Best Picture, 1983

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.

Give My Regards to Broadway: Best Adapted Screenplay, 1983

I'm sick, I'm getting to this late, it's the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay.

I will say this: notice something interesting about this year? Four of the five nominees are based on stage plays, three of which are British productions. I feel like the last time a play inspired a screenplay nominee, it was The King's Speech - and since that was unproduced and subsequently rewritten for the screen, it won Original Screenplay.

Anyway, the contenders, after the jump.

Who's the New Guy?: Best Director, 1983

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?

OR WAS IT?

Casting Coup Tuesdays: The Dresser

The Dresser 

Best Picture - Nominated
Best Director, Peter Yates - Nominated

Best Actor, Tom Courtenay - Nominated
Best Actor, Albert Finney - Nominated

Best Adapted Screenplay, Ronald Harwood - Nominated

In the years between 1943 and 2009, when the Academy had but five nominees for Best Picture, there was often a last-minute qualifying release that took nominations in the top slots - The Reader, Million Dollar Baby, The Thin Red Line. In 1983, that latecomer was an intimate British backstage dramedy, The Dresser.

Based on a hit play by Ronald Harwood, the film is centered on the relationship between an aging Shakespearean actor known only as Sir (Albert Finney) and his devoted dresser (Tom Courtenay) as they prepare for a performance during World War II. Their ensemble of actors is ancient, sirens sound throughout performances, and the theaters and towns they visit are not quite as bustling as they might have been in peace time. Naturally, this setting is also symbolic of the state of theatre, as the traditionally bombastic style of Sir and his quaint troupe will soon be on the way out - keep in mind, it was 1936 when Orson Welles produced his all-black Haiti-set production of Macbeth; the action of The Dresser takes place in 1942.

Playwright Ronald Harwood based the characters on his life, for he was a personal dresser to Sir Donald Wolfit, he of Room at the Top and Lawrence of Arabia fame. Courtenay originated the role of Norman in the West End, and was Tony-nominated for the Broadway production. YouTube this title and you'll see trailers for a number of local productions. And, most recently, BBC and Starz partnered for a telefilm with Ian McKellen and Anthony Hopkins in the lead roles. So a remake is not entirely out of the question.

But who would play the roles? Let's imagine....

The Year of the Drunk: Best Actor, 1983

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.

1983: An Introduction

The year was 1983.

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.

And at the movies? That comes after the jump.

Coming in May

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?

May 3rd

The Big Chill

May 10th

The Dresser

May 17th

The Right Stuff

May 24th

Tender Mercies

May 31st

Terms of Endearment

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