Oscar Trivia with the 91st Annual Academy Awards now a wrap
Monday, February 25, 2019 at 9:15AM Now that the big show has ended let's talk trivia. Please do share any cool things you noticed in the comments.
PICTURE & DIRECTING
• With Alfonso Cuarón's win we are reminded that Mexico is completely dominant for Best Director prizes in Hollywood of late. Five of the past six winners have been Mexican directors (Damien Chazelle for La La Land being the lone non-Mexican winning). The US is really lagging, and not behind Mexico -- in the ten past ceremonies only two American-born directors have won: Chazelle and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker
• Alfonso Cuarón is the first and ONLY director to win for directing a foreign-language film. Some trivia listings suggest he's the second after Michel Hanavicius for The Artist but that was a silent film, so language isn't relevant...
• Alfonso Cuarón is the third director to win twice without ever having one of his movies win Best Picture winner. The others are George Stevens (Giant and A Place in the Sun) and Ang Lee (Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain)
• It's the new normal. Though the "expanded" era of Best Picture era began in 2009 we've only had the current system (varying degrees of nominees + "preferential" ballot to determine the win) since 2011. In the 8 years of the current system, Best Picture/Best Director have split more than half the time.
• Green Book is the 5th film to win Hollywood top prize, Best Picture, without even having a Best Director nomination. The only others were Wings (1927), Grand Hotel (1932), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and Argo (2012). More amorphously (and mileage may vary on what the movies are primarily about) but there have been several movies with race relations, interracial strife, ethnic prejudice or ethnic genocidal topics to with the top prize including: Gentleman's Agreement (1947), West Side Story (1961), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Dances with Wolves (1990), Schindler's List (1993), Crash (2005), and 12 Years a Slave (2013).
• Green Book is approximately the millionth movie to win Best Picture without passing the Bechdel Test. They really cannot get enough of movies about men with one token female role.
• Green Book is a very typical length as Oscar winning movies go. It is 2 hours and 10 minutes long. The average Best Picture length last time we checked about about 2 hours and 18 minutes.
ACTING
• With Glenn Close's loss on her 7th nomination she is now the all-time loser among women, defeating Deborah Kerr & Thelma Ritter's previous record of six wins with no Oscar. Amy Adams has now, with her sixth losing nomination, joined Ritter and Kerr as runner up to Glenn Close in most nominations without a win. If you include male actors the list goes like so with asterisks indicating that they (at least) received Honorary Oscars in their lifetime.
- Peter O'Toole* (8 nominations)
- [TIE - 7 noms each] Glenn Close & Richard Burton
- [TIE - 6 noms each] Amy Adams, Thelma Ritter, and Deborah Kerr*
- [TIE - 5 noms each] Albert Finney, Arthur Kennedy
- A lot of people have 4 noms without ever winning. It's not uncommon but five and up is scarce for the non-winners.
• With Mahershala Ali's second win, he joins Vivien Leigh, Luise Rainer, Christoph Waltz, Kevin Spacey, and Hillary Swank as the only six actors who have won each time (i.e. multiple times) they've been nominated. They all went 2 for 2. Related Note: Walter Brennan, a popular character actor of the 1930s and 1940s pulled off a perfect 3/3 but then got one more nomination spoiling his 100% record ;)
• Rami Malek is the first person of Arab or Egyptian descent to win an acting Oscar. The only other nominee that we're aware of was the 1960s superstar Omar Sharif, who was nominated once (Lawrence of Arabia)
• Mahershala Ali is the first person of color to win two supporting acting Oscars. He now ties with Denzel Washington for the most acting Oscars for a person of color: 2. (Anything over 2, for any actor of any gender or color, is of course a rarity -- Katharine Hepburn has the record with 4 Oscar for acting)
• Olivia Colman is the third person to win Best Actress playing a queen. The previous royal winners were Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter (1968) and Helen Mirren in The Queen (2006). If you include Supporting Actress there are four since you can add in Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love (1998).
WRITING
• With Rami Malek's win, screenwriter Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything, Bohemian Rhapsody) has written three of the past five Best Actor winners. How crazy is that?
• Black writers have been killing it in the Adapted Screenplay category of late: 4 of the last 10 winning films in that category have been written or co-written by black men with Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott being the latest via BlacKkKlansman.
CRAFT CATEGORIES
• Black Panther is the FIRST superhero movie to win Best Costume Design (and the only one ever nominated in point of fact) and the second to win Production Design (the previous win was for Tim Burton's Batman in 1989)
• Hannah Beachler (Production Designer) became the first African-American woman to win her category. She is also, in fact the only black nominee ever in that category, male or female.
• Ruth E Carter (Costume Design) is now in a three way tie with Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis for most honored black woman of all time with Oscar. They each have 3 nominations and 1 win. She's also the first African-American woman to win in Costume Design. The only other African-American nominee has been Sharen Davis (Ray, Dreamgirls) who has yet to win.
• Roma joins Schindler's List (1993) as the only two black & white films to win Best Cinematography since the Oscars stopped having a separate category for Black and White films (the first year for a combined category was 1967 -- Bonnie & Clyde won).
MISCELLANIA
• Peter Ramsey is the first African-American to win in Animated Feature (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) but we'll surely soon have more since that category is young.
• Asian and black women did exceptionally well at the 91st Oscars winning in the following categories last night: Best Documentary Short, Best Animated Short, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Supporting Actress.
EGOT MOVEMENT
• Ludwig Goransson, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, Andrew Wyatt and Lady Gaga all now have Oscars to go with their Grammys. EGOT
• Rami Malek, Spike Lee, Regina King, and Kate Biscoe (Makeup) now have an Oscar to go with their Emmys. EGOT
• Olivia Colman, Ruth E Carter (Costume Design), Hannah Beachler (Production Design), John Warhurst (Sound Editing) and John Ottman (Editing) all have Oscars now. Though they don't have any of the other big four showbiz awards they're worth mentioning because they've previously been Emmy nominated so maybe they'll win next time they are? EGOT
Reader Comments (54)
@Gil C. - Mahershala did not go back-to-back. His wins were for 2016 and 2018. Sam Rockwell won in 2017.
Not to give you a taste of honey, but consider that maybe next possible winner could be Pedro Almodovar.
I have a hunch, he'll be back, and specially "due" for a win at Directing, after so many snubs in his career (only 1 nom for "Talk to Her"). He could have perfectly been nominated for "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", "All about my Mother", "Volver" and "Julieta". This time, the work seems to be the most obviously autobiographical he's ever made, the film may be unstoppable for the end of the year awards.
@gwynn1984 Oops, right you are.
"With Mahershala Ali's second win, he joins Vivien Leigh, Luise Rainer, Christoph Waltz, Kevin Spacey, and Hillary Swank as the only six actors who have won each time (i.e. multiple times) they've been nominated."
You have forgotten about Helen Hayes. :)