Sins of Omission: Actors Snubbed by the Academy

We all know that the Academy Awards are more political than a presidential race, but we keep watching every year, and that's why when we fill out ballots (that is if we're really into it) we have a separate ballot for whom we secretly hope will win that we know will not because they're not in good standing with the committee, because the competition is too fierce, or they dropped too many F-bombs. Whatever the case may be, perhaps George C. Scott got it right when he straight up refused to show up to pick up his golden idol for his bravura performance in Patton and when it was mailed to him he mailed it back. 'It ain't nothing but a meat parade' he said. And it's sad but true that for the most part, actors especially are not given awards based on the actual merit of their performance, but for circumstance. Here's a list of some of the most grievous sins of omission in Oscar history. There are way too many for me to cover the entire spectrum so let's just focus on the acting categories...for now. By the way, this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are countless others, these are just the first ones that come to mind. In no particular order...

Anna Magnani got her start as an icon of Italian Neo-Realism, and made her transition into American films with the help of her #1 fan; Tennessee Williams who adapted his play The Rose Tattoo to film specifically for her. And to impress Tennessee Williams is no small accomplishment. But going back to Italian neo-realism, one has to really be something beyond method and dig into the depths of their soul so roughly that there’s nothing to do but suffer and cry through your performance so that your audience can fully understand your struggle. 

Gena Rowlands could be the greatest actress of all time second only to Meryl Streep. I would go as far as to say she’s perhaps even better, and with her director being her genius husband John Cassavetes, he worked her like a horse in a mine so that she could turn out the most heartbreaking and nuanced performances that touch on the female condition without beating you over the head with her plight. She embodied every part she played, and some were so down right complicated and layered that a ‘regular’ actress would be doomed to mess up. She is so intelligent as an actress that she knows exactly how to peel open all of those complex layers and get to the heart of her character. 

Leonardo DiCaprio was first nominated at 19 for his role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, since then he’s turned in some amazing performances, and some not so much performances; (We all remember The Beach) Oh you don’t? It’s because no one saw it, but as good as Matthew McConaughey’s performance was in Dallas Buyer’s Club, I think we can all agree that DiCaprio’s ballsy, spared no expense take on Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street should have given him unquestionable rights to that golden statue. 

Joaquin Phoenix seems to be the one that’s always robbed because of politics. The Academy just doesn’t like him no matter how brilliant he can be on screen, and I’m not just talking about his Johnny Cash. Working with Gus Van Sant throughout his youth definitely gave him the right training, and even in his teens, his performances were intelligent, thought provoking, and full of swagger. This culminated with his masterful performance in (excuse the pun) The Master, but he was upstaged by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the same film. Even though no one won for that film that year. Another oversight. 

Judy Garland won some kind of fake Oscar for ‘Most Promising Juvenile Performer’ or something like that which has since been omitted (thank god), but seriously? Judy? No Oscar? I object! Not only is she a screen legend, and an icon not only of cinema but of culture itself, it seems almost criminal that this unbelievably talented shooting star never got her golden statue. 

Naomi Watts is an actress that has time, but in my opinion has already proved herself worthy of a golden statue. She was introduced to us with one hell of a bang in Mulholland Drive, and has been going strong ever since. The problem with her is that her performances, no matter how en pointe, are just not Oscar fodder. Her two nominations for The Impossible and 21 Grams are great examples of what this woman is capable of. She’s very much on her way, and she’s on the Meryl Streep track. I expect great things of her in the future, and hopefully the Academy will eventually recognize that too. 

Jake Gyllenhaal is very young and also has plenty of time, but to only have one nomination for Brokeback Mountain, and getting completely overlooked for his incomparable performance in Nightcrawler is just plain wrong. I’m sure he’ll garner a few in his career to come, but it still seems like a huge oversight. As brilliant as Heath Ledger was in the former mentioned film, I would argue that Gyllenhaal’s bare soul performance was perhaps even better. He shines in everything he undertakes. Hopefully this will get noticed very soon. 

Cary Grant was another that has that ‘thank you for your body of work’ Oscars, which is basically let’s give them one before they kick the bucket kind of awards. You’re probably thinking this is a mistake but look it up, even the iconic Cary Grant who was Hitchcock’s favorite collaborator has 0 under his belt. One of his wives once said she thought that he played the same role in every movie, and who cares? He played facets of Cary Grant; that deserves an Oscar in my opinion.

Montgomery Clift was perhaps the greatest actor of all time never to receive an Oscar, and he made no point in hiding how much he wanted one. He was ‘a serious actor’ if ever there was a more perfect example, and from his first film to his last, he turned out absolutely flawless performances. He was trained by the Lunts as a child on Broadway, then studied the method with Strassberg before employing his own personal acting coach, just like Marilyn Monroe had. But his self-destructive behavior sadly overshadowed his intense raw talent. All you have to do is watch his 6-minute role in Judgment at Nuremberg (his last film) to see the absolute raw talent of this man. 

Marilyn Monroe has 1 Golden Globe for Best Comedic Performance by a Woman in Some Like It Hot and that’s it. You might want to disagree with me here because she’s known for playing dumb blondes, but that’s only half of it. Marilyn, wanting desperately to be taken seriously as an actress, and already being established, did something totally unexpected and moved to New York to start over, mastering her craft under the watchful guidance of Lee Strassberg who later became her mentor. Watch her performances in Bus Stop and The Misfits; those are performances. They aren’t just Monroe on screen. 

Below...clips and trailers. 

Why Nightcrawler Was the Best Film of Last Year And We All Missed It

Perhaps one of the best marketing strategies for this film was to sell it like something out of time, something surreal, keeping in touch with its Neo Noir roots. 

Except for a few 10 Best of the Year critic's lists, and some outcry here and there that Jake Gyllenhaal was robbed of an Oscar nomination, this film barely made returns upon release and flew quietly under our radar until it reappeared last month on Netflix instant. It's been in the 'Trending Now' category holding firm ever since, and everyone is kicking themselves for not seeing it earlier.

This was truly a sleeper hit. I can only imagine that dreaded pitch in any executive producer's officer in Hollywood. 'Hey, so yeah, it's a neo-noir...I'll explain later what that is, anyway film about a sociopath who undertakes a career in crime news as a stringer who eventually kills everyone who stands in his way of achieving his dream of exploiting the absolute worst in all of us. It's an indictment...I'll explain that later too of the news industry, and a satire, yes I'll explain later, on our vicious need for sensational news. Who do I see in the lead role you ask? Well I'm really hoping Ryan Gosling will return my phone calls. How long have I been waiting by the phone? About a year'. 

Lucky for us, appropriately named Bold Films, finances the project, and the man who eventually returned the phone calls was none other than the extremely versatile Jake Gyllenhaal who's acted in everything from niche cult classics like Donnie Darko, to Oscar caliber films like Brokeback Mountain, to just absolute shit like The Prince of Persia. 

The way that particularly Gyllenhaal is photographed gives such a window into the thematics of his character. Against the bleak darkness of an unforgiving world, he illuminates the worst part of what we can't see amongst it. (Ooooh that was poetic)

We know the man has chops, also we know he's experimental and fearless. He might be a pretty boy, but god damn, if his performance in Brokeback didn't make you well up, then check yourself for a pulse. Sorry Ryan Gosling. Once he was on board, it was an easy break. Filmed on location in LA, where permits and state tax laws make it almost impossible to afford shooting there, somehow they pulled it off. The setting was such where it had to be the third main character, and that's exactly what they achieved. The opening montage of LA landmarks in the middle of the night was wordless visual poetry. First time filmmaker Dan Gilroy wrote such a flawless script, I can't understand why he had trouble selling it, wait yes I can. It's seedy, it's dark, and it's an indictment of LA culture in particular, the likes of which we haven't seen since Sunset Blvd.

When it finally landed on Netflix, that's when we all took notice. but it was too late. Open Road had run such a piss poor Oscar campaign, that the film barely garnered a nod for Best Screenplay. And of course, everyone finally understood that outrage we read about that Jake himself lost out an Oscar nom to Bradley Cooper; in the film community Cooper was vilified of not only costing Jake the nomination, but also costing David Olyelowo the nod for Selma, the latter of which perhaps being more of an outrageous happening. 

In one of the more grizzly parts of the film Lou Bloom beats the police to an active home invasion and what he does next is completely shocking and yet portrayed with an unapologetic spirit.

People don't like dark films, people in Hollywood that finance most films definitely don't like dark films that point a mirror at their own culture and show them the ugliness of their own black souls. But we forget the main points. When Sunset Blvd. (perhaps one of the best films ever made) was released the only Oscar it won was for writing, but it lost literally everything else. Writers know good shit when they see it, too bad their a niche minority in Hollywood. 

We want to believe we're noble, and heroic human beings who overcome unsurmountable odds to achieve mental and emotional clarity; hence the Bradley Cooper nomination. Did you really think that Gyllenhaal's Lou Bloom; a straight up vicious sociopath who commits atrocities in order to further himself in a business that glorifies violence, as an antihero could stand up to that? Not with the Academy being 80% old white dudes. And Eastwood, his director being one of their own. 

Not since Ace in the Hole has there been such a taught satire of using the news to better one's own career with the subjects of the news being those that pay the ultimate price have we seen such a bleak look into the duality of man, and not since Network has there been such a quippy satire of the news industry; where if you can't find the news, you create it, and the bloodier the better. As Rene Russo ever so eloquently puts it 'picture our news cast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut'.

'I always say if you're seeing me, you're having the worst day of your life.'

All of those thematic elements that give every film studies student a boner aside, the writing is absolutely perfect. Everything is right there on the page, and writer/director Dan Gilroy really fused his directing ability with putting it into the script first so that the actors who read it would know exactly how to play their characters. One rule of making a film about an anti-hero or an antagonist front and center is that no matter how vile they are, the audience has to find something within them that they can relate to. You cannot have a full on villain that is completely unrelatable carry your film, because the audience will hate you, and they'll hate the film. 

Take Network par example. Faye Dunaway's character of Diana Christensen; the ruthless head of the TV station that goads everyone around her into the realization that the news is what they tell people it is, and if it's not there, they'll create it, is a total monster. Faye even asked her director Sidney Lumet what her character's vulnerability was, and he told her 'she doesn't have any'. This was coupled with two other characters who did (played by William Holden and Peter Fitch) the latter of which finally realizes that his life has been bullshit and gives that iconic speech of 'I'm Mad as Hell!' to a shocked audience. 

the "I want something people can't turn away from" in parentheses (no matter how violent) notion was first galvanized by Faye Dunaway the ruthless station head in Network (seriously watch it, can't believe you haven't yet)

Does Lou Bloom have vulnerability? Probably not, few sociopaths do, but we are attracted to him nonetheless, because we all know what it's like to be hungry, ambitious, and at times ruthless, we've all done something we're not proud of to get what we want, because we want it so much, not to Lou's extent, but we've been there...especially if you live in LA. He's a great antagonist because it's not his vulnerability we relate to, or any weakness he might have, but his motivation. Out of loneliness, anger, and frustration, Lou Bloom dehumanizes himself so that he can utilize a robot-like systematic means of climbing to the top without any second thoughts to his actions. 

On top of which, the story albeit heavily saturated with elevated themes doesn't push any of that into your face. It's Neo-Noir at its best. It's shot against a bleak backdrop of the bad neighborhoods of LA to accentuate the bad parts within the characters; a rusty environment leads to questionable choices. Noir is not supposed to be easy to watch. By definition, it's dark, it is not uplifting, and more importantly, it's the 'bad guy' that usually comes out on top. And if there is no such resolution, then there is none to speak of at all. A hallmark of Noir is ending it ubiquitously without giving the audience the answers it hungers for; so is the world going to be ok? Probably not, Noir dictates. Because there will always be people like Lou Bloom in the world. 

Me personally? I love films like that, that's what I was raised on. The great noirs of the 40's like Detour, Kiss Me Deadly, and Double Indemnity coupled with the death and lunacy laden films of Ingmar Bergman made me the finely well-adjusted adult I am today. This isn't Robert Zemeckis or Frank Darabondt, and Tim Robbins will not finally get to stand in the rain after being incarcerated for 40 years at the end of it (I'm talking about Shawshank Redemption for all you novices). This is the real world, where people aren't born malevolent, but their environment forces them into a desperation that brings out the worst in all of us. We don't want to admit it, but we'd go there too if we were hungry enough. 

Beautifully written, beautifully acted, beautifully marrying neo-noir gritty realism with (excuse the cliche) heart-pounding echo of a good-old-fashioned action thriller, Nightcrawler is definitely one of the greatest films of that year, if not in fact my subjectively favorite one. Birdman: Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (which won Best Picture last year) might have a lot of sappy sentiment that it masks in unique and brave directing techniques and indelible performances, but a man who overcomes tremendous odds to succeed in the liberation of his soul is much more appealing to viewers than a man who without a second thought brings mayhem and sadistic cruelty to the world around him and effectively makes his environment more ruthless simply by being in it. Brings new cadence to the phrase; 'If you can't beet 'em, join em'. 

Below clips of aforementioned films and trailer for Nightcrawler. Also the shooting script is available online. All it takes is a good Google search. Or ask me, fuck it. 

What Lou Bloom wants...