Oscar rules
February 20th, 2005
The rundown of the unwritten rules of Oscar by Jim Emerson at Roger Ebert’s site doesn’t contain many surprises: amazingly enough, it helps if your lead actor is dying or suffering from some debilitating physical or mental condition, it’s even better if he or she missed out on an Oscar for a really good performance a year or two earlier, and subtlety doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. However, one of Ebert’s points made me sit up and think:
Having a Period
The showiest way to flaunt your budget (besides spending it on astronomical marquee names) is to set your movie in the past, so you can see all the departments – costumes, production design, cinematography, makeup – working hard all the time. It’s astonishing, but the only Best Picture winners in the last 20 years to be set in contemporary times (real or fantasy) were “Rain Man,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” and “American Beauty” – which are also among the few that weren’t historical biographies (although “Rain Man” was supposedly based on a real person).
My first thought was that the picture isn’t quite so clear-cut if you look beyond Best Picture winners and consider the acting awards as well. Looking at the period from 1990 to 2003, I came up with this breakdown of awards for acting performances in contemporary roles as follows:
- 9 out of 13 Best Actor awards
- 9 out of 13 Best Actress awards
- 9 out of 13 Best Supporting Actor awards
- 5 out of 13 Best Supporting Actress awards
In short, actors seeking an Oscar should avoid period films like the plague.
(For what it’s worth, I’ve put up a copy of my analysis of the data as a tab-separated value text file, so you can argue with me about my classification of particular films as contemporary or otherwise if you’re so inclined.)
[Article edited to change the identity of the linked article's author, as per Jim's comment. jr 20 Feb 2004]
[Via web-goddess, whose 2005 Oscar Contest closes in just a few days.]
February 20th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Actually, it’s jim Emerson’s rundown.
February 20th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
My apologies, I made the mistake of reading the name at the top of the site instead of that at the head of the article. I’ll amend the entry accordingly.
February 21st, 2005 at 8:09 am
Ack! So did I! See, this has happened to me several times on Ebert’s new site. I think the “other” editors need to differentiate their contributions a little more from the Man’s.
February 25th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
“…(although “Rain Man” was supposedly based on a real person).”
I’m not going to bother to look it up, but I read an article in the last few days — I think it was in the NY Times — on savants, and a small character in the story was the named guy Rain Man was (loosely) based upon (apparently he’s considerably more articulate and normalish than the Dustin Hoffman portrayal).
For what it’s worth, I first started reading and liking Jim Emerson’s film reviews in Seattle about twenty-five years ago or so. But I’m puzzled by your commenter Kris’s referring to “other editors” of the Ebert site, plural: who, exactly, is another poster there besides Roger and Jim (the sole editor)?
And how exactly should Jim “differentiate” himself beyond the fact that his name is plainly bylined on each story of his, just as plainly and in the same format as seen in any newspaper or magazine that gives bylines? Why make a unique difference for the single site, which has a grand total — so far as I know — of two plainly labeled posters? Wouldn’t it make more sense for sites such as newspapers and magazines to switch to BLINK or something, given their hundreds of writers, than a site with two people, using the same format used for more or less a century of publishing without noticeable confusion?
By Gary Farber
February 26th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Googling around for the NYT story you mentioned, I came across this fascinating article at the Times about Kim Peek, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character. I’m happy to learn that whilst Hoffman’s character did bear some resemblance to his real life counterpart, it turns out that Kim Peek didn’t have an exploitative asshole for a brother.
February 27th, 2005 at 7:45 am
In the piece: “In addition to Best Movie and Best Actor Oscars, the screenwriter Barry Morrow also won an Oscar for creating the movie.”
Well, no, he really didn’t. They call it “Best Screenplay” (Original or Adapted) and not “Best Creator” for rather significant reasons. I’m all for recognizing the importance of the writer, and growling at the way Hollywood traditionally holds the writer in low regard, but I’d equally object to a winner of the Best Director category being said to have won an Oscar for “creating” a movie, as well. Is there any defensible reason for the writer to have made such a silly change?
This is the article I was thinking of, by the way; yup, Kim Peek. Roger’s assistant should have been able to find the relevant information in a flash; if not, I’m available, Roger!