SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This week's Oscar nominations kicked off the annual debate of what Academy voters got wrong and right - but let's be honest, mostly wrong. Many movie lovers are celebrating nominees like Colman Domingo for the prison drama "Sing Sing" and Demi Moore for "The Substance," but some beloved performers did not make the cut, like Nicole Kidman for "Babygirl" or Angelina Jolie for "Maria." It is a reminder that year in, year out, whether it's the nominations or the winners themselves, Oscar voters can get it very, very wrong.
Some Oscar blunders fall into the category of snubs. Others show a failure to recognize films that will endure - the Academy on the wrong side of history. To talk about how that happens, what it means and why we should care, we're joined now by NPR critic Bob Mondello. Hey, Bob.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Hey, good to be here.
DETROW: And our own producer and film fanatic, Marc Rivers - hey, Marc.
MARC RIVERS, BYLINE: Happy Oscars, Scott.
DETROW: I'm glad we're celebrating.
(LAUGHTER)
DETROW: So, Bob, is there one particular movie that always jumps out to you as, like, an iconic miss?
MONDELLO: Oh, my God, yes. It was the first Oscars that I paid attention to. It was in 1968. It was the year that "Oliver" won best picture.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OLIVER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (Singing) Oliver, Oliver, won't ask for more when he knows what's in store.
MONDELLO: And the biggest movie of the year - the most exciting movie I had ever seen in my life - came out...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY ")
KEIR DULLEA: (As Dave Bowman) Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
DOUGLAS RAIN: (As HAL 9000) I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
MONDELLO: ..."2001: A Space Odyssey" - and it didn't get nominated.
DETROW: It didn't even get nominated.
MONDELLO: What kind of crazy is that? And so at that point, I just sort of said, OK, the Oscars are stupid.
(LAUGHTER)
DETROW: And here you are.
MONDELLO: I mean, this is crazy.
RIVERS: My first Oscars was probably in 2004...
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: ...And this was the year that "Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King" ran the table on everybody. And that was my favorite movie at the time, so watching it, I was thinking, oh, my God, your favorite movie is just going to win all the awards? This is great. And then I quickly realized the following year that that was not going to be the case. So yeah, there's been many an omission, many a snub, in Oscar history.
DETROW: I feel like there's two kinds, right? There is the, it didn't even get nominated. The Academy is just on a different planet than a lot of moviegoers. And there is the, it was nominated, but it somehow lost. And I think to me, like, I guess we are going on 20 years later - like, I still think about "Brokeback Mountain" losing to "Crash," which was, like, this...
MONDELLO: Fair.
DETROW: ...Cartoonish algorithm...
MONDELLO: Yeah.
DETROW: ...Of a dumb movie plot that was heavy-handed, and "Brokeback Mountain" was so good in so many different ways. And that caused, like, a bit of a scandal in - or for a while, of, like, why the voters voted one way as opposed to another.
MONDELLO: Almost always, there's a good reason.
DETROW: Yeah.
MONDELLO: I mean, it's a - actually, let me rephrase that. There's a dumb reason...
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: ...That makes no sense but that makes sense to the Academy somehow. I mean, for instance, another movie that was not nominated is "Singing In The Rain." Today, it's regarded as a classic musical. Back then...
RIVERS: It's one of the great musicals.
MONDELLO: It is one of the great musicals. It's arguably the great movie musical, right? But back then, it came out the year after "American In Paris" won the Oscar for best picture. They were not going to give another best picture to a Gene Kelly musical. It just wasn't going to happen.
Another example is "Apocalypse Now." How could you not give "Apocalypse Now" the award for best picture? But the year before, "Deer Hunter" won. And so that would look like the Academy was obsessed with Vietnam, and they didn't want to be obsessed with anything. And so they shifted and they gave it to "Kramer vs. Kramer."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KRAMER VS. KRAMER")
MERYL STREEP: (As Joanna Kramer) Ted, I'm leaving you. Here are my keys.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEYS RATTLING)
STREEP: (As Joanna Kramer) Here's my American Express card. Here's my Bloomingdale's credit card. Here's my checkbook. I've taken $2,000 out of our savings account because that's what I had in the bank when we first got married.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: (As Ted Kramer) What is this, some kind of joke?
STREEP: (As Joanna Kramer) Here's the cleaning...
RIVERS: Yeah. I think that's an important point to mention about "Kramer vs. Kramer." Like, I think looking back now, obviously, as Bob said, that you have this kind of, like, timid domestic drama going up against this grand, operatic vision by Francis Ford Coppola, but "Kramer vs. Kramer" was not considered the kind of, like - you know, it wasn't weak at it - in its time. And this was critically acclaimed.
MONDELLO: Right.
RIVERS: So this was an example of a movie where the audience and - audience, critics and the Oscars all converged. I feel like it's something that doesn't happen as much these days. You'll find more modest successes winning best picture, and there's a kind of complaint you'll find lately about are the Oscars out of touch?
DETROW: I think there's - one of the interesting trends that you see at different points in history is kind of this big movement happening that people are responding to in theaters. And the Academy itself, the people who make it up, don't quite like the direction that Hollywood is moving, and they snub it. And I think, Marc, "The Dark Knight" is an example. The big Christopher Nolan epic Batman movie - the one where Heath Ledger plays Joker - changed the way movies were made.
RIVERS: It changed the way movies were made.
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: It changed the way - it changed the Oscars...
DETROW: 'Cause it didn't get nominated.
RIVERS: ...'Cause it infamously did not get nominated. I remember at the time, there was someone who came out from the Academy who said, you know, when they voted to change the rules to allow more nominees, you know, to extend from 5 to 10, it was part of the discussion where they said, you know, "The Dark Knight" was in our mind when we did this. I think "The Dark Knight" being snubbed is an example of just what voters are comfortable with, right? I think...
DETROW: Right.
RIVERS: ...You see biopics a lot. You see the kind of historical dramas.
MONDELLO: It's the moderate approach that wins. And what I'm thinking of is "Driving Miss Daisy" versus "Do The Right Thing."
RIVERS: Oh, yeah.
MONDELLO: What kind of sense does that make, right? "Driving Miss Daisy" is a nice, polite movie about race.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DRIVING MISS DAISY")
JESSICA TANDY: (As Daisy Werthan) You're speeding. I could see it.
MORGAN FREEMAN: (As Hoke Colburn) We're only doing about 19 miles an hour.
TANDY: (As Daisy Werthan) I like to go under the speed limit.
RIVERS: It has the word daisy in it.
MONDELLO: Exactly. Exactly.
RIVERS: Like, it is the sunnier word of (ph)...
MONDELLO: And it's an adaptation of an off-Broadway hit, a theatrical hit. "Do The Right Thing" was just, like, an explosion happening.
RIVERS: Yeah. Spike Lee's movie from '89 about simmering racial tensions on a neighborhood block in Brooklyn, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DO THE RIGHT THING")
GIANCARLO ESPOSITO: (As Buggin Out) Hey, Sal, how come you got no brothers up on the wall here?
DANNY AIELLO: (As Sal) You want brothers on the wall? Get your own place. You can do what you want to do.
RIVERS: And I remember...
MONDELLO: Right.
RIVERS: ...Reading contemporaneous reviews of it where, you know, some people thought that Black people were going to riot...
MONDELLO: Right.
RIVERS: ...At the end of the movie. So people were legitimately losing it over "Do The Right Thing," and "Driving Miss Daisy" was like a hug, you know?
MONDELLO: Yep. Yep.
RIVERS: It kind of tucked you in at night. And "Do The Right Thing" was a slap across the face, telling you to wake up - you know, wake up to the realities of race relations.
MONDELLO: Yeah.
DETROW: Let me ask the flip side of this. Are there years that jump out to you in that that the Oscars got it right, they perfectly put their finger on that moment in cinema, that moment in pop culture, and there was the right movie, and they picked it?
RIVERS: I have a couple moments, but Bob, you want to go ahead?
MONDELLO: I - no. I'm thinking.
RIVERS: Oh, come on (laughter).
MONDELLO: Did they ever pick the right movie?
RIVERS: Come on.
MONDELLO: No, no, seriously. I think the whole notion of art as a horse race is stupid, just dumb.
RIVERS: But if we're going to do it...
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: If we're going to do it - and I think about a year that arguably contained the biggest Oscar blunder of all time - the infamous "Moonlight," "La La Land" envelope mix-up.
MONDELLO: Oh, OK.
RIVERS: You know, you'll recall when a number of producers got on stage and actually gave thank-you addresses before they realized the wrong movie was announced.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JORDAN HOROWITZ: I'm sorry. No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: There's a mistake.
HOROWITZ: There's a mistake. "Moonlight" - you guys won best picture.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: "Moonlight" won.
RIVERS: I look at "Moonlight," which I think not only was the best movie of its year - 2016 - but also one of the best best picture winners of all time. I think "Moonlight" was representative, in a lot of ways, of how the industry and by proxy how the society wanted to kind of view itself as far as what stories it valued. I mean, you look at "La La Land" and "Moonlight," you have this big Hollywood production with these two bright, white stars.
DETROW: About LA...
RIVERS: About LA...
DETROW: ...About Hollywood, in a sense.
RIVERS: It's about Hollywood. And then you have "Moonlight," this really small, intimate drama about, you know, a gay African American coming of age.
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: And what you have there is this movie came at the tail end of the Obama years, and Obama represented this historic expansion of what a Black person could do or be in this country, right? And "Moonlight," to me, represented an expansion of the kind of Black stories we could tell - how they could look, how they could move, how they could feel. When something like "Moonlight" does win, I think it does send a message to not only audience members, it sends a message to other directors and filmmakers who say, well, you know, I may not have a "La La Land" in me, but I do have a "Moonlight" in me.
MONDELLO: Right.
RIVERS: And maybe that can get presented (ph).
MONDELLO: Or a "Hurt Locker."
RIVERS: Or a "Hurt Locker."
MONDELLO: Right? I mean, yeah, when those happen, it is magical.
RIVERS: Exactly.
MONDELLO: It's really...
RIVERS: You know, or...
MONDELLO: It shakes things up.
RIVERS: For sure. And I think we look to the Oscars to shake things up. They rarely ever do, but when they do, I think it's worth noting.
DETROW: That's NPR's Bob Mondello and Marc Rivers. Thanks to both of you.
MONDELLO: Great fun.
RIVERS: Thank you, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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