1973 Best Adapted Screenplay

Time now to begin the next screenplay category, in this case, Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published for 1973.

And the Nominees are:

• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, based on his novel
• The Last Detail by Robert Towne, based on the novel by Darryl Ponicsan
• The Paper Chase by James Bridges, based on the novel by John Jay Osborn, Jr.
• Paper Moon by Alvin Sargent based on the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown
• Serpico by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler, based on the non-fiction book by8 Peter Maas

As you might be able to tell, I've already talked about most of these, and won't go over them again until the category write-up. So next up is Paper Moon, followed by Serpico.

1973 Best Original Screenplay: My Choice

Once again, we come to the point where we need to look back over the category and discuss the winner, whether they deserved it, and who did if they didn't.

Once again, the nominees for Best Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Produced or Published in 1973 were:

• American Graffiti, written by George Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck
• Cries and Whispers, written by Ingmar Bergman
• Save the Tiger, written by Steve Shagan
• The Sting, written by David S. Ward
• A Touch of Class written by Melvin Frank and Jack Rose

The Winner: The Sting

Weighing the Nominees:

American Graffiti in a Nutshell

It's difficult to describe what makes American Graffiti on a screenplay level, but I'll try. It's a combination of a random events plot that's still compelling, as well as a nice snapshot of its time period that doesn't feel dishonest or pandering. While one could call it "60's cars and music: the motion picture", it's not like everything is just window dressing.

The movie has inspired a generation, and made stars out of nearly all its cast (oddly enough, its biggest future star had the smallest role of the main cast). The cars are neat to look at and the soundtrack is killer, but it's not all cars and songs, and it has some real heart. When school King suggests to his longtime girlfriend that while he's away at college they see other people, her reaction is entirely honest. She doesn't throw a scene, she doesn't dump him on the spot, but she's angry, and he's in trouble. The film is full of little honest moments like that.

And yes, the music, and interjections from DJ Wolfman Jack, do sort of underscore the action and provide a bit of hidden commentary, so much so that I wonder if the songs were part of the screenplay. If they were, this alone could put it near the winner's circle.

Cries and Whispers in Red and White

Then there's the reddest of the red, Ingmar Bergman's classic drama, Cries and Whispers, one of the final films not primarily in English to receive a Best Picture nomination for a couple of decades, before the love affair was renewed in the mid-90's. As I said in my initial review, I did appreciate the screenplay, and the performances, and the artistic way it handled topics like grief, love and hate, and made you question reality. While the color motif was probably self-indulgent, that's not a fault on the screenplay level. It's hard to qualify this film against the others, as this film is so different in tone, presentation and theme than any of its competitors. It would be like trying to decide if Shakespeare's Coriolanus matches up with stories by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce Carol Oates and Flannery O'Connor. While I appreciated what it was doing, it was also kinda hard to watch, and the symbolism sometimes went over my head.

Henry and Hooker scheme together in The Sting

On the other hand, I was gripped by The Sting, a period dramedy that hit every note it was going for, and without any major flaws. In fact, the biggest issue I had with it was the idea that we were supposed to buy Robert Redford as an inexperienced kid, but that's not the screenplay's fault.

I said in my review that movies like this need a good build-up and a great pay-off. And it had both. I don't know what else to say because The Sting is just a complete movie from start to finish. It just plain works. It's pretty rare for that to be the case, so it's very much under consideration for the win right now.

Two Jacks argue in Save the Tiger

I did appreciate the nearly one-man show that is Save the Tiger, and if I had a problem with it at all it was probably the fact that the one visible PTSD moment our character has comes very late in the film and isn't repeated, so it almost seems to come out of nowhere. That being said, the strength of this film was in Lemmon's performance, so I can't say this one is a winner. A deserved nominee, absolutely, but not a winner.

One thing I didn't talk about in my review was the reason for the title. Well, at one point Harry is asked to sign a petition to save the tigers in the rainforests of Africa because their numbers are dwindling. He does sign it, after taking a long look at the poster (which depicts a majestic tiger), possibly wondering if he and the tiger didn't have something in common; both had once been at the top of their game and now both needed someone else to save them.

Jackson and Segal reject the toilet seat in a Touch of Class

Finally, I had a good time watching A Touch of Class, but can't say it was really an Oscar-worthy film. In a stronger year I don't think it would have gotten noticed. It was clever, charming and very funny, with some genuine sadness at the end, but it feels like a number of other romantic dramedies that have come both before and since. Maybe it was that aspect that the Academy latched onto; maybe it reminded them of some older classics like Lover Come Back, That Touch of Mink or The Apartment. I dunno, but it's pretty clearly not winning this.

Honestly, this time the Academy got it right. Some fierce competition from American Graffiti and Cries and Whispers, but they got it right.

My Choice: The Sting

Next up is Adapted Screenplay and then it's time to choose another category.

A Touch of Class

Film: A Touch of Class
Year: 1973
Cast: George Segal, Glenda Jackson, Paul Sorvino, K Callan, Hildegarde Neil, Cec Linder, Lisa Vanderpump, Michael Elwyn, Mary Barclay, Nadim Sawalha
Director: Melvin Frank
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Jackson), Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song

Why do married people have affairs? I get the thrill of doing something different, something forbidden, etc. But this film illustrates just how dangerous it can be trying to keep all those secrets from your spouse.

Steve (George Segal) is a successful businessman, married with two children, while Vickie (Glenda Jackson) is a divorcee, also with two children, who works in the fashion industry. The two of them have a very standard "meet cute" which quickly turns into Steve asking Vickie if she'd like a no-strings-attached fling.

This isn't the first time Steve has done this, it turns out, and in fact, he has places he uses in various cities when he travels, and he invites Vickie to one such place, where she's all for the idea of a casual encounter...but not in the rather mean accommodations Steve has provided. Steve is so eager to go through with it that he arranges a trip to Málaga for the two of them, and pretends the entire thing is a business trip to try and discourage his socialite wife (Hildegarde Neil) from coming along.

I must admit, the truly Herculean efforts he goes through to ensure that she doesn't come with him are hilarious to watch. I won't describe them other than to say they involve a number of phone calls, because honestly this movie is worth a watch and I want you to find it as funny as I did. In fact the first half of this movie is one hilarious scene after another in which absolutely nothing goes right for two people who are increasingly putting more and more effort into their casual affair and gradually losing it more and more.

While the movie never gets truly bad, and in fact, like I said, is worth you watching it yourself, I feel like the first half is where its strengths are. In the second half, things take a turn for the solidly dramatic, which ordinarily wouldn't be so bad, except that it's a pretty sudden tonal shift, and not one I'm sure I believed all that much.

Part of the problem is that I felt like Steve and Vickie were wrong for each other, and the more the movie seemed it wanted me to root for their happiness, the more I wanted them to come to their senses and realize this whole thing just isn't working. Steve "falls in love" with Vickie, which never seems like more than infatuation. Their wrongness for each other made the first half work and the second half seem a bit dishonest. It also should be used as a deterrent for anyone considering an affair themselves.

As you see above, the movie scored a number of Oscar nods, including Best Picture. One that it didn't get was Best Actor for George Segal, and I think he was robbed, personally. Not only does he have a truly wonderful sense of comic timing, the perfect facial expression for each moment, and a rapier wit, but he also manages to come off like a sympathetic everyman despite playing a rich guy looking to cheat on his wife. I feel like Segal carried the movie. I would have nominated him before I would have nominated Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino (I know, heresy) or Robert Redford, and if he had been nominated, I would have considered him a real threat to Jack Lemmon.

But Jackson did get nominated, and in fact, she won. I read that her win was a shock; that most predictions went for Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist or Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty. Quite frankly I'm still making up my mind about this category, and as I haven't gotten there yet, I won't elaborate, but I'll say that Jackson's acting style can be summed up in one word; poise. Jackson, an actress I've seen in only two films (and she won an Oscar for both), is statuesque, imperious and deadpan, and it works for her incredibly well. While her range might be in question, what she does with the material here seems exactly what's called for. Matching wits with George Segal, she might not carry the film like he does, but she matches him barb for barb, and is an absolute delight.

As for the film's other nominations, I can't help but feel like it doesn't really belong. It's a romantic dramedy that feels like a dozen others I've seen. While the two leads are splendid, and Michael Elwyn, in a smaller role as Vickie's gay assistant, is so hilarious that I wonder why he didn't have a huge career, the movie itself seems pretty light and inconsequential, especially when compared to its competitors in both categories. I would have given a Best Picture nod to Save the Tiger or Paper Moon in a heartbeat before considering this one. I also don't think it deserved a screenplay nod. What sold this were its two leads.

In many respects, this film reminds me of As Good as it Gets, a film released over 20 years later, featuring two respected actors we know are capable of great performances, but ultimately the film produced is so standard that we wonder why the Oscars seemed to love it; giving it Best Picture and Best Screenplay nods, and winning Best Actress.

It feels like I'm saying it's a good film but it's bad. What I'm really trying to say is that you'll have fun watching it, and the two leads are definitely Oscar-worthy (at least as nominees), but the rest of the film just isn't.

The Sting

Film: The Sting
Year: 1973
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Ray Walston, Eileen Brennan, Harold Gould, John Heffernan, Dana Elcar, Jack Kehoe, Dimitra Arliss, Robert Earl Jones, James Sloyan, Charles Dierkop, Lee Paul, Sally Kirkland
Director: George Roy Hill
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Redford), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song Score, Best Sound

Well, this is it. The film that could be considered "the big one" for 1973. Nominated for ten awards, and won seven, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Did it deserve to? Let's delve into it and see.

For starters, I should mention that this is the exact same trio of two leading men and director as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid back in 1969, which also received Best Picture and Best Director nominations and ended up winning Best Original Screenplay, though in that case it was the great William Goldman who penned it. This screenplay came from David S. Ward, and from what I saw from a brief glance at his filmography, this is his best script. He did Sleepless in Seattle, as well, resulting in his only other nomination, but it seems like a majority of his scripts were screwball comedies like King Ralph and Down Periscope. If you'd never told me the same man wrote this movie, I would never have thought so. Ever.

There's nothing like a good con movie, is there? I confess; I love seeing good (or at least, less bad) people get one over on a really bad guy, and this is exactly what this movie is about. Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) is a small-time grifter who's spent the last few years learning short grab-and-run jobs from his mentor, Luther (Robert Earl Jones, who, yes, is James's father, and the two look and sound so similar it's uncanny), but after successfully conning a man who turned out to be carrying well over a thousand dollars, Luther decides he's taught Hooker all he can, and announces he's retiring. Bad move, Luther, don't you know this is a crime movie?

It turns out the guy they pulled their latest con job on is a carrier for a very powerful crime boss, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). And Lonnegan is not the forgiving type. Worst yet, Hooker is being hounded by a corrupt cop, Snyder (Charles Durning), who knows he ripped off Lonnegan and wants a cut for himself. Lonnegan finds out it was Luther who pulled the job, and, well, I mean, we already know Luther was speaking openly of retirement, and we all know what that means. Plus, he was the only black character in a movie from the 70's, so...

Hooker wisely skips town and searches out one of Luther's associates, Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), whom Luther had claimed knew how to teach the "big cons", as opposed to the street grifting that Luther and Hooker routinely engaged in. But Hooker's not all that interested in merely conning people with more money; he wants revenge on Lonnegan, and he'll do it the only way he knows how; by running a massive con on the crime lord that will ruin him. The trick, of course, is to con him so thoroughly that he won't know it until it's far too late, and that he'll be stripped of any resources with which to retaliate.

Henry's got a lot of knowledge, and is connected to some of the bigger names in the business. Together with guys like JJ Singleton (Ray Walston), Kid Twist (Harold Gould) and the Erie Kid (Jack Kehoe), they work together to take Lonnegan for nearly all he's worth. Don't you love those names?

This kind of movie is dependent on an intriguing setup and satisfying payoff, preferably with colorful characters we enjoy watching. And boy, does this movie deliver. I loved literally every second of watching these con men work. From start to finish, I was hooked, trying to see if I could piece together their plan myself before I saw it being put into action, worrying with them when it looked like it was about to go off the rails, and wondering how much of what I was seeing could I take at face value.

On top of that, the charming period setting, enhanced by sets and backdrops that called back to old Hollywood, with period-era costumes that made actors of that era look like Cagney or Bogart, The Sting is as fun to look at as it is to watch.

Movies like this can sometimes feel like they might be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. After all, when your competitors are a Swedish art house film dealing with themes like death and estrangement, a nostalgic but critical look at small-town America in the 60's and one of the most bone-chilling, yet also the most thought-provoking, horror movies in American history, does a movie about a slick con really qualify as best?

The answer is...harder than it sounds. The problem with these movies is that they're all very different from each other, but that doesn't necessarily mean that by subject matter alone is one better or worse than another. The battle for the soul of an innocent girl with a demonic presence, or an existential drama that anthropomorphizes grief, fear, love and hatred might seem more "important" than a con job movie, or watching kids in the 60's drive around in cool cars listening to classic rock, but movies are more than their themes or plots. It's all about the total package.

On a screenplay level, I'll have to think a bit more about it before making my final selection. I loved the plot of this one right down to the ground, but it's got some fierce competition.

Let's also talk about the one nominated performance from this movie; Robert Redford as Johnny Hooker. For one thing, there's no doubt that Hooker is the central character. Newman may get top billing, and a lot of screen time, but he's very much the second lead; the mentor figure. He has no real stakes in this other than not getting caught. The focus is squarely on Hooker outwitting two major big figures that are out for his blood. So does he carry this film?

The answer is yes, sort of, because Redford is incredibly comfortable in his own skin, no matter who he's playing, and he always seems like he's in calm control of everything around him. The problem is that Hooker isn't supposed to be calm and self-possessed. He's supposed to be the inexperienced guy on his first big job, but at 36 and with all the confidence, breezy arrogance and self-assurance that comes with being Hollywood's principle leading man in the prime of your life, I never really felt any of the doubt, second-guessing or panic that a young guy in Hooker's position should feel.

I'm gonna say something about Redford that kinda flies in the face of popular opinion where he's concerned. And no, it's not that I have an issue with his acting; he's a very natural actor. It's that he keep hearing how young and "boyishly good-looking" he is, or was back in this era. I have never, ever felt that about him. He's a very handsome actor, no question. Strikingly handsome, and with none of the obnoxiousness that generally comes with guys who are unbelievably good-looking. This is undeniable. But youthful? No. He looked every inch of his 36 years here, and in fact I wouldn't have trouble believing he was over 40. He's constantly held up as one of those actors who "never age", or at least he was until he hit his late 70's and it couldn't be denied anymore that he was visibly aging, but hell, I won't look as good as he presently does even in my 60's, let alone my 80's. The more the other actors, several of whom looked about his age, called him "kid", the less I believed it.

If they'd cast him in the role of Henry and cast, say, Jeff Bridges as Hooker, it would have worked at least as well, perhaps better, because Bridges was still in his twenties but had enough self-assurance to pull of the scenes where Hooker is supposed to be fooling Lonnegan and his men. But where Redford is concerned, once he drops "character", I get the feeling we're supposed to feel his nervousness that not all will go according to plan, but I didn't, because Redford is so naturally sure of himself.

I don't know if I can hold that against him, but it's making me see why, despite a long and celebrated acting career, Redford has mostly received honors from the Academy, and other awards groups, for his directorial efforts. As an actor, he's almost too smooth, but in a way that makes him easy to like. But then, that likability counts for a lot, as does his easy chemistry with Paul Newman, and it helps us really loathe Lt. Snyder in his confrontational scenes with Hooker.

But what really made this film worthwhile, to me, was watching the con play out. Like I said; solid buildup, solid payoff, and that, more than anything else, is probably what won this film its screenplay award.

I also thought Newman did a great job, which didn't surprise me because he always does. His best scene, bar none, was when he manages to win big in a card game against Lonnegan, despite Lonnegan having fixed the game. He plays up the role of obnoxious bookie, and gets Lonnegan good and steamed, and then manages to out-cheat him, and Lonnegan can't say anything without revealing he cheated as well! I can kinda see why it was Redford and not Newman who got the Oscar nod for this; Newman isn't really being challenged here, and it's not really his story. As for the supporting cast, especially Shaw, Durning, Gould and to a degree, Walston, almost any of them would have made a better Supporting Actor nominee than Vincent Gardenia in Bang the Drum Slowly (see my write-up for that category).

But this vs. the Exorcist as Best Picture? Stay tuned for my category write-up for that one.

Cries and Whispers

Film: Cries and Whispers
Year: 1973
Cast: Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, Kari Sylwan, Inga Gill, Erland Josephson, Henning Moritzen, Georg Årlin, Anders Ek
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design

This is, without a doubt, the reddest movie I have ever seen. If anything in this movie is not red, it's white. All the characters wear so much white you'd think they were going to a wedding, except for one scene where Maria (Liv Ullman), hoping to seduce older physician David (Erland Josephson), wears a sultry red dress.

Agnes (Harriet Andersson) is dying slowly of a painful disease that the film doesn't name, but that context clues show is likely uterine cancer. Her sisters, older and frosty Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and younger, more emotional Maria (Liv Ullman) are staying watch over her during the night, as is her devoted maid Anna (Kari Sylwan), doing their best to make her comfortable in her last days. And doing an absolutely terrible job of it, with the exception of Anna, who seems to actually be in love with her mistress, which was likely recipricated (that's them up there on the poster).

This is one messed-up family. Anna has been cheating on her husband with the doctor caring for Agnes (see above) and Karin is an icy bitch "trapped in a loveless marriage" to Joakim (Henning Moritzen), who is at least as cold as she is, so she does what any sensible person could do and slices up her uterus with a shard of glass so that she can never bear him children. As one does.

Agnes, meanwhile, only wants to feel loved as her illness progresses and she realizes she's near the hour. The first half of the film concludes with Agnes's final passing, which seems at least as painful as the symptoms of her illness, at least until it's over, and from there on, we get to really dig into the numerous issues, physical, emotional, psychological and familial, that the others are going through.

Anna has lost probably the only friend she ever had; both remaining sisters either ignore her or treat her with coldness and cruelty, and we learn she also lost her (very young) daughter to another illness. Anna's insecurities about her sisters and Karin's seeming hatred of everyone, not least of all herself, come stridently to the forefront, and, well, it's hystrionic in the extreme, to say the least.

All of it plays out against the red background and white costumes; the walls are red, the floor is red, the bedsheets are red, even the book Maria reeds to Agnes is red. Why so much red? Well, according to Ingmar Bergman himself: "Cries and Whispers is an exploration of the soul, and ever since childhood, I have imagined the soul to be a damp membrane in varying shades of red."

Ooookay, then.

What this basically boils down to is a movie rich in symbolism that seems deliberately over-the-top and unreal. I could easily see it being based on a dream, or perhaps nightmare. There are some seemingly gothic horror moments in this film. Karin's self-mutilation, or at least its after-effects, are shown prominently. At one point it almost seems like Karin and Maria have a whole conversation in their minds while frozen in a catatonic state. Eventually Agnes's corpse starts crying and begging to be held, because even though she's dead, she can't get to sleep and needs help crossing over.

There are some dramatic pauses from the living characters, but they ultimately kinda take it in stride, telling her why they can't come hold her and let her pass, with Karin even pointing that the idea is disgusting because she's starting to rot. Of course, none of them point out that, being dead, she shouldn't be speaking to them at all. I do like how Bergman shot these scenes, though; Dead Agnes is never shown speaking, only heard.

Bergman punctuates his scenes of raw emotion with scenes of utter quiet, or scenes where the characters themselves might be quiet, but we the audience can hear ghostly whispers following them throughout the large, empty house. Yeah, I guess I didn't expect the title to be so literal, but damn if that's not pretty spooky. Like I said, moments of gothic horror.

If this had been made by an American director, and filmed in English (hell, if the director was just British), I think critics would have called it "self-indulgent" and "trying too hard to be great art" and they would have been justified. This is not a movie where subtelty rules the day. It's actually why I sometimes have a hard time taking foreign language films seriously; they keep pulling stuff Americans could never get away with and everyone loves it.

Oddly enough, I don't have any issues with the acting in this piece. Sure, it's pretty melodramatic in parts, but it fits the setting and scenario. I was particularly impressed with Ingrid Thulin, who had the thankless task of playing a character that is in no way sympathetic but also not villainous.

I also thought it was a pretty engrossing story, and I did like some of Ingmar Bergman's directorial choices, like the way he would frame wide shots to communicate the character's distance from each other and close-ups when characters are having an emotional catharsis. I feel like if I was just reading this story, it would haunt me, so I strongly support the nomination here. I don't even hate that the film went overboard with its overt red-and-white-themed symbolism. It's just very heavy-handed and I don't feel like Bergman was ever really called out for that.

This was the last foreign language film to be nominated for Best Picture until 1995, though Bergman himself would receive two more Best Director nods (for Face to Face and Fanny and Alexander) and two more Best Original Screenplay nods (for Autumn Sonata and Fanny and Alexander). This might be my first Bergman film, but I'm intrigued enough by what I saw here that I'm looking forward to my next one. Bergman might have been a little crazy. But good crazy.

American Graffiti

Film: American Graffiti
Year: 1973
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, MacKenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, Wolfman Jack, Bo Hopkins, Harrison Ford, Suzanne Somers
Director: George Lucas
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Clark), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing

Where was I in '62? Nowhere. But I kinda wish I had been.

Quick, I say the name George Lucas and you say...?

Thought so. But while we all love Star Wars (I mean, really, who doesn't?), I think this might be Lucas's unsung magnum opus. I say unsung, but it was a huge hit and garnered Lucas the first Oscar nominations of his career.

Not bad for a movie that's essentially Happy Days but with more reality ensuing.

Okay, that wasn't fair. But it's also not far off the mark. American Graffiti (by the way, was there much actual graffiti in this movie? I can't say I really noticed it) is a nostalgic look back at the era of a director's youth while also being a fairly frank look at what was really going on in that "more innocent time".

Knowing what would become of George Lucas in the modern age, it's almost like this movie, so unlike anything we associate with him, stands as a tribute to a time when he was sane. Yes, it was at least as troubled a production as Star Wars, but the end result is resoundingly down-to-earth, and a perfect snapshot of its time period. This movie is defined by its cars, its fashion, its cars, its hairstyles, its cars, shots of small-town American shops and diners, its cars and its soundtrack.

The plot could accurately be described as a night of teenagers in the summer of 1962 driving around town, yelling at each other from cars, and listening to the radio, which plays classic hit after classic hit throughout the film, the songs and the frequent interjections from DJ Wolfman Jack (playing himself) acting almost as a sort of Greek chorus.

So what makes this so compelling? Because it's really fascinating to watch. To be frank, I'm not sure. It's not like the nostalgic coming-of-age story had never been done before. But somehow, these kids, their cars, that crazy awesome soundtrack; it all just comes together to make something magical.

The group of teens in this film come from different walks of life but the town is small enough that they all know each other and hang out. The 19-year-old dropout Johnny Milner, who just wants to drag race and cruise for girls and has no intention of growing up (Paul LeMat) and hopeless nerd Terry "Toad" Fields (Charles Martin Smith) are friends, and Johnny only teases Toad lightly. High School "king" Steve Bolander (Ron Howard) and his longtime steady girlfriend Laurie Henderson (Cindy Williams) are that one couple everyone is sure will get married, while Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), her older brother, is Steve's best friend. The two of them are headed off to college in the morning, and this is their last night in town, but suddenly Curt isn't sure he wants to go, and Steve is mostly concerned about being able to see college girls while he's gone but still keep Laurie for when he's back in town. Meanwhile, Toad is elated that Steve has left his prize Chevy Impala in his care while he's gone, and he wastes no time taking it out on the strip to see what girls he can pick up. Of course, sweet ride or no, he's still Toad. He does manage to get an older girl, Debbie (Candy Clark) to take a ride with him, but she's an "experienced" (shall we say) woman of the world while he's an utter naife and soon he's in over his head the more he tries to impress her.

Johnny hears there's a new guy in town, Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford) who heard Johnny is the drag racing king of Modesto, and wants to challenge him. Johnny drives a modified, "pimped-out" 1932 Ford Deuce Coupé while Falfa is cruising in a 1955 Chevrolet One-Fifty Coupé and I can only imagine what the Ford and Chevy fans must have made of their rivalry back when this came out. It's kind of interesting watching Ford play a total jerk. But compounding the situation is that Johnny has unwittingly been saddled with Carol (MacKenzie Phillips), the younger sister of a girl he was hitting on through his car window, and by "younger" I mean 12. This is a pretty squicky situation (after all, what girl lets her preteen sister get in the car of a strange man?) but thankfully Johnny is just as squicked out by it as we are, wanting to get her home or back to her sister before anyone thinks anything funny is going on, with Carol determined to make that as hard for him as possible, because she wants to be out having fun.

Curt, meanwhile, catches a fleeting glance of a blonde woman in a T-Bird (Suzanne Somers), who seemingly mouths the words "I love you" directly to him before turning a corner and disappearing. Curt is determined to find out who she is, but with no car of his own and a habit of doing or saying things that get him kicked out of others' cars, he gets no closer to finding her, and runs afoul of a local gang, the Pharaohs, led by greaser Joe (Bo Hopkins).

As I understand it, this movie was extremely low budget (most of it might have gone into paying for all those cars and royalties for the music) and even filmed somewhat guerilla style, with some of the location shooting happening in areas they weren't allowed to film, and that almost no one wanted to distribute it because it didn't have any stars (yeah, really, all those names you recognize were nobodies back then). And then it became a surprise hit, and racked up five Oscar nods, only to lose all of them.

Well, the Picture, Director, Editing and Screenplay nominations were absolutely earned, and I'm a little surprised it didn't win at least editing, but Candy Clark is the only actor to be nominated here, and her performance is kinda one-note and nothing special at all. You've seen a million other performances like it. I think the real stand-outs here are Paul LeMat, who manages to make his "punk" character relatable and likeable, Charles Martin Smith, who has this nervous energy that adds to Toad's geeky charm, and MacKenzie Phillips, who removes any fear that she's in danger being so young and out so late by almost immediately taking charge of the situation in Johnny's car. Not that he wants to take advantage of her (at all!) but his frequent attempts to take her home, find her sister or at least make sure no one sees her in his car all fail hilariously thanks to her outsmarting him at every turn.

The screenplay nomination, for Lucas, his frequent collaborator Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who would go on to direct the ill-fated Howard the Duck from the same writers and with lucas as a producer, I can certainly understand, but I also understand why it lost, because this really is a sort of "random events plot" that follows around several small groups of people just sort of...doing stuff. It manages to make it compelling, but how much of that was the acting, the cinematography or the acting? Of course, it's also got all those songs which come on at important moments, and I understand that was part of the script as well, so yeah, the nomination was earned.

I don't know where you were in '62, but if you haven't seen this yet, where have you been?

1973 New Category

And next up is...

...Screenplay!

This is the first time a screenplay category has come up, so I'll explain how I'm going to do them.

Today, we mainly know Screenplay as two categories: Best Story and Screenplay Not Previously Produced or Published and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Or, as they're more often called, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay.

But these categories have changed a lot, and I mean a lot throughout the years. For example, Best Original Story used to be a different category from Best Screenplay Not Previously Produced or Published, and there was a time when you could be awarded for Best Screenplay and Best Adaptation, among other things.

So, I'm just making "screenplay" the category draw and then doing each category for that year separately, and as always, in alphabetical order.

That being said, Best Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Produced or Published is technically the first category this year, alphabetically, when going by full title, which I will be for each year.

The nominees for this award in 1973 were:

• American Graffiti, written by George Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck
• Cries and Whispers, written by Ingmar Bergman
• Save the Tiger, written by Steve Shagan
• The Sting, written by David S. Ward
• A Touch of Class written by Melvin Frank and Jack Rose

As you might have already figured out, one of these I've already talked about, so I won't bother doing another post on it. I didn't speak directly about the screenplay in the review, but I will in the category write-up.

So, next up is American Graffiti.

1973 Best Supporting Actor: My Choice

The time has come to weigh and evaluate the performances for 1973's Best Supporting Actor. Did the Academy get it right or wrong this time?

Once again, the nominees were:

• Vincent Gardenia as Dutch Schnell in Bang the Drum Slowly
• Jack Gilford as Phil Reeves in Save the Tiger
• John Houseman as Prof. Charles W. Kingsfield in The Paper Chase
• Jason Miller as Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist
• Randy Quaid as Seaman Larry Meadows in The Last Detail

The Academy's Choice: John Houseman

Weighing the Performances:

Some have called this a weak year for the Academy in general, and frankly I can understand that. It's not that there isn't some real gold from this year (Paper Moon, The Exorcist, The Sting) but there's also some genuinely forgettable stuff that no one would even care about from a historical standpoint but that it won or was nominated for Oscars.

Vincent Gardenia in Bang the Drum Slowly

And with that, we lead off with Vincent Gardenia, giving a completely competent performance in an undemanding role that any character actor could have played just as easily, and probably in very similar ways. I'm not kidding; I don't think there would have been an appreciable difference in performance if Gardenia and his co-star Phil Foster had switched roles. The role of suspicious coach Dutch could have been just as competently played by Jack Warden, or Charles Durning, or heck, even Tom Bosley, Ed Asner, Tom Poston or just about any crusty, middle-aged character actor from the 60's. And they likely would have played it just the same. He's not even the most memorable performance from the film! While Robert De Niro's Bruce Pearson is probably the second lead (he was billed first, but did win the New York Film Critics Circle award for Supporting Actor), his role was more of a stretch for him and probably a lot more difficult to play, plus I've already said that Phil Foster was at least as memorable as the assistant coach eager to scam "fish" out of their money with his "Tegwar" playing "skill". Even Tom Ligon and Tom Signorelli, as two of Pearson's fellow players, had more memorable parts. And this isn't even to mention that this was not that lean a year for solid supporting performances; Max von Sydow in The Exorcist, Robert Shaw in The Sting, Dustin Hoffman in Papillon, Michel Lonsdale in Day of the Jackal, Charles Martin Smith or Paul LeMat in American Graffiti, Martin Balsam in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (have never seen it, but he did score a Golden Globe nod), possibly even Carl Anderson in Jesus Christ Superstar (by Academy standards, at least, he could qualify as "supporting"; more on this in a bit). So, no, by no stretch is Gardenia the winner here.

Jack Gilford in Save the Tiger

Almost on the same level, but a bit more understandable, is Jack Gilford as the sad, tired, desperate business partner in Save the Tiger, a man just slightly more determined to hold on to his principles than his partner Harry (star Jack Lemmon), but his own fraying conscience gets thinner as the film goes on. Gilford is effortlessly likeable (in fact, he once played a character called "Simon the Likeable" in the TV series Get Smart, a villain working for KAOS who it was literally impossible not to like, enabling him to commit his crimes with ease) but much like Gardenia, it's hard to imagine that this part was much of a stretch for him, and his nomination was likely due to the scenes where he and Lemmon play off each other and really do seem like two middle-aged men who've been working together for years. Lemmon, of course, was famous for his many pairings with Walter Matthau, mostly for comedic roles, but one wonders if Matthau could have played this part just as effectively (or would casting him have made people think this was a comedy, and would their dramatic scenes together be too distracting?) but as I said, name an even mildly well-known middle-aged actor from the 70's and they'd likely be just as good in this role.

John Houseman in The Paper Chase

Then there's John Houseman, playing the imperious contract law professor, Charles W. Kingsfield, in a movie we primarily remember because of his performance. While it's definitely a supporting performance, you know audiences walked out of theatres talking about the guy that played the professor. He's very good, and I mean very, but one gets the impression that he was cast because the role suited him to a T. He wasn't even the first choice; Edward G. Robinson and James Mason were both offered the part, but Robinson wasn't long for this world at the time and Mason turned it down. Houseman uses his natural accent and his role consists essentially of posing challenging questions to his pupils and then making sarcastic comments when they don't give him the answer he was looking for. Like I said in the initial review, he seems like the kind of professor you want to impress even as you hate him. Houseman was primarily a writer and producer, with acting being something he kinda did on the side, and really, this was practically his film debut (see the review of the film where I talk about this), and this likely heavily played into the amount of Academy members who voted for him. But was he really the best? Or just the most memorable? And is that really the qualifier?

Now we come to the entry I think is going to be the longest, because before I talk about the role and the actor, I first need to talk about a little thing called category theft.

In Oscar history, category theft is a sort of unofficial term among people like me who like to follow and predict the nominations/winners through the years, and look back at the Oscars of the past. It's what we call it when an actor is nominated in a category we don't think they belong in; a supporting performance that gets placed in the lead category, or much more commonly a leading performance that gets nominated as supporting.

The causes for category theft are numerous, but they mainly boil down to the studios behind that actor's campaign thinking the performances are more likely to be nominated and/or win if they shoot for supporting instead of lead. In the case where it's the other way around, an actor's name power or the dominance they're perceived to have over the film play into them being thought of as a lead role whereas almost any other role that size would automatically be considered supporting.

But to really get at the heart of what makes a nomination true "category theft", the question should be asked: what constitutes a leading performance vs. a supporting one?

It's not always that obvious. Many times people have shouted "category theft!" because the supporting nominee has a significant amount of screen time. Is screen time the deciding factor in whether or not a performance can be considered lead or supporting? It's certainly part of it, but not the whole. After all, two Oscar-winning Best Actor roles, Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (played by Marlon Brando and Anthony Hopkins, respectively) are actually on screen for less than half their films' runtime (in Hopkins' case, less than half an hour!) yet we recall both of them as being their film's lead actor, mainly because their characters dominate their films even when not on screen. For that matter, performances like Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny, Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Michael Douglas in Wall Street, Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada and numerous others probably should be considered supporting, and other such roles with comparable focus and screen time have been, but due to various factors like star power or role dominance were nominated for, and in Fletcher's and Douglas's cases, winning. There are numerous other examples of a film having two top-billed performers where one is clearly not the focus but does get a lot of screen time, and are campaigned for lead instead of supporting.

Once in Academy history it was so not obvious that the actor in question was nominated in both categories! No, seriously, at the 1944 Oscars, Barry Fitzgerald managed to be nominated both as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor (winning for the latter) in Going My Way because up until then the Academy had never thought about having a rule that you couldn't be nominated for both and voters were confused about whether or not he was co-lead to Bing Crosby (who won Best Actor) or a supporting player.

And the confusion just gets worse the more questions you ask. What if the film has two or even three lead characters of the same gender? Do you gamble on campaigning them all for Best Actor or Best Actress, thereby lessening any of their chances of getting nominated at all? Or do you shunt one or two of them to supporting? Is the biggest name among them actually the lead, or is the focus of the film more on a character played by the lesser-known, second- or third-billed performance (like the examples I gave above)? What if the actor or actress is very young, even a child? It's pretty rare for children, or teenagers, or even people in their early 20's, to be nominated in the leading categories, deserving or not. Sometimes they're nominated for support even if they're the co-lead, but when they're undeniably the lead, such as Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild, Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name or Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider, they can, and sometimes are, nominated for leading, though more often they're just snubbed.

There are lots of ways to approach it. Perhaps it's an ensemble piece where everyone is technically supporting. Perhaps one can argue that there is no such thing as a "third" lead and that such roles should automatically be considered supporting. Others would suggest that a film's villain should automatically be considered a supporting role, even if they have more screen time than the hero. Still other say sizable roles that are the most memorable of their films are automatically leads.

A fairly extensive list of actors nominated in "the wrong" categories can be found here, but I'm not sure it's exhaustive and some of them I don't even necessarily agree with. If an actor has a great amount of screen time and it's arguable that they're the main focus, or part of the main focus, of the film, I'd say they're unquestionably leads. Whereas even if they have a lot of screen time, if there's another character who's the true focus of the film and this other sizable role is mainly there to support that character, it's a supporting performance. Defining it like that, any number of nominated and/or winning performances qualify as category theft, almost enough to say that it happens every year.

Jason Miller in The Exorcist

This, by the way, is also what I meant about Carl Anderson probably being considered a supporting player in Jesus Christ Superstar by Academy standards, because between he and Ted Neeley, in the title role, he'd be the one shunted to supporting, despite having comparable screen time and as much
or more focus.

And with that long-winded explanation, I come to Jason Miller in The Exorcist.

There's really no question that Miller is a co-lead here. Yes, there are long sections of the film that he's absent from, but this is also true of Ellen Burstyn, who was nominated for Best Actress for this film. For the first act, the action switches back and forth between the situation at the McNiell household and Father Karras's issues dealing with his dying mother, questioning his faith, seeing death omens everywhere, etc. and it's hard to really judge without getting out a stopwatch which of the two actors gets more focus in this part of the film. Once she contacts him, his screen time is absolutely the equal of hers, and once he begins working with Reagan, he pretty much is the lead from that point on.

But like I said, screen time isn't the only factor; focus is the big one. Well, I'd say he has as much focus as Chris MacNiell, absolutely. Again, we spend a lot of time with him before he is contacted by Chris, and his character has his own arc, his own issues to deal with, that have nothing to do with Reagan's demonic possession.

And to be frank, I think he carries the film. He spends a ton of time with Reagan and manages to not be upstaged by her. We recall his outwardly calm talks with her early on, and his increasing crushing grief as the demon in Reagan harms the poor, innocent girl's body, or pretends to speak in his mother's voice, causing him to question even further whether or not there's a God and if He cares. It's a remarkable performance, and I think he carries the film. Why was he nominated here instead of as Best Actor?

Well, probably it was because this was his film debut. Known mostly as a playwright at that point (meaning not known to the general public at all), if he had been campaigned for the Best Actor category, he would have been competing with some truly big names; Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, both Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting, Donald Sutherland in Don't Look Now, Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard in American Graffiti, Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger, James Caan in Cinderella Liberty, Steve McQueen in Papillon, Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, Edward Fox in Day of the Jackal, George Segal in A Touch of Class, Al Pacino in Serpico, Ryan O'Neal in Paper Moon and Robert Blake in Electra Glide in Blue. Brando, Lemmon, Nicholson, Pacino and Redford actually got nominated. Think in that mixture of names, a little-known playwright in his film debut would have stood a chance? For that matter, he was billed last among the main actors in his film. Go look at the poster for its entry.

His competing in this category is likely what cost his co-star Max von Sydow (a true supporting performance, and a great one) a nomination. I do think Miller had more to work with and therefore turned in the more award-worthy performance, but that doesn't mean I think von Sydow deserved to get snubbed (and I understand it was a pretty big shock at the time that he didn't get it).

Randy Quaid in The Last Detail

Finally, let's talk about Randy Quaid. I still think this guy has had a very strange career. He started off essentially as a young, but very skilled and very prominent, character actor. I've already mentioned the number of Oscar-nominated films he appears in, but I didn't mention that he also appeared in a number of respected classic films, including The Missouri Breaks, Three Warriors, The Long Riders, and TV movies like LBJ: The Early Years (in the title role), Inside the Third Reich, Of Mice and Men (where he played the classic role of Lenny Small) and A Streetcar Named Desire, where he played the same role that won Karl Malden an Oscar for. But how do we usually remember him? As personal-boundary-invading redneck Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (he appeared in several other films in that series, but most prominently in Christmas) to the point where if you refer to Randy Quaid in public and people aren't sure who you mean, all you need to do is say "The shitter was full" or "That there's an Aaaaaaaar-veeee!"

Quaid never really stopped taking dramatic roles, or roles that required him to act rather than just be goofy, but we tend to remember him mostly for his goofier roles, in movies like Christmas Vacation or Caddyshack II or Quick Change. His role in The Last Detail is kind of a combination of the two; he plays lovable man child Larry Meadows, a giant of a man with the soul of a lost puppy and an unfortunate habit of compulsive thievary. He took a role that was supposed to be a little nerdy guy and made it his own, and had us laughing, crying, and genuinely hoping he wouldn't be sent to prison after all. For that, I'd say he earned his nomination.

But we must have a winner, and while John Houseman was impressive and Quaid was sympathetic, I've got to vote for the guy that should have never been in this category. I didn't let the wrong category stop me when I picked Wallace Beery in The Big House to win for 1929-30 (even though the right category didn't exist at the time), and I won't let it stop me here. He should have been nominated for actor, but he's unquestionably the best performance in this category this year.

My Choice: Jason Miller

Join us next time for a new category from 1973.

Save the Tiger

Film: Save the Tiger
Year: 1973
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Jack Gilford, Laurie Heineman, Norman Burton, Patricia Smith, Thayer David, William Hansen, Harvey Jason, Lin Von Linden, Lara Parker
Director: John G. Avildsen
Nominations: Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Supporting Actor (Gilford), Best Original Screenplay

I'll be honest; most of my life I've thought of Jack Lemmon as that congenial old guy who always acts with Walter Matthau.

I knew he could do drama, and in fact I knew that most of his eight (eight!) Oscar nominations were for dramatic roles, but until I saw this, the only one I saw him in was Glengarry Glen Ross. Review of that one coming...someday.

Lemmon always seemed like one of those actors who had a type, and stuck to it. There are many, and many of them have won Oscars. If you've got a type but do it really well, you're not a bad actor, even if there are actors who can swing from one kind of character to another with ease.

This movie convinced me that Lemmon's range was much broader than I realized. I figured it had to be; it's not as if I've seen much of his earlier work. It's weird; the role of increasingly desperate small business owner Harry Stoner seems written for Lemmon and yet it feels like a different type of performance than I expect from him.

Harry runs a clothing company that's going under despite his attempts to keep it afloat by cooking the books. He and his longtime business partner Phil Reeves (Jack Gilford) have been going over what to do about it for a long while now, and Harry's been driven to the point where he's ready to torch the place for the insurance money. Phil objects strongly: "There are some lines I will not cross!" he yells at Harry.

But Harry's past the point of listening. He's on a downward spiral and seems intent on taking some sort of action he can't take back. He's the kind of guy who spends most of his time talking about how the world was better back when he was younger. But when he actually talks about his younger days, it's clear they weren't exactly the greatest. Among other things he was in the Viet Nam war, and is almost definitely suffering from some sort of PTSD. At one point, while giving a speech at the show to introduce the company's new season, Harry starts seeing his departed war buddies sitting silently in the audience, just staring at him, possibly accusingly.

We follow him through a three-day stint where he takes action after action that makes him realize any principles he once held are long gone. He obtains a hooker (Lara Parker) for a married client (Norman Burton), and it's clear this isn't the first time as he and the hooker know each other already. He speaks to two disgruntled employees, one a gay man (Harvey Jason)  who's forced to work with an older Jewish man who can't stand him (William Hansen), and he implies to both that the other is about to be fired. Finally, he manages to even convince Phil to go and meet with the arsonist (Thayer David) that will carry out the previously mentioned insurance scam. The final insult? He hasn't kept his building up to code and therefore it's not worth torching.

The action culminates in Harry picking up a young girl (Laurie Heineman) who's hitching for the fun of it. He had actually picked her up earlier, where she admitted she does little more than cruise the strip for fun. She offered sex, which he turned down, but on their second trip together, he's lost any resolve he might have had and takes comfort in her arms.

Lemmon is fantastic in this; best performance of his I've seen, as I mentioned. I thought I knew what to expect from him, and if you think the same, you should watch this film. He won his second Oscar for this, his first for Best Actor, and dangit if I'm not thinking the Academy might have gotten this one right (at least thus far; I have yet to see two of the nominated performances from that year).

Gilford, as Phil, is understated but just as good as Lemmon. The scenes where they act off each other are splendid, and you can feel that these are two men who have worked together for years and trust each other implicitly, and it's clear that Phil considered himself Harry's mentor, and is still trying to be his "angel on the shoulder", but the fact that he's older, tired and almost as desperate as Harry has diminished his capacity to play this role.

All in all, Gilford, one of those "haven't-I-seen-that-guy-somewhere" character actors who mostly did TV work, acquits himself well but it's mainly his acting off Lemmon that elevates his performance to something award-worthy. He's the last performance in this category that I've watched, and while not the least, I think I can say without too many spoilers that he's not my winner.

But Lemmon, so far, just might be for his category.

The Paper Chase

Film: The Paper Chase
Year: 1973
Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Lindsay Wagner, John Houseman, Graham Beckel, James Naughton, Edward Herrmann, Craig Richard Nelson, Bob Lydiard, Lenny Baker, David Clennon, Regina Baff, Blaire Brown
Director: James Bridges
Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Houseman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound

The career of Timothy Bottoms is an odd one to say the least. Rarely has an actor so early in his career taken the lead role in not one but two films that grabbed Academy notice and yet ultimately faded into obscurity, continuing to act, but hardly ever doing anything again that anyone remembers.

Well, he did play George W. Bush in three separate productions, and knowing this, I could easily see a young Bush when I watched him in this film and The Last Picture Show.

Here, he plays a young Harvard Law student, James Hart (pretty much only called by his last name), who thinks of himself as pretty smart, until he ends up in the classroom of the imperious Professor Charles Kingsfield (John Houseman) who seems to educate mainly by showing his students how little of what they think they know do they actually know.

He gives little in the way of lectures, but instead poses hypothetical law questions to the class, many based on actual cases, several based on potential situations, and hands out disdainful corrections to those students unfortunate enough to get the answer wrong, which they frequently do. On Hart's first day in the class, he makes the mistake of assuming Kingsfield will go over the course syllabus for the semester, and all he'll need to do is pay attention, only to find himself scrambling for an answer when called upon. It's a scene that most of us can probably relate to, almost like a bad dream.

He ends up in a study group with some colorful characters; the eager-to-impress Ford (Graham Beckel), nerdy older student Anderson (Edward Herrmann), prickly know-it-all Bell (Craig Richard Nelson), hapless O'Connor (Bob Lydiard) and Brooks (James Naughton), who made it into Harvard thanks to a photographic memory, but who has no ability to understand or apply the material.

Hart also meets a charming, attractive young lady named Susan, and the two hit it off, starting with her asking him to walk with her as she's afraid someone's following her and leading to a relationship. Susan doesn't understand why Hart is so devoted to his studies, and so determined to impress a professor that apparently doesn't have the capacity to be impressed.

Honestly, I was never all that invested in the relationship aspect, and if there's an element of the film I would remove, it's this one. There's even a twist to Susan's identity that I won't reveal here, because to be frank, I didn't buy it. It felt cheap, like something that would happen in a bad movie but never reality. As this isn't a bad movie, and is trying to reflect reality, the whole thing felt shoe-horned in, though I'm sure it was in the novel. Oh, yeah, it was based on a novel (hell, what nominee in this category isn't?) by Jay Osborn, Jr. that I sincerely doubt you've ever read. I haven't.

Bottoms does a fine job, but he's upstaged by, hell, the entire film is stolen by, John Houseman in what is commonly (falsely) believed to be his film debut, age 70, and hired only after the initial choice, Edward G. Robinson, fell ill with cancer, and the second choice, James Mason, turned it down. While Houseman had acted before, in the films Too Much Johnson (which he co-produced) and Seven Days in May, he was mostly known as a producer in film and theater, who had famously collaborated with Orson Welles on several projects, including The War of the Worlds. In fact, Orson Welles was the man who directed (and co-produced with Houseman) Too Much Johnson, which was a 1938 silent film paying homage to the silent film stars of old, including Buster Keaton and the Keystone Cops (one of which Houseman played).

Houseman is the main reason to watch this, as he's just so much dang fun to watch, holding court over his classroom like a regal emperor, imperious and cold, yet dropping one wry quip after another, and you feel like even if you'd hate to have this guy as your professor, you know if you had him, and you didn't do well in his class, you'd blame yourself instead of him. So far, I can see why he won that year. While I felt fondness for Randy Quaid in The Last Detail and feel that Jason Miller was the true lead (at least the second lead) in The Exorcist, this is a true supporting performance that carries the film, and it's satisfying to see that kind of thing result in a win. We'll talk more about it in the category write-up.

Final note; while Houseman stole the film, I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of the character of Bell, played by Craig Richard Nelson, and I don't understand why this is the only real role of note in his career. With a dry voice, deadpan stare and smug curl to his lip, Bell is utterly convinced he's the smartest man in the room. Any room. Even being shown up a couple of times by Kingsfield fails to wipe the pomposity out of his entire bearing. We've all worked with a Bell, and Nelson somehow manages to make him funny, even while being as grating as possible.

Later in the film each member of the study group produces their study outline, which the others in the group are supposed to evaluate. It's a composite of their characters; most produce something slim and workable, with poor Brooks (who by now has dropped out) submitting to Hart the only work on it he'd managed to get done; two pages, not even filled up all the way. Bell, however, has essentially produced a textbook in itself; several legal pads, all filled out, and he's so self-righteously impressed with it that he even says he's gonna have it published. No points for guessing the big prick gets what he deserves.

So while it's not a perfect movie, it's a pretty damn good one, and if it consisted of nothing but the study group and classroom scenes, it just about would be perfect. Watch it for Houseman primarily.

The Last Detail

Film: The Last Detail
Year: 1973
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Carol Kane, Clifton James, Michael Moriarty, Nancy Allen
Director: Hal Ashby
Nominations: Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Supporting Actor (Quaid), Best Adapted Screenplay

I'll start off by saying I always assumed that this film's title referred to making sure everything is just as the characters want it, down to the last detail.

It's actually about two naval enlisted men who are "detailed" to transfer a prisoner to where he'll be incarcerated. Numerous times throughout the film, Gunner's Mate "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) declares "I hate this stupid chicken-sh*t detail!"

Mulhall, and Signalman "Badass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) are two "lifers" in the US Navy, neither of whom know each other but both of whom have developed a rather lax attitude toward duty. Both are pulled for the above-described detail, seemingly because neither has anything better to do, though neither is happy about it.

The now ex-Seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) is their charge; a young man only recently enlisted who was caught trying to steal forty dollars from a charity dropbox. Because it was the pet project of the base commander's wife, he's been dishonorably discharged and sentenced to eight years in prison. Both Buddusky and Mulhall feel this is a bit harsh, but don't give it much thought, until they've spent a little time with Meadows.

Buddusky discovers that Meadows has had a pretty sheltered life, raised by a single mom who likely was an alcoholic to boot, and hasn't experienced much in life. He has no malice toward anyone; his only real issue is that he's a compulsive kleptomaniac, which is revealed when he tearfully confesses that he's stolen before even when he had enough money to buy whatever he was stealing.

While Mulhall is less than symapthetic, it's hard to dislike the simple but good-natured big lug of a guy, and Buddusky feels like he needs to really experience some life before he's locked up for the better part of his twenties. As they have a week to get him to Portsmouth, but can get there in two days, they hang around Washington while Buddusky does his best to show Meadows a good time, Mulhall reluctantly tagging along, trying to remind everyone what they're really traveling for, occasionally just giving in and joining them.

The film is based on a book by Darryl Ponicsan, and an interesting bit of trivia is that Ponicsan wrote a follow-up, years later, called Last Flag Flying, about Meadows, now in his 50's, getting back in touch with Buddusky and Mulhall to help him get to his son's funeral. That book was adapted into a movie of the same name, with the names of the three central characters changed so that people didn't think it was a sequel to this one, and starred Steve Carell in the "Meadows" role, with Bryan Cranston as "Buddusky" and Laurence Fishburne as "Mulhall".

Anyway, enough side-tracking.

This is a film that's difficult to dislike, but it's also hard to really know what you liked about it. Jack Nicholson is in top form as Buddusky, though quite frankly we all know today that Nicholson has a type, and he's very much playing to type here. This is probably the earliest performance of his I've seen (yet) but every tic and nuance we associate with Nicholson is fully on display here. Apparently he was upset that he didn't win the Oscar for this role, as he considered it some of his finest work. While I have yet to see some of his earlier performances, I have seen some that have come after, and honestly, I think his finest work was ahead of him.

Otis Young, whose career didn't reach the heights of either man he's acting alongside in this film, is also fine, even if, like Nicholson, his character is a little one-note. I love how he starts off determined to do the job he was given and getting increasingly annoyed at Buddusky until he finally shouts "I consider myself in jeopardy with you, understand? This ain't no farewell party and he ain't retirin'! He's a prisoner and we're taking him to jail!" But by the end of the movie he's got an air of irritated resignation, even buying hot dogs for a "picnic", which they hold after it's started snowing.

Randy Quaid...man, I can't even articulate why, but it's so strange to think that Randy Quaid is an Oscar nominee. Quaid's main claim to fame, besides being the big brother of Dennis Quaid (man, to think those two shared the same parents; we know who got the looks in that family) and most recently, more's the pity, going full-on crazy, is playing annoying redneck Cousin Eddie in the National Lampoon's Vacation series, most notably in Christmas Vacation, but he's shown up surprisingly often in my Oscar viewing. Aside from this one, he had featured roles in The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Midnight Express and, well down the road from these films, Brokeback Mountain. Not bad for a guy we mostly associate with goofy comedy roles, and who, after acting in these films (except that last one of course), joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, of all things.

But this is the film that got him the nod, and frankly, I can see why. Meadows in the book is a little guy, but Quaid, at 6'7" but with the face of a child, and the easy-going manner reminiscent of Forrest Gump, is the perfect actor to play this guileless man-child. Somehow his height, combined with his manner and expressions, just makes him more lovable. We almost hope the guys decide to set him free and just live with the discharge they're threatened with if it happens.

I've just about said all there is about the plot of this movie without going into specifics. It's really a three-man show, with a few cameos along the way. Don't blink and you'll see a young Gilda Radner as a member of a cult that the three of them encounter, which turns Meadows on to the calming, or focusing, power of chanting. Carol Kane, already fairly well-known, drops in as a spirited hooker who provides Meadows with his first experience in that regard. Essentially the plot is Buddusky thinks of something they could do in the time they have left, Mulhall protests, Meadows is usually pretty non-committal about whether or not he even wants to do it, sometimes even saying he'd rather not, and then they go do it.

But it doesn't seem repetitive. Instead, it's charming, and it's sweet to watch three men who don't really know each other and would never have met otherwise, growing to become friends, even sticking up for Meadows when he's bullied and teaching him confidence. It's something to watch Meadows's development from a shy kid who won't even protest when he isn't given mayonnaise on his burger after specifically asking for it to a man who at one point initiates the next activity with a cool "drop your socks and grab your cocks, boys, we're going to a party". It's delivered with this strange innocence, like he's saying it because he's never had a chance to do so before and he's not gonna blow it.

There's laughs, tears, drama, heart and a ton of profanity (no, really, it broke the record in F-bombs) and a great time waiting for anyone who watches this movie.

The Exorcist

Film: The Exorcist
Year: 1973
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Mercedes McCambridge
Director: William Friedkin
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actor (Miller), Best Supporting Actress (Blair), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing

The Exorcist is one of those films that I don't really think I can talk about because there's no way I could say anything that hasn't already been said.

This indisputable classic, the first horror film to receive a Best Picture nomination, has been so quoted, memed and whatever else you can do with a movie that by now, even if you haven't seen it, you've seen it. You know that poor possessed Reagan MacNiell turns her head all the way around, that she declares to the priest that his mother sucks c**ks in Hell, and that she levitates while the priests shout "The power of Christ compels you!" You know that her bed rises into the air at some point, you know that young Reagan refers to the other presence as "Captain Howdy", you've seen the image of "Captain Howdy" with the wide eyes and sharp teeth, and you likely know that for probably the first half of the movie, everyone, the priest included, thinks Reagan just needs treatment for mental illness.

That being said, I was still surprised by many elements of this film the first time I watched it (not this time; this is one I've definitely seen before). For instance, I'd always believed that the priests wanted to come do an exorcism and that they had to talk Reagan's mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) into it. Rather it's the opposite; after the doctors can find no reason whatsoever for Reagan's sudden change in behavior, nor can they explain some of the things they've seen, like her leaping off the bed several feet in the air from an inclined position, they finally suggest that if she really believes she's possessed, maybe an exorcism would convince her that the demon has left.

Desperate, Chris contacts young Father Damian Karras, a priest who's starting to lose his faith thanks to his ailing mother getting worse, doctors unable to prevent her from slipping away, despite her being a staunch Catholic with unshakable faith all her life. Karras, who also has his doctorate in psychiatry, also thinks Reagan is simply mentally ill, and lets Chris know that the Catholic church no longer performs exorcisms, as most of the conditions that used to warrant one have been revealed to be mental disorders. Even seeing Reagan in her state doesn't convince him. At one point he pulls out a bottle of tap water and declares that it's Holy water, which he begins splashing on Reagan's body. On cue, Reagan begins to thrash and twist as if being burned. This tells Karras that Reagan isn't possessed, and is merely acting like she thinks a possessed person would. That is, until Reagan's nanny Sharon (Kitty Winn) shows him that Reagan herself, still inside her body, is making scars on her skin spelling out the words "help me".

And this is another point; I'd always assumed that Max von Sydow, as Father Lankester Merrin, an experienced exorcist, was the principle male role in this film, and that it's he who spends most of the movie trying to exorcise young Reagan. His name is second in the credits and that iconic shot of him arriving at the MacNiell home (see the poster above) is instantly recognizable. In fact, he's essentially the title character, as he's the man with exorcism experience that the church calls in when Father Karras convinces them that Reagan really is possessed. The film actually does open with him in Iraq, on an archaeological dig where numerous images of a demon are unearthed. Then he's pretty well absent for a majority of the film, which Father Karras being the main contact with the church Chris has.

One common misconception a lot of people have is that this movie makes clear that Reagan is possessed by a Mesopotamian demon named Pazuzu. In fact, this movie never makes it entirely clear just what is possessing Reagan (at one point it claims to be the Devil himself, which Karras immediately dismisses) and the demon never names itself nor is named by the priests, at least not here. The novel might make it clear; I don't know. I haven't read it. But in the films, the name "Pazuzu" isn't spoken on screen until the second installment.

Much of the early parts of this movie frustrated me, as the doctors are so determined that Reagan is just mentally ill that they start grasping at straws. They insist that Reagan merely believes that she's possessed, and when Chris asks how she could leap off the bed like that, the doctor explains that her condition could be using her adrenal glands to give her what is essentially enhanced strength. My next questions would have been "Okay, and the unnatural bulging at her neck? And the multiple voices including male ones, sometimes several at once?" It bugs me when movie characters don't ask the obvious questions.

But yeah, I'm not going to waste much time going over this movie and asking if it deserved all its nominations, because of course it did, but I do have a couple of quibbles.

The first is that, at least as far as the films I've seen, this one really should have won Best Picture. I need to see The Sting, and once I do maybe I'll change my mind, but I know I'm not the only person to feel like the wrong movie won the top prize. At the very least, William Friedkin deserved another Best Director win, and I wonder if his loss stemmed mostly from the fact that he'd won already just two years prior for the film The French Connection. Also from the fact that it was a horror movie, a genre the Academy has historically had issues with.

Ellen Burstyn, who seems to show up in a number of films I've watched recently, pulls off the role of the increasingly worried, panicked, then frantic mother, but what really sells this to me is one scene that has nothing to do with motherhood. See, I didn't know this the first time I saw the movie but the character Chris MacNiell is actually an actress, and one early scene shows her acting on a set. When she's in character, she acts nothing like Chris MacNiell but still seems to be acting very naturally. It's actually harder than one thinks to play an actor acting, because there's a tendency to ham it up, but that's the moment when I was best able to buy her as a worried mother, because now she didn't seem to be acting in her scenes with Reagan and Father Karras.

Linda Blair received a Best Supporting Actress nomination, making her one of the youngest nominees ever, but I wonder how much of that was due to her incredible makeup job and Mercedes McCambridge as the voice of the demon within her. True, Blair had to emote through that makeup, and she really did speak during filming, with McCambridge's voice dubbed in later, and those really are her facial expressions, even if they're enhanced by the make-up. The scene I was most impressed with was the one in which she was hypnotized, as this was the main scene in which the creep factor was strongly present even before the make-up and dubbed voice. Am I saying she wasn't worthy of her nomination? I don't know. I don't think I'm really saying that. But I do wonder how much of an impact the make-up and voice had on her nomination, and she wasn't part of either one.

A bigger problem for me is what to do with Father Karras. Playwright and sometime actor Jason Miller plays Karras, in his film debut, and he's heavily present throughout the movie, with multiple scenes devoted to his character even before he's contacted by Chris. I can't confirm just how much screen time he had, but he definitely doesn't feel like a supporting player in this. I'd be shocked if he had much less screen time than Burstyn herself, and the movie is as much about him as it is about the MacNiells. I'll talk more about the concept of "category theft" when I do my write-up for this category, but honestly, I feel like if he'd been played by, say, Robert De Niro, he likely would have been campaigned for and nominated in the Best Actor category. Miller doesn't even get second billing. It just about has to be because it was his first film. You'd never know, though, because Miller fits this role so well you could believe they hired an actual priest (they did; all the members of Karras's parish are actual priests, but he isn't, and you'd never know). If there's a standout performance in this film, as far as I'm concerned it's his. This is why I think he should have been nominated for Best Actor; Max von Sydow did not receive a nomination for this iconic role and performance, but that's because he had to compete with his own co-star for the nod, and between the two, Miller's screen time and deep characterization, brought to life by his dour, realistic performance, made that no competition at all.

The last thing I want to talk about is that it's pretty rare for a film with makeup this good not to win an Oscar for it, but there's a handy explanation; the category did not exist at the time. That's a real shame because the makeup job they do on Linda Blair is phenomenal, and also iconic. But it's not just Reagan who impressed here; Max von Sydow was only 44 at the time, playing a character who's in his 70's at least. He's actually younger here than Stellan Skarsgård was when he played the young version of Father Merrin in the more recent Exorcist prequels. His makeup job is good enough that I never realized it until reading about it, and never did the math on von Sydow's age, assuming he must have been in his late 50's, early 60's at least, and in his 80's today....yeah, don't judge me, I just never really thought about it. Apparently he started losing work because people thought he was an old man. That's Oscar-quality makeup.

But it didn't win makeup, or any of its actual nominations, barring two; Adapted Screenplay and Sound Mixing. Both deserved, but come on, this movie, with its incredible impact on the film industry and horror as a genre, and only two awards? Really?

Next on the list is The Last Detail.