Hollywood’s Big Studios Back In The Swim For Oscar Honors
Last year’s Oscars honored the independents.
Monday night, the 70th Academy Awards likely will mark a return of the major studios to Hollywood’s rite of spring, with the shipwreck saga “Titanic” favored to win big.
“The English Patient,” “Shine,” “Sling Blade” and other films produced outside the Hollywood system dominated the awards last March. This year’s nominees are headed by three big-bucks, establishment movies: “Titanic;” “As Good As It Gets,” about a hateful novelist who learns to love; and “L.A. Confidential,” the film noir tale of police corruption in 1950s Los Angeles.
Another favorite, “Good Will Hunting,” about a blue-collar genius trying to confront personal demons, was released by Miramax Films, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Co. Only the British male-stripper comedy “The Full Monty” ranks as totally independent.
Attire officially his focus
So what does the Academy Awards’ official fashion coordinator do on the big night? Check out everyone’s duds like the rest of us, although Fred Hayman gets to do it while standing on the red carpet as the stars walk by.
Hayman does much of his Oscar work well beforehand, advising nominees and presenters who want help putting together the right look and warning two people who plan on wearing the same thing.
But he never tells anyone not to wear a certain outfit, no matter how ugly it might be.
“No! No way, not at all!” said Hayman, who wouldn’t cite any particular egregious fashion mistakes during his decade as coordinator.
“They have been documented so clearly, everyone knows what they are. Unfortunately, the faux pas become the most memorable things.”
Ceremony becomes reunion
The 70th Academy Awards are a reunion of sorts for Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda. In 1969, Nicholson scored his first Academy nomination as supporting actor in the landmark biker movie “Easy Rider.” Fonda produced the film and was nominated as co-writer.
In “Ulee’s Gold,” Peter Fonda appears as Ulysses Jackson, a taciturn Florida beekeeper trying to raise his imprisoned son’s two daughters. Ulee must deal with violence when the son’s fellow criminals threaten the family.
Fonda’s triumph has been hailed as one of the several comebacks among the nominees, but he insists that he hasn’t gone anywhere: “I haven’t really disappeared. You just haven’t gone to the art houses. I make 1.2 movies a year.”
Nicholson appears the favorite for best actor, but Fonda has a good outside chance. If he succeeds, that will make a record for an Oscar-winning family: Peter, Jane and Henry.
“I carried my dad’s watch in the movie for good luck,” admitted Peter.
Documentarian snubbed again
It’s Oscar time, and once again the country’s most distinguished documentarian, Errol Morris, won’t need to polish his acceptance speech.
His critically lauded film “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” was not nominated, nor have any other of his acclaimed films.
Academy Awards critics say the snubbing of praised documentaries is nothing new.
The castoffs already include some of the most popular ones made in the past decade: “Hoop Dreams,” “Paris Is Burning,” “Truth or Dare,” “Roger & Me,” and “Crumb.”
“There’s no question that the Academy has ignored the most remarkable documentaries in the past 10 years,” said Mark Jonathan Harris, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences documentary committee.
His feature “The Long Way Home” is up for an Oscar this year.
“Everybody talks to me around Oscar time because my films are never nominated,” said Morris, whose landmark death row documentary “The Thin Blue Line” was blanked, along with 1991’s “A Brief History of Time,” about cosmologist Stephen Hawking.
“Maybe someday I’ll get nominated for something,” he said, good-humored despite his latest disappointment.
His works have been recognized outside the Academy.
“Fast, Cheap & Out of Control,” a visually splashy profile of four eccentric people, won awards from the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. Yet the film didn’t even make the Academy’s short list.
“Any film that tries to be innovative just hits a brick wall,” said Michael Barker, co-president of “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control,” distributor Sony Pictures Classics.
“You can’t be innovative and you can’t be too successful. Which isn’t to say there’s not some great films in there.”
Quotable assessments
“It’s a battle. ‘Titanic’ has great special effects, but in ‘Good Will Hunting,’ the special effects are the words.”
- Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax, distributor of “Good Will Hunting” “It sank once. Maybe it’ll do it again.”
- Sandy Reisenbach, executive vice president of marketing and planning at Warner Bros., which released “L.A. Confidential,” another bestpicture nominee, talking about “Titanic.”
“There are a number of potential icebergs out there in the water. ‘L.A. Confidential’ is one of them.”
- Curtis Hanson, director of “L.A. Confidential”
xxxx Check these highlights in history of the Oscar From wire reports First telecast of the awards: 1953. First color telecast: 1966. Academy Awards postponed: 1938 - one week (reason: floods); 1968 - two days (reason: funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.); 1981 - one day (reason: assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan). There have been two ties in Oscar history: In 1931-32, Frederic March (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) and Wallace Beery (“The Champ”) both won Best Actor. In 1968, Barbra Streisand (“Funny Girl”) and Katharine Hepburn (“The Lion in Winter”) both won Best Actress. Most acting nominations: Katharine Hepburn, 12. Most acting wins: Katharine Hepburn, four. Number of times Katharine Hepburn has attended the Oscars: One. Henry Fonda, 76, and Katharine Hepburn, 74, became the oldest Best Actor and Actress winners for 1982’s “On Golden Pond.” Hepburn’s record was broken in 1989 by 80-year-old Jessica Tandy (“Driving Miss Daisy”). All-time Oscar-winning champion: Walt Disney with 32, 12 of which were for cartoons. To celebrate the achievement of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the Academy awarded Walt Disney one normal-size Oscar and seven tiny ones. In 1937 ventriloquist Edgar Bergen received a special Oscar - made of wood. Beginning in 1942, and for the duration of World War II, the Oscar statuette was made of plaster. The statuette was given its nickname by Academy librarian Margaret Herrick, who took one look at it and said, “It looks like my Uncle Oscar!” First time two actors have been nominated for playing the same role in the same film: 1997. Gloria Stuart (Best Supporting Actress) and Kate Winslet (Best Actress) were both nominated for their portrayals of “Titanic” heroine Rose. For the Academy Awards of 1928-29, no film won more than one award, including Best Picture winner “Broadway Melody” - the only time that has happened. Most Oscar wins by a single film: 11 (out of 12 nominations), “Ben Hur” (1959). Screenwriter Karl Tunberg lost the Oscar to “Room at the Top” scripter Neil Paterson. “West Side Story” (1961) won 10 Oscars out of 11 nominations. Again, the screenwriter, Ernest Lehman, was the sole loser. Both “Gigi” (1958) and “The Last Emperor” (1987) made clean sweeps. Each had nine nominations and nine wins.