(Number I saw at the cinema then: 1. Number I have seen now: 10)
Beverly Hills Cop
Ghostbusters
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Gremlins
The Karate Kid
Police Academy
Footloose
Romancing The Stone
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
Splash
I’ve written a fair few film reviews over the years but thankfully have never had to write a review of Ghostbusters. Why “thankfully” you may ask? The simple answer is, because it was such a big film during my early childhood that I really cannot view it impartially. Is it a good film or is it a bad film? I honestly can’t tell.
Perhaps that’s not quite true. I can say fairly confidently that it isn’t a “bad” film per se. It’s also so fondly remembered that it had definitely achieved a degree of classic status. As Adam Buxton has noted, it was also marketed very well. I later had the Atari computer game (“Don’t cross the streams!”). I love the Stay Puft Marshmallow bit. I actually thought he was real for a while too. Not “real”: but I thought he was a genuine US advertising symbol who had been turned into a monster for the film. But he wasn’t. He was entirely made up for Ghostbusters.
Nearly thirty years later, I actually selected Ghostbusters the song to be played at my wedding (although not for the ‘first dance). It was a popular choice. But is it a genuinely good film? I honestly don’t know.
As with E.T., I had a shock early on: the library ghost sequence is easily the scariest bit in a not very scary film. But I was older now (eight, in fact: I’m sure I didn’t see it until 1985) and was now confident enough to still enjoy the film. I went to see it with my mum who didn’t like it at all. I seem to remember her being so bored that she read a magazine during the film. My memory may be playing me false here, however. How would she have read a magazine in the dark? I don’t think she liked it though anyway.
For the first time, I’ve actually seen all ten films listed, so I’ll run through them all quickly. 1984 seems to have been a much better film year than 1983:
Beverly Hills Cop: Really surprised this beat Ghostbusters to the top spot. Okay, but nothing special as I remember. People went nuts about the theme tune though.
Temple of Doom: Okay, but EASILY the worst of the three 1980s Indy films. I first saw it when it was broadcast on TV on Christmas Day a few years later. Part of the problem is that while the first film is based around the mythical Ark of the Covenant and the third one is based around the mythical Holy Grail, this one’s based around the…er… famous temple of Doom? It might as well be called Indiana Jones and ‘the Chamber of Bollocks.” Too silly, too much screeching, too many jumpy bits. And a bit racist, let’s face it.
Gremlins: Was scared to see this for a while after hearing an American relative describe how evil and demonic the Gremlins are. Of course, I saw it eventually, perhaps in my teens and wasn’t scared at all. It’s great fun. And all the “don’t get them wet/don’t feed them after midnight” stuff is genius.
The Karate Kid: Didn’t see this until my thirties when my wife made me watch it to fill a gap in my cinematic education. It’s okay. I suspect I’d like it more now if I had seen it as a child.
Police Academy: The sort of thing I used to end up watching on video at a friend’s house in the late 1980s. Confused me for a while: are all gay men big leather-clad bikers? Generally not a big fan. But I did later see Police Academy 6: City Under Siege at the cinema. No excuse really.
Footloose: Didn’t see this until my twenties. I still like it a lot though. John Lithgow can do no wrong in my eyes. The “Let’s Here It For The Boy” bit always makes me a bit sad though. Chris Penn was clearly so fit and healthy-looking then. What on Earth went wrong?
Romancing The Stone: Good, as I remember. We saw it as an end of term treat at junior school. It was a relatively ‘dangerous’ choice. The sequel’s not as good though.
Star Trek III: It’s easy to forget how popular Star Trek films were at the time. No one really watches them now. This was an odd numbered Star Trek film though and thus DULL.
Splash: An early video choice for the family. Very likeable and the first time I’d seen Tom Hanks in anything.
The first ever US Academy Awards are held. First World War-based thriller Wings wins the first ever Best Picture Oscar.
1933:
In a scene reminiscent of the early scenes of the 2001 comedy film Zoolander, comedian Will Rogers opens the Best Director envelope and says, “Come and get It Frank!” Unfortunately, there were two directors called Frank nominated in that year. Frank Capra was half way to the podium before Rogers clarified that it was Frank Lloyd, director of Cavalcade who had won, not Capra. Happily, Frank Capra later won for Mr Deeds Goes To Town in 1936. In future years, the awards are always announced in a heavily scripted way, in the hope of preventing such an embarrassing error ever happening again.
1940:
Hattie McDaniel becomes the first black woman to win an acting Oscar (Best Supporting Actress: Gone With The Wind). Having been barred from the film’s Atlanta premiere due to the state’s racial laws, she is made to sit at a segregated table during the Oscar ceremony. She is only allowed to attend at all due to the Ambassador Hotel making an exception to its usual strict ‘no blacks’ policy. Her white agent sat with her at the ceremony.
1941:
How Green Is My Valley beats Citizen Kane for Best Picture. Citizen Kane subsequently became the most critically acclaimed film of all time.
1964:
Sidney Poitier (Lillies Of The Field) becomes the first black actor to win an Oscar.
1968:
A very rare occurrence: A tie in the Best Actress category.
Barbara Streisand wins for Funny Girl. Katharine Hepburn also wins for The Lion
In Winter (her third). As most Oscars are determined by votes from several
thousand Academy members, a tie is a frequent possibility.
1970:
George C. Scott wins Best Actor for Patton. He chooses not
to attend and instead stays home and watches a ball game on the other channel.
1972:
Native American Sacheen Littlefeather surprises viewers by
attending to reject Marlon Brando’s second Oscar won for The Godfather on his
behalf. t “He very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And
the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the
film industry,” she says. She is actually not a political activist herself but
a small-time actress who later appears in Playboy magazine.
1973:
In a famously impromptu remark, host David Niven comments on
a streaker who disrupts the ceremony: “Isn’t
it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in
his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?
1974:
Robert De Niro wins his first Oscar playing Vito Corleone in
The Godfather Part II. Marlon Brando played the same character in 1972’s The
Godfather. It is the only time two actors have won Oscars for playing the same
(fictional) person.
Tatum O’Neal becomes the youngest ever person to win a competitive
Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress – Paper Moon). She is ten (she turned
nine during filming).
1978:
Annie Hall beats Star Wars for Best Picture. Director and star Woody Allen begins a long tradition of not attending the Oscars (choosing to perform jazz music elsewhere on Oscar Night instead). He finally attends in 2002.
British actress Vanessa Redgrave (Best Supporting Actress: Julia) is audibly booed after she attacks opponents of her documentary film, The Palestinian as “Zionist hoodlums”. She also attacks former President Nixon.
1979:
Jane Fonda (Best Actress: Coming Home) uses sign language during her acceptance speech to highlight awareness of deafness. It is her second Oscar: she also won for Klute in 1972.
1981:
Robert De Niro wins his second Oscar for Martin Scorsese’s
Raging Bull. The timing is awkward as the new President, former actor, Ronald Reagan
has just been shot and wounded in an assassination attempt. His attempted
assassin John Hinckley was reportedly inspired by Scorsese and De Niro’s 1976
film Taxi Driver and a desire to “impress” his teenaged co-star Jodie Foster
(she is not impressed).
T
1982:
Katharine Hepburn wins her fourth and final Oscar for On
Golden Pond. No other actor, male or female, has ever won four Oscars. Cate
Blanchett later wins one for playing Hepburn herself in The Aviator in 2004.
Hepburn’s co-star Henry Fonda becomes easily the oldest ever
Best Actor winner at 76. Too ill to attend the ceremony, his daughter and
co-star, Jane Fonda collects the award on his behalf (he dies a few months
later).
Screenwriter Colin Welland shouts “The British are coming!”
following the success of Chariots of Fire this year. In fact, the next decade will
prove a very lean one for British cinema, although Gandhi does win Best Picture
in 1983.
1984:
Sally Field wins her second Oscar for Places In My Heart. “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect,” she says. “The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!” Seen my many as overly sentimental, Field’s speech is often misquoted as: “You like me, you really like me!”
Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost) becomes only the second black actress to win Best Supporting Actress.
1992:
Silence of the Lambs wins in all of the “Big Five”
categories: Best Film, Actor (Anthony Hopkins),
Actress (Jodie Foster), Director (Jonathan Demme) and Adapted
Screenplay. This is the only the third time this has ever happened (the previous
films were 1932’S It Happened One Night and 1975’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s
Nest).
Rumours abound that Jack Palance read out the wrong name
during his announcement of the Best Supporting Actress winner Marisa Tomei (My
Cousin Vinnie) In fact, though a surprise result, Tomei undoubtedly won. That
said, Palance did seem to be in a somewhat “tired and emotional” state as he
announced the award.
1993:
Couple Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon use the Best Film Editing category as a political opportunity urging the government to let HIV-positive Haitians being held at Guantanamo into the US.
1994:
“Oh, wow. This is the best drink of water after the longest
drought of my life.” Steven Spielberg (Best Director: Schindler’s List) finally
wins. Schindler’s List is the first black and white film to win Best Picture
since The Apartment (1960).
1995:
Tom Hanks wins two Best Actor Oscars in consecutive years for
Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, a feat not achieved since Spencer Tracey in the
1930s, He delivers highly emotional acceptance speeches both times, inadvertently
“outing” a high school teacher as gay in the first (a moment which later
inspired the Kevin Kline film In and Out) and in the second stating “I feel
like I’m standing on magic legs.”
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) loses the Best Supporting
Actor Oscar to Martin Landau (Ed Wood). Lipreaders can see Jackson clearly says
“shit” on hearing the announcement from 12 year old, Anna Paquin. Jackson is
unrepentant afterwards, arguing he deserved to win.
1999:
George Clooney, Nick Nolte, Ed Harris and many other actors refuse to stand or applaud Elia Kazan’s Lifetime Achievement Oscar. The On The Waterfront director testified to the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952
2002:
Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball) becomes the first black winner of the Best Actress Oscar.
2003:
Filmmaker Michael Moore (Best Documentary: Bowling For
Columbine) provokes a mixed reaction with an attack on President George W.
Bush: “We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that
elects a fictitious President. We live in a time where we have a man sending us
to war for fictitious reasons…Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any
time you’ve got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.”
Adrien Brody (Best Actor: The Pianist) kisses actress Halle
Berry on receiving his award.
2004:
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King becomes the
third film to win eleven Oscars. The others are Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic
(1997). All About Eve (1950) and Titanic remain the most nominated films (14
each). The Return of the King is the only fantasy film to win Best Picture (no
sci-fi film has ever won it) and only the second sequel (the first was The
Godfather Pt II in 1974).
2007:
Martin Scorsese finally wins (Director: The Departed) after years of being overlooked. “Could you double check the envelope?” he quips.
2010:
A showdown between Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and
James Cameron’s Avatar. The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture. Bigelow becomes the
first woman to win Best Director (she and Cameron were married between 1989 and
1991).
2012:
The Artist is the first black and white film to win Best
Picture since 1993’s Schindler’s List. Contrary to popular belief, it is not technically
a silent film. Wings, the very first Best Picture winner, remains the only
silent winner in this category.
Christopher Plummer (Best Supporting Actor: Beginners)
becomes the oldest ever performer to win a competitive actor Oscar. He is 82.
Meryl Streep wins her 17th nomination (and her third win)
for The Iron Lady joking: “When they called my name, I had this feeling I could
hear half of America going, ‘Oh no. Come on… Her, again?’ You know. But,
whatever.” No actor has ever been nominated as many times as Streep has:
Katharine Hepburn won four times but was only nominated a still impressive 12
times. In 2018, Streep received her 21st nomination for The Post. Her other two
wins were for Kramer Vs Kramer and Sophie’s Choice.
2013:
Daniel Day Lewis wins his third acting Oscar for Lincoln.
Only five other actors have achieved three Oscar wins: Katharine Hepburn (who,
as previously mentioned, won four), Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Walter
Brennan and Ingrid Bergman.
2014:
John Travolta messes up his introduction to a performance
from Frozen by Idina Menzel: “Please welcome the wickedly talented, one
and only Adele Dazeem,” he says.
2016:
The Oscars are widely criticised for a lack of racial diversity in the nominations.
Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins Best Actor for The Revenant.
2017:
In an embarrassing cock up, La La Land is briefly announced
as Best Picture, instead of the actual winner, Moonlight. The mistake – which
seems to have resulted from veteran actor Warren Beatty being given the card
revealing La La Land actress Emma Stone’s Best Actress Oscar in error, and
Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s understandably confused reaction – is only corrected
after two minutes (“There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best
picture…This is not a joke. Moonlight has won best picture”) by which time the
La La Land team are midway through their acceptance speech.
Casey Affleck wins for Manchester by the Sea despite
widespread controversy over sexual harassment allegations. Actress Brie Larson,
an advocate of sexual assault victims, presents the award to Affleck, but seems
unhappy with the result.
2019:
Comedian Kevin Hart steps down as host of the Oscars after controversy emerges over a slew of allegedly homophobic tweets he sent in the past. It is decided the Oscars will not have an official host for the first time since 1989.
Four score and seven years ago (or thereabouts) the Oscars burst onto the world. With this year’s ceremony fast approaching, let’s take a look back at the highs and lows of Academy Award history…
1927: World War I based thriller Wings wins the first ever Best Picture Oscar. It is the last silent film to win until The Artist wins in 2012.
1933: In a scene reminiscent of the early scenes of Zoolander, comedian Will Rogers opens the Best Director envelope and says “Come and get It Frank!” Unfortunately, there were two directors called Frank nominated in that year. Frank Capra was half way to the podium before Rogers clarified that it was Frank Lloyd, director of Cavalcade who had won, not Capra. Happily, Frank Capra wins for Mr Deeds Goes To Town in 1936. In future years, the awards are always announced in a heavily scripted way, to avoid such a cock up happening again.
1941: How Green Is My Valley beats Citizen Kane, subsequently the most critically acclaimed film of all time, for Best Picture.
1968; A tie in the Best Actress category! Barbara Streisand wins for Funny Girl. Katharine Hepburn also wins for The Lion In Winter (her third).
1970: George C. Scott wins Best Actor for Patton. He chooses not to attend and instead watches a ball game on the other channel.
1972: Native American Sacheen Littlefeather picks up Marlon Brando’s Oscar for him to promote Native American issues (it is Brando’s second. This one is for The Godfather). She is actually not a political activist herself but a small time actress and later appears in Playboy.
1973: David Niven remarks of a streaker at the ceremony that “the only laugh that man will ever get is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings”.
1974: Robert De Niro wins his first Oscar playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. Marlon Brando played the same character in 1972’s The Godfather. It is the only time two actors have won Oscars for playing the same (fictional) person.
1980: Robert De Niro also wins his second Oscar for Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. The timing is awkward as President Reagan has just been shot. His attempted assassin John Hinckley was reportedly inspired by Scorsese and De Niro’s 1976 film Taxi Driver.
1981: Katharine Hepburn wins her fourth and final Oscar for On Golden Pond. No other actor, male or female, has ever won four. Cate Blanchett later wins one for playing Hepburn herself in The Aviator in 2004.
1992: Rumours abound that Jack Palance read out the wrong name during his announcement of the Best Supporting Actress winner Marisa Tomei. In fact, this is impossible: only one name is ever on the card, the name of the winner. Marisa Tomei in fact thoroughly deserved to win for My Cousin Vinny (even though it was a surprise result). That said, Palance did seem to be in a somewhat “tired and emotional” state as he announced the award.
1995: Tom Hanks wins two Best Actor Oscars in consecutive years (a feat not achieved since Spencer Tracey in the 1930s) for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Both times he delivers excruciating acceptance speeches inadvertently “outing” a high school teacher in the first (a moment which inspired the Kevin Kline film In and Out) and in the second stating “I feel like I’m standing on magic legs.”
1995: Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) loses the Best Supporting Actor Oscar to Martin Landau (Ed Wood). Lipreaders can see Jackson clearly says “shit” on hearing the announcement (from 12 year old An Paquin). Jackson is later unrepentant, arguing he deserved the award more than Landau.
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King becomes the third film to win eleven Oscars. The others are Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997). All About Eve (1950) and Titanic remain the most nominated films (14 each).
2012: Meryl Streep wins her 17th nomination (and her third win) for The Iron Lady. No actor has ever been nominated as many times as she has. In 2014, she won her 18th nomination for August: Osage County. Her other wins were for Kramer Vs Kramer and Sophie’s Choice.
2013: Daniel Day Lewis wins his third acting Oscar for Lincoln. Only five other actors have achieved this: Katharine Hepburn (who won four), Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Walter Brennan and Ingrid Bergman.
Trying to guess who will win this year’s Best Picture Oscar? Why not let the past be your guide?
Sixteen of the last fifty Best Picture winners were based on true stories (for the record, I am counting The French Connection as “true” but not Shakespeare In Love). This, of course, means that around 68% of the last fifty Best Picture winners were entirely fictional. The most recent “real life” winners were and 12 Year’s A Slave.
Comedies hardly ever win the Best Picture Oscar. Only around five of the last fifty Best Picture winners were comedies. Annie Hall, Forrest Gump, The Artist, Shakespeare In Love and American Beauty. And some would dispute that American Beauty or Forrest Gump are comedies.
Nearly half of the past fifty Best Picture winners had either a British director, lead actor or actress, a British setting or has other heavy British involvement.
No science fiction film has ever won Best Picture. Gravity, Avatar, Star Wars and A Clockwork Orange were all nominated but didn’t win in this category.
Only two sequels have ever won. The Godfather Part II (the first Godfather film also won) and the third Lord of the Rings film.
So Daniel Day Lewis has nailed Abraham Lincoln. Bill Murray also apparently masters FDR in the forthcoming Hyde Park on Hudson while Anthony Hopkins (amongst others) have recreated Richard Nixon on screen while Dennis Quaid and John Travolta have (sort of) portrayed Bill Clinton. But what about all the other presidents who have never had a decent shot at being on screen? Here are a few possible contenders:
George Washington
Who was he? Only the first US president (1789-97) and victor in the American War of Independence (or as the Americans more excitingly call it, the Revolutionary War).
Who could play him? Tricky. Tom Hanks? Washington doesn’t actually look much like any contemporary actor.
Prospects? On the one hand, it’s surprising there haven’t been more films about Washington. On the other, films about the early days of the Republic (Revolution, The Patriot, The Alamo) often perform badly at the box office. And are boring.
Teddy Roosevelt
Who was he? The 26th president (1901-1909). The youngest ever Commander in Chief whose refusal to shoot a bear on a hunting expedition inspired the creation of the teddy bear. More importantly, he fought and won a vital domestic battle against the great monopolies (trusts) of his day and pledged to “speak softly and wield a big stick” in foreign policy. Later ran as an independent presidential candidate and is distantly related to Democrat president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45).
Who could play him? John Goodman, Oliver Platt, Nathan Lane. Anyone fat basically.
Prospects? Already a major character played by Brian Keith in The Wind and the Lion (1975), Teddy R also had a tragic upbringing and an exciting military career. He was also shot and wounded as a presidential candidate in 1912, but delivered a speech regardless. Potentially a great film.
Dwight David Eisenhower
Who was he? Ike was a leading commander in World War II and in peacetime 1953-61) a hugely popular president.
Who could play him? Anthony Hopkins. Ed Harris. Anyone bald.
Prospects? Ike’s military career was exciting but his presidency was uneventful. Unless you enjoy watching people play golf.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Who was he? Youthful charismatic inspiration to the world, Cold Warrior, first Catholic president and compulsive womaniser. Famously assassinated 1963.
Who could play him? Was played well on TV by Greg Kinnear and thirty years ago by Martin Sheen.
Prospects? JFK has been portrayed a few times in TV and film, but it’s surprising no one’s done a full scale biopic yet. War hero, family tragedy, nuclear confrontation, the battle for civil rights: it’s all there. That said, it’s quite tricky to square this with his womanising and dealings with the Mafia particularly as the Kennedy family remain such a potent force in the US. Their opposition effectively forced an end to the (admittedly dodgy) Greg Kinnear/Katie Holmes TV series The Kennedys.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Who was he? Kennedy’s successor (1963-69) began his presidency well with a wealth of civil rights and anti-poverty legislation (“the Great Society”) but ultimately became hopelessly bogged down in the Vietnam quagmire.
Who could play him? Liam Neeson. Perhaps Daniel Day Lewis again.
Prospects? Ultimately a bit of a downer story-wise and the garrulous sometimes bullying LBJ is not an instantly loveable figure.
Ronald Reagan
Who was he? Simple minded Hollywood actor turned ultra-conservative 40th president (1981-89). Almost started World War III but somehow managed to oversee the end of the Cold War instead.
Who could play him? Warren Beatty, Tom Hanks, Josh Brolin (who played him in the short lived TV series). Richard Dreyfus could play Gorbachev, Sacha Baron Cohen Colonel Gadaffi while John Hamm could be Oliver North.
Prospects? Great. Assassination attempts, arms to Ira, bombing in Libya and Reagan’s ultimate decline into Alzheimer’s. A movie is only a matter of time,
Films that sound like they should be about presidents …but are not.
George Washington: 2000 film set in a depressed contemporary US city. Not actually about the first US president.
Garfield: About a cat. Nothing at all to do with the 20th president James A. Garfield who was assassinated in 1881.
Ted: No. Not about Teddy Roosevelt at all. Seth MacFarlane adult comedy about a teddy bear who comes to life.
The Truman Show: A man who grows up in a world entirely created for TV. His name’s Truman Burbank. Nothing to do with atomic bomb dropper Harry S. Truman (1945-53). That one was actually portrayed by Gary Sinese in the decent 1995 TV movie Truman.
JFK: Actually very little about JFK himself, aside from a short biography at the start. O liver Stone’s film is instead a dramatised account of the investigation into why the 35th president was assassinated. And by whom.
Dead Presidents: Hughes Brothers’ crime drama. “Dead presidents” is US slang for banknotes (which, of course, have portraits of dead presidents on them).
Are you a film actor? Would you like to win, or at least be nominated for, an Academy Award? Well, you’re probably cutting it a bit fine for this time round. But if you want to be considered in the future, perhaps try one of the following:
Play a real person.
The Oscars always like this. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone instantly recognisable (the Queen, Margaret Thatcher, George VI, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Edith Piaf, Truman Capote, Ray Charles) or not (Erin Brockovich, John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, Harvey Milk, Ron Kovic) playing a real person living or dead definitely gives you an edge.
Do an accent.
Meryl Streep isn’t the only one to have benefitted for doing accents other than her own. This often goes hand in hand with playing real people (see above). It need not be an overseas accent either: even Colin Firth did a bit of a funny accent in The Kings’s Speech.
Doing an accent sometimes even leads to Oscars when the accent is bad. Witness Sean Connery’s inconsistent Irish brogue in The Untouchables or Michael Caine’s bizarre accent in The Cider House Rules. The effect works less well if the film in silent (The Artist).
Don’t win too often.
Tom Hanks won two years in a row (for Philadelphia and Forest Gump) but this is rare. Generally, the Academy is more likely to favour you gradually. Meryl Steep and Jack Nicholson won each of their three Oscars apiece during different decades. On the other hand, if you are felt to have had a near miss one year (like Colin Firth for A Single Man or Kate Winslet several times) you are more likely to win at the next one.
Be British.
This is statistically likely to favour you perhaps because of the perceived gravitas the accent is thought to imbue (rightly or wrongly).
Be very old or very young.
The Oscars like a novelty like Jessica Tandy or Anna Paquin in The Piano. This has been less true in recent years though.
Avoid scandal.
Russell Crowe’s phone throwing tantrum probably cost him a second Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. Avoid belittling or attacking the Oscars too. They won’t thank you for it.
Play someone with something wrong with them.
It doesn’t matter what. Autism, blindness, dementia, madness, a stammer. All go down well with the Academy.
Finally…combine as many of the above as possible into one performance…and Oscar glory will be yours!(Just remember to thank us in your speech…)
Chris Hallam's World View 