It has been suggested that Hollywood big shot Louis B Mayer created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927 as a marketing gimmick for the picture racket in general, and maybe for his studio, MGM, in particular. Officially though, he sought to create an organization that would mediate (read: quash) labor disputes and put a shiny veneer on the film industry's image, the underbelly of which guys like Louis B Mayer had to pull a lot of strings behind the scenes to keep off the front pages of the nation's leading newspapers. The seamier side of Tinseltown was bad for business.
Douglas Fairbanks Sr, perhaps the biggest movie star there was at the time, was elected as the first president of the Academy, and shortly thereafter somebody, maybe Fairbanks himself, decided it would be a nifty idea to stage a big, overlong awards gala, not unlike the one we encounter today, for the purpose of handing out "awards of merit for distinctive achievement". Or something. The first Oscar awards ceremony took place on May 16, 1929.
If you haven't guessed already, I don't take the Oscars all that seriously, as they tend to amount to little more than a complete waste of everybody's time. I pretty much quit watching the telecasts years ago, if I ever in fact did watch them anyway. I've never bought into the idea that there really is such a thing as a "best picture" or "best actor", etc., since there typically are any number of deserving candidates for most of the categories voted on every year. But it's the ones where the Academy voters clearly screw up in their decision making that will often stick out like a sore thumb and drive one to distraction, like the Chicago film critic who is NOT Roger Ebert who had the temerity to question Oscar wins for Martin Scorsese and THE DEPARTED back in '07. The following are some of my picks for the most egregious "upsets" in Oscars history, by which I mean GREATEST OSCAR RIP-OFFS EVER.
How Green Was My Valley def. Citizen Kane (February 26, 1942)
Prior to that year's ceremonies, the Oscars more or less came and went without a whole lot of surprises, but I would submit this as the Academy Awards first true ream job, and maybe its most tragic. It's also significant for the impact it had on the career of the director in question, Orson Welles, meaning that this one actually had far-reaching consequences beyond merely cheating one guy out of an award (or two) that he probably deserved. Welles was the director, co-screenwriter, and star of the aforementioned "Kane", a THINLY disguised fictionalization of the life and career of one William Randolph Hearst, a big-time newspaper magnate at a time when being a newspaper magnate actually meant something. W.R. was especially piqued at the reference to his pet name for his mistress' genitalia (a "secret" that EVERYBODY in Hollywood was aware of at the time), which went on to become the most famous one-word line in cinematic history. The Old Man did everything his power and influence could afford him to insure that the Welles opus flopped at the box office in 1941, thereby likely changing the course of filmmaking history. But Welles would ultimately have the last laugh. "Kane" is typically ranked at the top of most film scholars' "best ever" lists, as relevant an achievement today as it was at the time of its initial release. Not that "Valley" is a "bad" movie, per se. Scholars of director John Ford will certainly make their case for it; but is it really "superior" to Citizen Kane? Uh....no. No, it's not.
Rocky def. All The President's Men and Network (March 28, 1977)
Okay, look. Rocky is a perfectly decent enough little picture. I understand that it's an underdog movie about an underdog character, who through sweat and tenacity and hard work beats the odds! What's not to like about that? Well, nothing; just that it's not the "better" of either one of these two movies, that's all. Not to go all conspiracy theory on you, but here is my guess as to what happened with the voting that year. Hollywood for some reason has always enjoyed this reputation as some kind of bastion of "liberalism" (maybe it's from all the partying, I don't know), but the truth is, the guys who get to vote in the Oscars are all industry insiders. And in 1977, that demographic would have been largely populated by middle-aged, (mostly) conservative white guys who likely would have deeply resented a movie about the investigative journalism exploits that ultimately toppled the presidency of Richard Nixon. Heck, Nixon was from California; any number of those guys were probably friends of his. Not only would they have hated this movie's very existence, but handing it the Best Picture statuette would have been very much out of the question. And this would pretty much account for the other Oscar snub victim that awards season, Network. That same brand of insiders more than likely would have frowned upon a mainstream film that satirized with rapier-like precision the evils and excesses of Corporate America using a fictitious television "network" as its metaphor. The late Paddy Chayefsky probably had no idea how prescient this film would look to people nearly forty years later, and this movie hits its mark so unerringly that it's scary.
Ordinary People def. Raging Bull (March 31, 1981)
Let me just say this up front: Raging Bull is one of the very few mainstream Hollywood films I've seen that actually gives Citizen Kane a run for its money, and that's saying something. In fact, Scorsese even utilizes some of Welles' own visual and narrative techniques to tell this story of a boxing champ who through sweat and tenacity and hard work beats the odds and talks the mob into giving him a shot at the big time despite his steadfast refusal to take a dive. Then, having reached the top, there's nowhere to go but down, and down he plummets. Robert DeNiro delivers the performance of his life in this film, for which he won a well-deserved Oscar, but Scorsese got--what's the delicate way to put this?--SCREWED. NO Best Picture, NO Best Director, awards Raging Bull so richly deserved. As for the movie that "won"? Thirty years later, I don't hear anybody talking about how wonderful Ordinary People is; for that matter, I don't hear anybody talking about that movie period. Except for bloggers at a loss as to how anybody could look at these pictures side by side and conclude: Yeah, this tortured, overwrought two-hour soap opera about a suburban American family "coming apart at the seams" beats that boxing movie all to hell! It's all the more ironic in that director Robert Redford, who got the gyp as producer on "President's Men", somehow slips one past the goalie on this film for which he in no way, shape, or form deserved winning.
Forrest Gump def. Pulp Fiction (March 27, 1995)
We saved the best for last. There is no nice way I can put this: Forrest Gump is a stupid movie about stupidity which centers on a mind-numbingly stupid character played by Tom Hanks. Yeah, I had forgotten all about it too, until I sat down to write this piece. Now proponents of the book upon which the film is based, written by Winston Groom, will argue that it's actually a terrific book; you just would never know it by the unsubtle, heavy-handed treatment it suffers at the hands of Robert Zemeckis, the hack director's hack director. Aside from the fact that this movie ripped off Pulp Fiction (and to a lesser extent, The Shawshank Redemption), it stinks all the more in that it also ripped off the guy who wrote the damn novel! The aforementioned Winston Groom was paid peanuts in light of the volume of currency this movie printed upon its release in 1994 (we're talking a disgusting amount of money here, folks), whereas the production's star and director each netted some 40 million bucks for their endeavors. The studio, whose name rhymes with Schmaramount, walked off with all the rest. Not a bad paycheck for a piece of shit, but that's Hollywood accounting for you. As for Pulp Fiction? Either you get that movie or you don't; I once knew a guy who didn't, and as far as I'm concerned that was just his loss. The Tarantino film obviously stands in a class by itself, all the more impressive in light of the litany of futile and genuinely lousy attempts to copy him and his movie over the years. Thumbs down, WAY down, for Forrest Gump!
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