Oscars' rehash: ’97, Year of Disasters

So The English Patient didn't deserve to win Best Picture. Some tragedies are unavoidable.On the one hand, this is the year the Coen brothers finally received a Best Picture nomination, much deserved and far overdue. On the other hand, it was also the year that the disaster picture came back with tornadoes and aliens, Roland Emmerich destroyed the White House (the first time, anyway) and Nicholas Cage stopped doing movies like Leaving Las Vegas and started making crap.

What I miss about being a projectionist: free popcorn, watching movies from the projection booth and seeing movies a couple hours before everyone else. What I don't miss about being a projectionist: seeing the same awful movie over and over and over. The theater I worked in a was a small, single-screen Main Street theater in Vermillion, South Dakota. The ticket counter was five feet from the concession stand which was five feet from a pair of swinging, totally unsoundproof doors into the theater. It was impossible to avoid hearing the movie while working, and as iPods had not been invented yet, during my final year as a projectionist (not coincidentally, my last year as a college student) I was forced to sit through repeated hearings (if not quite viewings) of The Rock, Mr. Holland's Opus, Broken Arrow, Executive Decision, Spy Hard, Eraser, Phenomenon, A Time to Kill, Chain Reaction, Twister, Sleepers, Space Jam and That Thing You Do. I liked That Thing You Do, at least the first time I saw it. Unfortunately, it was a movie about a one-hit wonder, and so to drive that point home, nearly the only song that plays in the entire movie is that one song, over and over and over. I still have nightmares.

So it came to pass that final my year of unlimited free movies also was one of access to movies I wished I had never watched even once, let alone two shows a night, four nights a week plus Saturday matinees. I did have the good fortune to show Fargo over and over and over. But perhaps even that repetition had an adverse effect in the long run. More on that in a minute.

I cannot remember which was my last movie. Looking at the release dates for November and December 1996, I'm guessing it was either Jingle All the Way, Daylight or The Preacher's Wife. My year with ready access to movies was well worth forgetting.

What should have won: At the time, I responded to The English Patient winning over Fargo roughly as I would later respond to George W. Bush winning re-election over John Kerry. I briefly sank into a deep depression, convinced Hollywood (and later, America) had voted as it did simply to piss me off, and considered moving to Canada.

In retrospect, however, perhaps I overreacted. The English Patient and George W. Bush were still poor choices, and neither one has grown on me in the intervening years. But The English Patient is the sort of sprawling epic that Hollywood drools over and can't help but give Best Picture. And while Fargo (like Kerry) was an admirable representative of the larger body work by the Coens (and the Democrats), it really wasn't the best work they would ever do and probably wasn't worth all the pain.

At the time, Fargo was a bold, ironic crime story. Now, it's a bit over the top. From the very beginning, Carter Burwell's score is just too much, suggesting a movie of far greater scope. The Northern Plains accents seemed then like a delicious little quirk, especially when I was selling tickets to Northern Plains residents, many of who requested those tickets in the same Northern Plains accent without a bit of irony. Now, it seems like a disturbing affectation. The center of the story was then and remains Frances McDormand, whose performance has not faded at all. But it's overshadowed by the quirkier performances of William H. Macy, Peter Stormare and especially Steve Buscemi.

What the Coen brothers tried here, they did better later. In No Country For Old Men, they executed a similar story structure -- a crime story about buffoon in slightly over his head (Macy, then, Josh Brolin later) against a psychopath who doesn't have much to say (Stormare and Javier Bardem), all anchored by a small-town law officer (McDormand and Tommy Lee Jones who is both wise and befuddled about the goings-on -- and perfected it by setting aside many of their quirks. That said, I still prefer Fargo to any of the other nominated movies. The English Patient, was perfectly timed, released and marketed for Best Picture, but was unbelievably dull, wasting far too much screen time on the least-interesting relationship, that between Ralph Fiennes's Count Laszlo and Kristin Scott Thomas's Katherine. As Elaine Benes later said, "You know, sex in a tub -- that doesn't work." A few years later, upon the release of the movie version of Cold Mountain, I would realize that I have a fundamental beef with the now late Anthony Minghella and his process of adapting books into movies. In an interview he said he would only read a book once and then never look at it again while adapting it, which seems incredibly disrespectful of the source material. But as I never read The English Patient, it would be unfair to assume he screwed it up as badly. So, I will continue to dismiss it as boring and merely wish we had seen far more of Juliette Binoche and less of Scott Thomas.

Fargo, then, is the more worthy movie, but I acknowledge that movies like The English Patient win because there are more J. Petermans in the world than Elaines. The world did not end because The English Patient won Best Picture. As for the other the decision, from 2004, well, we're still paying for that one, so maybe that depression was well founded.

But there were three other nominees in 1997: Jerry Maguire is still one of my favorite movies despite the presence of a) Tom Cruise, b) the cheesiest of cheesy movie quotes (actually three or four of them) and c) the continued presence of Tom Cruise; Shine at least gave us Geoffrey Rush, and where would the world be today without Barbossa; Secrets & Lies was just happy to be nominated.

Better movies that got screwed: Big Night. Every time I watch it, I'm still mesmerized by Stanley Tucci making an omelet. John Sayles' Lone Star wasn't as sweet as his previous movie (The Secret of Roan Inish) or as good as the one that followed (Men With Guns), but it's still better than most, if not all, of the Best Picture nominees. Sling Blade earns points for one of the more memorable performances in history, but loses even more points for John Ritter's hairdo. Bound was so much fun that Gina Gershon is completely forgiven for Showgirls.

Worst award: While you could certainly find fault with several of the technical awards The English Patient won in its landslide, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Supporting Actor win in Jerry Maguire seems out of place. Maybe it's the Oscar speech that seemed a bit too in character or the total lack of range he's displayed since that performance, or maybe it's just grown worn since Donald Faison borrowed the character nearly whole for Scrubs. At the time, I would have voted for Macy, but he's been better. Ed Norton in Primal Fear looks like the best choice of those nominated, but Tony Shalhoub from Big Night or Richard Jenkins from Flirting With Disaster would have been inspired choices.