Tender Mercies is unusual, even considering the number of unassuming, reflective movies that came out in the 1980s. It's quieter than most, there's no obvious climax, most things are left unsaid. There's only one "big" moment, and it belongs to Betty Buckley, in one of her three scenes. There are plenty of big moments that don't involve caterwauling or screaming, but they happen within. The characters may be in or around show business, but they don't make a business of showing, at all.
In many ways, it's a beautiful film, and not because of the Texas landscape. Good God, decidedly not! The beauty lies in its little moments: a flyer posted for a fan's band, a game of catch, a couple gardening together, a lullaby sung privately, away from us. And best of all, it introduces a recovering alcoholic, without having to show them falling off the wagon. I've always felt that twist, while believable, is often used as a crutch. Horton Foote needs no such crutch to keep his story in motion.
Could such a film be made today? If so, what would it look like? Allow me to speculate.
Our month-long celebration of the year 1983 nears its end. Beginning Wednesday, I'll begin naming my honorees in 18 categories for the Retro Hollmann Awards. But before I do - let's end the actual Oscar coverage the way all Oscars end, with Best Picture of the Year.
And what do all five nominees have in common? They are about people who need each other. Friends, lovers, business partners, researchers, family. These are stories of people who cannot survive without one another, for a whom a life without their community is a hollow existence. It's a sentiment at the core of The Big Chill - Glenn Close's Sarah believes she was at her best when she was with this formerly tight-knit group of college friends, and when one member of their group objects to the idea, Kevin Kline's wittily and sincerely observes, "How much love, sex, fun and friendship can a person take?" (It also became the movie's tagline)
Similarly is The Right Stuff about a family created out of circumstance. Only seven men are chosen to be the first Americans in space - they are each other's navigators, engineers, safety officers, communications liaisons. They depend on each other to make it back home, and they aren't home, their wives are keeping each other company.
The Dresser also has co-workers who depend on each other, in this case a little too much. Sir, the noted Shakespearean actor, not only depends on Norman to get him dressed and ready for each performance, he also depends on him to help maintain his sanity. Norman, himself dependent on the bottle, needs Sir just as much - he needs someone who needs him, he's dependent on dependency.
Just as wrapped around each other are Aurora and Emma, the mother-daughter duo at the heart of Terms of Endearment. Even though Aurora pursues her own romance, even though Emma moves out of state twice-over, even though they don't seem to get along for a good half of the movie -- they need each other. They constantly talk on the phone, they know everything about each other (even sex things!), one is the anchor for the other.
And then we come to the couple that saves each other. Mac Sledge is a former country-western star, a drunk. Rosa Lee is a widow, a single mother, making it on her own in a ramshackle motel/gas station. But when they meet, she gets him sober, he builds a life for her and her son, and they take care of the surrounding land to allow for a farm. And Rosa Lee thanks God for these Tender Mercies.
It's a strong lineup. Terms of Endearment came out on top, but maybe I have a thing or two to say about that. Maybe I'll say it after the jump.
I'm so glad we finally made it to Best Original Song, because the 80s was the decade for this category. The confusing rule changes, terrible winners, and "huh?" nominations of recent years have called into question the legitimacy, the necessity of Original Song. But without it, we wouldn't have the power ballads and pop hits that have defined the last 30 years of karaoke.
Here's just a sampling of nominees, not even winners: "9 to 5", "On the Road Again", "Endless Love", "Eye of the Tiger", "The Power of Love", "Footloose", "Let's Hear It For the Boy", "Somewhere Out There", "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", "Kiss the Girl". Songs that, when played amongst friends, cause the whole party to stop for a group sing-along. And I haven't even touched the actual champions like "Say You, Say Me", "Up Where We Belong", "Take My Breath Away", "I Just Called to Say I Love You", and so on, and so forth.
1983 gave us three bona fide classics, songs that have stood the test of time, tunes that everyone - old, young, straights, gays, men, women - knows most of the words to. Two of them come from Flashdance, the third highest-grossing film of the year, whose soundtrack took the top spot of the Billboard Top 200 two weeks in a row. The other one comes from Yentl, Barbra Streisand's surprisingly great directorial debut.
Oh, and the other nominees were another tune from Yentl and one from Tender Mercies. Shall we have a listen?
It's the new guy versus the vets in the battle for Best Director.
Well, OK, the new guy was James L. Brooks, and while Terms of Endearment was his first film, this was hardly amateur hour: he was the writer-producer who brought us TV shows like Mary Tyler Moore and Phyllis and Taxi. He had even dipped his toes into film producing with Starting Over, which received two Oscar nominations years before.
Bruce Beresford, surprisingly enough for the director of a Texas-set, country music-concerned film like Tender Mercies, was an Australian filmmaker! He had been nominated for his Breaker Morant screenplay just three years earlier - he also has the rare honor of having directed a Best Picture-winning film (Driving Miss Daisy)...without being nominated himself.
Yates also directed Krull in 1983
Peter Yates was back making films like The Dresser in his native England, having been nominated four years earlier for directing and producing the American bicycle dramedy Breaking Away. He performed similar double-duty with The Dresser.
Mike Nichols was back in the game after more than a decade of nada, following his Oscar win for The Graduate. Silkwood was less obviously stylistic, but brought him back and served as his first collaboration with Meryl Streep. The two would later team up for Heartburn, Postcards from the Edge, and the HBO mini-series Angels in America.
And then there's Ingmar Bergman, with his own spotty record of Academy love. The most revered of Swedish filmmakers, Bergman's previous efforts had been relegated to either Foreign Film (this was the third of his films to win the category) or Original Screenplay (curiously, a common place for foreign auteurs to find their work honored - A Separation, anyone?). Fanny and Alexander proved to be his most Oscar-friendly work since Cries and Whispers in 1973, though like Scenes from a Marriage, it was a mini-series edited down to feature-length.
Beginner's luck: Brooks won. And it's interesting: he would be back twice as the producer-writer of Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets, but this proved to be his only at-bat for Directing. Good thing he got it, eh?
I know I should probably make an overall post about Original Screenplay, but let me raise a glass to the ladies. Because 2/5 of the films nominated here were written by women, and I love that.
Frances Marion
Much is made of the few nominations received by female directors - four in total, right, including winner Kathryn Bigelow? But screenplay has been much kinder, it's true! The Second Academy Awards saw two women nominated for Best Screenplay: Josephine Lovett, for the provocative Our Dancing Daughters, an original work; and Bess Meredyth, for both A Woman of Affairs and Wonder of Women, both based on novels. The very next year, Frances Marion became the first woman to actually win the Best Screenplay Oscar, for her original screenplay The Big House.
Lovett, Meredyth and Marion were solo acts - the three ladies nominated here in 1983 had partners.
Barbara Benedek was mostly a television writer, married to Peter Benedek, who would later found UTA. She had written a number of unproduced plays and other scripts, one of which Lawrence Kasdan got a hold of; they collaborated on the screenplay for The Big Chill. No surprise that she nails the insecurities of these 30-somethings so truthfully: she was a psychiatric research assistant before entering TV.
Ephron with husband Carl Bernstein
Silkwood is a woman's story - who better than Alice Arlen and Nora Ephron to script it? Perhaps writing is genetic: Ephron's parents were the writers behind Carousel and Desk Set, and before Silkwood, she had already published a book of essays and a novel, Heartburn. Her friend Arlen was likewise blessed, a female journalist whose mother was a female journalist, and whose mother before her was a female newspaper publisher. The two would later re-team for Cookie; Arlen also wrote the screenplay for Helen Hunt's directorial debut, Then She Found Me, while Ephron...well, hello? Ever hear of Julie & Julia, You've Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle....
Meanwhile, Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes were up for a teen thriller - they would be nominated again years later, but as producers for Best Picture nominee Awakenings. And Ingmar Bergman was up for a television mini-series he had whittled down to feature film length, his fifth screenplay nod.
Horton Foote won the Oscar for Tender Mercies, his first time writing an original work for the screen. He previously won Best Adapted Screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird. Fun fact: he was nominated last year at the Primetime Emmy Awards for writing Bessie...six years after his death. Hollywood!
And should Foote have won? Find out, after the jump!
If you wanted a nomination in 1983, all you had to do was open a bottle. Of the five nominees for Best Actor, four of them are hard drinkers, whether active or reformed.
In Educating Rita, Michael Caine plays Frank Bryant, a literature professor who begins private tutoring sessions with a working-class woman. His failure as a poet has brought him to the bottle - he keeps a stash behind a copy of alcohol epic The Lost Weekend. The drink has driven his girlfriend right into the arms of one of his colleagues. Did I mention it's a comedy?
In Reuben, Reuben, Tom Conti plays another poet, Gowan McGland of Scotland, based largely on poet/womanizer/alcoholic Dylan Thomas. He comes to a small town in New England to give talks and lectures, and seduce the local bored wives. The Reuben of the title is a dog Gowan befriends; his owner is the grandfather of a much younger woman Gowan falls in love with. This is Conti's first and only nomination.
Tom Courtenay is the title character of The Dresser, whose entire life is devoted to serving a Great Shakespearean Actor - and in between breakdowns, comforts, truth-tellings, bitching, and gossip, he nips from a bottle, and is quick to replenish the supply when he runs out. Albert Finney, as the Great Shakespearean Actor, does not need to imbibe, for he is already losing his mind, and surely that's just one bit of madness too many.
In Tender Mercies, Robert Duvall plays former country music star Mac Sledge - he has hit rock bottom at the film's beginning, and is more or less forced to sober up by the widow he eventually falls in love with. It's distinct from the rest for a number of reasons: the other performances are from films based on plays (Reuben, Reuben is based on a play and a novel), whereas Tender Mercies is an original screenplay. Not only that: of the five, Duvall's the only American!
Small wonder, then, that he won.
Hollywood toasting a native son? Or was he truly deserving? My thoughts, after the jump.
The Cold War entered its 38th year (unofficially, though, for how does one keep track of an undeclared event?). Ronald Reagan was still in his first term, and while 1982 had witnessed an unemployment high unseen since the Depression, it began it's decline this year -- slowly, but surely. People were pensive about nuclear war, nuclear waste, nuclear meltdowns, with apocalyptic visions of the future taking over the airwaves. M*A*S*H ended, The Thorn Birds was our new obsession, and the end of the year brought the greatest gift we could ever receive: the music video for Thriller.
It's been too quiet for too long (not counting my And Then There Were None casting which you should take a peek at). Fret not -- we're back in business starting in May!
Throughout the month, we're traveling back to the 80s for a retrospective of the 1983 Oscars! Followed, of course, by own picks of the year, at the Retro Hollmann Awards.
The fun begins May 2nd.
Casting Coup Tuesdays will also return that month, as I re-cast all five 1983 Best Picture nominees! Join me, won't you?
