In Contention

Tag: Tootsie

  • Hoffman’s holiday hilarity

    I just caught this over at Hollywood Elsewhere.  BRILLIANT.  Check back tomorrow, by the way, for an interview with Mr. Hoffman:

  • Attenborough: Oscar got it wrong

    As awards geeks, bitching about the Academy’s supposed mistakes is pretty much our favourite sport. The question of who should and shouldn’t have won provides endless material for discussion — frequently on these pages.

    One of the titles that comes up often in the “shouldn’t have won” category is Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi,” that well-mounted, well-acted and thoroughly indigestible biopic that managed to beat such more-beloved nominees as “Tootsie” and “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.” It was an unpopular choice even at the time. After the ceremony, NYT critic Vincent Canby famously wrote: “”E.T.” and “Tootsie” are films. “Gandhi” is a laboriously illustrated textbook.”

    Interestingly, Lord Attenborough, of all people, agrees. In a recent interview with BBC Radio Five, he admits that “E.T.” was robbed, being “an infinitely more creative and fundamental piece of cinema” than his own winning film. Attenborough continues:

    [Business partner] Diana and I went to see “E.T.” in Los Angeles shortly before all the awards and we used language, when we came out, to the extent of saying ‘we have no chance – “E.T.” should and will walk away with it’.

    Without the initial premise of Mahatma Gandhi, the film (“Gandhi”) would be nothing. Therefore it’s a narrative film but it’s a piece of narration rather than a piece of cinema, as such. “E.T.” depended absolutely on the concept of cinema and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I’m very fond of, is a genius. I think “E.T.” is a quite extraordinary piece of cinema.

    I couldn’t have said it any better myself. I’ve never been a fan of Attenborough as a filmmaker (“Shadowlands” excepted), but he sure is a classy guy. There are a lot of undeserving Oscar winners out there who must know they got lucky, but few of them have the guts to come right out and say so.

    Anyone else want to come forward? Kevin Costner? Gwyneth Paltrow? John G. Avildsen? Anyone?

  • Why I will miss Sydney Pollack

    It has now been nearly four days since filmmaker Sydney Pollack passed away. The loss was not crippling for me, however, because of equal parts expectancy and, strangely, indifference.

    As fine a filmmaker as Pollack was, he was always something of an afterthought in my cinema-going experience.

    I want to be measured here, because the last thing I mean is disrespect. In fact, I’m aiming more toward appreciation of a sort of confident casualness that has been eradicated in this fresh new world of cock-sure filmmaking youths and the veterans who, at times, struggle to keep up, and at others, tap into their own former risk-taking ways to establish a new vision of the “old school.”

    Pollack was never about that. He seemed to make his way from film to film with grace and a willingness to take stock of the lessons that came. I never knew him — can’t offer any first hand accounts of exchange — but if anything about his May 26 death strikes a profound chord with me, it is to know that an ever agreeable constant has been removed from this business, this art form. Sometimes the disconnect of casual dependency can sting as much as the loss of the closest of comrades.

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  • Sydney Pollack (1934-2008)

    Trained as an actor at Sanford Meisner’s famed Neighborhood Playhouse — the stomping grounds of Robert Duvall — Sydney Pollack connected to actors because he was one of them…and a damned fine one at that.

    In fact, his comedy “Tootsie” is not only the greatest American comedy ever made, it is also the greatest study of the art and craft of acting I’ve ever seen. The director, writers and star explored the depths to which an actor will go to get the role right, to find that all-important and essential truth. Without truth in a performance, there is nothing but failure.

    There is a moment in the film when Michael Dorsey, the actor who has become actress Dorothy Michaels to find work, is no longer Michael at all. Dorothy has become a living, breathing character in his life. Hoffman’s astounding performance is the finest work of his career, a jaw-dropping feat of art that is often overlooked (criminally) when the great film performances of all time are discussed. And of course holding the film together, the glue, the guiding hand, was Mr. Pollack, one of the great directors of the 1970s, 1980s and beyond.

    Though he lacked the box office breakthroughs of Francis Ford Coppola or Steven Spielberg, or the nasty edginess of Martin Scorsese, Pollack nonetheless was an artist, one of the few directors able to walk the line between making succesful mainstream films that worked on levels of commerce and artistry.His death at the age of 73 is one of the film world’s great losses, though he leaves behind a legacy that will be remembered for years after many of us have gone to that great screening room in the sky.

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  • Who joins the great Best Picture snubs this year?

    It happens every year, a great film, in some cases destined to be remembered more than the eventual Oscar winner is snubbed for a Best Picture nod, or gets nominated and loses to an inferior film that happened to capture the public’s attention at that particular point in history.

    Some of the greatest films of all time lost the top award, “Citizen Kane” among them, arguably the greatest of all time (though I disagree). “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, easily John Huston’s best work, joins the list, as does “The Searchers,” which is in my opinion the finest western ever made and contains the greatest John Wayne performance of all time.

    Remember “Rocky” winning over “All the President’s Men,” “Network” and “Taxi Driver?” Or “Kramer vs. Kramer” over “Apocalypse Now?” In the last twenty years, Oscar has pulled some howlers, some choices that left me nearly putting my foot through the television upon the announcement. The first time I remember being really, truly angry at a lame decision was in 1981 when “Chariots of Fire” bested Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” which I believe to be among the best films of the 80s.

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  • Best actor contenders join an eclectic list of recent winners

    Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Frank Langella seem to be the names bandied about for Oscar consideration this year, which would place them in some impressive company of nominees and winners these last 20 years. Of course, that said, there have also been some bizarre choices for the Best Actor award, which has often left me shaking my head in disgust and wondering what these voters were actually seeing.

    Since 1988, there have been 10 winners that perhaps should not have been, the award arguably deserved by another of the nominees, or worse, an actor not nominated! Consider Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” a widely acclaimed performance that asked that he not connect with anyone in the film, never make eye contact, rock back and forth and speak in a nasally voice.

    Stop what you are doing right now and try what he did in the film, and trust me it is very easy to do. Now do you deserve an Oscar for doing what Hoffman did in that film? The real perfortmance in “Rain Man” was that of Tom Cruise, who we watched evolve over the course of the film, and of course the best performance of that year was Gene Hackman as the tough investigator in “Mississippi Burning.” Hackman was nominated, but he stood no chance in the wake of the juggernaut of support for Hoffman, who in fact should have won years before for his miraculous work in “Tootsie!”

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