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. 

A Tribute To A Real Genius

Every once in a while, every other generation or so, we get a gift from the acting gods to grace the silver screen with their incredible and versatile talent. And more often than not, those wonders get taken from us far too quickly. In the past decade we've had more losses than we know what to do with, and the landscape of film has become lacking no matter how many surprisingly good performances Jennifer Lawrence turns out. 

The most obvious that comes to mind is last year's loss of comedy icon Robin Williams. It hurt particularly because he dedicated his life to making people laugh and in this world there is no more a noble profession, with the exception of Doctors Without Borders. But I'm speaking about entertainment here. 

For me personally, a day I will never forget was January 22nd, 2008. My mom called me around 8pm New York time to tell me that Heath Ledger was found dead in his SoHo penthouse. I didn't have a TV, so I hadn't heard, but made it over there in time just to watch the camera crews surrounding his building pack up for the night. It didn't take me long to realize the gravity of that loss. Heath Ledger was very much on his way to being our generation's Marlon Brando, and to die so tragically without even peaking at the young age of 28, without all of us seeing what more he could have given us, fresh off of his performance in Brokeback Mountain, none of us in the film community were ever the same again. 

Arguably his best performance in the rather flawed epic The Master working with frequent collaborator, P.T. Anderson as egomaniacal cult leader Lancaster Dodd.

Just when we had begun the healing process, we had another enormous blow; last year in February when one of the most talented people to ever gift the acting community with his presence lost his life; Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yesterday was his birthday, and instead of dwell on the fact that we will never have another brilliant Hoffman performance, I'd like to remember some of the best that he left us with. Unlike Ledger, Hoffman left behind an indelible legacy of stellar performances that will always be iconic and always be studied, analyzed, and used as basis and inspiration for others. As a true actor's actor, Hoffman had such a profound understanding of his craft and an even bigger respect for it. In every role he played, he brought to it heart, sincerity, and immeasurable depth. There will never be another Hoffman, but at least we have his legacy that generations upon generations of actors will look to when building themselves as masters of their craft. 

Hoffman so brilliantly embodied Truman Capote that his pastiche would be just as good to show someone if you were trying to tell them about who Capote was. It wasn't an interpretation, and it wasn't an impression. It was bringing someone back to life. 

I would go out on a limb and say that there is not a bad performance in his repertoire. From flimsy films like Along Came Polly to bravado like The Master, Hoffman never missed a beat. I personally will always remember his performance as Rusty, the down on her luck drag queen in the teeny Joel Schumacher film Flawless, opposite Robert DeNiro, as well as the awkward boom operator for a porn producer in Boogie Nights, as well as of course, his second to none almost carbon copy of Truman Capote in Capote, for which he won a well-deserved Oscar. Then there was Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, and perhaps my personal favorite; the blocked introverted novelist-turned-screenwriter in State and Main. No matter how small the role, or how small the film, Hoffman took it upon himself to elevate his role in the project and basically carried a lot of the films towards their successes. I don't know what the scope of cinema would be today without him, I would imagine very different. This was a man who could literally do anything, and was such a absolute master of his craft that he raised the bar for everyone else. So on his birthday (one day late, forgive me) I salute you sir. There will never be another, and you will always be missed. Thank you for sharing your gift, and even from a snarky sarcastic cynical person like me, I truly mean it. 

Below, some of the performances mentioned. All of which, unforgettable. 

Dear James Franco: Stop Everything! Sincerely, The World.

A picture worth a thousand words.

I don’t even understand the appeal here. He’s not even fun to look at, he might have been in the beginning when he was on that whole matinee idol next River Pheonix skew back in the early 00’s, but then he decided to go the pretentious artist route and become a full-fledged laughable academic all at once. And I do mean laughable. He started doing two masters degrees at the same time one at NYU and one at Columbia. And if you’ve ever done 1 Masters (ahem) you know how grueling and time consuming it is, so he was basically trying to show off, and didn’t do a half decent job of it. My cohorts and I would see him around Dodge Hall (School of the Arts in Columbia University, what what!) droning around staring at his blackberry and a cigarette dangling out of his mouth like he was the reincarnation of James Dean, too cool for school; as it turns out he was just too stupid for it. And when he got into Yale, and I didn’t for a PhD program, I had realized people had seriously lost their effing minds...not that I deserved to get into Yale, but he sure didn't! I mean seriouslaaaay. 

Finally realizing that he’s a total joke in academic circles, he decided to go the pretentious artist route and scathed by with a whole series of garbage films, both acting and directing them, the newest of which, a bastardization of the William Faulkner novel ‘As I Lay Dying’ which is unbelievably going to open in Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year, and putting in a piss poor performance in perhaps one of the most interesting films of the year; Harmony Korine’s Springbreakers (2012), James Franco should get a universal 'F' for failing in life. 

Pretentious ass. Franco in a still from his new film in which he stars and directs (of course) As I Lay Dying (2013)

He once said the reason he’s so ‘productive’ or as I like to call it scattered in a clusterfuck is because his mind is so active, which I translate into ‘I’m on Adderall all the time’ which is basically what it seems like. I remember in 2008, he took over for Gus Van Sant’s absence when we screened Milk (2008) at Columbia for the film program and a subtle sighs of ‘awwwww’s’ echoed through the audience. He seemed totally stoned (of course) and couldn’t tell us anything interesting. Not about the film, not about his career, not about anything in particular because he was so mentally befuddled, like words were confusing him and hitting him at the face and grabbing at his brain. 

Franco in Milk (2008) probably the only good thing he's ever done.

And now it’s just getting ridiculous, you are not a renaissance man, James Franco, you will never be the next Kerouac, Orson Welles, or Dostoevsky, stick to what you know how to do best; rolling fatties and making teenage girls squirm in their panties. Just stop, for the love of god, stop everything. Now. Much love, Vera.