The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1991 is just a week away so get your votes in! Before we get there it's time for more context of that year in showbiz history. Ready?
Great Big Box Office Hits:
The year's biggest hit by an enormous margin was James Cameron's Terminator 2 Judgment Day (which has aged spectacularly well). The other major blockbusters were Kevin Costner's hit Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and Steven Spielberg's Hook. The big sleeper hit of the year was The Silence of the Lambs. Other hits that year included City Slickers, Backdraft, Sleeping With the Enemy, The Addams Family and the remakes of Father of the Bride and Cape Fear.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
Most people remember 1991 as the year of Silence of the Lambs (7 noms / 5 wins) but many Oscar fanatics remember it just as clearly for another milestone...
When Beauty and the Beast (6 noms / 2 wins) became the first animated movie ever nominated for Best Picture, you could hear gasps and cheers in the room from the assembled press. Sadly you can no longer here reactions since they've sinced changed the way they do nomination morning. The other nominees were JFK (8 noms / 2 wins), The Prince of Tides (7 noms) and Bugsy (10 noms / 2 wins). Bugsy isn't discussed much 29 years on but some pundits believed it would win the top prize given a) Oscar's aversion to horror and b) because it was the nomination leader and a biopic (Oscar's favourite genre). But it was not to be. Silence of the Lambs was too big to ignore... though we've long maintained that the horror hit would have lost had it premiered in December and not truly settled in yet as a new American film classic.
Obviously the year's most unfortunate snub was Thelma & Louise (6 noms / 1 win) which had been a major possibility for the top nomination since its much discussed debut in the summer. But as we've seen countless times in history, Oscar voters are very focused on last minute releases so the Academy went with the hokum of The Prince of Tides instead, a Christmas release and bigger hit. Still that seminal feminist adventure was, we'd argue, most definitely in the dread 6 spot.
But what would have been numbers 7-10 in an expanded Best Picture field? That's surely where the debate comes in. Some possibilities: Terminator 2 Judgment Day (6 noms / 4 wins... a huge hit with the craft categories but Oscar voters were much stingier with genre films back then), The Fisher King (5 noms /1 win), Hook (5 noms), Barton Fink (3 noms). And though they only received 1 or 2 nominations they probably had solid voting blocks, too: Boyz n The Hood (2 noms), Europa Europa (1 nom... but not eligible in foreign film where it undeniably would have won), Grand Canyon (1 nom) and The Commitments (1 nom)
WHICH FILMS DO YOU THINK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN?
Films That Endured (in some way) That Were Neither Oscar Nominees Nor Blockbusters:
Kathryn Bigelow's action classic Point Break, Gus Van Sant's queer classic My Own Private Idaho, slow to collect their fanbase comedies Soapdish and Defending Your Life, Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique, Aussie critical darling Flirting (very early roles for Nicole Kidman, Noah Taylor, Naomi Watts, and Thandie Newton's debut!), Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse, David Cronenberg's adaptation of Naked Lunch, and family friendly favourites like The Rocketeer, My Girl, and Reese Witherspoon's hugely charismatic debut Man in the Moon.
Notable films listed as 1991 at IMDb that didn't actually play for US audiences until 1992 or later: Enchanted April (nominated for the 1992 Oscar race), cult favourite Delicatessen, Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth, and the wild French classic Lovers on the Bridge (which we didn't get it in the US until 1999!)
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 1991
- Thelma & Louise
- T2 Judgment Day
- Raise the Red Lantern
- Silence of the Lambs
- Beauty and the Beast
- The Fisher King
- Cape Fear
- My Own Private Idaho
- Point Break
- Grand Canyon
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
Madonna at her most world-dominating, ailing and then departed Michael Landon, the sexual harassment case of Anita Hill, the hot new actors from Beverly Hills 90210, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, Keanu Reeves, Susan Sarandon, Michael Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett were frequent covergirls that year.
Mix Tape (Select Hits of '91):
"(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" by Bryan Adams was the top selling single of the year and also an Oscar nominated Best Original Song. Other random hits included "Gonna Make You Sweat" and "Things That Make You Go Hmmm..." by C+C Music Factory, "I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd, "Losing My Religion" by REM, "Motownphilly" by Boyz II Men, "Unbelievable" by EMF, "More than Words" by Extreme, "From a Distance" by Bette Midler, "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" by Janet Jackson, "Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite, "Justify My Love" by Madonna, "I Touch Myself" by The Divinyls, "Joyride" by Roxette, "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak, "Get Here" by Oleta Adams, "Something to Talk About" by Bonnie Raitt, and "Tom's Diner" by DNA featuring Suzanne Vega.
More Music: Mariah Carey and Wilson Philips' eponymous debuts, Garth Brooks' "No Fences", The Black Crowes' "Shake Your Money Maker", Vanilla Ice's "To the Extreme," and Madonna's "Immaculate Collection" were the six biggest selling albums of the year. Other hit albums included Bette Midler's "Some People's Lives", Amy Grant's "Heart in Motion" and Whitney Houston's "I'm Your Baby Tonight" and toward the latter part of the year and the top selling album as the year ended and the next began was Nirvana's "Nevermind".
TV: Cheers (Season 9) and LA Law (season 5) took the Comedy and Drama prizes at the Emmys in August. It was the fourth non-consecutive and final win for Cheers and the third consecutive and final win for LA Law. The lead acting Emmys went to Burt Reynolds (Evening Shade), Kirstie Alley (Cheers), James Earl Jones (Gabriel's Fire) who won a second Emmy that night for a miniseries as well, and Patricia Wetting (thirtysomething), and the supporting trophies went to Timothy Busfield (thirtysomething), Madge Sinclair (Gabriel's Fire), Bebe Neuwirth (Cheers) and Johnathan Winters (Davis Rules). Meanwhile China Beach and Thirtysomething, 21 Jump Street and Twin Peaks aired their final episodes. Debuting that year were the sitcoms Blossom, Home Improvement, and Step by Step, as well as the dramas Sisters and I'll Fly Away, and the cable series Clarissa Explains it All (Nickelodeon) and Aeon Flux (MTV).
Literature: Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears, Josephine Hart's Damage, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, John Grishman's The Firm, and Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho were all first published that year and went on to become major motion pictures or TV series.
Stage: Lost in Yonkers took Best Play beating Shadowlands and Six Degrees of Separation (all three would become movies within a few years). How The Will Rogers Follies beat (are you ready for this?) Miss Saigon, Once on This Island, and The Secret Garden for Best Musical, though, is a complete headscratcher from our vantage point in 2020. Like, what? HOW?!?
Nigel Hawthorne, Mercedes Ruehl, Jonathan Pryce, Lea Salonga, Kevin Spacey, Hinton Battle, Daisey Eagan, and Irene Worth won acting Tonys. (Yes, that's right, Ruehl won both the Tony and the Oscar within 9 months of each other -- what a year for her). Meanwhile, across the ocean, Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave made their only stage appearance together in Chekhov's Three Sisters on the West End.
Showtunes to Go:
Here's a Miss Saigon medley from the Tony Awards that year with a fun intro from Jeremy Irons, who co-hosted that year's awards with Julie Andrews.