Oscar Drops Trou: Top 10 Academy Award Disappointments

Did this happen to you?

Dateline: Early 2001.
Location: Water Cooler
Scene: You, doing a spectacular end-zone victory dance on your co-workers’ crushed souls

YOU: Yeah, bitch! I told you muthafuckin Gladiator was taking it home! SUCK IT!
CO-WORKER: Screw you, man! Erin Brockovich was still a better film!
YOU: Whatever, sparky. Pay up.

This magical moment occurs when the forces of good prevail and a Best Picture Oscar goes to a film with… sauce. With cojones. A MAN-FILM.

But sometimes this doesn’t happen. Not this year; Crash held firm, and took home little men for Picture, Screenplay and Editing. But every second or third year, some foofy tear-jerker comes along and the Academy’s wives and mistresses badger them into voting for it instead of the one with the full frontal shot. Detailed below are the ten worst emasculations in film awards history.

10. 1996- The English Patient beats Fargo
Wait, I know, The English Patient was a good movie—wait, no it wasn’t. It had a wartime vibe, but the only actual WWII scenes depicted Canadians. In France, for Christ’s sake. Not even Willem Dafoe could save it. I started begging for the end after thirty-five minutes. We all knew she died and he screwed over his best friend, but they’re English; they’re not going to do anything about it. One syllable of that crisp Oxford accent and we know that Ralph Fiennes wasn’t going to grab a shotgun and go after anybody… besides, there wasn’t anybody to go after. I didn’t know it was possible to cry and sleep at the same time. Now, in the other corner, we’ve got the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece, Fargo. Bill Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, everybody’s favorite Euro-psychopath character actor, and Fran McDormand telling us she’s gonna barf. And a woodchipper. God bless the woodchipper. Did you know that role was written specifically for Buscemi? I swear, he could kick Fiennes’ ass. I forget, though… did the English Patient have tits? I think it did. I think we saw the brunette nurse’s rack. Still not enough bonus points to put it over the top, though.

9. 1979 - Kramer vs. Kramer beats Apocalypse Now
Lets add it up here. We’ve got, on one side, Dustin Hoffman playing a new-agey kind of wimp father who has to raise a kid on his own, learning about fatherhood on the way, a kid with that stupid movie-kid haircut who learns that his father can be his friend too, and Meryl Streep as the bitch wife who leaves for a long time, comes back and wants the kid. Everybody whines and slaps at each other while trying to keep their own face covered. Classic girly fight. Over here in Manville, we’ve got Coppola directing Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Larry Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford, Scott Glenn, and yes, R. Lee Ermey. NAPALM IN THE MORNING, PEOPLE! Smells like victory.

8. 1998 - Shakespeare in Love beats Saving Private Ryan
Damn those Fiennes boys! As if this scandalous misuse of Oscar clout wasn’t bad enough, Tom Hanks lost the Best Actor prize to Roberto Benigni, in Life is Beautiful. Forget Tom Hanks; I’d rather watch Tom Sizemore’s part in Saving Private Ryan than Life is Beautiful. Hell, I’d rather watch Tom Sizemore’s sex tape than Life is Beautiful.

7. 1997 - Titanic beats L.A. Confidential
Don’t get me wrong, here. Jim Cameron’s depiction of the Titanic’s staircases and dining rooms and clocks and stuff was all very nice, but nowhere on that boat did I see anything approaching the dirty, corrupt vision of Los Angeles that Curtis Hanson gives us. Hollywood’s Golden Age crumbles before our eyes, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce burst onto the scene, Kevin Spacey cements his career in place, and Kim Basinger is just so friggin’ hot. I don’t care if you are the king of the world. Titanic’s only redeeming quality is Billy Zane, because every movie is cooler if it has Billy Zane in it. I don’t know why; that’s just the way it is. But did Titanic have a brothel scene? I rest my case.

6. 1980- Ordinary People beats Raging Bull
Choose one of the following:
1. Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore have two sons. One dies, and it turns out it was the one they like more. Timothy Hutton, as the other son, feels very guily. Weepy bullshit ensues.
2. Jake LaMotta is a boxer who has emotionally destructive feelings of self-doubt. However, these feelings transform into a blinding rage in the boxing ring, resulting in Jake kicking everybody’s ass into next week. Oh, yeah, and Jake’s played by Bobby DeNiro. And his brother and sparring partner is Joe Pesci. And Scorsese directed it. At one point in the filming, De Niro actually broke two of Joe Pesci’s ribs. From hitting him so hard.
If you chose 1, give yourself no points, and pour all of the hard liquor in your house down the drain, because you don’t deserve it. Go get yourself a glass of strawberry zinfandel. If you chose two, give yourself ten points, and get yourself two fingers of Johnny Black. Someone will be around to fellate you shortly.

5. 1990 - Dances with Wolves beats GoodFellas
Again, Scorsese gets stiffed. Kevin Costner drinks and prances around the so-not-wild West with a large dog, and eventually comes to respect the North American Aboriginal people. Which is cool and everything, but it’s missing a certain… something. Maybe if it had Joe Pesci asking Costner if he was to be found amusing, or perhaps killing Costner (almost) and stuffing him in the trunk of a Cadillac. Maybe if they just told Costner he was a made man, and then whacked him instead of Pesci? I dunno, I just could have done a lot more with the wolves. Stuff with stealing and killing, and wearing suits the whole time. Nobody ever said, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to dance with wolves.”

4. 2002 - Chicago beats Gangs of New York (10 noms, no statues)
Yet again for Scorsese. You know, he was nominated for six Best Director awards, and received none. Makes me want to slit my wrists. But Chicago and Gangs have one thing in common: Mr. John C. Reilly. He was a pansy in Chicago, but he was a murdering Irishman in Gangs, which should settle matters right there. But let’s continue; perhaps have ourselves a little Celebrity Deathmatch. Count with me: Liam Neeson vs. Catherine Zeta-Jones. Daniel Day-Lewis vs. Richard Gere. Cameron Diaz vs.Renee Zellweger. Leo DiCaprio vs. Lucy Liu. Okay, we’ll let ‘em have that one. But Brendan Gleeson could take Queen Latifah any day of the week. And a theme song by U2 vs a bunch of show tunes. That adds up to six points for Gangs and one for Chicago. Interesting fact: So many men were dragged by their curlies to see Chicago that doctors have renamed the resulting inflammation after the film.

3. 1977 - Annie Hall beats Star Wars
Seriously. Did Annie Hall have a Wookiee? Was there a Jabba cameo? Did James Earl Jones voice the menacing protagonist? How can it have won, then? Both films had a neurotic wuss, granted, but with Star Wars, the wuss got his hand cut off at the end of the sequel and kicked everybody’s ass in the third film, making up for the first two entirely. Did Woody Allen have a light saber? By making Annie Hall, he paved the way for Ally McBeal and Sex and the City. On Tattooine, either of those offences is punished by feeding the offender to the nearest sarlacc.

2. 1981 - Chariots of Fire beats Raiders of the Lost Ark
Chariots of Fire is not a girly film. It is about two athletes. Sprinters, even. Proper athletes, not curlers or ballroom dancers. And yet it sucks balls to the degree you would expect of, say, Beaches, or Fried Green Tomatoes. One of the athletes is a Scottish missionary, running for God. The other is a somewhat persecuted rich English Jew. They compete, and the Scot (of course) is going to win, but the race is on Sunday, so the Scot refuses to run. The English guy wins, but the Scot goes on to win the 400. Everybody goes home happy, except I don’t know where the hell an hour and a half of my life went. I’ve seen Raiders upwards of forty times, and I’d much rather have watched that again. From the mountain dissolve shot off the top, to Karen Allen telling Indy she’s his goddamn partner to the climactic fight scene when Indy rolls his eyes, hauls leather and actually looks bored shooting a guy, what the hell’s not to love? Maybe if the sprinters were running… away from a giant boulder? Or punching a giant Nazi into an airplane propeller?

1. 1994 - Forrest Gump beats Pulp Fiction
Just how the hell is this possible? Pulp Fiction actually won the Palme D’or at Cannes in 1994. That’s debatably the highest prize in all of cinema. I liked Forrest Gump, but give me a goddamn break here. Travolta accidentally shoots the FedEx guy from MadTV in the face. Bruce Willis offs Travolta with an Uzi, and then kills some rednecks with a samurai sword. Christopher Walken describes the sensation of a rectally inserted watch. Sam Jackson waxes Biblical, and professes ownership of a wallet that says “Bad Motherfucker.” Although, to be fair, that wallet actually belongs to Tarantino.

Here, let’s just line up the quotes from the two films:

Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates”
Pulp: “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”

Gump: “Run, Forrest! Run!”
Pulp: “I’ma get medieval on your ass”

Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does, sir.”
Pulp: “Bitch, be cool.”

Gump: “My name’s Forrest, Forrest Gump.”
Pulp: “ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?”

Now, I know, a film isn’t all about quotability. It’s also about music. Like this:

Gump: Blowin’ In The Wind – Joan Baez
Land of 1000 Dances – Wilson Pickett
What The World Needs Now is Love – Jackie DeShannon

Pulp: Misirlou – Dick Dale (amazing surf guitar track that’s become synonymous with the film)
Jungle Boogie – Kool & The Gang
Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon – Urge Overkill covering Neil Diamond

God, what am I doing here? We all know the injustice of this clearly rigged contest. To cap it off, Forrest Gump also beat The Shawshank Redemption that year. I drank a quart of Mr. Clean when I saw that. I’m lucky to be alive. It’s a damn good thing my brother knew how to perform an adrenalin injection directly into my heart. Thanks, Pulp Fiction.

Thankfully, this year, we were somewhat well represented. In the past the Academy has been caught in the unenviable position of having to choose between five films devoid of all testicular fortitude. This year was good. It gave us Syriana, Walk The Line, Crash, Cinderella Man, A History of Violence, Revenge of the Sith, War of the Worlds, Batman Begins, Munich and King Kong. And Pride and Prejudice can only push us so far back. And now, as I continue to splutter indignantly at the idea that Memoirs of a Geisha won multiple awards, I encourage all readers to begin their lobbying for Marlon Brando to be awarded the Best Supporting Actor prize for 2006’s Superman Returns.