Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.
Last week we looked at some of HBO’s period dramas to see how LGBT characters fared in ancient Rome, New York in the 1920s, and in the wild wild west. But now, we’re taking a two-week hiatus to play a game I like to call “Oscars What If…”
HBO has been producing great films for decades now and give or take an Elephant, they’ve been content to solely screen their made for TV movies on their network without any theatrical release. (Curiously, their documentary branch has been more eager to nab gold, understanding perhaps that statuettes can do wonders for that genre’s visibility). And, really, some years, you’re just left wondering how certain performances and films from HBO’s roster could have crashed that year’s Oscar race.
The two most obvious recent examples are Grey Gardens in 2009 and Behind the Candelabra in 2013 — the latter you’ll remember was actually eligible at the BAFTAs where Matt Damon scored a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Could they really have pushed Barrymore, Lange, Douglas, or Damon to a nomination? But those races remain much too recent, and have in themselves sparked the type of discussion in their respective comment threads that inspired me to take this detour as we focus on Oscar these weeks. And so, I went as far back as I could find a viable Oscar player which coincidentally features two also-ran nominees from this year.
I landed on Roger Spottiswoode’s And the Band Played On. Released in September 1993, the film, if we allow my fancy, would have joined the Oscar race that would see Spielberg’s Schindler’s List barrel its way to the win as Jonathan Demme's AIDS courtroom drama Philadelphia nabbed Tom Hanks his first Best Actor win. Seeing as the HBO AIDS drama has a sprawling cast, it’d have no doubt been one of those films that could have easily yielded a Supporting Actor or Actress nomination even if it hadn’t found much traction anywhere else. But who gets the MVP status? Awards-wise, the Globes went with the film’s ostensible lead, Matthew Modine, who was quite the hot commodity by the early 1990s, while the Emmys singled out Ian McKellen (not yet a household name), Alan Alda (a TV veteran), and Richard Gere (doing the A-list movie star slums it on TV before that was even a thing) on the actors side and Lily Tomlin (legend then, legend still) and Swoosie Kurtz (another TV regular) on the actress side. Could any of these have angled for a spot in 1993’s Supporting Acting races?
Best Supporting Actor
Tommy Lee Jones – The Fugitive
Leonardo DiCaprio – What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Ralph Fiennes – Schindler's List
John Malkovich – In the Line of Fire
Pete Postlethwaite – In the Name of the Father
Left outside looking in: Golden Globe nominee Sean Penn (Carlito’s Way), BAFTA nominee Ben Kingsley (Schindler's List), and perhaps Denzel Washington (Philadelphia) and Sam Neill (The Piano) whose films earned nods elsewhere and could easily have been coattail nominees.
Jones, Malkovich and Fiennes were pretty much locked into place with those final two spots going to a rare case of Oscar skewing young in a male actor category (DiCaprio) and embracing a character actor (Postlewaite) in a film the Academy liked very much (7 Oscar noms). As for who Oscar might have welcomed from Spottiswoode’s film, my bet would have been on Gere (his involvement was instrumental in getting the film made and he was playing A Chorus Line’s Michael Bennett in all but name) but we all know how Oscar feels about pretty leading men in their prime in non-baitey roles. Alda would come next, but then TV actors usually need showier roles to be in the conversation (see Alda’s own The Aviator nomination). Perhaps McKellen could have made a play — he has the meatiest role of the three — but I wonder if Band would have paled in comparison to that other AIDS movie that year. Wouldn’t it have been amazing to see McKellen nominated for playing a gay character six years before he’d accomplish that same feat with Gods and Monsters?
Best Supporting Actress
Anna Paquin - The Piano
Holly Hunter - The Firm
Rosie Perez - Fearless
Winona Ryder - The Age of Innocence
Emma Thompson - In the Name of the Father
(In case you're wondering, yes, this lineup has been the subject of the always entertaining Supporting Actress Smackdown)
Left outside looking in: NYFCC’s runner-up Jennifer Jason Leigh (Short Cuts) & winner Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine), Golden Globe nominee Penelope Ann Miller (Carlito’s Way), BAFTA nominee Miriam Margolyes (The Age of Innocence) and NSFC’s winner Madeleine Stowe (Short Cuts).
As you can see, the Actress category had more names swirling around with only Paquin and Ryder looking like locks in hindsight, which means Tomlin and/or Kurtz could have found some traction. Tomlin’s presence in Short Cuts would have no doubt helped her momentum. And how great would it have been to see Tomlin nab her second Oscar nomination for such an LGBT-friendly role? As for who she could/might have knocked off, well that’s a bit harder to suss out. It’s such a great lineup as is that I only feel okay suggesting Hunter would have likely been left off seeing as her win over at the Best Actress category was all but inevitable.
Next Week: We try to suss out whether another low-key but beautifully acted HBO film could have nabbed nominations for its once Oscar favorite leading lady and her on-screen partner who paved the way for the Redmaynes and the Tambors of the 2010s.
What do you think? Think this starry ensemble cast could have crashed one or both of these categories?