Top 5 Oscar Snubs (Not Nominated)
3.) Bruce Springsteen for “The Wrestler”
For whatever reason this year, the Oscars only nominated 3 songs instead of their usual 5. It’s hard to talk about this because not only is music very subjective but I’m nowhere near as knowledgeable as I am with movies. I know what I like and what I liked was Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler.” It was written for the film of the same name. The Aronofsky film was a great drama and this song perfectly captured it in musical form. It’s something I still listen to on my iPod to this day. It is just simply powerful… like most of the Boss’ songs.
Why not nominated? I have absolutely no clue. Like I said, they had 2 extra nomination slots that they could have easily used. It won or was nominated for just about all of the other award ceremonies so I really have no idea. Bruce Springsteen had won before with “Streets of Philadelphia” for “Philadelphia.” None of it makes any sense to me. Also this has nothing to do with what was nominated as the other songs were good. The actual winner “Jai Ho” for “Slumdog Millionaire” puts a spring in your step and its placement at the end of the film was great, but I still don’t get this. I’m someone who firmly believes that it’s an honor just to be nominated so when someone and their song is completely shut out for no apparent reason, it just really messes with my head.
2.) Robert Shaw for “Jaws”
I don’t think I should have to waste time explaining “Jaws” or how important of a film it is. Even people who don’t study the film industry probably know by now. So I’ll ask this, what is the best scene in the movie? Not the most iconic (the opening attack) or the most famous moment (“You’re going need a bigger boat”), I mean what is the best scene? I think most would agree it’s the Indianapolis speech. It begins innocent enough with all of the actors comparing scars and then very subtlely it changes to a very quiet, very haunting scene entirely focused on Robert Shaw and oh boy does he take us all on a journey in this one speech. With a bigger budget they could have filmed some flashback scenes but with how good he is you don’t need it, just the way he tells the story gives you all the emotion and drama you need. The whole character is great from his often spoofed introduction to his nightmarish end. He sort of reminds me of Burgess Meredith in “Rocky” and just how much the actor just loses himself to this completely different type of character. You watch other Robert Shaw films and he doesn’t play another character even remotely similar and it’s just amazing how much Quint feels like a real person they just found in the town they were filming in.
Why not nominated? This is another one of those cases where I think most aren’t even aware of, they just assume he was nominated. In 1975, George Burns in “The Sunshine Boys” took home the gold for Best Supporting Actor in what most consider an “appreciation for a lifetime of work” win. Even in that movie I think there was a more impressive performance by Walter Matthau. However I haven’t seen all of the films that were also nominated so I can’t say if it was a case of too many good performances, but even if that’s the case it’s still a major oversight. Ones like this are even harder to comprehend when the film and performance become just these huge cultural touchstones that everyone knows. I would remind people that hindsight is 20/20 and not necessarily a knock against the Academy itself, that’s not the sort of thing you can predict nor is it the Academy’s job to.
1.) Jack Lemmon for “Glengarry Glen Ross”
Let me just start off gushing about how amazing this cast is. In my opinion it may just be the greatest cast assembled for a movie, plus Alec Baldwin’s in it too! I mean seriously in the main cast you have Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, and Jack Lemmon. Even the supporting cast is top-notch with Johnathan Pryce and Alec Baldwin who gives by far the greatest performance he’s ever done. On top of all that they’re working off of incredible material by the legendary David Mamet which is practically designed to up the A-game of any actor. However one performance somehow rose above all the others as being something truly special. No not Al Pacino (but he was the one nominated), Jack Lemmon as Shelley “The Machine” Levene. Now if you watch this movie and think that performance was kinda familiar it’s because Old Gil from “The Simpsons” is entirely based on him.
Why not nominated? This is sort of a mixture of two earlier cases where I am completely dumbfounded how people could watch this performance and yet not want to honor it and where there was a lot of excellent competition that year. Gene Hackman won for “Unforgiven” and we also had terrific performances by Jack Nicholson, David Paymer, and Jaye Davidson (“The Crying Game”). However the 5th nomination went to Al Pacino for this same movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He’s very good in the movie, like all of the other actors, but I don’t think anyone comes away from that movie talking about Pacino, so easy substitution right there.
This is kind of a stretch but maybe they were going by the fact that the way the performance came out was not how Lemmon intended it. It is said that during filming, he told all of the other actors if they ever started to feel sorry for him to tell him so he could stop because he saw the character as a total scumbag deserving of zero pity. Without giving the ending away, what I think makes the character work so well is that he doesn’t seem like a bad person until the very end. For a majority of the movie your heart goes out to this guy. He is such a loser and I think a large part of that is in the filming (in the beginning he’s often filmed with the camera tilted down on him making him seem even smaller and pathetic) and Jack Lemmon’s natural charisma. I’ve of course seen a bunch of his other work where he’s often playing a completely pure hearted human being, but even if you hadn’t I think it would be hard to not feel sorry for him. Even when the “twist” happens you still want to root for him. It’s only because of multiple viewings that I can even now see how much of an awful person this guy is. Personally I think that dichotomy really makes it all much more interesting and keeps him in your thoughts longer than if Lemmon had played him as he was originally going for. At least that’s what I got out of the performance that I think was most egregiously snubbed by the Oscars. Enjoy watching the Oscars this year!
