Another Look Back on the Eve of Apollo 13 and The Color Purple

We’ve been doing some digging to find out what people were thinking before the surprise Oscars delivered Braveheart for Apollo 13 and Out of Africa for the Color Purple. On these occasions, two directors won the DGA, weren’t nominated for Oscar, and saw their Best Picture hopes dashed in the 11th hour. But everyone believes Argo is a done deal so perhaps it’s moot. But it’s fun to look back anyway.

First, Marshall Flores helped us dig up an old predictions article by Kenneth Turan, who was really their only Oscar guy, and one of the only Oscar guys around, wrote this:

If this year’s Academy Awards competition were a major motion picture, “Oscar’s Revenge” would be the obvious title.

After a series of contests that were child’s play to predict, the race for the 1995 statuettes has been the despair of veteran Oscar watchers. While in previous years it was clear that “Unforgiven,” “Schindler’s List” and “Forrest Gump” were going to dominate, no such consensus has emerged as yet.

That’s partly because the contest for best picture has proven fiendishly difficult to get a handle on, with the momentum for the various contenders ebbing and flowing like the passions of a teenager’s heart. What it’s finally come down to is whether the space shot has enough fuel left to hold off a fast-closing pig.

The space shot is “Apollo 13,” the second-most-nominated film this year with nine, a traditional studio picture that has been a top contender since the day it came out. It was in fact such a favorite for so long that momentum inevitably shifted away from it when “Sense and Sensibility” made its appearance.

But when “S&S” missed out on a best directing nomination and “Apollo 13” director Ron Howard took home the DGA trophy, the pendulum swung back to the Tom Hanks-starring vehicle. And though that film has to be listed as the favorite, there is no counting out that most determined of porkers, “Babe.”

The surprise picture of the year, “Babe” refuses to go quietly into the night. Its backers are the most passionate and, if it weren’t for the presence of fellow feisty underdog “The Postman (Il Postino),” it would have an excellent shot at pulling off a “Rocky”-type surprise. Momentum for it does continue to rise, just as it did in the days right before the nominations, and though a victory would still be an upset, it would be rash to say it couldn’t happen.

The pick: “Apollo 13.”

Turan did pick Mel Gibson for Best Director, Nicolas Cage (right) and Susan Sarandon (right), Ed Harris (Kevin Spacey), and Kate Winslet (Mira Sorvino).

Next, Marshall found this piece in the NY Times talking about the Color Purple/Out of Africa Year called
“OSCAR RACE BIGGEST TOSSUP IN YEARS.” I’m reprinting the whole thing here because unless you’re a subscriber you can’t access the archives:

”Prizzi’s Honor” has the Oscar for best picture sewed up, says a studio executive, because ”The Color Purple” and ”Out of Africa” will cancel each other out.

No, the Academy will vote for ”Out of Africa,” because it’s one of those stately epics Academy members love, says the man in the next office.

Psychologically speaking, insists the man down the hall, the Academy will vote for ”The Color Purple” to assuage Steven Spielberg’s pain at not being nominated for the best-director award.

But ”Witness” was the one picture everyone says they liked, adds a producer who is passing by.

The outcome of the 1985 Academy Awards race, which millions of Americans will watch on their television sets Monday night, still seems uncertain to the men and women who do the voting. With half a dozen of the major awards less predictable than they have been for years, only ”The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a foreign film, seems to be out of contention for best picture. Usually a Consensus Forms

In the seven weeks between the nominations and Oscar day, there is almost always a consensus about the major awards. Academy members knew that ”Gandhi” would bury ”E.T.” in 1982, that ”Terms of Endearment” would sweep the major awards in 1983, that ”Amadeus” would be picked over ”A Passage to India” in 1984. It is a knowledge based on past votes and on the elderly, conservative, sentimental nature of a large block of Academy members.

This year there is consensus on only two likely winners. The 79-year-old director John Huston is the favorite for best director for a number of reasons, only one of which is his juicy direction of the black comedy ”Prizzi’s Honor.” He has been in frail health for several years, yet he managed to make a movie whose vitality was marveled at by critics. His one and only Academy Award as director came nearly 40 years ago. With that one, for ”The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in 1948, he also brought his father, Walter Huston, an Oscar for supporting actor, the only Oscar in Walter Huston’s long and laureled career. If he wins for ”Prizzi’s Honor,” John Huston’s own career may be rounded off by bringing his daughter, Anjelica Huston, an Oscar for supporting actress. Miss Huston, who played a Mafia princess in ”Prizzi’s Honor,” is far and away the front-runner for that award.

In recent years, a single movie has tended to sweep, as though a movie worthy of being best picture must be best in everything from sound recording to costumes. ”Amadeus” and ”Gandhi” were nominated 11 times each, and each garnered 8 awards, results that the industry labeled ”boring” and ”predictable.” Films Attract Strong Feelings

This week, however, the hype seems to be mixed with genuine excitement and a feeling that there will be more than the usual one big surprise. That is partly because each of the five nominees for best picture, except ”Witness,” has strong supporters and equally strong detractors. Although ”Out of Africa” and ”The Color Purple” each have 11 nominations, knowledgeable observers feel that the awards will be more evenly divided than in any year since 1981.

In that year, the front-runners, ”Reds” and ”On Golden Pond,” were rudely surprised by ”Chariots of Fire,” which was named best picture without taking any other major award except for original screenplay. ”Chariots of Fire” and ”Raiders of the Lost Ark” took four Oscars apiece, while ”On Golden Pond” and ”Reds” each won three.

The most talked-about aspect of this year’s race is the effect that the snubbing of Mr. Spielberg by the director’s branch of the Academy will have on the awards. ”The Color Purple,” which got mixed reviews, was expected to win a lot of nominations – including best director – but few Oscars. However, the chances of ”The Color Purple” for best picture and of Whoopi Goldberg for best actress zoomed when Mr. Spielberg was snubbed. There are more than 1,000 actors in the Academy, and almost every one wants to be in a Spielberg movie. Mr. Spielberg was given the Directors Guild trophy the weekend before Academy ballots were sent out. Will Academy members get on the bandwagon or will they feel the director has been adequately comforted? Allegiance to Director

In the golden era of the studio system, Academy members spent their careers at a single studio and tended to vote for the movies made by that studio. Today, when film editors, actors and costume designers move from Paramount to Columbia at the rip of a contract, allegiances are to directors – a Sydney Pollack production, for example – rather than to studios. One likely factor in the uncertainty this year is that the nominated directors involved have no enemies. Even Mr. Huston, a controversial figure during his feistier days, is, at this point, without foes. By virtue of age, he has become revered.

This is the first year that video cassettes have had an effect – if not on the Oscar race, then certainly on the financial prospects of the Oscar winners. Because the producer of ”Prizzi’s Honor,” ABC Motion Pictures, was going out of business, cassette rights to the movie were sold last summer. Since the movie is already available in video cassette stores, none of the major theater chains will play it, even if it wins as best picture. 20th Century-Fox, the distributor of ”Prizzi’s Honor,” managed to get approximately 100 independent theaters and smaller chains to play the movie after it was nominated. The results, says Tom Sherak, president of distribution at Fox, were, ”at best, fair.” Usually, a best-picture Oscar can mean anywhere from $5 million to $15 million to the movie’s distributor from extra film rentals. A combination of acting and directing awards brings $1 million to $5 million.

For the first time, the Oscars are being used to sell cassettes. ”Plenty,” the film version of David Hare’s allegorical play about the fading of Britain’s prestige after World War II, got negative reviews and earned a scant $3 million in film rentals. Released on cassette by Thorn EMI/HBO to coincide with Oscar fever, ”Plenty” has sold 87,000 cassettes, with equivalent wholesale revenue of $4.4 million.

The advertising campaign for the video cassette deliberately stressed the star of ”Plenty,” Meryl Streep, who was identified as ”the Oscar nominee.” Miss Streep was nominated for ”Out of Africa,” not for ”Plenty.”

We found another Oscar article from the year Braveheart won. In March 1996, Stephen Hunter was reviewing movies for The Baltimore Sun. (He later became The Washington Post’s film critic). He wasn’t too impressed with Braveheart and barely mentions Apollo 13.

Kind of a scary year. “Sense and Sensibility” had the look of the swank, Brit, big-ticket piece the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences loves to honor with an Oscar. Then there was that anthem of gung-ho, can-do spirit, “Apollo 13,” patriotic as all get-out, another sort of movie the academy has a tendency to adore. A two-horse race, figure six for one, four for the other, with the Brit coming out in the lead.

Oops. Another miscalculation.

Instead, along came a Scotsman named William Wallace, the subject of Mel Gibson’s old-fashioned — and old; it dated from May — epic, to get 10 completely unexpected nominations, throwing the whole thing up in the air.

And then those blasted double-death downers “Dead Man Walking” and “Leaving Las Vegas” blow in from out of town and throw their butts down and will not go away. They mess it up even more!

And then from nowhere, this talking-pig opus, “Babe,” a faux-naif Aussie comedy about a porker who thinks he’s a barker and makes the nation believe it. Charm, audacity or just an extra-long “I want a Clark Bar” commercial?

The fat and easy days of “Forrest Gump,” when a professional prognosticator could knock out his picks in 10 minutes and go an easy 8 out of 10, ain’t around no more. This one is tough. You have to think about this one. Ouch! At my age, that hurts.

So here’s my best shot. If I go down in flames, don’t call to gloat. If you do better than I do, don’t write the editor. You’re still not getting this job.

Best Supporting Actress: Let’s begin with an easy one. Mia Sorvino put on a whiny voice, dyed her hair jet blond and got buff in the gym for the role of the tart in “Mighty Aphrodite.” Cheapness always works; you’d never suspect she’s a neo-conservative from Harvard! But she won’t win. Mare Winningham was an eye of calmness in “Georgia,” but she won’t win either, because nobody ever saw the movie, which hasn’t even opened in Baltimore. Kate Winslet was wonderful in “Sense and Sensibility” as headstrong, emotional, self-dramatizing “sensibility,” and, in a normal year, she would win.

The Oscar, however, will go to Joan Allen, for “Nixon” and her turn as Pat. It was an extraordinary impersonation that caught its subject’s iron dignity and stoicism as well as her intelligence, a stunner in a movie from the Oliver Stone who tends to make most Republicans look like fascist warmongers.

Best Original Screenplay: “Mighty Aphrodite”? No. Hollywood hasn’t really forgiven Woody Allen for his crimes, his crimes not being cohabiting with his wife’s adopted daughter but having a string of box-office failures and also hating Hollywood and going to Europe on a jazz tour during Oscar week. An Oscar for “Toy Story” in this category would completely miss the point: It was technique, not writing, that distinguished that computer-animated gem. “Braveheart” has a shot, but such an award would fail to honor the movie’s prime mover, Mel Gibson, and pay dividends only to his stalking horse, screenwriter Randall Wallace. “Nixon?” Nah.

Rather, here’s a chance that not even Hollywood will blow to pay homage to one of the cleverest films of the year. That’s the astonishing and delightful enigma, “The Usual Suspects,” with its Byzantine plot and its nostalgic insistence on a mythic master criminal pulling all the strings. Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie will nab the golden boy.

Best Adapted Screenplay: You’d think Mike Figgis for “Leaving Las Vegas,” as a way of rewarding him for his astonishing audacity in making Hollywood want a movie nobody in Hollywood wanted. Wouldn’t “Babe” have a chance, too, as a nice way to memorialize a film that’s cute but probably not going to go all the way? Factor out “The Postman” and “Apollo 13,” the first because all the nominations are enough,the latter because no one really liked it a lot.

That means the novelty nomination will get it — actress Emma Thompson for her brilliant adaptation (six drafts in longhand on yellow tablets while waiting for the blocking to stop and the shooting to start on a decade’s worth of other movies) of “Sense and Sensibility.” Who could resist that one? Tinseltown still loves a good story.

Cinematography: Not a great category this year, a year in which few films were visually distinguished. Most experts seem to be picking “Braveheart,” but I found its photography conventional: Auld Scotland looked much more poetic and resonant in “Rob Roy.” “Batman Forever” was gleamingly professional, big-studio filmmaking but for that same reason coldly unmoving. “Shanghai Triad” was probably the best-photographed film of the year, yes, but the close-knit, tribal cinematographers aren’t going to acknowledge an Asian film as such. Nobody saw “A Little Princess.”

Actually, the best-photographed film of the year wasn’t even nominated, that being Figgis’ brilliant “Leaving Las Vegas,” shot in a super-16 that, blown up to 35, had a powdery, gritty, doom-laden feel. Rather, the Oscar will go to Michael Coulter for his green and lovely “Sense and Sensibility,” which made the 19th century look like a walk in the park on a beautiful late-May Sunday.

Foreign Language Film: I love this category because I’ve never seen most of ’em and I don’t have to be depressed if I blow it. So I’m picking “Antonia’s Line,” from the Netherlands, not that I’ve seen it or “All Things Fair” from Sweden or “Dust of Life” from Algeria or “O Quatrilho” from Brazil. It’s the most famous and has gotten the best reviews. I have seen “The Star Maker,” from Italy’s Guiseppe Tornatore, another love poem to the cinema, but so many find it a disappointment after “Cinema Paradiso” that it’ll probably swoon.

Best Supporting Actor: The race here is between Ed Harris, outstanding as the technocrat commander of the earthlings in “Apollo 13,” and Kevin Spacey in “The Usual Suspects,” and if you’ve seen the movie you know why, but I won’t tell you if you haven’t. I liked Tim Roth’s great turn at nastiness in “Rob Roy” as Archie Cunningham, fop and duelist. Brad Pitt was noisy in “12 Monkeys,” but he’ll eventually earn the Big One as his career continues to swell; James Cromwell of “Babe” is the dark horse. But no. I’m going with Spacey, who’s emerged recently as one of the most reliable and fascinating character actors in Hollywood.

Best Actress: A four-horse race. Factor out at the top Meryl Streep from “The Bridges of Madison County,” included in the category merely to fill it out. Here’s the theory behind each of the other contenders: Elizabeth Shue, for “Leaving Las Vegas,” because Hollywood loves it when a good girl goes bad. Sharon Stone, for “Casino,” because Hollywood loves it when a bad girl stays bad. Emma Thompson for “Sense and Sensibility,” because Hollywood loves it when a good girl stays good. And the winner: Susan Sarandon, for “Dead Man Walking,” because Hollywood loves it.

Best Actor: Massimo Troisi, the star of “The Postman,” had the best publicity gimmick — he died the day after shooting. Sentimental H-wood might eat that up. Sean Penn had the best greasy, white-trash pompadour in “Dead Man Walking.” Richard Dreyfuss had the best sense of self-loathing in “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” and Anthony Hopkins had the best fake chin and hairline in “Nixon.”

But this is Nicolas Cage’s year: In “Leaving Las Vegas,” he had the best sense of ironic, tragic doom, the best joie de vivre in the face of his own impending destruction. He made you care about one of the biggest losers in screen history. Besides, God is kind to babies, the United States of America and drunks. See what He did for Ray Milland in “The Lost Weekend”?

Best Director: Oy. Ummf. Ugh. Blecch. And this is only the second hardest category! Michael Radford, an Englishman, reinvented himself as an Italian in “The Postman,” and that always pleases people. On the other hand, the super-aggressive Miramax’s super-aggressive marketing campaigns can turn more people off than on. Chris Noonan blew America away with “Babe,” a wholly unexpected hit and quite an astonishing movie, for a movie about a pig. Tim Robbins was furiously even-handed “Dead Man Walking,” making both pro- and anti-capital punishment arguments with equal fervor, but in very liberal Hollywood, that might hurt rather than help. Mel Gibson represents a long-established Tinseltown pattern: the big star who puts money, reputation and effort on the line to make “his” picture — a picture nobody else wanted — and delivers a stunner in “Braveheart,” though in truth it was a very conventional picture.

But I think the award will go to Mike Figgis for “Leaving Las Vegas,” which for bizarre tribal reasons wasn’t even nominated for best picture, despite the incredible reviews and the brilliant // success. But “Las Vegas” is a total Figgis thing: He found the original book, he wrote the screenplay, he got the financing (in France, after everyone in Hollywood turned it down), he talked the hot young actors into appearing in it, he scored it and he went on the publicity tour to shill it. He deserves it, and I believe the academy will recognize that, for his heroism if nothing else. Hollywood is a tough town to be brave in, and nobody knows that better than Hollywood.

Best Picture: Oy. Umf. Ugh. Blecch. Really hard. There seems to be a consensus building for “Babe” primarily because it’s such a charmer, such a delight. But “Braveheart” is also the kind of epic, old-fashioned movie that the academy’s older members like very much (the whole academy votes in this one category, so the choices tend to skew more conservative). “The Postman” has the same nicey-nice values, but I believe the nomination will be enough. “Apollo 13” has lost most of its cachet of late and doesn’t look to be a contender.

But I think in the end the old patterns will reassert themselves: “Sense and Sensibility” is a safe choice; it can’t be criticized by anybody, and it represents the outfit’s consistent fantasy view of itself, as a sort of “Masterpiece Theater” of the global village.