Oscar Snubs and Best Picture Fiascos, Past and Present
This One Won Best Picture This One Didn't The recent hand wringing over the lack of nominations for "Selma" beyond Best Picture was surprising, given the fact that most of the people writing about it should know that nominations are not given out of fairness or merit. (Profitability is also beside the point, otherwise at least one "Fast and Furious" or "Spiderman" movie would have been nominated for Best Picture by now.) It's as if they've forgotten that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not some sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval-giving organization but a by-invitation-only private club whose members (according to a recent LA Times poll) are:
94% white 77% male 86% fifty or older, median age 62
Not exactly a picture of diversity, yet over the years these members have nominated a raft of offbeat choices for Best Picture, films like "The Tree of Life," "Pulp Fiction," and this year's "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Winning is another matter: although other nominations come from the corresponding branches, every eligible member votes for the Best Picture nominations, which explains why the directors of Best Picture nominees aren't necessarily nominated for Best Director. Given the size and occupational variety of the AMPAS electorate, the Best Picture winner is often not so much a matter of what everyone loves most as what everyone hates least. Accordingly, the winners are usually bland and sometimes the worst of the bunch. Does anyone really think "Crash," is a better film than "Brokeback Mountain"? That "Forrest Gump" is better than "Pulp Fiction"? That "Dances with Wolves" is better than "Goodfellas"? Yet all the former won Best Picture; the latter lost.
My all-time favorite undeserving Best Picture winner is 1980's "Ordinary People," a family melodrama that even at the time of its release looked less like a feature film than a middling TV Movie-of-the-Week. But it starred Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore and was directed by Robert Redford, all formidable stars near height of their powers, so it beat not one but three vastly superior films: "Raging Bull," "Coal Miner's Daughter," and "The Elephant Man." (If that weren't enough, the voters gave the Best Director award to Robert Redford, who beat not only Martin Scorsese but David Lynch and Roman Polanski for the award. Did anyone really think Redford was the best director of the group?) Never mind: history determines the real winner. Today "Raging Bull" is considered one of the greatest films of all time, while "Ordinary People" is remembered mainly as the movie that introduced Timothy Hutton, whose Best Supporting Actor win is the apex of his career so far.
Whichever nominee wins this year's award for Best Picture, the real best picture winner won't be determined for at least a decade. How will we know? It'll be the movie we're still watching and thinking about. If the past is any indication, it won't be the one with the Oscar.