible true story of catatonic patients who miraculously, albeit temporarily, became active and aware after decades of no progress, possibly due to a treatment administered by their new physician. Robin Williams is the doctor, Robert De Niro is the first test subject - both were named Best Actor by the National Board of Review. A hit film based on a best-seller, it grossed over $100 million, was named among the best films of the year by a number of critical bodies, and was a no-brainer for a Best Picture nomination.

Marshall, however, never received any accolades for the film. Not an Oscar nod, not a DGA nomination, not a Golden Globe. And this is part of two problems the Academy had throughout this decade. The first, obviously, was their lack of nominations for female directors - you can’t say they just weren’t good enough, their films kept making money and getting into Best Picture (Randa Haines, anyone?). The second was, as far as I can see it, snobbery. Awakenings is not a comedy. Marshall, however, was a comedienne, a sitcom star. It didn’t matter that her films kept making money or received critical acclaim, just as it didn’t matter that Jerry Zucker - of Airplane!, Police Squad, and Top Secret! fame - brought in the biggest moneymaker of the year. Just as it didn’t matter in 1995, when Ron Howard won the DGA Award for Apollo 13 but blipped with Oscar! They weren’t in the club…yet.

Awakenings came out December 19th, amidst these eleven other eventual nominees and awards season hopefuls:

1948: Best Picture

Finally, Best Picture of 1948. Honestly, not one of the strongest lineups. There are two clear-cut masterpieces, alongside three films whose craftsmanship is undeniably good, but as movies...just overall not my thing, I guess. There are lots of films from this year I'd rank above...but we'll get there, never you mind about that now.

The nominees:

1948: Best Score

The nominees for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture consist of four Best Picture nominees and Joan of Arc. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre did not make it here, though its composer, Max Steiner, was nominated for Johnny Belinda. And only one composer was showing up for the first time - and wound up winning! The nominees:

1948: Best Director

Got to this a couple days late, but here we go: Best Director, 1948.

Actually, before we get to the nominees - did you know this was also the first year that the Directors Guild of America gave out competitive awards? What was going on that everyone suddenly wanted their own trophies? 

There were only four nominees that first year, only half of whom were also nominated at the 21st Academy Awards: Anatole Litvak for The Snake Pit and Fred Zinnemann for The Search. The other two were Howard Hawks for Red River and Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives...a 1949 film. Mankiewicz would repeat his win at the 22nd Academy Awards, while the winner of the 1948 Oscar wasn't even nominated at the DGA Awards. Go figure!

Here are Oscar's nominees:

1948: Best Actor

The question that haunts this category for this particular year: where's Humphrey Bogart's nomination for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? 

From the Los Angeles Times: "There is nought but credit to give to the actor for his very fine performance. He has a terrific dramatic summit to reach in the later scenes, and does this with notable effectiveness." From the New York Times: "His performance in this film is perhaps the best and most substantial that he has done." From Variety: "Bogart...comes through with a performance as memorable as his first major film role in The Petrified Forest was in 1935. ...In a remarkably controlled portrait, he progresses to the edge of madness without losing sight of the subtle shadings needed to establish persuasiveness."

To many, this is the performance Bogart should have won for (possibly clearing the way for a Brando win in 1951). Perhaps the reason for Bogart's absence is the about-face. Every review notes that his fans may be disappointed to find that instead of another "indestructible private eye" or flawed good guy, he plays a real asshole. Allegedly, he himself told a critic weeks prior to the film's opening, "I play the worst shit you ever saw." It's a great performance but a challenging part, one that perhaps fans weren't ready to see and co-workers weren't ready to award.

Here's who got nominated instead:

1948: Supporting Actress

Look at this lineup of character actresses: Oscar nominees today, Emmy winners tomorrow. Oh yes, each one of these ladies went on to TV gold. Academy Award winner Claire Trevor won an Emmy for her performance on the anthology show Producers' Showcase; Jean Simmons, for the mini-series The Thorn Birds. Ellen Corby won three just for The Waltons, while her I Remember Mama co-star Barbara Bel Geddes won one for playing Miss Ellie on Dallas. And while Agnes Moorehead went 0-for-4 with Oscar, with Emmy, she went...1-for-7 - her one Emmy wasn't for her six-time nominated Endora on Bewitched, either, but for her guest appearance on The Wild Wild West. Oh, well.

Five actresses with Emmy Awards. But what about Oscar? Let's discuss...