Spielberg's Strange Oscar History

[mlrg]

Only now, and beacause of Okri's mention in the 1998 discussion, I got to read this post.

Strangely, no one mentioned Spielberg's Thalberg Award in 1986. Was this seen at the time as a make-up award?

After loosing again this year for Lincoln, I think there is a real issue in the Academy with Spielberg.

[Franz Ferdinand]

Great post, Mister Tee. What are your thoughts on his upcoming Lincoln biopic with Daniel Day-Lewis? A third director win for him? I think he still has it in him for a few more nominations and possibly another win.



Edited By Franz Ferdinand on 1305177701

[Sabin]

(Mister Tee @ May 11 2011,6:02)

Eric, I've been meaning to mention that I think your take on Saving Private Ryan is very interesting. It is as if Spielberg, by separating earnings from seriousness, shattered a paradigm that had won many a best picture prize in the From Here to Eternity mold and suffered from it. I do wonder: had Spielberg not already taken film/director five years earlier, would the split still have happened?

He would have taken both.

[Mister Tee]

People were talking about Wag the Dog quite a bit.

Actually, Levinson was MY lone director prediction. I thought the combination of veteran nominee/winner and hugely topical material would slip him in.

Eric, I've been meaning to mention that I think your take on Saving Private Ryan is very interesting. It is as if Spielberg, by separating earnings from seriousness, shattered a paradigm that had won many a best picture prize in the From Here to Eternity mold and suffered from it. I do wonder: had Spielberg not already taken film/director five years earlier, would the split still have happened?

Another tradition that would have pointed to a Ryan victory, and may be waning now, is the idea that longer movies always have an advantage. Movies over 2 1/2 can't constitute more than 5-10% of all movies ever made, but they represent a far higher percentage of best picture winners. Hell, I believe the five films prior to Ryan all had that excess running time. Voters seemed to feel it gave films extra heft (even in the case of something stupid like Braveheart). Shakespeare's win may have been precedential there, too -- only Gladiator and Return of the King have had super-long running times among winners since.

[Sabin]

Titanic was the kind of blockbuster that comes along increasingly rarely. We haven't seen the likes of it since, but I think previously only Forrest Gump or Dances with Wolves came close.

Then we have two different kinds of crowd-pleasers. The male weepie and your grandparents' favorite movie.

There's usually only room in a lineup for one grudgingly admired financial disappointment, and that's L.A. Confidential. Two would be a bit much. In retrospect, that probably should have killed Amistad, even though I see it was nominated for five Golden Globes, the DGA, and the PGA. The Screen Actor's Guild went for Boogie Nights, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential, Titanic, and eventual winner The Full Monty. I was rather stunned by its inclusion, but I guess I shouldn't have been.

I remember thinking that Paul Thomas Anderson would be the wild card director's slot, but that was before I learned how much they seem to hate young upstart/snot directors. He probably didn't have a chance following his film's surprisingly small Globe showing. However, The Boxer picked up three, but was never in the race.

People were talking about Wag the Dog quite a bit.

[Mister Tee]

...but what else was it going to be?

I remember predicting Amistad at the time, but what were the options? Wag the Dog? Boogie Nights? The Sweet Hereafter? This was a case of nobody knowing...the likes of which we will never see again now that the roster is expanded to ten. Now it's a question of whether it will be Winter's Bone or The Town.

You're right -- all those films (plus probably Wings of the Dove) would have been nominated under the current system.

I wasn't at all surprised The Full Monty got the best picture nomination. Director was a stunner. But unexpectedly big hits, from Dead Poets Society through Crash, have a way of making the best picture slate at the expense of grudgingly-admired things like Amistad. I knew lots of general filmgoers who adored The Full Monty.

[Sabin]

...but what else was it going to be?

I remember predicting Amistad at the time, but what were the options? Wag the Dog? Boogie Nights? The Sweet Hereafter? This was a case of nobody knowing...the likes of which we will never see again now that the roster is expanded to ten. Now it's a question of whether it will be Winter's Bone or The Town.

[Eric]

Eventually I had a hard time adjusting myself to The Full Monty being the fifth nominee.

Oy, speaking of utterly forgotten movies.

[HarryGoldfarb]

A great read indeed Mister Tee, thanks a lot for sharing it with us. This is the kind of things that always makes me come over here, even though this kind of reading has become more sporadic. If only we can have more of this instead of some nonsense that we have recently witnessed here...

Put me on the wagon of the The Color Purple likers (not in the lovers one). But the more I see it and compare it to the other nominees, the more it makes sense the fact that it went home empty-handed (the only exception being Lead Actress).

And I do rememebr Amistad. Back in 1997 information like reviews weren't as available as today for a Venezuelan teenager, so when I first saw it I was like pretty sure it eventually lead to another Spielberg nod for both Picture and Directing (I, as I have previously said, was particularly in love with the score) and after it faired pretty well in terms of nominations with the Golden Globes I was like almost sure The Academy'd replicate the panorama. Eventually I had a hard time adjusting myself to The Full Monty being the fifth nominee.

A.I. and Catch Me If You Can should have gotten more attention from awards in their respective years...

Corny as he can get, I'm glad I can witness him as a defining contemporary director.

[Reza]

What a great read this was. Thank you for posting it Mister Tee.

[Sabin]

(Eric @ May 09 2011,9:29)

Is it fair to say that I take as evidence that Spielberg's in the most artistically rich portion of his career the fact that it's also (Munich aside) the era that's been the furthest off Oscar's radar?

Putting aside his "producer-ial" turns...

Portion #1 - Wunderkind (I recall several questioned whether or not he was responsible for Jaws or Verna Fields):
Duel
The Sugarland Express
Jaws - 4/5
OSCARS WON - 4

Portion #2 - King of the World (...but is it art? Also that kid died.)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind - 1/8 + special
1941 - 0/3
Raiders of the Lost Ark - 4/8 + special
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - 4/9
The Twilight Zone
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - 1/2
OSCARS WON - 10

Portion #3 - Serious Artist? (seriously robbed)
The Color Purple - 0/11
Empire of the Sun - 0/6
OSCARS WON - ZERO!

Portion #4 - Creative Exile (what now?)
Always
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - 1/3
Hook - 0/5
OSCARS WON - 1

Portion #5 - Favorite Son (can do no wrong)
Jurassic Park - 3/3
Schindler's List - 7/12
The Lost World: Jurassic Park - 0/1
Amistad - 0/5
Saving Private Ryan - 5/11
OSCARS WON - 15

Portion #6 - Journey Man (lose The Terminal and the most interesting work of his career)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence - 0/2
Minority Report - 0/1
Catch Me If You Can - 0/2
The Terminal
War of the Worlds - 0/3
Munich - 0/5

Portion #7 - For my next act... (...but what I really want to do is Produce)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1st Razzie


...totally. At least he "won" a Razzie for this era. But his journeyman phase was the richest of his career, which is to say his most uneven, daring, overreaching, and weird.

[Damien]

Thanks for that great write-up, Tee. It's an outstanding overview of the man's career and also brought back and awakened memories (my gosh, does anyone even remember Amistad?).

Two points to add: It was generally felt in '85 that John Huston would be a likely winner for Best Director. This would be an irresistible sentimental gesture for the legendary director in that his daughter Anjelica was deemed the front-runner for Supporting Actress, so an Oscar for him would make for a perfect bookend -- when he won his Best Director award, he had directed his father to a Supporting Actor Oscar. At the same time, I don't think too many observers thought Prizzi's Honor was going to take the top prize -- too darkly comical, too oddball -- so going into Oscar night, there was a feeling that whatever won Best Picture -- Out of Africa or Color Purple -- it would do so without a Best Director award. (Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way.)

Secondly, yes Schindler's List did receive enthusiastic reviews, but it wasn't alone on some pedestal among releases of 1993 -- thought by many to be one the the great years of cinema. Although Schindler's did win Best Picture from the NY and LA film critics, Jane Campion won Best Director and Best Screenplay for The Pino from both groups. In fact, in LA, Spielberg wasn't even runner-up; he came in third with Short Cuts's Robert Altman taking the silver. It was only with the National Society that Schindler's won both Picture and Director, and when it did Spielberg was as shameless as Richard Attenborough had been 11 years earlier: He wrote the members of the National Society a letter thanking them in the name of 6 million souls.

Given its subject matter, and the previous perceptions of snubs, there was really no way Schindler's wasn't going to win, but the Campion critics victories still did lead some of us to hold out hope against all logic the it would be The Piano's night.

[Eric]

To understand this particular chapter in the Spielberg saga, you have to know what 1985 was like for movies.

I live for left-turn sentences like this.

The biggest irony hovering over Spielberg's entire Oscar career is how he failed to register with Jaws when, as you point out, the year's top-grossing movies were often considered major contenders for the prize. And then that same film almost single-handedly forged a cultural paradigm shift (well, in tandem with Star Wars) that basically obliterated the link between great B.O. and Oscar merit (aside maybe from a once-in-a-lifetime juggernaut like Titanic) and made it virtually impossible for him to win on what were then his strengths.

Worth noting that, though he dug deep and "sacrificed" mass appeal thereafter to eventual reward, in 1998 he managed to synthesize the two now-completely-divergent strands with an old-school critical smash hit that also, against the grain of our current culture, managed to eke out pole #1 position among its year's top-grossers (it was a pretty soft year for summer movies, if I recall). In that sense, the robbery of Saving Private Ryan had to sting a little. By the numbers, Ryan maybe bested even E.T. in conquering every single angle leading up to the Oscars. The best-review movie of the year, the most-honored movie of the year, the most-seen movie of the year. Nope, pass.

Is it fair to say that I take as evidence that Spielberg's in the most artistically rich portion of his career the fact that it's also (Munich aside) the era that's been the furthest off Oscar's radar?

[The Original BJ]

Today I saw, for the first time, on YouTube, Spielberg's reaction to his '75 omission. And I have to say, it strikes me as odd that he waited until the announcement of the final name to express his shock -- almost as if he was still holding on to hope he'd be nominated, even though, alphabetically, his fate had already been sealed.

Referencing that same clip, can I just say that few Oscar-related things irritate me more than the "Best Picture automatically equals Best Director" argument that always flares when discussing omitted directors. There's a reason there are two DIFFERENT categories, people. If anything, the Academy should split their nominees/winners in these categories more often.

Thank you for that very detailed write-up, Mister Tee. Spielberg, like any artist, has had his misfires over the years, but my god, the man has accomplished a lot in his career, with so much promising on the horizon.

[Sabin]

(Big Magilla @ May 09 2011,4:37)

Pushing 65, Spielberg shows no signs of slowing down and may actually have his best work in front of him.

I think this past decade features the man at his best and most innovative, but outside of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which showcased him more as a de facto director/more producer than anything else, he hasn't truly directed a movie since Munich. That was six years ago. He's taken to EP-ing everything. With War Horse and Lincoln to be released over the course of the next year and a half, I hope that changes things, but his output has certainly lagged as of late.