OVP: The Conversation (1974)

Film: The Conversation (1974)

Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Harrison Ford's public persona has long been of a man who didn't really want to be a movie star.  A lot of this, I have long-suspected, is at least partially untrue (otherwise why do it, especially when he became bonkers rich & didn't really need to do it anymore...after all, his wife is also a talented actor who now rarely works).  But it is interesting that Ford's fame came relatively late.  The role that made him a movie star was Star Wars, which was released just days before his 35th birthday. For comparison's sake with some of his 1970's peers, Al Pacino at that age had several Oscar nominations and the Godfather franchise, Dustin Hoffman had been Ben Braddock & Ratso Rizzo, and Jack Nicholson & Peter Fonda had both boarded a motorcycle into legend.  Ford spent much of the 1970's balancing his time between small roles in movies and making furniture for people like Joan Didion, Valerie Harper, & George Lucas.  Ford's movie career, though, is really interesting because he appeared in a lot of interesting movies, among them Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial Zabriskie Point, and three Best Picture nominees: American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now, and today's film The Conversation.  For all of the talk about Ford at one point before Han Solo nearly quitting the industry to work as a high-profile carpenter, the more intriguing idea might be what he did in this film: taking on the role of distinctive, very handsome character actor in important auteur-driven features.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Conversation is a movie best headed into with you knowing as little as is humanly possible, so while I provide a spoiler alert on all of my reviews because I generally want to know as little as possible about all movies I'm going to, this one in particular it helps to go in blind so I'll reiterate that now.  The movie follows Harry Caul (Hackman), a man who runs a service that essentially follows people and records them for money (it is not lost on me that The Conversation, which competed with Chinatown for Best Picture in 1974, bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Polanski film as both are about private investigators who uncover more than they expected from a routine case).  Unlike Jake Gittes, Harry Caul does not advertise and is not well-known for his work.  He is, instead, anonymous to the point of unhealthy, keeping everything about him at a distance to the point his girlfriend (Garr) doesn't ever visit his apartment and he doesn't even have his own phone.  This is driven by wanting to avoid retribution, but also the very real threat of violence in his career.  Similar to Chinatown (again) there are allusions to a previous case throughout the film that the audience only understands to be too horrific to mention, and that haunt both detectives to the point they are constantly in fear of repeating it.

The Conversation is considered a landmark film, but because Francis Ford Coppola had it come out the same year The Godfather, Part II (one of the greatest movies ever made), it always feels like it doesn't get its due, and so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect headed into this-would it be a really handsome movie, one that stands up but can't compare with a picture as perfect as Godfather II, or would it be just as exceptional.  Again, similar to Chinatown, it's not clear until the last moments what's happening, and it's also not clear where The Conversation will land in that comparison.  But as the movie concludes, you realize it's also a true masterpiece.  We understand as the film ends that Harry has no idea what he's walked into, and what he's helped cause.  He assumes that the conversation between Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams at the beginning of the movie is of a couple that might be having an affair, and becomes concerned when he uncovers (while listening to the clips that he initially won't hand over to a man known as "the Director's" assistant without first meeting the Director himself) that a part of the clips that he couldn't initially hear says "he'd kill us if he got the chance."  When he meets the Director (played by an uncredited Robert Duvall) he becomes worried for the young couple's safety as it's clear Cindy Williams is the Director's wife.  But as we learn in the waning moments of the film, he's missed something on the tapes-the emphasis in Forrest's reading of the word "us."

Because as the film ends, it's a case where Frederic Forrest has murdered Robert Duvall's husband with help from his lover, leaving all of the money (and secret organization he has) to Cindy Williams, and leaving them the opportunity to end up together.  The movie's sound work is legendary (and Oscar-nominated) for a reason, as not only is the entire setup with Hackman's Harry filled with us getting whirs & blurs from the recording equipment, but also the film tells in flashback narrative things the audience will have missed.  The film clearly inspired everything from The Usual Suspects to Severance (which borrows heavily from The Conversation's score), and you see why-this is a movie that shows paranoia is justified...and cannot be resolved.  We end the movie with Harry knowing he is being watched, knowing that he can't escape or be safely private...and having to give in to that to not go mad.

Harrison Ford's role is a key component & a crucial part of this story, even if he's only in about three scenes.  He plays the Director's assistant, and plays him with a level of bureaucratic cool that you kind of just assume he's a jackass (also according to most reports, Ford played him as gay which kind of comes across in the way he's super bitchy in a way you don't find a male character in the 1970's, even if there's no hint of this other than him wearing a stylish green suit in one scene that Ford bought with his own money), one who has gotten to this position through being absurdly handsome and honestly it's the sort of character you assume you don't need to pay attention to as the movie progresses.  Because I am writing this about Ford, though, I was paying attention, and it gives you a whole other angle here.  Ford's Martin Stett is the only figure in the film who 100% knows everything that's going on we learn as the film goes by-he works for the Director, but he's also clearly aware of the affair, and given that he's still working for Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams in the end, it's possible he orchestrated all of this in connection with them.  The paranoia seeps into the actual film...was this all a setup to use Harry, kill the Director, and give the young couple everything they wanted?  Only Ford's Stett, who calls Hackman in the end to tell him he's being watched, knows for certain, and makes him the true antagonist of the picture.  Ford is good in this, and as we'll talk about next week, that layered acting ability didn't totally diminish when his visage started to adorn the postered walls of teenage boys, but as I said above-it's hard not to think of Ford in the same way we think of someone like Robert Duvall or John Cazale, someone who added extra layers to already great movies, as a supporting character actor, while watching The Conversation.

OVP: Absence of Malice (1981)

Film: Absence of Malice (1981)

Stars: Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Wilford Brimley

Director: Sydney Pollack

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actor-Paul Newman, Supporting Actress-Melinda Dillon, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sally Field: click here to learn more about Ms. Field (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

During the early 1980's, Sally Field became what she'd clearly always dreamed of becoming: a serious actress.  We talked last week about Norma Rae, the movie that launched her onto this platform, and won her her first Oscar, against actresses like Jane Fonda & Jill Clayburgh who were taken more seriously than the former Flying Nun.  Field kept the pedal-to-the-medal on trying to change her image in the coming years, appearing in commercial fare (Hooper, Smokey and the Bandit II), movies that upended her cutesy image like the hard-swearing Black Roads with Tommy Lee Jones, and more dramatic roles.  She would win a second Academy Award for her work in Places in the Heart in 1984, when she'd infamously utter the lines "right now...you like me!"...lines that would come to haunt her & in many ways underline the spunky actress she was trying to shed.  During this time, one of the dramatic films that she made was Absence of Malice, a serious film starring one of the biggest names of the era, and a guy who (unlike Field) was still in the hunt for his first Oscar: Paul Newman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows newspaper reporter Megan Carter (Field), who is given a tip from Rosen (Balaban), who works in the US Attorney's office that they are investigating liquor wholesaler Michael Gallagher (Newman) for the disappearance of labor leader Joey Diaz (never seen, but if you can't tell they're making him seem like a Jimmy Hoffa-type figure during this time frame, you need to study your history more).  Carter publishes this based on a file on Rosen's desk, which was clearly planted for her to publish, but it upends Gallagher's life.  They don't actually have any evidence of the connection, but with the paper now saying "he's connected," he can't get out of it.  Gallagher is the son of a former crime boss, but is generally living a clean life...until Carter forces him to act dirty.  This comes to a head when Teresa Perrone (Dillon) provides an alibi for him-that he was taking her to a doctor to have an abortion.  But Perrone is devoutly Catholic, and when Carter's bosses insist they have to publish her name & that she had an abortion, Perrone kills herself.  This sets off a chain-of-events where Gallagher shows he learned something from his father, using a romantic relationship with Carter and implicit bribery of a US Attorney to get off...and to get their careers fried in the process.

Absence of Malice sounds better than it actually is when I describe it above.  It reads like an ambitious, greedy reporter wanting to make a name for herself, who sacrifices her soul and in the process has a man who had lived an honorable life go back to his criminal roots to punish her and those around her who destroyed the life of Teresa, the only truly innocent person in the picture.  That's not what it is though.  The writers desperately want us to care about the romantic relationship between Field & Newman, but you don't...because you realize that Megan is not a good person, even if she's played as bubbly & sweet in Field's hands.  The film could've ended on Megan admitting she was involved with Gallagher but knew nothing about him, but instead ends on a conversation between the two, potentially setting up a reconciliation.  But why?  They should hate each other, particularly him hate her...what's there, given so much of what came before was fake?

This hurts the performances.  Field is badly miscast here .  Field was in that "I can do anything" part of her career in 1981, but she is not right for this-you need an actress who can play fragile-but-brittle, and she is not a brittle performer (you kind of think someone like Susan Sarandon might've been better off with this part).  Newman is better, but again-this is a great character until the writers come in the way (you see hints of what might've been decades later when Newman would play a similar character in Road to Perdition), and you feel like you only get half a performance.  Melinda Dillon got her second-and-final Oscar nomination for her work here, and she does create a shadow over the film (her confession scene, where she tries to convince Megan not to publish that she had an abortion, knowing that she'll end up killing herself if she does but not having the guts to say it, is really well-done); again, though, much of the work in the back-half of the film takes air out of her performance by cheapening it.  Wilford Brimley, honestly, is pretty good in his one extended scene, giving the film some life, but at that point, it's too late-the script has already wrecked the promising premise.

OVP: Original Screenplay (1999)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Alan Ball, American Beauty

Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich

Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia

M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense

Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy

My Thoughts: All right, we are in the home stretch now as we enter the Big 8, and we generally start this with Original Screenplay.  Part of the reason we do that is, historically, you're more likely to find Best Picture nominees in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (so it feels more like we're climbing the mountain), but we are hardly Best Picture shy here, with two contenders (and the eventual winner) in the quintet.  This is also a category, I'll be honest, I'm not totally sold on whom I'm picking as my winner, so I'm going to kind of decide as I write this whether or not I'll give one of two films my statue.

Let's start with our last nomination for Topsy-Turvy in the discussion.  The film dominated the tech categories, and that was enough to get Mike Leigh another citation to his collection of nominations-without-wins (seriously, give the man an Honorary Oscar).  The script here, unlike the technical aspects, is just okay.  I think that it tells an interesting story, but because it's so linear, we don't get a lot of the fun meandering into the human experience that we receive in the best of Leigh's scripts like Secrets & Lies and Another Year.  I wanted more introspection, and this doesn't quite have that in the same degree as I would've hoped.  Still enjoyable, but not a Mike Leigh masterwork.

Being John Malkovich brought Charlie Kaufman his first of five nominations (to date) from the Academy, and it is an ingenious script.  I like Kaufman's movies better when he's being directed by someone else, and Spike Jonze is there to provide some restraint, which helps this script.  I think that some of my personal problems with the film are around not the script, which is really clever in its look at sexual politics, celebrity, and consumerism, and more around John Cusack being a bad casting choice in the lead.  Really good stuff here, some of Kaufman's best.

Magnolia, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson scripts.  This is a controversial take (I know some who set their clock by this movie), but I did not like this film.  That is partially on me, I'll take it-the black-as-coal look at humanity is something that I can sometimes take, and sometimes it feels a bit too Joker-esque.  I'll own that it's been a while since I've seen this, and maybe as an older man I could handle what's happening...but my notes on this eviscerate the movie's meandering plot, one with too many loose ends, and nothing about my memory makes me want to relive this (though Cruise & Moore are excellent).  If you're a huge fan (I've never been so different in my take of a movie compared to my Letterboxd followers, including my brother Luke whom I rarely disagree with by more than a star-and-a-half on a film), let's blame younger John on not liking this one (even though I honestly don't think older John is going to love it either).

And then we get to the two Best Picture nominees.  American Beauty is, in my opinion, a textbook definition of a great film script.  All of the storylines work-there's no point where I'm wanting to go in for another character, wanting to just spend time, with, say Annette Bening over the rest of the cast.  The movie's shrewd look behind-the-curtain of suburbia was so influential that it became the norm in film and television in the following decades.  I love everything about this...except the ending.  I do not think the ending of this film works (it's way too sentimental), and while a movie should be more than one aspect, if we're splitting hairs, that's gotta count for something.

The Sixth Sense, of course, famously aces its ending.  If we're comparing the two, The Sixth Sense's biggest issue would be around some of the dealings with Bruce Willis's character, where the limitations of the twist ending mean that we don't explore some of his more complicated dealings with his wife and his career.  But this film is littered with really great lines ("I see dead people" became a classic for a reason) and those end monologues, particularly between Toni Collette & Haley Joel Osment, are fantastic and human, adding a real sense of feeling to a horror movie (harder to do than you'd think without it coming across as cheesy).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and in a rare situation, all five of them would eventually get an Oscar nomination (usually at least one gets skipped by the Academy).  Three are adapted, including the winner American Beauty and Being John Malkovich & The Sixth Sense took nominations.  The BAFTA's have them divvied up like Oscar does, and their adapted field included Being John Malkovich as the winner against All About My Mother, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, and Topsy-Turvy while the WGA went with the same winner and nominees as Oscar, except they dumped Topsy-Turvy in favor of Three Kings.  If we're being real, I don't think any of these were in sixth place.  Pedro would win this category three years later, but Talk to Her was a bigger deal than All About My Mother was at the time, and while Three Kings was a serious film in 1999 (I rewatched it as a catch-up for a reason), it might have been too controversial to get in with Oscar.  I'd theorize that Sweet & Lowdown, with two acting nominations and it being Woody Allen, was probably just out-of-reach in this lineup (I'm just going to mention that The Matrix is not something Oscar was cool enough to nominate for writing in 1999).

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to be totally real here-Original Screenplay is maybe the weakest I've seen it in the years we've profiled for 1999...in the last two weeks of my My Ballot I'm on the hunt specifically for better options here.  But I do think that if they were ever going to nominate the taste-specific films of Kevin Smith for an Academy Award, Dogma's take on religion (which has aged really well) would've been the way to go.

Oscar’s Choice: Alan Ball's win here was inevitable.  The era where winning Best Picture came with matching directing & writing statues was coming to an end (3 of the previous 4 years had failed in that department), but American Beauty is the kind of movie that gets a writing statue, especially with its competition being as unusual as Being John Malkovich and The Sixth Sense.

My Choice: I said at the top that I couldn't decide who should win, and the contenders for the statue (for me) are American Beauty and The Sixth Sense.  I think that American Beauty has better plot structure, but fails its ending, while The Sixth Sense doesn't have as insightful of takes, but sticks the landing better.  I think a script needs to be a complete package, though, and so I'm going to change my mind on what I initially had at #1 and instead give it to The Sixth Sense, just barely over Alan Ball's work (both will be high on my My Ballot list).  Behind them (in order) are Being John Malkovich, Topsy-Turvy, and then Magnolia.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Are you getting scared with M. Night Shyamalan & I, or do you want to sell real estate over with American Beauty?  Am I the only person who really did not get the appeal of Magnolia?  And with a host of options, are you thinking All About My Mother, Sweet & Lowdown, The Matrix, or Three Kings as the sixth place finisher?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Foreign Language Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

OVP: Teacher's Pet (1958)

Film: Teacher's Pet (1958)

Stars: Clark Gable, Doris Day, Gig Young, Mamie van Doren, Nick Adams

Director: George Seaton

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Gig Young, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Doris Day: click here to learn more about Ms. Day (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Doris Day would never win an Academy Award in her career, and would only be nominated once, for Pillow Talk in 1959.  There are actresses we're going to profile this season who enjoyed genuine critical success (like Audrey Hepburn) and others who never got that kind of recognition (like June Allyson).  Day's Oscar nomination theoretically puts her in the middle, but to be honest-that's being charitable to the Academy.  Day's movies were not meant to be critically-acclaimed-they were meant to make money.  Her citation for Pillow Talk was considered to be something of a surprise, even to Day herself, and less about her acting & more an acknowledgement that she'd been the biggest actress of the decade (and should have an Oscar nomination to show for it).  But the next year, when she got actual buzz for Midnight Lace (a film, it's worth mentioning, that's not very good even if Day was lauded at the time), they felt she'd had enough praise.  This is true for most of the serious or seriously-considered films of Day's, including our film today, Teacher's Pet.  The movie got Golden Globe nominations for Clark Gable & Gig Young, Young got an Oscar nomination, and it was cited by the WGA & Academy for writing, as well as the DGA for its direction.  But Day-not a mention...proof that she was never really taken seriously by the powers-that-be as anything other than a way to make some money.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie honestly has a cute premise.  We've got James Gannon (Gable), a grizzled news reporter who grew up in a newsroom (and only knows that life) who writes a letter to the instructor of a journalism school saying he won't speak in her class because he doesn't believe in journalism school.  When he's forced to apologize, he finds the instructor, Erica Stone (Day) to be less mockable (and far prettier) than he had thought in his letter.  He assumes the guise of a student, one who shows intense promise, and the two start a professional (and romantic) relationship, one that falls apart when James's identity is revealed.  The movie then meanders a bit, both sides softening their stances, and ends with him respecting her and her ending up on his arm, both in love.

The movie's premise and first thirty minutes is really smart, and almost justifies the casting.  Gable & Day are professional movie stars, and both know how to sell a two-dimensional plot, and we get some really fun dialogue about the benefits of both education and real-world experience.  I liked seeing Day in smart woman mode, and not just "preaching from books" but it's clear the writers want her to actually be good at her job and not just "seems good" until Gable shows her the ways of the world.  That theme continues throughout the movie, but it fails once the two start being romantically involved.  Gable is too old for this part, and not necessarily the romance, but the idea that he's going to learn more from Day given his background.  He doesn't sell the transformation particularly well (the script doesn't help him there), and by the last thirty minutes they introduce a whole new topic (the economics of a newspaper) as a bizarre 11:00 number to the plot that feels tacked on because they didn't know how to end the picture.

Honestly, the Oscar nominations perplexed me here.  The film was a hit, so maybe that was the driving factor, but most of Day's movies were hits...I don't get why Teacher's Pet got all of this love when she'd also been in serious films like Julie and The Man Who Knew Too Much a few years earlier with little notice.  Anyway, the two Oscar nominations are quickly discarded.  The screenplay, as I said, suffers after thirty minutes (the movie is two hours long), and really doesn't know how to end this with the two of them both respecting each other AND falling in love AND staying in character (and so it doesn't).  The nomination for Gig Young is even more bewildering, not necessarily because he's bad, but because he's so ancillary.  He's meant, I think, to be a romantic rival to Gable but there's no actual rivalry, and honestly I think he'd 100% be the "gay best friend" if this was a 1990's rom-com.  He's meant to be the comic side piece, but only a couple of his jokes are funny, and there's nothing meaty or showy in his work, or even admirable in adding to the picture.  He's just sort of there-definitely one of the weirder Classical Hollywood acting nominations I've come across...the only way it makes sense is if Teacher's Pet was far closer to Best Picture or Director nominations than I'm giving it credit for (which given the DGA & WGA nominations, may have been the case).

OVP: Original Screenplay (2023)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Justine Triet & Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall

David Hemingson, The Holdovers

Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer, Maestro

Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik, May December

Celine Song, Past Lives

My Thoughts: Moving into the big eight (this is now certain to be the fastest we've turned through a series, as I have every intention of getting this all published by the end of the month, a two-month turnaround), I think one of the biggest complaints I have about the new ten-wide Best Picture fields comes into focus best in the writing categories.  Of the two writing categories, 90% of the nominees came from Best Picture nominees, and had Barbie stayed in original (as I would've included it as...saying it's "adapted" from a toy is a bit specious to me, given there's very little source material associated with a Barbie doll, and if Barbie is adapted, then we should say the same of King Richard and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), it's near certain that it would've been a ten-for-ten carbon copy.  This is really bad.  I have less overlap in my personal ballots for screenplay (albeit more overlap than I probably should), and that's just one person, not a larger Academy body where there should be more diversity of opinions.  We need to figure out a way to have some differentiation-not all of the Best Picture nominees have some of the best writing.

This is true for something like Maestro.  The biopic of Leonard Bernstein has some elements that are worthwhile (particularly the cinematography), but it's not well-written.  The movie doesn't know how to talk about Bernstein's sexuality, veering occasionally into homophobic with how dismissive it is of his relationships with men (The Imitation Game and Bohemian Rhapsody are other examples of this).  This feels like it's so crucial to understanding Bernstein that the rest of the film comes across incomplete.  Like King Richard before it, this is a case of the family being too involved with the creation of the movie, wanting it to be a work of legacy more than a work of art.

This isn't a problem for May December, which is clearly based off of the relationship between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, but because it's not technically an exact replica, it gets to be far more interesting.  The movie's script unfolds in a really knowing way, showing how manipulation can happen even when we want to initially project our own understandings onto characters (particularly Natalie Portman's main actress, craven and yet working toward something we don't understand until the final scenes).  I love some of the line readings (Melton's speech about not understanding if he's giving his child a traumatizing memory or not, Portman's justification for a romantic relationship with him)-it's really calculating writing, with lots of sharp double meanings and damning conversations about ethical filmmaking.

This is also true of Past Lives.  Celine Song's movie, one that shows us the way we carry our own romantic (and life) expectations around, even after we've long moved past or given up on them, is one of the better films I've seen in a while when it comes to giving us a grown-up look at love.  The movie talks about how we cannot be young again, but it does it without spoon-feeding that concept to us, and I love the way that we as an audience are brought along on this romance, eventually realizing that, like the characters, we're never going to totally know what might've happened for these people had life been different...just like our own lost loves.

Alexander Payne's quite famous for his scripts at this point, and there is some of the expected wit throughout The Holdovers to underscore that reputation.  Paul Giamatti litters the film with bon mots, and there are some marvelous monologues from Da'Vine Joy Randolph, particularly as she starts to open up to the reality that her dead son will never be home for Christmas again.  The writing is really clean, but also needs some mess to make the ending work-we need a better understanding of where the film is going after the credits (we understand the "why" behind Giamatti's decisions...we might need a bit more of the "what next" in order for this to feel like a complete story).  Still, solid writing-this could be taught in a college course it's so well-constructed.

Does putting the "Did She Do It?" title card in the opening scenes get blamed on the writers...I genuinely want to know as I'd probably up this a star if it didn't.  It's writing, and it's onscreen, so I'm going to put some of the blame on them, and the way they steal much of the film's suspense from the get-go.  The way that it wields misogyny as a weapon not just by the characters but against the viewers (I would imagine polling gender lines for the "did she do it?" question would be pronounced) is really good...but the way the film takes too long to get to the inevitable ending is not.  I think wanting to keep the character open-ended takes away from Sandra Huller's work, and this is a weird aspect of the film to have honored.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and the winner came from this field with Anatomy of a Fall beating Past Lives (the four other nominees are adapted).  The BAFTA's split theirs, with Barbie replacing May December here (it would go adapted for the Oscars), but otherwise a copy of Oscar in both wins & nominees.  The WGA Awards, weirdly, were held after the Oscars (I cannot remember the last time this happened), so they knew what would happen, and because of guild rules (that largely preclude subtitled films) we had The Holdovers winning here, with Air & Barbie replacing Anatomy of a Fall & Maestro.  In sixth place, I think it was Air, and not just because it's the only new name in the precursors.  Beyond the Top 5, this was a weak field with very few Oscar contenders, and this feels like a spot they would've added a new name.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Yes, The Holdovers is genuinely funny in parts, but it would've been cool if we'd had room for the funniest film of the year, Emma Seligman & Rachel Sennott's destined-to-be-a-classic Bottoms, which deserved one of these spots.

Oscar’s Choice: The early dominance of Anatomy of a Fall at the Globes carried all season, and brought it back to the Dolby, stopping Alexander Payne from getting his third writing statue.

My Choice: This is a tough call between May December and Past Lives, and I'm going to give it to the former because I think it does a slightly better job of using audience expectations in creative ways, but either would've been a really cool Oscar winner.  Behind these two are The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, and then Maestro.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Do you want to join Oscar with the (potential) French killer, or would you rather join me on the roof with Charles Melton?  Is everyone kind of on the same page that we need to shake up these nominees a little bit again as 90% overlap is too much?  And if it wasn't Air in sixth place...what was?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

Film: The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

Stars: James Stewart, June Allyson, Harry Morgan, Charles Drake, George Tobias

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Original Screenplay, Sound*, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In 1953, coming off of Remains to Be Seen, a crime musical that flopped badly at the box office, June Allyson was dropped from her contract with MGM.  This wasn't the end of June's career, though.  Allyson smartly made her first post-contract movie with her costar in the MGM hit The Stratton Story Jimmy Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story, which was a critical & commercial success (and our film today).  Allyson would reteam successfully with Stewart the following year in Strategic Air Command, and Alan Ladd in The McConnell Story (another war picture) the same year.  She'd even return to MGM for one last musical at the studio in The Opposite Sex (a musical remake of The Women that also has Joan Collins & Ann Sheridan) in 1956, but that would bomb badly, and by 1957 she'd be ready for a new chapter, which we'll get into next week.  But first, let's talk about one of the films that helped keep Allyson a leading woman throughout her late thirties, The Glenn Miller Story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a (somewhat) accurate depiction of the life of Glenn Miller.  Miller might not be super well-known to the general public today, but in 1954 if you asked "who is Glenn Miller?" they would've looked like you in the same way  people would look at you today if you asked "who is Rihanna?"  Miller was a wildly successful big band leader in the 1930 & 40's, and we see that in this film as Jimmy Stewart plays him from his unsuccessful beginnings, including his unusual courtship of his wife Helen (Allyson), to eventual success, recording such standards as "Moonlight Serenade" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which would become the first-ever certified gold record.  The film ends where Glenn Miller's life did, with his plane going down during World War II into the English Channel, his final resting place still unknown to this day.

The movie is a part of my least-favorite subgenre, the musician biopic, one that has been pounded into the ground in recent years thanks to the success of the film Bohemian Rhapsody (we've got an upcoming one about Amy Winehouse while a Bob Marley biopic is still playing in most theaters).  So color me as surprised that I loved this movie.  It helps that Glenn Miller is one of my favorite recording artists.  My friend Drew, after I told him I was cooking while listening to Glenn Miller the other day said "how old are you???" but there's something about Miller's orchestrations that feed my soul.  Every moment of actual music in this picture is heaven.

But it's honestly the film itself that makes it work (I didn't like Respect with Aretha Franklin and I love Aretha's music).  I think it's primarily because of the way the film is constructed.  We don't need Miller to struggle with fame or a drug addiction-his story feels refreshing, particularly since it's unique (how many music superstars have died for their country?), and because Stewart & Allyson have a lot of fun with it.  Their courtship is silly & delightful, even if they're both too old for these parts, and as the film progresses, they do a really good job of showing us how bittersweet this love story's ending is going to be, knowing that it will end too soon, but that Miller's music will live on with countless lovers in the decades that follow.  Stewart is excellent (I love the way he conducts, showing that he loves Helen in a way that's different than being in love with music, but when they connect, it fills his heart), but Allyson is strong too.  Allyson didn't get enough credit as an actress during her career, but she's very good here, and the last few minutes, when she goes on a facial journey listening to her husband's arrangements, a special song just for her (for the last time), is beautiful.  Really well done on her part.

The film won three Oscar nominations, and two of them are impossible to argue with; I wasn't as enamored with the screenplay just because it was sometimes confusing at the beginning as to what Helen exactly saw in Glenn, but that's only a quibble because there's an Oscar at stake as it's otherwise solid.  But the scoring is divine-all of the Glenn Miller musical choices, particularly "Moonlight Serenade" and the way they show its evolution, are spectacular.  And the sound...I honestly was surprised how well this went.  I'm not one of those "it's a musical-it must have good sound!" people primarily because it downplays how great it can sound when you get it right-the sound here is rich, full, and captures all of the melancholy grandeur of Miller's music.  The scene where he plays while the enemy planes are dropping bombs near a still-enraptured audience...death be damned if the music is that enchanting.  What a terrific choice for an Oscar win.

OVP: Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)

Film: Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)

Stars: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, Jimmy Durante

Director: Richard Thorpe

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

June Allyson's career in Hollywood started rather conventionally.  She was originally a chorus girl on Broadway, getting a spot as an understudy to Betty Hutton in Panama Hattie, and after Hutton got the measles (and Allyson got to go on), she caught the eye of a Broadway director, who put her as the lead in his next show.  From there, she went to Hollywood, where an MGM screen test put her under contract immediately.  Her first real breakthrough role was in today's film, Two Girls and a Sailor, where she was paired off with Van Johnson.  Johnson was known as the "boy next door" at MGM, and got to play these parts regularly, and Allyson was soon after referred to as "the girl next door" on the lot.  The two would make six films together in all (this is the only one I am planning we'll get to this month as Allyson made a lot of movies), most of them quite successful, including today's film, which would make Allyson a leading lady for the next thirteen years.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two sisters Patsy (Allyson) and Jean (DeHaven) who grew up in a show business family, sometimes performing as children opposite comedian Junior Kipp (Durante).  When they get older, they are a successful singing duo who want to open up a club, but they can't because they don't have the money.  What they do have is a crew of handsome soldiers & sailors following them around (great problem if you can get it), and one of them is John Dyckman Brown III (Johnson), an extremely wealthy man who is also in the Navy.  They don't know that John has been sending Jean flowers, and when they spend a night getting to know each other, he buys them their dream venue, not revealing that he's actually a wealthy heir to a $60 million fortune.  The problems arise when it's clear that Patsy and John are in love, but she thinks he loves her sister (and that he's penniless).  Before the film ends, Jean goes off with one of her other suitors, pushing Patsy & John (whom she now knows is rich) into each others arms.

The film's original screenplay nomination is kind of silly, even if it's a genuinely lovely little movie.  The plot makes no sense if you assume that, during the time that both sisters were smitten with Johnny, they never bothered to ask him his last name or anything about his family.  But this will be a problem for when I get to that chapter of the Oscar Viewing Project later, as otherwise Two Girls and a Sailor is lovely.  The music is really great.  This is one of many MGM musicals in the 1940's that would use big names of the era and singers under star contracts (such as Lena Horne) to add a touch of excitement & glamour to the film.  Horne is wonderful, as is Harry James (who does trumpet with Allyson to the tune "The Young Man with the Horn," which I believe is the first appearance of this song that would become a James staple), and Jimmy Durante.  The funniest number is a skit that Gracie Allen does where she just plays two notes as the star pianist to an otherwise very busy orchestra; though she'd continue to do radio & television with her husband George Burns for another two decades, this would be her final film appearance.

As for our star of the month, I'm instantly enamored.  I've seen a couple of June Allyson movies, but because she isn't an "Oscar-nominated actress" I honestly haven't seen a lot of her.  Watching her here, it's intoxicating to understand why this role, in particular, made her such a big name in Hollywood.  Every scene she owns, and she does it effortlessly, like the camera is drawn to her.  After watching the most recent Hunger Games picture, my friend Cody said of Rachel Zegler (and I agreed), "this (star power) is the kind of special effect that money can't buy"...that's what Allyson is doing here.  There's something in her singing, her husky voice, her warm expression...you want to see it again-and-again.  Allyson oftentimes disparaged her abilities (she once said of herself "My voice is funny, I don't sing like Judy Garland and I don't dance like Cyd Charisse"), but it's easy to see why America disagreed with her.

OVP: Original Screenplay (2000)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous

Lee Hall, Billy Elliot

Susannah Grant, Erin Brockovich

David Franzoni, John Logan, & William Nicholson, Gladiator

Kenneth Lonergan, You Can Count on Me

My Thoughts: We are moving into the Best Original Screenplay contest today.  We have talked a lot over the past couple months about how the 2000 Oscars were not my favorite, and featured relatively middling (but not necessarily bad) lineups.  That is not a uniform opinion, though, as some categories really step it up and are actually quite wonderful.  The Best Original Screenplay category is one of those fields.  This is, with one exception, a really solid group of contenders, and in some cases, we're discussing for the first time some of my favorite films of 2000 showed up in the OVP.

Let's get the one dud out of the way: Gladiator.  I have been largely down on the film that would win Best Picture in 2000, but there are aspects of the film (like its art direction and sound work) that are worth celebrating.  Its script, on the other hand...there's no reason for it here, and it's probable that even the Academy knew that given that in those days, the Best Picture winner frequently pulled off Best Screenplay.  It's repetitive, much of it plays out like an outlandish, well-dressed soap opera, and it contains far too many random turns to amp up the rivalry between Maximus & Commodus for my taste.  It's here solely based on that Best Picture nomination, nothing more.

Now let's get to the good stuff.  The screenplay category is about plotting and it's about dialogue.  Hopefully both are great if they're in the Top 5 of the year, but definitely one is going to shine brighter, and for Erin Brockovich, it's a film where the dialogue sparkles.  What sets the movie apart is how well Julia Roberts' title character handles her speeches.  Think of how iconic her "we brought that water in for you special" speech goes, or when she's explaining the reasons not to date her.  This is a woman who has been underestimated her whole life, and the script is giving her the opportunity to finally stand up and be whom she dreamed she'd be.  That's a cliched plot, but it's one that is elevated by character-specific script choices that makes Erin stand out.

The same can be said for Billy Elliot.  Here we have an organic coming-of-age tale of a young boy who falls in love with dance, who is truly good at dance, but has to make that dream his own in a town that's not going to provide an opportunity for it to mean anything.  Billy is really well done due to the way it builds relationships, including those with Billy's teacher and his gay best friend (who is in love with him).  It helps that it feels written specifically for Jamie Bell, it's so honest and his performance is so good, but I think it really tackles this subject with authenticity and, like Erin, uses strong character work to rise above the core cliche of the plot.

Almost Famous is not what I'd consider a cliche, or at least it wasn't in 2000 (since then, a lot of movies have stolen from Cameron Crowe's original picture).  I adored this movie, even seeing it for the first time decades after it came out.  I do think that Crowe's sentimentality comes through and hurts the film in parts, keeping it from being a Graduate-style classic, but that's more a fault of direction than the script.  The way that it shows youth, freeing & filled with the troubled reality that you only get to do it once, is marvelous, and I love the interplay between some of the characters, particularly Crudup & Hudson every time they're onscreen.  It still feels fresh 24 years after the fact.

Our final nomination is for You Can Count on Me, a movie I watched obsessively as a high schooler (I was a weird kid).  This was the first introduction the world got to Mark Ruffalo, and was Laura Linney's graduation piece after many years of playing side characters in films like Dave and The Truman Show.  The film is such a knowing look at siblings, the quiet relationship you only have when you grow up in the same house, share the same memories & stories, and watch as adulthood (especially an adulthood spent apart) means that someone you know better than anyone makes decisions you don't understand.  It's so organic, and I love the little Easter egg of them not saying the title (but clearly indicating the source of the title), a tricky reverse on the Peter Griffin meme.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and the winner is adapted, so we just have mentions of You Can Count on Me and Almost Famous among the losers.  BAFTA keeps them separate, so we had Almost Famous beating Billy Elliot, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, and O Brother Where Art Thou, while with the WGA we had You Can Count on Me atop Almost Famous, Best in Show, Billy Elliot, & Erin Brockovich.  In sixth place, I honestly have no idea.  The Coens would actually factor into Adapted Screenplay for O Brother, and I don't think that the scripts of Christopher Guest are Oscar's cup of tea.  As a result, I'm thinking it was The Contender, with its two acting nominations and liberal politics that probably got in here (there are not many other options other than maybe Shadow of the Vampire that make sense as this was a heavily adapted year outside these five movies).

Films I Would Have Nominated: A very strong lineup, so I'll just list one movie-no film is as quotable (or as funny) from 2000 as the barnyard escape picture Chicken Run, which should've gotten some Oscar love in a lot of categories, but this is maybe the most egregious.

Oscar’s Choice: This was a very tight race headed into the awards ceremony, weirdly with two Best Picture runners-up besting actual Best Picture nominees, but Almost Famous took it over You Can Count on Me.

My Choice: I'm going to reverse that, with Lonergan beating out Crowe, though both would've made fine winners...Lonergan's work is just such a writerly film that I can't deny him the love.  Behind them we have Erin Brockovich, Billy Elliot, and in back, Gladiator.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Do you want to reunite with your long lost sibling with me, or would you prefer to jump ?  Are we all in agreement that Gladiator stands out here like a sore thumb?  And was it clearly The Contender in sixth place here...and if not it, what?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2000: Foreign Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022