Best Supporting Actor 1996

[The Original BJ]

NOTE: Edited in 2016 to reject category fraud.

A lot of the alternates others have already thrown out are solid; I'll add Stellan Skarsgard in Breaking the Waves as worthy as well.

If one likes cartoonish, over-the-top parodies of evil Southern racists, then James Woods is definitely your guy. If one doesn't, well, then this resembles more of a circus side show act than actual acting.

Armin Mueller-Stahl is decent as Helfgott's overbearing father in Shine, but it's more of a powerful presence than a showcase performance. I will say, though, that if a SUPPORTING actor was to be nominated from Shine, then Mueller-Stahl was the right choice. C'mon, folks, Noah Taylor has more screen time than Geoffrey Rush!

I'm glad to see that Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s performance is being appreciated for what it is -- a funny, spirited, sensitive performance in an enjoyable mainstream comedy. Given how quickly his career went down the drain, it would be easy to scoff at the fact that the guy has an Oscar. But, based on this work alone, it's not as if his Oscar win is something hugely objectionable. He created a memorable character (who popularized a very memorable catch phrase) and brought a lot of life to his role. Not my choice, given the alternates, though.

As with almost everyone, I come down to the other two men, and I'll echo what Sabin said about this choice being one between the year's Best Supporting Actor and the year's Best Actor. As for the definitely-supporting actor, I'm almost more disappointed by the way his career has turned out than Cuba Gooding's, because Norton in the late 90's seemed to have the potential to become a truly great screen actor. But since 25th Hour, he just hasn't had the great roles it seemed would continue to come his way. Still, he's fantastic here, in the kind of role that's obviously attention-getting. But I think the way Norton plays it is really special, creating a mentally disturbed individual who isn't just full of loud tics; the actor is charismatic, disturbed, witty, cocky, and pathetic, sometimes all in the same scene. I was astonished at the number of layers Norton found in this character, especially given the fact that Primal Fear isn't the most interesting movie, even for a potboiler. (I can't say I find the plot revelations about Norton's character -- both the mid-film reveal and the twist at the end -- all that interesting.)

William H. Macy is sensational, perfectly capturing Fargo's bemused tone of quirky humor and unsettling horror. His Jerry Lundegaard is both a fully-comic and full-bodied dramatic role, and the actor effectively uses his everyman quality to portray a regular guy who begins to seriously unravel when his little crime spins way out of control. However, it's fraud -- I hear the argument that EVERYONE in Fargo is supporting -- it certainly makes more sense than elevating McDormand -- but I prefer to view both of these performances as the leads. One is the criminal and the other is the cop pursuing him. So, despite the fact that I prefer Macy's work overall (and in fact prefer him to any of the Best Actor nominees), Norton is the best using the honest definition of the category.

[ITALIANO]

I, too, voted for Edward Norton. It's true that the movie is watchable but very, very minor, and that he's helped by the kind of twisty role that actors quite easily shine in - but it's also the kind of role that can often prove too mechanical, too "written", while in Norton's hands it becomes real, believable; it was certainly the sign that a new, genuine talent had been born. Norton isn't probably a worse actor than Sean Penn - though his career, of course, didn't go the same way.

Of the others, William H. Macy is also very good - though, yes, probably Leading, and I'd say that even Cuba Gooding jr and Armin Mueller Stahl aren't unworthy of a nomination. But James Woods, as the villain-without-subtext in that dreadful antiracist movie, clearly doesn't belong here - a completely superficial performance.

[nightwingnova]

William Macy was too broad.
I don't remember Armin Mueller-Stahl.
Cuba Gooding, jr. was good. But I can't say he well represents this category.
Edward Norton? Blew me away. Astonishing. Of course, that was 16 years ago and today I might think he's too blatant...but no reason to second guess right now.

[Reza]

My picks for 1996:

1. Edward Norton, Primal Fear
2. Samuel L. Jackson, A Time to Kill
3. Paul Scofield, The Crucible
4. William H. Macy, Fargo
5. Lou Diamond Phillips, Courage Under Fire

The 6th Spot: Cuba Gooding Jr., Jerry Maguire

[anonymous1980]

I do believe Cuba Gooding Jr. won for two major reasons: 1. Jesse Jackson made such a huge stink the previous year because no black/minority actors or filmmakers were nominated in the major categories and 2. Jerry Maguire is a huge hit and the only Hollywood studio picture nominated for Best Picture that year. Cuba Gooding Jr. was its best of throwing it a bone.

That being said, I voted for William H. Macy.

[Mister Tee]

Fighting a nasty flu, so I'll be briefer than usual.

Martin Donovan, in the otherwise dreary Portrait of a Lady, is my favored substitute, with Scofield's Crucible work to follow.

I was a great admirer of James Woods at the time (before he became a full-time asshole), but even that couldn't justify his inclusion here for such a drooling villain caricature. Rob Reiner started off as such a promising, unpretentious moviemaker (if not great director), but about here he lost it completely.

I'm definitely in the camp of "If someone from Shine, Noah Taylor". Armin-Mueller-Stahl had been hanging around since Music Box, working pretty constantly, and maybe got this nod simply on wearing down voter resistance. He's not bad, but Taylor does something special.

I was surprised Cuba Gooding ended up running away with this race, and like everyone I note how pathetic his subsequent career has been. But it's not as if his win was any kind of outrage. He gave a full-throated, engaging, human performance, in one of the year's only popular hits. I can live with Oscar wins like that, even if I won't be endorsing this one.

OK, as to William H. Macy: I certainly agree that slotting him supporting and McDormand lead is ridiculous -- but I've always considered McDormand a supporting perfomer promoted above her station. I see Fargo as one of those diffuse narratives where there are no leads per se -- there's the Buscemi narrative, the McDormand narrative, the Macy narrative, and by me none is dominant enough to be lead. YMMV.

Further: I've never quite got the in excelsis praise Fargo has got in many quarters, here included. I think it's a good, funny movie, but not the be-all masterpiece many obviously see. The only things I truly loved about the movie were the scenes revolving around Frances McDormand. For the rest...well, the snark artist in me thinks of it as just a routine failed-scam movie done with over-the-top Minnesota accents which, it's presumed, makes everything HILARIOUS. I'm afraid Macy's performance epitomizes this for me; it probably didn't help that I'd seen him do this hapless schlub act on stage previously. So, to summarize: I'm not with the crowd here, either on size or quality of the Macy contribution.

Which brings me to Edward Norton, who had a phenomenal coming-out in Primal Fear, and then of course followed it up with a second major credit later in the year with People vs. Larry Flnt (the Allen film was less consequential). Norton was terrific merely as the backward character he initially appeared to be playing in Primal Fear; when the second personality emerged, I was floored. I really thought he had the Oscar cold, right up till the SAGs.

Norton's career has obviously meandered since. I think most people see him as a potentially great actor who simply hasn't had the proper roles (or luck). Maybe someday he'll return to the Oscar forum. For right now, I'll commemorate this moment of his emergence with my vote for the year.

[Bruce_Lavigne]

Oh, 1996. How can I vote for William H. Macy, considering that his placement in this category arguably ties with Casey Affleck for the second-worst case of category fraud in this category's history (with Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal tied at No. 1)? How can I not vote for William H. Macy, considering that he's nominated for what might be my favorite screen performance of the '90s?

My distaste for leading actors nominated in supporting categories wins out over my love of the miracle that is Macy's Jerry Lundegaard, and I vote for Edward Norton, who is the year's best supporting actor. Macy is better by miles, but he has no more business in this category for this performance than he'd have in Best Original Score.


My ballot:
1. Edward Norton, Primal Fear
2. Derek Jacobi, Hamlet
3. Cuba Gooding Jr, Jerry Maguire
4. Harry Belafonte, Kansas City
5. Armin Mueller-Stahl, Shine

[mlrg]

William H. Macy - Fargo

[Big Magilla]

Norton was so good, not only in Primal Fear, but in The People vs. Larry Flynt and Everyone Says I Love You as well, having won several critics awards for all three performances. So much so that is Oscar loss was a big headscratcher for me, but then I always underestimated the pull of Roger Ebert and the Chicago Film Critics who gave thier awrd instead to Cuba Gooding, Jr., good in an also-ran kind of way in Jerry Maguire.

Armin Mueller-Stahl was strong in Shine, altough an argument culd be made that Noah Taylor was perhaps even better in the film and deserved teh nod more.

William H. Macy was superb in a role that really does belong in the Best Actor category for a couple of reasons. 1) the role is at least as large as that of Frances Mcdormand who was nominated and won in the lead actress category and 2) because the lead actor category was less competitive than the supporting actor category this year. I would move him to that category in place of Woody Harrelson, although he could really replace just about any of the nominees.

James Woods was marginally effective in Ghosts of Mississippi. I would replace him and Macy in this category with Paul Scofield in The Crucible and Martin Donovan in The Portrait of a Lady with my vote going to the year's true best supporting actor, Ed Norton.

[koook160]

Macy was great, but the problem with his category fraud is that it denied his co-star Steve Buscemi of a richly deserved nomination.

[Sabin]

Oh, I think this race is going to go strongly for Macy.

Just as in 1994, the year’s best leading performance and the year’s best supporting performance. William H. Macy has to get my vote because he gives the best performance ever in a Coen Bros film balancing their broader instincts with something entirely different. He’s an unironic tragic figure, the closest of which I can think of is Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man. When you do learn what Jerry’s plan for the money is, my God! How disappointing you find him to be! So myopic! As a rule, when you can talk about a character as if they were a person, and you talk about their choices as an individual rather than “Oh, this happened in the movie!”, you’ve got a truly exceptional performance. In whatever category, William H. Macy.

There haven’t been many Oscar-nominated films as obscure as Primal Fear. The best you can say about it besides launching Edward Norton’s career is that Richard Gere is actually pretty lucid in it. It’s trash, and Edward Norton makes the most of it. It’s not an embarrassingly anguished performance. It’s a smart mix of caricature and pathos that elevates every scene that he’s in. To watch it in 1996 was to say “Who the fuck is this kid?” And he went on to thrive in The People vs. Larry Flynt and survive Woody Allen’s Everybody Says “I Love You!”. Normally when a triple threat like this happens, it’s the popcorn flick (like Kevin Spacey in Se7en) that goes forgotten over the prestige projects. Norton’s career has mildly stalled these days but he’s a relentlessly cerebral presence on film that was very exciting and as I knew that it was between him and Gooding, Jr., I was staunchly pro-Norton.

Which is not to say that Cuba Gooding, Jr. is bad in Jerry Maguire. I like him quite a bit actually. It’s just that the same sexual politicking that dampens the overall whole of Cameron Crowe’s now-underrated film carries a minstrel quality for Gooding Jr’s Rod Tidwell that is even more troublesome. Dorothy Boyd and Jerry Maguire are great characters who possibly belong together slightly more so than Melvin and Carol in As Good as It Gets, but that’s not saying much. The message for Rod Tidwell is an elevated form of “Dance for us!” If ever there was a movie to turn off thirty minutes before the end, it’s Jerry Maguire because there’s a lot to really like in it, and Cuba Gooding Jr.’s performance is certainly one of the high points. Regardless of what a cautionary tale his career has become and the fact that there will be no Marisa Tomei second act in his future, he’s very good in the film if not Oscar-worthy. A lot of the lines that he just tosses out there are very, very funny.

I haven’t seen Shine in ages but the one aspect that warranted if not demanded attention was Noah Taylor’s arresting descent into meltdown. Wes Anderson desperately wanted a Max Fisher who had the same spindly whimsy that Taylor brought to the wonderful The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting, and they were subverted to great effect in this film. I never bought that he grew up into Geoffrey Rush and honestly I wish the filmmakers would have just aged him up a bit and cheated how long it took for him to get out because Taylor is the best part of this dull film. Not far behind is Armin Mueller-Stahl, an actor who it seems not many people found much use for post-nomination. I come from a family of survivors and when I was younger I had a grandfather whose presence scared the shit out of me. Mueller-Stahl has that same quality in this film. It’s both sympathetic and terrifying. I don’t have a problem with his nomination, and I very much appreciating him shutting Geoffrey Rush up in that one scene late in the film. He even finds something truthful in the way he views Helfgott as pathetic, not worthy of reunion.

So four performers ranging from good to exceptional, and then James Woods in Ghosts of Mississippi. There’s not much to say really. Nothing in the film works except for a few moments that he has which devoid of context are kind of engaging. He does a good job of conveying something ugly. You half expect the camera to pan over and his De La Beckwith is just doing random acts of debaucheries: reading porn, flipping off the camera, carving vulgarities onto the desk, wearing blackface. Bob Oedenkirk gives an identical performance as Sen. Tankerball on Mr. Show.

So who did Woods “rob”? Well, the Golden Globes went with Gooding Jr., Norton, and were won over by Woods, and instead of Mueller-Stahl and Macy they cited Samuel L. Jackson for Joel Schumacher’s ideologically bothersome A Time to Kill and Paul Scofield, the best thing in The Crucible. Clearly the financial meltdown of The Crucible and Ghosts of Mississippi had some impact on the Screen Actor’s Guild, as did the relative obscurity and/or anti-popcorn bias of Primal Fear and A Time To Kill because they ended up choosing Gooding Jr. as well as William H. Macy in Fargo and Noah Taylor in Shine, as well as Hank Azaria and Nathan Lane from The Birdcage, the film that would go onto the win the Ensemble award over The English Patient, Shine, Sling Blade, and Marvin’s Room. The National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association went for Norton’s body of work. The National Society of Film Critics tied between Martin Donovan for Portrait of a Lady and Tony Shalhoub for Big Night, while the New York Film Critic’s Circle chose Harry Belafonte for Kansas City. I think I remember predicting the nominees would be Cuba Gooding, Jr., William H. Macy, Edward Norton, Noah Taylor, and Samuel L. Jackson considering that “Yes, they deserved to die and I hope they burn in hell!” became a part of the lexicon.

1. Edward Norton, Primal Fear
2. Noah Taylor, Shine
3. Edward Norton, The People vs. Larry Flynt
4. Paul Scofield, The Crucible
5. Timothy Spall, Secrets and Lies
(For Macy, see my Best Actor list)

[MovieFan]

Its between Macy and Norton, and both are fantastic and completely deserving of winning.

Macy is lead but I think he gives the best performance of the year. His Jerry is utterly dispicable yet Macy makes him an everyman, almost a bumbling idiot who digs deeper into trouble and its hard watching him sometimes but its masterfully played by Macy.

[ksrymy]

Still have yet to see Woods, but it won't change my opinion.

Shine is not a good movie. It is very well-acte, but it can't stand up on its own. Mueller-Stahl does alright.

These last three deserved their nominations.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. has never been better than in this performance (but man his other Oscar-deserving work like Snow Dogs and Daddy Day Camp are so so close). His win made for a great Oscar moment, but I find Rod Tidwell a bit easy to play. Jerry Maguire, on the other hand, truly more complex and deserving.

I know Edward Norton is going to win here. His Aaron is what takes Primal Fear to another level. And I cannot begrudge him if he sweeps here.

But William H. Macy works so well with everyone else in Fargo. This film may be my personal choice for darkest comedy ever and Macy's moral dilemma and the consequences that follow are a romp to watch. Macy's timidity and ever-fearful attitude make Jerry Lundegaard a wonderful character. He'll get my vote.

My picks
_____________________
1. William H. Macy - Fargo
2. Edward Norton - Primal Fear
3. Timothy Spall - Secrets & Lies
4. Paul Scofield - The Crucible
5. Cuba Gooding, Jr. - Jerry Maguire

6. Lou Diamond Phillips - Courage Under Fire