1990: The Winning Road

Today, we focus on films released October 19-December 5, which means we're focusing on Dances with Wolves.

This is why we're here, after all. You voted for me to watch Kevin Costner's directorial works and the films they were released alongside, so here we are. And Costner's first go in the director's chair was also his most successful: it won Best Picture, entered the lexicon, and secured his place in Hollywood, making his subsequent projects possible.

The film started as a spec script by writer Michael Blake, who had only one successful screen credit to his name: Stacy's Knights, a 1983 film about card-counting and revenge featuring, guess who, Kevin Costner. In interviews, Costner paints Blake as talented and temperamental, a man who had trouble selling his work because he entered every interaction with execs and developers with a "fight me" mentality, bemoaning the stupidity of Hollywood suits, refusing to compromise his vision, and overall, just being difficult. But talented! When Costner read Blake's still-unsold screenplay for Dances with Wolves in the 1980s - not because Blake offered it, but because he left it around the house while living with Costner - he immediately saw the appeal...and why studios were nervous about it. It was he who suggested Blake turn in it into a novel and sell that first, which might make it easier to sell the "adaptation" to studios.

Published in 1988 by Fawcett's Gold Medal imprint (meaning straight to paperback), the film rights were immediately snatched up by Costner, by then a star thanks to Silverado, The Untouchables, No Way Out, and Bull Durham, hoping to make it his directorial debut. You had an uncooperative writer, an untested director, and a genre - epic Western - that had dried out, especially since the notorious flop of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Not to mention half of it wouldn't be in English at all, but in the Lakota dialect! Just as they balked at the script, studios balked at the package. Eventually, Costner and his producing partner Jim Wilson secured foreign investment and a deal with Orion Pictures. Costner also paid out of his own pocket when production started going over budget, one of those things that immediately made people raise their eyebrows, smirk, and call the movie, Kevin's Gate. Filming in private ranches and national parks, Costner and crew wrapped up in late 1989. A year later, the film was released, limited on November 9th, wide on November 23rd.

And it was a smash hit. While never, not once, claiming the #1 spot at the box office, it had staying power. By the end of its run, it was the third-highest-grossing 1990 film in the United States, the fourth highest in the entire world. Accolades came from all over the world: the Berlin International Film Festival gave Costner the Silver Bear for Outstanding Single Achievement, the Japanese Film Academy named it the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, France's César Awards nominated it for Best Foreign Film, and the Golden Globes gave it three awards, including Best Motion Picture - Drama. It cleaned up stateside too, named among the best of the year by guilds for the Cinematographers, Editors, Casting Directors, Directors, and Producers. 

All on the way to its big night at the Academy Awards, of course, where it won seven of its twelve nominations. Among them: Blake for Best Adapted Screenplay (they'll forgive anyone if they succeed) and Costner for Best Director and Best Picture.

Not bad considering some of the competition it was up against at both the box office and the awards run. Among which were these films: 

The 1976 Retro Hollmann Awards

February's gone - let us end our look at the year 1976.

We're going out with a bang, Googie.

We talked to my parents about their memories, my mother sounded off on Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor, many took an interest in Best Adapted Screenplay (thanks to Nathaniel of The Film Experience for linking, truly unexpected!), and of course, we talked Best Picture.

But those were Oscar's picks. What of my own? The full list of the 61 films eligible have been named already; now it's time to talk my personal favorites of 40 years ago.

These are the Retro Hollmann Awards of 1976.

Best Adapted Screenplay

All the President's Men

William Goldman

from the book by Carl Bernstein / Bob Woodward

2. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Paul Mayersberg); 3. Carrie (Lawrence D. Cohen); 4. Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Robert Altman / Alan Rudolph); 5. The Shootist (Scott Hale / Miles Hood Swarthout)

Of All the President's Men, I said already that "there's a lot of information...But every detail is clear, the suspense is genuine, and each character vividly realized." The Man Who Fell to Earth's gradual meting-out of information, its slide from possibilities to a squander of them, is haunting. Carrie is earnest and completely its own, so you can buy into its crazy. Buffalo Bill and the Indians is a typical Altman: wincingly funny. The Shootist may be cynical about progress, but it doesn't let its hero off scot-free - a complex heart-tugger.

17 more categories, plus the full top ten, after the jump...

The Bicentennial Best Picture

The moment you've all been waiting for. Well, the moment you would have been waiting for 40 years ago. Before we see who the Academy honors as the Best Picture of 2016 tonight, let's take a trip back to 1977, and the Best Picture of 1976:

The nominees, after the jump.

The Bicentennial Actor

With two nominations here, Network becomes the rare film to get five acting nods (Mrs. Miniver, All About Eve, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Tom Jones, Bonnie and Clyde are the others). Sylvester Stallone is the first since Charlie Chaplin to be up for both Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay without a co-writer! Giancarlo Giannini is only the third male actor ever nominated for a foreign language performance - funnily enough, the second was fellow nominee Robert De Niro (The Godfather: Part II). And all three were in Italian!

Oh, and of course, Peter Finch becomes the first posthumous acting winner:

The nominees after the jump.

The Bicentennial Actress

Back when I did the 1971 Retrospective, I compared all of that year's nominees to the corresponding Oscar Year - 2014. And I haven't really done that, mostly because I don't find a lot of parallels. But in this category? Honey, this category is always dependable.

If you want a Gallic beauty who surprises even herself with her reaction to a disrupted home life, watch Isabelle Huppert in Elle...or Marie-Christine Barrault in Cousin cousine.

If you want a devoted lover, quiet yet strong, more steel-willed than she seems, who knows what she wants when she knows it, and adores the man who is her other half, watch Ruth Negga in Loving...or Talia Shire in Rocky.

If you want a lady of status that men don't know what to expect from, who is primarily obsessed with crafting a narrative with a specific audience in mind, watch Natalie Portman in Jackie...or Faye Dunaway in Network.

If you want someone whose dreams and fears have way too much influence on her life, yet finds a breakthrough with the help of a new man in her life, watch Emma Stone in La La Land...or Liv Ullmann in Face to Face.

If you want an underestimated force, mocked by people around her, striving to be adored, who absolutely slays when she hits a stage, watch Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins...or Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

But who will really be this year's Faye Dunaway?:

And who will be this year's...not Faye Dunaway? The nominees, after the jump.

The Bicentennial Director

History was made on nomination morning. Once again, a bunch of white men were up for Best Director. But for the first time ever, a woman's touch was finally felt in the category. That was the Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, up for her study of an asshole in fascist Italy, Seven Beauties, which she also wrote. Wertmüller came from the theatre, where she met her future muse Giancarlo Giannini; they not only collaborated on Seven Beauties, but also Swept Away, The Seduction of Mimi, and Love and Anarchy. Her entry into film was be as assistant director on Fellini's 8 1/2.

Wertmüller broke through the boys' club, though it would be another 33 years before a woman actually won the damn thing. But that's not to dismiss the actual winner of the 1976 Oscar:

I mean, have you seen Rocky? It's pretty freeking great.

Anyway, the nominees, after the jump.

The Bicentennial Original Screenplay

Spoiler alert: I love Paddy Chayefsky. I love that he was the first screenwriter to win three Academy Awards. I love that he wrote in multiple genres, in every format possible, that he was stylized yet human, serious and hilarious. The Hospital - not a fan, regrettably. But this win was well-earned!

Paddy was up against his fellow Americans and two European films - France's Cousin cousin, and Italy's Seven Beauties. A different time indeed - from 1945-1980, a 35-year period, 38 foreign language films were nominated for Best Original Screenplay! That's at least one a year, and then some. After that, though, it starts to get more scarce - a Life is Beautiful here, a Barbarian Invasions there - until A Separation becomes the most recent foreign language nominee in this category...and that was already five years ago.

(It should be noted - 2006 was an unusual year, with the multilingual Babel, the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima, and the Spanish-language Pan's Labyrinth all in competition. Another outlier, considering recent history, is 2002, where Y Tu Mamá También was nominated, and Talk to Her won.)

What will the future bring? Maybe more like this year's Oscars, where foreign writers are nominated for English-language works, such as The Lobster's Greek filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. But I do hope that, eventually, we can get back to an international lineup.

And now, the nominees of 1976.

The Bicentennial Song

It is incredible that the category of Best Original Song has lasted as long as it has. It is possibly the most expendable category at the Oscars. I know people who think the ceremony runs too long always suggest moving the Short Categories to the Governors Awards, but at least those serve as calling-cards for obscurer filmmakers.

But Original Song? It is not like it was in the 1930s, when musicals were as common as romantic-comedies and a song was as much a part of the studio package as a leading lady and a happy ending. When was the last time the winner even played on the radio? Outside of a dance remix? You know Justin Timberlake isn't going home with the Oscar this year!

Still, it makes for an entertaining category, a fun diversion during the ceremony, and a chance for Neil Diamond to accidentally call Ayn Rand a nominated songwriter:

(It's kind of bad form for Diamond to openly root for Barbra, but very gracious of her to cede the mic to Paul Williams)

So, consider this a musical break - the nominees, with video, after the jump.

The Bicentennial Supporting Actor

Our journey through the 1976 Oscars continues. We've talked Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Dramatic Score, and Supporting Actress. Now we're back to acting...with the Best Supporting Actor nominees.

If we look at the other awards ceremonies that we now call The Precursors, we see that, then as now, this race was over from the start. Oh sure - Marathon Man's Laurence Olivier won the Golden Globe for his role as the Nazi who comes out of seclusion for the sake of diamonds, but they're always a little perverse, aren't they? BAFTA had different qualifying dates for Network and Rocky, and so neither film was nominated at that event until a year later - and even then, the former's Ned Beatty and the latter's Burgess Meredith and Burt Young were left out in the cold.

No, friends, only one nominee in this category was also nominated for the BAFTA Award and Golden Globe, and had already won the National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Circle awards. And that man wound up winning the Oscar:

And as if all that weren't enough, Jason Robards wound up winning the year after, too, for Julia! But we'll get to that when we cover 1977. Until then, a closer look at this year's nominees