Happy New Year’s and A Decade of Memories

Awards Daily began life as Oscarwatch.com at the end of the 1999 and its first proper Oscar year was 2000, the year that Gladiator beat Crouching Tiger. I don’t have many memories that remind me that the Gladiator year was first but I know it must be since I wasn’t covering the Oscars the year American Beauty swept. A quick trip to the Wayback machine shows me a primitive looking version of Oscarwatch. And the Gladiator Oscars has finished. This was dated May 11, 2000. Let’s just say, we’ve come a long way, baby. We changed our name from Oscarwatch to Awards Daily, a lot of contributors have come and gone, like Kris Tapley, Scott Feinberg, Bob Burns, Daniel Kenealy, , Thea Posnock, Nancy Kriparos, Stephen Holt, Dan Conley and more that I’m surely forgetting. Some of you readers were here from the dead beginning, writing me letters because there wasn’t a way to leave comments. I had manually built a blog but without the blog software.

For me, it has been an intense ten years. In that time, I also had a baby and raised her. She is 11. The readers have always made this site what it was, so thank you. Many of you hail from all over the world. I’m going to try to name my top ten most memorable Oscar moments over the last ten years, year by year. I hope you will do the same.

1. When Gladiator was up against Crouching Tiger it really did look like the Ang Lee epic would pull through at the last minute. I made the mistake of predicting it to win Best Picture over the much more popular Gladiator. It was a foolish move but a memorable one. Ang Lee seemed destined to win Best Director at any rate. Who could have predicted Steven Soderbergh to take it?

Also memorable that year was the surprise inclusion of Chocolat as a Best Pic nominee. That was my own first encounter with the power of Miramax and the Weinsteins. In the meantime, Weinstein had to sell Miramax and now he works at the Weinstein Co. with brother Bob.

It was also the year Marcia Gay Harden won in a major upset, taking Kate Hudson’s one chance to win an Oscar. That was another big lesson in Oscar voting – if there is a clearly more deserving supporting contender (whose role is really a leading one) they can beat someone with all of the buzz but who gave a more lightweight performance.

2. When A Beautiful Mind beat Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring at the Golden Globes (again, it’s hard for me to believe that this was only my second official Oscar year) I was given a heads up by a very good publicist who told me that no way would Lord of the Rings, being a fantasy, win Best Picture as everyone thought it would. I encountered my first taste of the muggle thing, since most people I encountered on the street believed Lord of the Rings, the more popular movie, was going to win. But I watched as A Beautiful Mind began to dominate and sure enough, the combination of Ron Howard’s likability and the subject matter put that movie over the top. It was an important moment for me because it was the first time I understood the importance of conventional dramas over experimental films.

But the biggest thing that year was Denzel Washington and Halle Berry winning. I remember most people thought one or the other could win, but not both. I had predicted both (along with a few others, like Roger Ebert, as I recall) but when they won I remember screaming so loudly I made my daughter cry. For a few years after that during the Oscars she would make me warn her if I was going to scream.

3. The Chicago year was quite memorable as a last-minute run for The Pianist was threatening its dominance. It was a great year, with Adaptation and About Schmidt and of course, Gangs of New York. being a Martin Scorsese fanatic I really wanted that film to win — but of course, there was no way it could. Daniel Day Lewis was the film’s best chance and most people were predicted Day Lewis to win. I remember a reporter calling me and asking me about the Best Actor race and I told him that sometimes, when two very big actors are competing, a third actor can sneak through and win. So watch out for Adrien Brody, I said. But I didn’t have the guts to predict him to win. His win was glorious nonetheless, as was the surprise of The Pianist overall.

4. At last, the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was about to win everything. No one thought a clean sweep was possible — after all, they’d seen the film nominated and ignored, nominated and ignored. But a clean sweep was just what it got. The Lord of the Rings series was happy times for my website and the readers because most of them found their way here during those film’s run for Oscar. We were like an LOTR family. I wasn’t as big on the movies themselves as the readers were but it was one of the more memorable experiences over the past decade.

Although I loved Mystic River, I was disappointed to see Sean Penn beat Bill Murray. Murray did not take it well and Penn didn’t really deserve it – it was more of a make up Oscar for him. He did deserve it for Milk but alas. Things don’t always go as planned, do they.

5. By the time Million Dollar Baby beat The Aviator, I very nearly lost all faith in the Oscars and almost quit.¬† Not only did I believe the Aviator to be the better movie, I thought it was high time they rewarded Martin Scorsese. The Aviator was all set and ready to go when Million Dollar Baby swooped in at the last minute. I remember David Poland writing that he’d just gotten out of the screening and he knew that movie was going to win Best Picture. This was good news for those who didn’t connect with The Aviator. It was disappointing for me after Gangs of New York fell so hard. And now another big Scorsese movie nobody liked?

I hated Million Dollar Baby on top of that – felt it overly sappy, phony and forgettable. It left a sour taste in my mouth, that whole year and I began to feel very cynical about the Academy and their mediocre taste in films. But I was addicted to covering the Oscars by then and, in truth, the readers kept me going. You all have always kept me going — so many years I wanted to quit but the joy of doing this site is not in seeing films win or lose – it’s in the ongoing discussion with you readers. That’s the truth of it.

That was a rough year.

6. And speaking of rough years — I don’t think we Oscarwatchers have had a more frustrating year than the Brokeback vs. Crash year. It still stirs controversy to this day. Crash is an okay movie — it’s not a bad movie, I don’t think. Good characters, good message, sappy plotline. I cried at the end and was greatly moved. But it wasn’t history in the making like Brokeback Mountain was. Brokeback won almost everything. It didn’t win the SAG ensemble. Academy voters went on TV and admitted they hadn’t seen it. There were voters giving quotes to magazines that the gay relationship bothered them. And then there were people who just didn’t like the movie. So old Ang Lee won Best Director but again, his masterpiece was not given Best Picture. That was a chance for the Academy to really define itself as a potentially great institution that took into account film history and cultural impact.

There were other reasons Crash won. It has some saavy marketers behind it. Brokeback was in the lead so it didn’t have to fight for its spot. The Crash team made sure everyone had a screener. It also starred a great many Hollywood actors, popular Hollywood actors. It was a tearjerker (so was Brokeback, imo) and for a variety of reasons Crash won – I would be willing to bet that the film squeaked a win — maybe a couple of extra votes. It remains the most memorable Oscar year, however, and the most resonate.

7. If the Brokeback year was the worst year on record, The Departed year was the best. It was pure joy for me to see what I thought was the best film of the year actually win. It was also fun from an Oscar predicting standpoint because I knew it was going to win early on. I kept quiet about it, though. I didn’t want to tip my hand. And I watched as everyone else kept saying it wouldn’t win for a variety of reasons – unhappy ending, the Scorsese factor. But I felt the heat. I only get that feeling every so often but I know it’s as good as gold.

It’s hard to believe that The Departed was only a year after the Crash vs. Brokeback year. It seems like it must have been longer. Nonetheless, seeing Martin Scorsese finally win after two crushing losses was the high point thus far of my experience Oscar watching. The only slight disappointment for me was Alan Arkin beating Eddie Murphy in the Supporting category. I thought Murphy should have won – and though Arkin had never won before, I found his performance in Little Miss Sunshine just ok. Small part, funny part, but to win an Oscar for that? Seems to render the whole game kind of pointless, which maybe it is.

8. No Country for Old Men — one of the best films to win, in my opinion. By this time, Ryan Adams had come on board and he made the day in and day out experience a hundred times better for me.

9. This will always be the year The Dark Knight didn’t get nominated. It was a joyous experience to see Danny Boyle and his great Slumdog Millionaire triumph — but it made for a very boring Oscar year. I’m fairly sure this is why the Carpetbagger quit. When it’s this predictable it takes all of the fun out of it. Nonetheless, the right film won. The best film won. I’ll forget talking to Kris Tapley the morning of the nominations and him saying that if they get to Frost/Nixon without saying The Dark Knight first it was out. It was so depressing that he decided to bail out on the whole day. It was a reminder to me of how the voting can sometimes result in a very lame lineup — on the other hand, the inclusion of The Reader was a signal that Weinstein was back in the game. And that was probably the only truly exciting thing for me on nominations day.

The Dark Knight being shut out was a fairly big deal. It was a sign that the Academy was in danger of becoming out of touch with the public. That is usually the job of critics – to be out of touch. The Academy are usually somewhere between the public and the critics. If you look back on the year Titanic made all of that money you’ll see that it got a major boost when it was nominated for all of those Oscars. Back then, being nominated by the Academy meant something. But when the public notices that the voters only choose movies they can’t see and haven’t seen, how are they to then show their support back?

If the Dark Knight had been nominated for Best Picture who knows the Oscars would have gone or whether it would have boosted the ratings. It’s impossible to say.

All I can say is that it has been a hell of a decade. Thank you loyal readers for your support and for all of the times you wrote in correcting this or that thing, pointing out a typo, or building a chart for me or sending me links or trivia, or writing in. I once got a letter from a reader. A gay man who said he was on the brink of suicide the year Brokeback Mountain was up for Best Pic. He said that the one thing that kept him going was the support for the film he read on this site. That made me feel like it all has been worth it. And believe me, this ain’t no easy gig. Love to you all. Happy New Year my dear pals.