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Post by Sabin »

Same here, Penelope. I love Guthrie and - Coming Home aside, which I saw ten years ago and probably need to see again - I've liked every Ashby film I've seen. I can't find Bound for Glory anywhere.
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Post by Penelope »

Big Magilla wrote:Bottom line, though, is that All the President's Men, not Taxi Driver, not Network and certainly not Rocky, was my choice for best picture then and remains so.
Not to get this thread off-track, but what's the collective opinion of Bound for Glory, the fifth nominated Best Picture that year, and, shamefully I must add, the only one of the nominees that I've not seen.

Of the other four, my preference is probably similar to Magilla's: All the President's Men first, followed closely by Taxi Driver and Network, with Rocky bringing up the rear.
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Post by Damien »

Big Magilla wrote:Peter Finch's death back stage at the Today Show while campaigning for an Oscar nomination made him the instant sentimental favorite for best actor. I
Magilla, I know it's nit-picking but since we were all rolling our eyes over Tom O'Neil's ineptitude in film history with Walter Brennan, it was backstage at Glood Morning, America, not The Today Show, where Peter Finch died.

I guess I must be one of the few people on earth who think that Hal Ashby's Bound For Glory was by far the best of the 1976 Best Picture nominees.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Jane Alexander was great in Eleanor and Franklin and probably did get the nomination for All the Preisdent's Men on the basis of liberal Hollywood's love for that performance, but her brief bit in All the President's Men was such a throwaway that I couldnt imagine her actually winning for it. Lee Grant, still riding the popularity of her previous year's win, was nominated for a Holocaust movie, and not a very good one, for which she wasn't likely to win a second Oscar in a row. It was clearly between Foster, Laurie and surprise nominee Straight at this point.

Peter Finch's death back stage at the Today Show while campaigning for an Oscar nomination made him the instant sentimental favorite for best actor. I think the rest followed.
I've always maintained that Dunaway's expected win for her blatantly unattractive performance was a make-up for not winning for Bonnie and Clyde or Chinatown. Staight's win for her genteel wife may have been seen by some voters as a way of counter-balancing the ugliness of Dunaway's character.

I would have voted for Taxi Driver for best score over Obsession, which would have also been a great choice, but The Omen was not a bad one. Jerry Goldsmith's eerie score set the tone for the film and was very popular in its own right. Even the creepy Ave Satani theme song was nominated for best song and would have been a more interesting winner than Streisand's schmaltzy Evergreen.

Bottom line, though, is that All the President's Men, not Taxi Driver, not Network and certainly not Rocky, was my choice for best picture then and remains so.
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Post by Eric »

Mister Tee wrote:Magilla, I think Bernard Herrmann's loss to The Omen the same night indicated at least some level of pure anti-Taxi Driver feeling.
In that case, some Herrmann votes could've been siphoning off to his (superior, to my taste) score for Obsession.
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Post by Damien »

Eric wrote:For those who were around at the time: What were Piper Laurie's chances, roughly? Was she considered a distinct possibility or an easy fifth-wheel in the category?
Except for Lee Grant, who had won the year before and now gave a lousy performance in a lousy now-forgotten film (the non-nominated Katharine Ross won the Supporting Golden Globe for the same lousy film, Voyage Of The Damned), the Supporting ACtress race was a complete toss-up and any of the four conceivably could have won.

At the time I was rooting for Laurie, but predicted Alexamder, who was very hot then because of her recent work in a TV movie about Eleanor Roosevelt. There was some resistance to honoring Foser because of the nature of her role (child whore), while Straight and Alexander had very brief roles, and Laurie was in a horror film. As I said, this one was anybody;s guest, although I think STraight was probably in most people's number 4 slot.

Tee, it's interesting that you liked Network so much more almost 30 years ago, as it has always struck me as a real middle-aged man's movie, and not one that youth would embrace. Frank Rich wrote a devastating dismissal of the film at the time -- he was at the pre-Murdoch New York Post -- as so much reactionary blather from Chayefsky. I'll try to find his comments; I probably have the article somewhere in my Mom's attic in Connecticut.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Magilla, I think Bernard Herrmann's loss to The Omen the same night indicated at least some level of pure anti-Taxi Driver feeling.

Like you, I thought Talia Shire was the solid choice, until she was ludicrously bumped to the top category. After that, I just thought Jodie Foster had by far the most substantial role of what remained. It really was almost shocking to me, last weekend, to see just how brief Straight's scene was. I'd certainly remembered it was short, but I figured it must have ben five minutes or so of solid focus. This time around, it seemed more 2 1/2 minutes. Judi Dench's Shakespeare In Love role was expansive by comparison.
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Post by Big Magilla »

I thought it was a two-way race between Jodie Foster and Talia Shire, who had won the NYFC award for Rocky, but when she wound up in the best actress category instead it seemed like a free-for-all.

I would say Piper Laurie was a strong third choice, with Shelley Winters in Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Rita Moreno in The Ritz also in strong contention. The nominations for Jane Alexander, Lee Grant and Beatrice Straight came as surprises and threw the whle thing off its axis.

I don't think there was an anti-Taxi Driver sentiment so much as a pro-Network and Rocky sentiment.

Beatrice Straight was a member of one of New York's richest families, the Vanderbilts, and probably could have bought herself an Oscar if that were possible. More to the point, she had lots of fans of her theatre and TV appearances over the years. She was hardly known to movie audiences, making her win for such a short role all the more astonishing.
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Post by Eric »

Mister Tee wrote:For people who don't understand how much the Oscars have hated Scorsese over the years, know this: the only reason such a truncated part as Straight's could have won was because voters would have gone for ANYTHING rather than give a prize to Taxi Driver.
For those who were around at the time: What were Piper Laurie's chances, roughly? Was she considered a distinct possibility or an easy fifth-wheel in the category?
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Post by Mister Tee »

I saw Network probably within a few days of you, Damien, also at the Sutton. And then I just saw it again last weekend, with no viewings in between.

I was a fan of the film at the time, finding alot of the comic invention fexciting (a big improvement over Chayefsky's previous The Hospital), much of the sentiment (specifically in William Holden's performance) moving, and the performances in general effective. I knew there was a substantial minority who considered it an opinionated shout-fest, badly shot, but what I liked about it was enough for me to disregard these dissensions.

So, on a belated second viewing....Well, the first, most obvious thing to mention is how what seemed wildly hyperbolic about TV news in 1976 is now, if anything, not cynical enough. I found I liked the first 45 minutes of the film as much as I did on originally seeing it. It's hard to recapture the jolt of the "I'm mad as hell" scene, since it's become such a part of the culture, but I still was able to see what I'd liked as a 24-year-old.

In the second half of the film, though, I just got sick of Chayefsky's sense of superiority to most everybody. One speech after another, explaining how people aren't as real as they were in HIS day. Sadly, Holden was saddled with most of the worst dialogue. I say sadly because, even back in '76, I was of the opinion his performance was the true revelation of the film, where Finch just had a fun, showy part. (Holden's career in the years previous had dried up to the point where just hearing him speak dialogue, and play something other than a cowboy, was a treat)

I also noted, for the first time, just how extraordinarily short Beatrice Straight's part was. For people who don't understand how much the Oscars have hated Scorsese over the years, know this: the only reason such a truncated part as Straight's could have won was because voters would have gone for ANYTHING rather than give a prize to Taxi Driver.

Anyway, I'm not all the way with Damien in loathing the film, but my opinion of it has been significantly revised downward from my young man's impression.
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Post by Damien »

Aceisgreat wrote:This is one of those films (along with Spielberg's "A.I.") that causes a lot of dissent when it's brought up. Half of the people I know who've seen it swear that it's one of the best films ever made. The other half call it a turd, and not even a fresh one. I've been a part of that first group (solidly) for years. However, in recent times, I am starting to comprehend what some of the people in the other group are saying.

I was a staunch defender for the longest time of Peter Finch's Best Actor win (bowled over by a loud, in-your-face performance, you could say). I admit to not really understanding what people were going on about when they said William Holden would have been a better choice. But the quiet elegance of his performance finally struck me. Some of his best moments in the film are when he's not speaking. The look on his face during Straight's famous monologue and the way he just quietly listens to Dunaway run her month are a few scenes that come to mind. I know some who would even say he's the only human character in the movie.
Holden was a great actor and could convey so much with so little. Because he was so understated he isn't appreciated as much as he should be. But just check ou some of his facial expressions in Sunset Boulevard -- it's amazing how quietly (but powerfully) he expressed his character's self-disgust.

I think Network would be even more unbearable without Holden as an anchor (Beatrice Straight is very good, as well).
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Post by Damien »

I saw Network the day it opened in 1976 (at the late great Sutton theatre) and I have never waivered in my belief that it's one of the worst movies ever made. Chayefsky's scattershot script is really notthing more than menopausal rantings against societal changes he can't comprehend (he's like Steve Shagan on speed).

The script is unfocused and the film is equally uncertain in tone, as it swerves wildly from cartoonish comedy to relationship-driven drama to obvious satire -- the one consistent is how overwritten all of the dialogue is. In short, it's a hysterical mess.

In making his end-of-the-year round-ups, a friend of mine from college came up with the "Sidney Lumet Visual Obfuscation Award," so names because in almost every scene in almost every film, Lumet's camera placement is simply off and meaningless. For instance, I saw some of Network a couple months ago and when I turned it on, there was a scene in a conference room with Robert Duvall making a speech. What does Lumet show? -- he has a tracking shot of the backs of the people seated at the conference table. SO typically pointless. And this is the director getting a Lifetime Achievement Oscar?
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Post by Eric »

Aceisgreat wrote:Half of the people I know who've seen it swear that it's one of the best films ever made. The other half call it a turd, and not even a fresh one.

I'm neither nor... I dig it as a script, but mostly because it taught me half of the vocabulary zingers I know now. As a piece of cinema, I think it's sort of in the same category as Groundhog Day: hideously ugly by design and out of necessity. One needs to approximate the indifferent and harsh lighting of a wan television melodrama, the other needs to stress the incessant mediocrity of day-to-day life, and both films accomplish that by looking wan and mediocre.

The biggest problem with Network is the incongruency of all its ingredients: the flourescent drone and architectural greyness of the settings against the mostly hysterical performances and the filmstrip narrator detailiong a horror show spiral into madness... the ambitions exceed nearly everyone's grasp except for, IMHO, Paddy's.
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Post by Aceisgreat »

This is one of those films (along with Spielberg's "A.I.") that causes a lot of dissent when it's brought up. Half of the people I know who've seen it swear that it's one of the best films ever made. The other half call it a turd, and not even a fresh one. I've been a part of that first group (solidly) for years. However, in recent times, I am starting to comprehend what some of the people in the other group are saying.

I was a staunch defender for the longest time of Peter Finch's Best Actor win (bowled over by a loud, in-your-face performance, you could say). I admit to not really understanding what people were going on about when they said William Holden would have been a better choice. But the quiet elegance of his performance finally struck me. Some of his best moments in the film are when he's not speaking. The look on his face during Straight's famous monologue and the way he just quietly listens to Dunaway run her month are a few scenes that come to mind. I know some who would even say he's the only human character in the movie. I don't know just yet if I want to regulate Finch to supporting, but I can easily say today that Holden would've indeed been the more deserving winner of the two.

Some of the complaints I've heard about Faye Dunaway's bitchy news executive is that she was too hectic, too delirious. She's a caricature, sure, but could you have honestly seen Diana played any other way? Same goes for Finch and his Howard Beale. For the people who hate "Network," is it fair to point the finger at the actors or can all the blame be place entirely on Paddy Chayefsky?

Thoughts anyone?
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