Hangin' Out In 100b

Due to a serious bout of stupidity on my part, I skipped TWO posts this week, the first week of our glorious comeback! Our two-month break clearly hasn’t sharpened my senses, but in spite of appearances I am excited to get crackin’, starting with this post about the Academy Awards.

Exactly eighty years ago, give or take a month or three, the very first Academy Awards was hosted. It was a private dinner attended by less than 250 guests with entrance fees at a mere five dollars, and the whole ceremony lasted only fifteen minutes. Now, it has grown into a flashy, three-hour long (if you’re lucky), globally televised monster of an event and I love every single ridiculously expensively clad star-studded minute of it. The upcoming 81st Oscar night promises to be another exciting shindig and I already picked my favorite nominees, though I must admit I haven’t even seen a goodly portion of the movies nominated this year yet. In honor of the little golden naked man statue, here are some random facts:

1. Donald Kaufman, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s fictional brother in the movie Adaptation, is the only fictional character ever to be nominated.

2. George C. Scott refused his award for his portrayal of the title role in Patton in 1970. He said that “the whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don’t want any part of it.” Marlon Brando refused to accept his award personally, because of the way Native Americans are discriminated against by the US and Hollywood. Instead, he sent a woman named Sacheen Littlefeather to receive his prize, and gave her a fifteen page acceptance speech.

3. During World War II, in support of the American effort, the statues were made of plaster and were traded in for gold ones after the war had ended.

4. One of the most interesting award winners was screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who won two Awards under a pseudonym. The first was in 1953 for Roman Holiday under Ian McLellan Hunter and the second was in 1956 for The Brave One as Robert Rich. He was blacklisted as a communist sympathizer after he ‘refused to give information’ in a trial during the so-called Red Scare in 1947. The blacklist was lifted after Kirk Douglas revealed Trumbo was credited for the screenplay for Spartacus. Another interesting note is that Ian McLellan Hunter was an actual screenwriter. When the Academy wanted to post-humously give the award to its rightful owner, Hunter’s son, director Tim Hunter, refused to give the statue back and a second statue had to be made.

5. Not counting the now retired Honorary Juvenile Awards – of which the youngest was Shirley Temple when she was only 6 years old – the youngest winner of an Academy Award is Tatum O’Neal at the age of ten, for her supporting role in Paper Moon in 1973. She is followed by Ana Paquin who was a year older when she brilliantly played Holly Hunter’s daughter in The Piano in 1993. The youngest nominee ever was Justin Henry, the cute little boy in Kramer vs. Kramer who was only eight years old at the time.

6. So far Meryl Streep has been nominated fifteen times but only actually won twice. Though that’s nothing compared to poor sound re-recording mixer Kevin O’Connell, who has received twenty nominations and never won a single one of ‘em.

7. A movie has to be at least 40 minutes long to be considered for a Best Picture award. The shortest movie that ever won was Marty, which took one hour and twenty-eight minutes.

8. Walt Disney holds the record for most wins and nominations. He was nominated 60 times during his lifetime and received 22 statues.

9. George Bernard Shaw is the only person who has ever won both an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize. He won the Best Adapted Screenplay for Pygmalion in 1938 and his contributions to Literature were rewarded in 1925. He wanted to refuse the Oscar, because he didn’t want the public honors. But his wife insisted he accept it, because she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did however refuse the monetary prize and donated it to have books translated from Swedish to English, which has to be the most peculiar fact in this list.

10. Rocky won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1976. This may not seem like interesting trivia, but I had no idea. Not that I don’t like the movie, on the contrary, but I didn’t think it was Oscar-good. I always thought it was an awesome, but infinitely cheesy boxing movie with an endless string of sequals which were even cheesier, but I have to admit it still has the best Oscar nominated theme song ever.