Top Ten Biggest Oscar Snubs – Nominations #5
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In A Brief History of Errol Morris, Errol Morris discusses the making of The Thin Blue Line. Clip posted by WOODDDDDDDYAMOVIES
- The Thin Blue Line (1988)
- Roger & Me (1990)
- Hoop Dreams (1994)
- Grizzly Man (2005)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
For better or for worse, Errol Morris‘ The Thin Blue Line has been so influential that it’s become commonplace for documentary filmmakers to use (cheesy) reenactments whenever they get the chance. Additionally, Morris’ investigative film won awards from the New York critics, the National Society of Film Critics, and the National Board Review, and it even led to the overturning of the murder conviction of its subject.
The Academy’s Documentary Committee remained unimpressed, as The Thin Blue Line failed to receive a nomination. As per a Los Angeles Times report, "at the committee screening, enough members raised their hands to have the film stopped before it was completed."
According to Carl Bromley’s 2001 The Nation article "While the Academy Slept," Committee member Mitchell Block told the Los Angeles Times: "I think [the distributors] set [The Thin Blue Line] up as a shoo-in and … created an expectation among members that the film couldn’t meet. But there was no backlash. As a group, we simply thought the five nominated films were better." (For the record: the five nominated films in 1988 were The Cry of Reason: Beyers Naude – An Afrikaner Speaks Out, Let’s Get Lost, Promises to Keep, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, and the eventual winner, Marcel Ophüls‘ Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.)
Roger & Me (1989)
Roger & Me was attacked in some quarters for distorting facts to fit them into its director’s political agenda, e.g., in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote, "I’ve heard it said that Michael Moore’s muckraking documentary Roger & Me is scathing and Voltairean. I’ve read that Michael Moore is ‘a satirist of the Reagan period equal in talent to Mencken and [Sinclair] Lewis,’ and ‘an irrepressible new humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain and Artemus Ward.’ But the film I saw was shallow and facetious, a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing." (Kael’s complete Roger & Me review can be found here.)
Even so, Roger & Me, about Moore’s frustrated attempts to meet with General Motors honcho Roger Smith, was a box-office hit (for a documentary) and, generally speaking, a critical success, winning best documentary awards from the Los Angeles Critics, the National Board of Review, and the National Society of Film Critics, among others.
Roger & Me, however, was left Academy Award-nominationless.
Among those attacking Roger & Me was Academy Documentary Committee member [not Chair, as previously reported**] Mitchell Block, who was quoted calling the movie "unethical."
In his hilarious — and probably quite "creative" — reminiscences of his Roger & Me adventures, which he described in a July 1990 New York Times article (a transcription can be found here), Michael Moore stated that "the L.A. Times quoted an unnamed member of the Academy committee who said that Roger and Me didn’t stand a chance of even being nominated because they [sic] were easily ‘five better films’ that the committee has seen. This was the same quote given last year by a committee member, Mitchell Block, when he explained why The Thin Blue Line was not nominated. Mr. Block has a financial interest in who gets nominated; he owns a documentary distribution company [Direct Cinema] and, in the last 10 years, nearly one quarter of all films that have won the Academy Award for best documentary have been Mitchell Block films."
** Former Documentary Committee member Mitchell Block has posted a comment below, explaining that he never chaired said Committee. The text has been amended accordingly. My source for that information and for the Roger & Moore conflict of interest furor was Mason Wiley and Damien Bona’s Inside Oscar, which doesn’t provide a list of sources at the end of the book — though those are usually referenced throughout the text. In that particularly instance, however, there are no specific references. Therefore, I’ve deleted the brief paragraph referring to the "furor" replacing it with Michael Moore’s own published remarks (above) on the matter. In his comment below, Mitchell Block gives his side of the story regarding the Roger & Me controversy.
Hoop Dreams (1994)
Steve James‘ Hoop Dreams, about two Chicago inner-city youths struggling to become professional basketball players, was one of the best-reviewed movies of 1994. In fact, there were many who believed the film would be included in the Academy’s Best Picture shortlist. It wasn’t.
Nor could Hoop Dreams be found among the nominees in the Best Documentary Feature category.
Newsday’s John Anderson labeled the omission a "singularly unspeakable outrage," while the Los Angeles Times‘ Kenneth Turan wrote that if the documentary committee members "knew the meaning of the word shame they would now be making arrangements for mass suicides."
In a July 1995 article for Entertainment Weekly, documentary filmmaker Alan Adelson wrote that "according to one shocked insider, in the committee’s prescoring discussion one voter cautioned that if Hoop Dreams were nominated, it would surely win. He appealed to his fellow members to preserve other films’ chances of winning the Oscar by denying Hoop Dreams a nomination altogether.
"When balloting time came, at least two other attendees joined the anti-Hoop Dreams speaker. According to the source, those scorers together shot down Hoop Dreams by giving it the lowest possible score, a 4. Others on the committee gave the film top scores, but to no avail."
"Why the animosity toward Hoop Dreams?" inquired Carl Bromley in his 2001 The Nation piece. "’Many of the committee members at the time considered documentary the real weakling in the cinema litter’," Adelson told The Nation. ‘They had a patronizing, paternalistic attitude toward the form: Documentaries are never seen by anyone until the academy shines their light on it and gives the poor weakling sustenance. There was a sense of mission. They promoted films they thought the public needed. And they felt threatened by an already successful film.’"
Clip posted by fierythornbushes
Grizzly Man (2005)
The Academy’s documentary committee would be attacked once again in 2006, when Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man failed to get a nomination. The story of Timothy Treadwell, a man who lived among Alaska’s grizzly bears and who was eventually slaughtered by one of them, Grizzly Man won numerous critics awards, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York (along with Herzog’s White Diamond).
Quotes and background info: Inside Oscar by Mason Wiley and Damien Bona
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Don’t forget the most recent snub. Kristin Scott Thomas for the absolute flawless performance in Il y a longtemps que j’taime
And Juliette Binoche in Trois couleurs: Bleu
Mr. Soares,
It’s interesting how factual errors live on.
For the “record.”
1. I was never the chair of the documentary committee. I was one of the committee members for over 20 years.
2. AMPAS rules prohibited committtee members from voting or discussing films they had any connection to. To lobby for any film would be somewhat obvious to any of the 50 or so members of this small committee. I was not able to “vote” for my films, I was on record for my conflicts. Under AMPAS weighted ballot counting procedures not voting a film would hurt it in the ballot counting process.
3. Direct Cinema at the time did distribute three of the nominated films, including the winner, COMMON THREADS: STORIES FROM THE QUILT. COMMONN THREADS was produced by Warner’s HBO division, ROGER AND ME was released by Warber’s Theatrical division.
Direct Cinema’s PR director was hired by Warners on a freelance basis to work as a consultant on ROGER AND ME’s Oscar campaign to try to reverse the committee’s perception that the negative reviews of the film’s distortions of “truth.” This was the devestating review of ROGER by Critic, Pauline Kael in the New Yorker.
4. The other nominees of 1989 included ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, CRACK USA: COUNTRY UNDER SIEGE, FOR ALL MANKIND and SUPER CHIEF: THE LEGACY OF EARL WARREN. Interestingly the filmmakers of three of the other nominated features have multiple nominations (and/or Oscars). FOR ALL MANKIND by first time nominees received multiple awards in 1989 for its excellence.
5. COMMON THREADS continues to be praised for its excellence, historical accurate telling of the causes (and effects) of the AIDS epidemic. Robert Epstein one of it’s two filmmakers is currently an elector Governor of the Documentary Branch.
6. Direct Cinema’s documentary films continued to to receive multi-documentary Oscar nominations (and Oscars) after the committee was restructured so that members who had any conflict of interest could not participate in the nomination process and a few years later the Academy Doc Branch was formed. Because of the new “conflict” rule adapted several years later, I could no longer serve on the committee.
7. Today controversy continues to dog the Branch for omissions, clicks, etc.
8. Mr. Moore showed that creating controversy about the Oscars can sell movie tickets.
9. In Flint, a lawyer representing a number of the cast of ROGER AND ME prevailed in a court case to remove his clients from future releases of the film because Michael Moore placed them in a “false light.”
Mitchell Block
Mr. Block,
Thank you for the correction (the text has been amended to reflect the fact that you were not the chair of the documentary committee) and for your comments on the matter.