The music branch of the Academy is famously clique-y. Year-after-year they tend to nominate the same group of men (only two women have ever been won in the Original Score category, and only two women have been nominated multiple times, and only Rachel Portman has done both), frequently citing them for films that would raise eyebrows otherwise (we'll get to the Original Score OVP of 2008 tomorrow, but Defiance getting its sole nomination that year was more about its oft-cited composer than a celebration of its quality). However, an odd thing occasionally happens with all of these nominations-the rare person who actually breaks through and gets "in the club" almost always seems to win. It's rare that the Academy cites some of the frequent nominees, perhaps knowing that they'll be back soon enough. As a result, you oftentimes get people who have been nominated many times without a single win.
Last year one of these gentlemen finally ended his long losing streak (Alexandre Desplat, winning on his ninth nomination), and during Comic-Con this week it was announced that he could be followed by someone who has been hunting for a trophy for even longer. Quentin Tarantino pointed out that legendary composer Ennio Morricone (so legendary he already has an Honorary Oscar but is still hunting for a competitive one) will be scoring his highly-anticipated movie The Hateful Eight. Considering this year hasn't yet created a Best Picture frontrunner (The Danish Girl doesn't seem like it's up the older Academy's alley, Suffragette has the "women's picture" problem that hurts in Best Picture, and The Revenant has the "he just won" problem), there's still time for The Hateful Eight to sneak in and actually become a major player (doesn't it feel like Tarantino could be in that moment of his career right now?). If so, it would mean that Morricone, who scored his first nomination for 1978's Days of Heaven but is far more well-known for his western scores to Sergio Leone pictures (a director Tarantino frequently borrows from) could end his losing streak. This begs the question-what other composers are in a longtime hunt for an Oscar? Below I have listed the four living composers with 5+ nominations, but no trophies:
Caveat: I'm going solely based on people who were nominated for Original Score, not Original Song or Original Song Score-the music branch gets tricky, y'all, and this is just the classical score and nothing with lyrics. As a result, Lalo Schifrin is not on this list since his six Oscar nominations were a result of four for score, one for song score, and one for original song, though one could hardly argue the man isn't due a trophy after all these years.
4. Ennio Morricone
Born: November 10, 1928
Nominations: 5 (Days of Heaven, The Mission, The Untouchables, Bugsy, and Malena)
Probably Got Closest On: 1986's The Mission, which is generally considered one of the finest scores ever written (it made AFI's 25 Best Scores roster, a pretty impressive achievement for a largely forgotten film), but the gimmick of the also legendary Herbie Hancock writing an original jazz score for Round Midnight was too much for the Academy to handle, and this was during a period when they actually seemed to want to honor major names in the popular music industry, so Morricone lost.
Shockingly He Missed For: I'm not surprised he missed for Once Upon a Time in the West, which was not a major Oscar player but is my favorite cinematic score of all time so you know that I am heartbroken that it didn't make it. However Morricone's list of classics is hard to compare to (no one else on this list can boast they should probably have double the amount of nominations they have), and so everything from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to Academy-friendly Cinema Paradiso is a surprise miss.
Could He Make it in 2015: As I pointed out, The Hateful Eight seems like the sort of film that was born to take a nomination. The only issue would be if Tarantino borrows too much from other music (he's a maestro at creating great song scores), which turns this branch off.
3. James Newton Howard
Nominations: 6 (The Prince of Tides, The Fugitive, My Best Friend's Wedding, The Village, Michael Clayton, and Defiance); it's worth noting that Howard has also been nominated twice for Best Original Song for Junior and One Fine Day
Probably Got Closest On: None of these. Howard is one of those composers who slipped in early in his career on two really big Best Picture nominees that had no shot of winning (you just weren't going to beat Beauty and the Beast during this branch's love affair with Disney or Schindler's List in pretty much any year). After that he's parlayed those two nominations into being a perpetual nominee for films that wouldn't normally be cited like The Village and Defiance. Michael Clayton was a rare exception to this rule and if he had been a little older might have been a decent way to get an old-age award, but he was only 56 and is constantly composing-it was hardly an urgent issue.Shockingly He Missed For: The Dark Knight-the film is one of only four exclusively orchestral scores (the others being Anatomy of a Murder, Crimson Tide, and Independence Day) to have won the Grammy for Best Score and not to be nominated for an Oscar. Considering the film was nominated for a HUGE number of Oscars, this is a stunning miss even though there's no way Howard could have bested AR Rahman.
Could He Make it in 2015: Howard always has a contender (though he surprisingly missed for Maleficent last year, which I was thought might be an option), and he's always a threat to randomly show up like he did for The Village and Defiance, but it all depends on the strength of Will Smith's football drama Concussion-if it's a surprise hit toward the end of the year he could be a threat. Otherwise his only other film is Mockingjay-Part 2 and that franchise has not been up Oscar's alley.
Born: November 28, 1943
Nominations: 8 (Ragtime, The Natural, Avalon, Toy Story, James and the Giant Peach, A Bug's Life, Pleasantville, and Monsters, Inc.); he has also amassed twelve nominations for Best Original Song for Ragtime, Parenthood, The Paper, Toy Story, Babe: Pig in the City, Toy Story 2, Meet the Parents, Monsters, Inc., The Princess and the Frog, and Toy Story 3, winning for Monsters Inc and Toy Story 3
Probably Got Closest On: Oh surely one of the Pixar scores. I suspect that Toy Story was his best bet, though he would have had to best Pocahontas for it and this was when Disney still trumped Pixar. He eventually won two Oscars for Best Original Song, though, so there's absolutely no urgency for him to win a third trophy in this category, and the category sort of turned on him here after he won his "we give in" trophy in 2001.
Shockingly He Missed For: Every film after Monsters, Inc. Honestly-Newman's weird aversion to this category in the years after his Oscar is strange. He continued making animated Disney scores, which is a favorite of this category (films like Cars, The Princess and the Frog, and Toy Story 3), as well as he headlined his first Best Picture nominee ever (Seabiscuit), but they just went cold on him. Maybe his smug Oscar speech made some enemies (I found the first one pretty funny, to be honest, but who knows what ticks off the music branch).
Could He Make it in 2015: No-Newman's next score is for the much-dreaded Toy Story 4.
Born: October 20, 1955
Nominations: 11 (Little Women, The Shawshank Redemption, Unstrung Heroes, American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events, The Good German, WALL-E, Skyfall, and Saving Mr. Banks); he also received a nomination for Original Song for WALL-E, for which he just won the OVP!
Probably Got Closest On: To this day I still do not understand what happened in 1999. Newman was at the helm of an extremely memorable Best Picture score (American Beauty), had three competitors who had recently won (John Williams, Rachel Portman, and Gabriel Yared) who were clearly also-rans, and a fifth film that no one had heard of as competition. It was his for the taking. And yet somehow the score to The Red Violin snuck through and won an Oscar for John Corigliano despite no history with the movies, let alone Oscar.
Shockingly He Missed For: In the years since American Beauty Newman has made bait after bait after bait trying to get a trophy, so I am going before his 1994 double-nominated breakthrough to Scent of a Woman, a film that scored HUGE with Oscar and likely would have landed Newman a nod had he been more established.
Could He Make it in 2015: Newman is taking over John Williams duty on Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, which feels like yet another nomination without a win.
And there you have it-which of these men feels like they could score next? Which will remain forever a bridesmaid? And how the hell did The Red Violin win an Oscar? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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