Showbiz History: Oscar's fav movie producer, MASH finale, and Fury Road's Oscar night.
Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 9:00AM 5 random things that happened on this day, February 28th, in showbiz history...
1921 One hundred years ago today movie producer Saul Zaentz was born in New Jersey. He won the Best Picture Oscar three times: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, and The English Patient. That gives him the all time record for "Most Best Picture wins" which he shares in a tie with Sam Spiegel (On the Waterfront, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia). The living producers that share second place with 2 wins each are Clint Eastwood and Albert S Ruddy (though they're both 90 years old) and Dede Gardner & Jeremy Kleiner (who are fairly young as producers go winning for both 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight so they could conceivably tie this three-time record... though it obviously won't be easy to do!
1983 M*A*S*H airs its final episode after 11 seasons. The vast majority of the television audience in the US was watching. I remember my oldest brother crying and being confused about why...
1996 The 38th Annual Grammys are held (25th anniversary!). Alanis Morrissette's seminal "Jagged Little Pill" took Album of the Year while Seal took Song/Record for "Kiss from a Rose". The Music Video Grammy went to "Scream" by those storied siblings, Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. Coolio, Mary J Blige, TLC, Anita Baker, Stevie Wonder, Nine Inch Nails, and Annie Lennox (for her brilliant cover of "No More I Love Yous") also won Grammys that night. Frank Sinatra also won his last (of nine overall) Grammys for his work on his last completed album "Duets II". He died two years later.
2013 Pope Benedict XVI shockingly resigns; Popes just don't do that. Sir Anthony Hopkins was recently Oscar-nominated for playing him and this internal drama with major external consequences in The Two Popes (2019). We think that was a superb performance (and nice warm up for The Father) but it was a co-lead in a duet movie so it had no business snagging that Best Supporting Actor nomination.
2016 Five years ago today the 88th Academy Awards honoring 2015 were held and it was quite unexpectedly exciting. The Revenant led the nominations with 12 and we feared the worst. But the very atypical (but remarkably worthy) contender Mad Max Fury Road won the most Oscars (six !!!) while Spotlight nabbed Best Picture and Best Screenplay. The acting categories were infinitely less suspenseful with all the frontrunners winning but for Best Supporting Actor which always felt like a toss up between Sylvester Stallone (Creed) and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) with Rylance eventually prevailing.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 34th today to the original Miss Bala (2011), Stephanie Sigman.
'La piel es la frontera entre el misterio de la sangre y el misterio del mundo, el teatro donde comunican nuestras entrañas con el universo, el principio y el final de muchas historias, amores y guerras'
-Un escrito que me mando alguien hace mucho tiempo
We thought the Mexican-American actress would be a bigger star by now after proving her range, international flexibility, and that not small matter of her incredible beauty. But hey, the win for any actor is consistent work and she's definitely had that highlights being from Mexico (Miss Bala), Norway (Pioneer), the UK (Spectre) and here in the US (albeit mostly on TV procedurals). She seems to be taking a wee break at the moment (young motherhood, plus you know Hollywood being mostly on hiatus) but still active on Instagram!
Other showbiz birthdays: Tony & Globe winner Bernadette Peters (The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven), Robert Sean Leonard (Dead Poet's Society, Swing Kids), Oscar nominated writer/director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, Time Code), Stephanie Sigman (Miss Bala, Spectre), Ali Larter (Final Destination, Heroes), Rory Cochrane (Argo, White Boy Rick), Sarah Bolger (In America, The Tudors), John Turturro (Quiz Show, Barton Fink), Rae Dawn Chong (The Color Purple, Quest for Fire), Bobb'e J Thompson (Role Models, House of Payne), Kelly Bishop (Gilmore Girls, Dirty Dancing), Annabelle Acosta (Quantico, Kill Chain), Geoffrey Arend (Garden State, 500 Days of Summer), China's Angelababy (Hitman: Agent 47, Young Detective Dee), Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl (The Fisher King, Hustlers), Quinn Shephard (Hostages, Blame), Dorothy Stratten (They All Laughed, Galaxina), Stephanie Beacham (Dynasty, Troop Beverly Hills), Director Guy Maddin (Saddest Music in the World, My Winnipeg), Oscar winning songwriter Markéta Irglová (Once), Broadway legend Tommy Tune, and comedian Gilbert Gottfried.
Bonus b-day suit: one of our favourite directors Vincente Minnelli, born on this day in 1903.
And late greats like Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli (Gigi, Meet me in St Louis), Oscar nominee Charles Durning (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, To Be Or Not To Be, Tootsie), Oscar winning writer Ben Hecht (The Scoundrel, Notorious), and Billie Bird (Sixteen Candles, The Mating Season)
Reader Comments (24)
Mad Max: Fury Road should have won Picture and Director as well, and was horribly snubbed of Actress and Adapted Screenplay nominations, which should have won as well.... just saying.
M*A*S*H* was such a phenomenal and unique show at the time that its ending couldn't help but be a major event. I've been working my way through the show lately and it's easy to see why. With Hawkeye as its linchpin the show was never stagnant with each change necessitated by cast members leaving dealt with in an organic way so that the show reshaped into a similar but different beast with the new additions integrating with the established group (who also changed and grew) and often improving the show as it went along. The McLean Stevenson command years were very tonally different from the Harry Morgan ones but you never felt you were watching a different show. I think the show actually became stronger as the years passed. For example David Ogden Stiers' Charles Winchester was a much richer and more varied character than the narrow and limited Frank Burns who could be amusing but left before his character became stale.
Every Vincente Minnelli film isn't a home run but his batting average is very high and much more varied than his reputation would lead you to think. His musicals are so big and expansive it can come as a surprise that some of his dramas (Some Came Running, Home from the Hill etc.) are so insightful.
"The Revenant led the nominations with 12 and we feared the worst"
I was rooting for it
I wouldn’t have voted for Revenant to win, but definitely think Tom Hardy deserved that surprise supporting actor nod.
Can anyone tell me how I spent all these years of my life without ever hearing or reading about Galaxina? I saw the trailer on the Internet and a fanvid. I need to see it urgently. The full movie is in YouTube. Galaxina must be the American answer to the French Barbarella. Dorothy Stratten is a goddess of beauty, what a sad and sordid story. Eric Roberts deserves to be subject of an "almost there" post for his wonderful performance in Star 80(1983).
Please stop using the word "that" when referring to people. Use "who". The sentence should read "The producers who" not "The producers that..."
In the Oscar photo the winners Mark Rylance, Leonardo DiCaprio and the twins Brie Larson and Alicia Vikander.
Nathaniel,
It’s been a week since any Film Bitch Awards nominations were announced.
When do we get more?!? :)
I was loving THE REVENANT for the first half hour, then I felt it swerved into self-parody (he should have died of exposure a thousand times over, c'm on!) and finally, into an art film version of a nasty little exploitation revenge flick, one that was still more DEATH WISH than THE VIRGIN SPRING.
I remember the MASH finale but don't remember that it was at the end of February. That's pretty early for an end-of-the-season episode, and I don't remember MASH ending as part of a curtailed season, but yeah, everyone I know dropped everything to watch it.
2015 was maybe the dreariest Oscar year in the last decade. I like Spotlight, but those acting winners....
I gotta say it's quite a thrill to see the names of two filmmakers whose filmic outputs are highly divisive, to say the least: Guy Maddin & Mike Figgis. I am for most of the films they created although Maddin's outputs can be maddeningly hard to find and The Forbidden Room was difficult to sit through even if he managed to rope in Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling, Adèle Haenel, Maria de Medeiros, and Geraldine Chaplin to participate.
I have a huge crush on Markéta Irglová ever since Once came out. I saw her in concert with Glen Hansard as The Swell Season. She is so talented and so unassuming.
Owl -- Most of Guy Maddin films are streaming on Th Criterion Channel in March (!)
Julian -- should be dropping most of it monday-friday.
Though Hopkins does have a lot of screentime, the story focuses on Pope Francis and Pope Benedict's character is actually supporting the main storyline of how Francis has become a Pope. So I think Hopkins' category placement was actually right. The same goes for Daniel Kaluuya in Judas and the Black Messiah, whose placement (and campaign) in supporting was criticized more times here. So I wanted to ask, what is actually your criteria for placing someone in either leading, or supporting category? (I'm not trying to be rude, just trying to sort it out for myself, too.)
Hopkins is supporting to me just like Kaluuya,each to their own category placings,I always go with Oscar.
markgordonuk: I don't follow the Oscars' placement, mostly because sometimes they're too off. For example Julia Roberts in August: Osage County, or Rooney Mara for Carol are definitely not supporting, when the story is told from their point of view. But it's not the case of Hopkins or Kaluuya, in my opinion...
That 2015 oscar quartet picture is really charming. That said, I still feel more disappointed than not with the winners. Mad Max deserved what it got, but it felt like it might get more. Outside of Rylance, I wasn't really enthusiastic about the winners (though Larsen is very very good and deserving of the win, I don't quite get how she became a sweeper over Ronan... and Blanchett, though she wasn't winning a third that soon, of course). My disappointed drops back to the nominees too.
moviefilm -- my feeling is if the story is about the relationship between two people both are always leads. (hence the two popes being a duet film) or if the story is entirely about one person, even if they're not the POV, they're the lead. Saying Kaluuya is supporting in a movie where literally ever single character is defined through their relationship to him ina story that's all about him is insane to me. It's like calling Gatsby the supporting player in The Great Gatsby (very similar structure to Judas and...).
dan -- i double checked the air date to be sure. It is weird that it ended in February but it did for some reason.
I love both Bernadette Peters and Mercedes Ruehl - and it seems remarkable that they both entered the world in Queens on the same day (they're both turning 73).
I read this blog since the early 2000's and I think you're finally warming up to Hopkins!
@ Nathaniel
But Orson Welles is supporting in The Third Man, and Joseph Cotten is the lead, no?
And isn’t Brando supporting in Apocalypse Now?
working stiff -- i'm not sure how Brando factors into this?
@ Nathaniel
In the film, all they do is talk about Kurtz (Brando) and finding him is the whole plot, yet I would not call him the lead in Apocalypse Now. That would be Willard (Martin Sheen). Brando's onscreen for less time than Supporting nominee Duvall.