76 days 'til Oscar nominations
Wednesday, November 8, 2017 at 8:00AM Lately we've been telling you how many days it is until Oscar night. But we're still more than two months away from Nomination Morning, or as we like to call it, Christmas. (That makes Oscar night the big New Year's Eve party which is correct since the new film year starts thereafter... at least symbolically).
So for today's trivia, the number is 76! So let's talk one of our all time favorite Best Picture losers Network which fell to the rousing hugely popular Rocky in 1976. It didn't go down without a fight, though, taking home more Oscars than the Best Picture winner! How often has that happened, exactly?
It's happened 18 times in Oscar history all told. How many of the years can you guess before clicking after the jump to see the list Tell us how well you did in the comments.
Years in which the "Best Picture" didn't take home the most Oscars
(years where Best Picture tied another movie's haul not included)
2016 Moonlight (3) / La La Land (6)
2015 Spotlight (2) / Mad Max Fury Road (6) and The Revenant (3)
2013 12 Years a Slave (3) / Gravity (7)
2012 Argo (3) / Life of Pi (4)
2004 Million Dollar Baby (4) / The Aviator (5)
1977 Annie Hall (4) / Star Wars (6)
1976 Rocky (3) / Network (4) and All the President's Men (4)
1972 The Godfather (3) / Cabaret (8)
EXTRA TRIVIA: Cabaret holds the record of the most Oscar wins without taking Best Picture. Gravity recently came close to tying it but didn't quite...
1969 Midnight Cowboy (3) / Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (4)
1952 The Greatest Show on Earth (2) / The Bad and the Beautiful (5).
EXTRA TRIVIA: The Bad and the Beautiful holds the record for the most Oscar wins ever for a film that wasn't nominated for Best Picture. And it's one of only two times the most statues have gone to a non Best Picture nominee - the other is 1940. The former record will likely stand for eternity now that there are so many more Best Picture nominees in a year.
1949 All the Kings Men (3) / The Heiress (4)
1943 Casablanca (3) / The Song of Bernadette (4)
1940 Rebecca (2) / The Thief of Baghdad (3)
1938 You Can't Take it With You (2) / The Adventures of Robin Hood (3)
1936 The Great Ziegfeld (3) / Anthony Adverse (4)
1935 Mutiny on the Bounty (1) / The Informer (4)
1932 Grand Hotel (1) / The Champ and Bad Girl (2)
EXTRA TRIVIA: Grand Hotel is the only Best Picture winner which was only nominated for Best Picture (though there were far fewer categories back then)
1927/28 Wings (2) sort of...
EXTRA TRIVIA: This year, Oscar's first, is confusing. Both Sunrise and 7th Heaven won 3 prizes if you count Janet Gaynor's win for both of them... they hadn't yet ironed out the acting categories so she won for three films that year. But technically speaking there were two Best Picture prizes that year (under two separate names with Wings winning one and Sunrise the other) so maybe this year shouldn't count at all for this particular list.
What do you make of this list and in general do you prefer the losing film with the higher statue count or the Best Picture winners?
related list "most wins without a Best Picture nomination"
Best Picture, Network, Oscar Trivia, Rocky
Reader Comments (25)
Fascinating stuff. For me it's about a 50/50 split between whether I enjoyed the BP winner or the film that took more awards and as to what they were I hadn't a clue except I was certain about Grand Hotel knowing that its sole nomination was in Best Picture.
a fun game to tell the straight men from the gay men in a room is to ask if cabaret should have also won the godfather's best picture oscar
All the president's men also won 4 I think
The complete snub of All The President's Men here....far too much
Yes, I would have given the Oscar to All the President's Men, which seems timeless and modern.
A particularly fascinating topic for an Oscar geek like me!
Three adjustments:
The 1952 point doesn't stand, because, as you show, 1940 achieves it too;.
For 1976, remember that not only did Network win more Oscars than Rocky, so did All the President's Men (4 again);
And in 2015, not only did Mad Max: Fury Road win more Oscars than Spotlight, so did The Revenant (3).
Related to this topic, I've been reflecting on the years in which the Best Directing winning film won more Oscars than the Best Picture. It's only happened eight times - but four of them have been in the past five years!
2016 Moonlight (3) La La Land (6)
2015 Spotlight (2) The Revenant (3)
2013 12 Years a Slave (3) Gravity (7)
2012 Argo (3) Life of Pi (4)
1972 The Godfather (3) Cabaret (8)
1935 Mutiny on the Bounty (1) The Informer (4)
1931/1932 Grand Hotel (1) Bad Girl (2)
1927/1928: Wings (2), Seventh Heaven (3)
It really shows that we're in an odd phase where the Best Picture winner is not a major technical awards player and the Directing winners are supreme technical achievements that just fall short of the Big One. I wonder what will happen for 2017?
Much as I adore CABARET, a mere trio of Oscars for THE GODFATHER is absurdly low.
THE ROBBERY OF IT ALL IS NETWORK LOSING TO GODDAMN ROCKY!
So surprised to see that The Heiress actually won more Oscar than Men and Midnight Cowboy actually looked like the gay version of Butch and Sundance lmao
The Godfather for the win always.
Edward L hit the nail on the head. As films continue to expand the reaches of what is technically possible, yet fall short with what's needed to be a beloved or zeitgeist movie, this trend will only grow. I fully expect Dunkirk to win the most awards this year, but it doesn't feel like a best picture winner.
Network is a masterpiece. It was robbed robbed ROBBED. But at least it's one of only two films to have three acting Oscars. Yeah. So suck it, Rocky.
Just saw The Post trailer,not sure about Hanks or Streep from the 2 minutes shown,Meryl is never that gr8 in political films but the pedigrees there.
I'm still wondering what happened in 2004. Looking at this list, '04 looks like a dud of a year. And I enjoyed The Aviator, and I think it's a technical marvel! But does that '04 duo even approach the heights of many of those other years? Wasn't '04 the year of Eternal Sunshine and The Incredibles and Vera Drake? What happened at the Oscars?
Edward L: If you're only going to cite one, Network wins the tie breaker, no question. Yes, All the President's Men won a couple of the most important Oscars (Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay), but it also won a couple of the least important ones (Sound and Production Design). All four of Network's Oscars are in the most important sphere of statues. Advantage, Network.
Volvagia: For sure. But the question was just on the numbers. But yes, Network, with its three acting wins, is the points winner for that year. (And it's my personal pick.)
Far and away "The Bad and the Beautiful" over "The Yawniest Show on Earth"!!!
Give or take a few exceptions (Annie Hall, Godfather, Casablanca), the technical winners have in general stood the test of time far far better. Even in the cases above the tech winners also stood on their own (Cabaret, Star Wars) so I much prefer the other list.
Steve_Man: I'd say there's 7 cases where the one that won more is better, 6 cases where the smaller one is better (the ones you mentioned + 12 Years a Slave, Spotlight vs. The Revenant and Moonlight), and another 7 where I'm either unsure or know that it's effectively a push (2012, 1969 and everything before 1952)
Recently watched ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN again and was blown away and chilled to the bone by its deep relevance today. It's pretty amazing. In an overall great list of BP nominees that year (TAXI DRIVER! NETWORK!) ATPM would be my pick today (I think NETWORK is actually too didactic, despite its overall excellence and scarily prescient subject matter). ROCKY was actually the least of the nominees (along with the perfectly good but not-for-the-ages BOUND FOR GLORY), but at least it's an overall fine movie, not a travesty of a winner along the lines of CRASH or A BEAUTIFUL MIND. I just think we hold more against ROCKY in light of S Stallone's subsequent Rambo-esque schlock-filled career.
Rob: I've seen four of the nominees and I'd say:
1. Taxi Driver (A+)
2. Network (A)
3. All the President's Men (A)
4. Rocky (A-)
5. Bound for Glory (?) (Probably one of the top 10 best fields. Most Academy Years, something on the level of Rocky winning would be the best or second best nominee doing it.)
Didactic is a very good word to describe Network, which still is my favorite movie (of all time) but also a time-and-a-place film while *also* being incredibly prescient. It does have the benefit of being inventive, ballsy and devil-may-care about the subject matter, setting it apart from more mature, "prestige" fare like ATPM, which, along with Network and Taxi Driver, still is a stone-cold cinematic classic (compared to a pop-culture zeitgeist one like Rocky).
I also have seen 3 of the 1976 movies for best picture
1, Rocky A+
2. Taxi Driver B
3. Network; A
*Totally* forgot that Mad Max won so many awards. What a cool article!
I think we are going to see the same thing happening again next year. And I am also predicting Best Picture and Best Director will go to two different films.
Here are my ratings;-
1, Network - A
2. All the presidents men - A-
3. Taxi Driver - B+
4. Bound for Glory - B
and I can't give a rating for Rocky cos I walked out halfway. It was schmaltzy and I had difficulty understanding Stallone's slurring.
I did to try to watch it when it was on television but I turned off after about 15 minutes. It is one of the worst best picture winners in my opinion.
Looking forward to your final MINDHUNTER article, Nat.