The Academy Likes Big, Loud & Epic

I have a very handy book called "The Academy Awards Handbook." In addition to providing me with lists of winners and commentary on the ceremony for every year, it also has a helpful "Predicting the Oscars" essay in the back. Let me share with you the list of criteria to consider when picking the acting winners:

"1. Real People: Geoffrey Rush in Shine; Susan Surandon in Dead Man Walking; Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot; Ben Kingsley in Gandhi; Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry; etc.

2. Characters with disabilities: Again, Geoffrey Rush in Shine; Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman; Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas; Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump; Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; etc.

3. Age: Very old actors are a good bet, as are veteran actors who have never won: Al Pacino, Susan Surandon, Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy; Jack Palance in City Slickers; Sean Connery in The Untouchables; Paul Newman in The Color of Money; etc.

4. In the supporting categories, watch out for leads nominated in support, especially for actress. Marisa Tomei is a lead in My Cousin Vinny. Whoopi Goldberg has leading lady screentime in Ghost, Geena Davis is the lead in The Accidental Tourist, as is Jessica Lange in Tootsie. Also, watch out for big stars in supporting roles - Sean Connery, Michael Caine in Hannah and her Sisters, Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment, Maggie Smith in California Suite; etc.

5. Put your money on the Brits. In the past twenty years (this was written in 2000), 11 of the 80 acting Oscars have gone to Brits. That includes Connery (a Scot), Hopkins (Welsh), and Peter Finch, an Australian whom everyone thought was English. (Add to this Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent, plus both Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett may as well be British for their adaptability to accents.)

6. Accents: Hanks in Gump, Landau in Ed Wood, Tomei in Vinny, Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, Anjelica Huston in Prizzi's Honor, Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs; etc.

7. Actors win for the performances they weren't honored for last year. They also win for performances they weren't nominated for this year. How much of Diane Keaton's Annie Hall win was for the serious dramatics of Looking for Mr. Goodbar? Jeremy Irons won his Oscar the year after his highly regarded but unnominated performance in Dead Ringers. "

Put all of this information together and definite patterns emerge in the Academy Award's history of choosing large and loud performances. Also, the essay's guidelines for predicting the Best Picture winner mention that 1) the longest nominated film wins Best Picture 44% of the time, and 2) comedies don't usually win Oscars. The comedy winners have included It Happened One Night, Annie Hall, The Sting, Going My Way, All About Eve, The Apartment, and Shakespeare in Love (which takes it's plot from Shakespearean tragedy, and ends without the leads together, making it a dubious comedy, true as that label is).

So in the absence of comedies, what usually wins Best Picture? Epics. This trend has wavered a bit in the past decade (while Crash, A Beautiful Mind, and The Departed are pictures with large casts, intricate and wide-reaching plots, and in the case of Mind, spans large portions of time, none really qualify as epics.) But if you look at past-precedents, the Oscars almost always go for the biggest, longest and most dramatic film they can. This is especially true of the '90's where we got Dances With Wolves beating Goodfellas, Unforgiven beating The Crying Game, Schindler's List beating In the Name of the Father, Forrest Gump beating The Shawshank Redemption, Braveheart beating Apollo 13, The English Patient beating Fargo, and Titanic beating L.A. Confidential. I'm not complaining about most of these winners; in many cases they were the best film of the year, especially Schindler's List. I'm just noting a pattern. Why is it that we seem to place a greater importance or value on stories about war, history, death, and tragedy? Even I find it hard to seriously consider Juno in the same league as Atonement, even though it accomplishes it's story just as wonderfully, or thinking of Little Miss Sunshine as worthy as Letters From Iwo Jima. Why? Because one makes me laugh and the other teaches me a history lesson in tolerance? That makes one less valuable than the other?

Whatever the reason, it is usually a safe bet to wager on the biggest, longest, or most time-sweeping story. Although No Country For Old Men is the leading candidate for it's perfection in cast, performance, sound, pacing and dialogue, There Will Be Blood has the epic feeling. It feels larger, grander, it spans a large period of time, and explores historical relationships, giving it the epic vibe is spite of Country's superiority. But here's the rub; I think the Coen brothers have the edge for another important reason - they didn't win for Fargo. Critically speaking, while The English Patient remains a perfectly respectable film, critical favor for it has waned in the years since it's win, and most believe that Fargo was the deserving winner, both for picture and for direction. So this year, if the Academy were to honor Paul Thomas Anderson for his first really big picture, they would have snubbed the Coen brothers for both of their masterpieces. It's like rule 7 above - artists rewarded this year because they weren't honored before. In this case, I think the Coen brothers deserve it, but if they had won for Fargo, I'd give the edge to There Will Be Blood. The Oscars are really just one big political game, aren't they?

These guidelines are especially apparent in the acting categories. Although many nuanced performances get nominated, it is generally the biggest and loudest performance that wins. Let's look at last year. I'm not complaining one bit about Forrest Whitaker's win for The Last King of Scotland, or Helen Mirren's victory for The Queen, but we should taker a closer look at the reasons behind these wins. In the case of Whitaker, why was he nominated over James McAvoy, who is the real lead of the film? Technically speaking, Whitaker's role as Idi Amin is a supporting performance. He has a lot less screen time, but he has two very crucial attention grabbers in his favor: first, he's playing a real life person, and second, this real life person often seemed bi-polar, alternately loving and boisterous, then suspicious and cruel. McAvoy gave a performance that was smaller in scope, depending on reactions, while Whitaker got to display every emotion in the book and do it loudly! As with Best Picture, where we place a higher premium on long and dramatic, so in acting do we think it is more impressive to play a real-world figure. I have often thought that this seems ridiculous; if you're playing a real person, there are pictures, videos, historical references, and testimonies that help you shape a character and make them real. Doesn't it seem harder, or at least as difficult, to create a character that only exists in the script, where the actor has to create the voice, mannerisms, and patterns? The other thing in Whitaker's favor was the absolute ignorance of his other great performances in past award-seasons. Once Whitaker started garnering acclaim for The Last King of Scotland, the media, and the public, seemed to latch onto this as his rightful comeuppance for a great career, cause who knows if he'll get nominated again. I'm not claiming that his performance was anything less than fabulous - he was amazing. But this role and his acting history had a lot of favors built into it from the beginning.

The situation was in many ways similar with Helen Mirren. Again, she gave an absolutely staggering performance, and it was actually filled with nuance. I couldn't necessarily call it big and loud. But again, it was based on a real-life figure; there were images and behaviors to draw from in creating that performance. Mirren was also an actress with a long and fruitful career, twice-nominated in the past, but had never won. What if she wasn't nominated again? Judi Dench, also nominated that year, is older, but she won in '98 for Shakespeare in Love, so she's covered. While Mirren's work was excellent, it could be argued that Kate Winslet (in Little Children) and Penelope Cruz (in Volver) had the more difficult roles as their characters were steeped in humor and normalcy, and the actresses had to bring fire from within. I was rooting for Mirren all the way, but again, look at the guidelines; she had a lot of things going for her.

Navigating this political minefield has left a lot of clean-up for the Academy over the years. For instance, when Russell Crowe won for Gladiator in 2000, he was being given a make-up Oscar for The Insider, which he should have won for the previous year. And because the Academy was so involved in making it fair play, they missed out on Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls, and Ed Harris in Polluck. (Btw, Harris is gonna have a make-up Oscar in his future; amazing actor, four Oscar noms in the past ten years, and still hasn't won.) And because they gave Crowe the award in 2000, they couldn't give it to him for another deserving role the very next year, when he should have won for A Beautiful Mind. But that freed them up to give Denzel Washington his make-up Oscar. He won for Training Day (another big and loud supporting performance, disguised as a lead because Denzel is a big name) when he should have won for Malcolm X in 1992. And why didn't he win in 1992? You guessed it - because that was the year they gave Al Pacino his make-up Oscar, for his big and loud performance in Scent of a Woman. They had to give Pacino a make-up after failing to recognize him for Serpico in 1973, The Godfather Part II in 1974, or Dog Day Afternoon in 1975. They really have created quite a mess, haven't they?

I could go on about the big and loud (Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood) triumphing over the small and interior (George Clooney in Michael Clayton), because there are plenty of examples, but they are for a variety of reasons, and I think you get the idea. Just hoping everyone will think about it and look at the less showy performances a little more next time. I could also continue on with examples of make-up Oscars (Ingrid Bergman won for Gaslight in 1944 because she wasn't nominated for Casablanca and didn't win for For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1943, and consequently Barbara Stanwyck didn't win for Double Indemnity, oh the shame!), but I've already written too much. I don't think you guys enjoy reading these essays about Oscar history and rules as much as I do. But wanted to bring it to your attention.