The Smackdown of '98 (with special guests) arrives in just one week. Before we get to the main event let's just soak in that year a bit. Were you old enough to be conscious of pop culture in that year? If so, nostalgia warning. If not, here's what people were talking about before your time.
Great Big Box Office Hits: Titanic (1997) reigned long into 1998 as the then the biggest hit of all time. In fact it didn't fully cede the #1 of the weekend placement from Christmas '97 through Easter of '98. What's more it didn't leave the top ten box office chart until JUNE. That kind of run is unthinkable now. But the biggest hits released in the actual calendar year of 1998 were...
- Saving Private Ryan
- Armageddon
- There's Something About Mary
- A Bug's Life
- The Waterboy...
- Doctor Dolittle (the Eddie Murphy remake version)
- Rush Hour
- Deep Impact
- Godzilla
- Patch Adams
The list reminds us that general audience taste has always been questionable. Godzilla and Patch Adams were instantly reviled but huge hits nonetheless. Just outside the top ten better films like The Truman Show, Mulan, You've Got Mail, Shakepeare in Love, and Prince of Egypt lurked.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
Shakespeare in Love (13 noms / 7 wins) and Saving Private Ryan (11 noms / 5 wins) infamously battled it out at the Oscars, leaving not much gold for anyone else. In a curious homogenization of the field that was widely discussed at the time you could fit the nominees into just two categories: female-led costume pictures set in the Elizabethan era and war dramas. The other nominees were Holocaust dramedy Life is Beautiful (7 noms / 3 wins), biopic Elizabeth (7 noms / 1 win), and contemplative war drama The Thin Red Line (7 nominations).
Expanded Roster?
With the Oscars reverting to a simple 'top ten' this coming season after a decade of experimentation with a 5-10 fluid Best Picture field (though it always ended up being 8 or 9), which films would have benefitted in 1998 from a double-size field? The Truman Show scored 3 major nominations (but was passed over in craft categories it ought to have been competitive in) while Gods and Monsters also scored 3 but then actually surprised to win Best Adapted Screenplay. So we think those two definitely would have been nominated despite whatever Academy reservations existed at the time about them.
After that it gets much harder to imagine given the dominance of the top five.
Armageddon and Pleasantville scored multiple craft nominations but nothing in the above-the-line categories and didn't seem exactly "respected" at the time. Affliction, Hilary and Jackie, and Little Voice were popular with the actors branch but with seemingly no one else. Films with just two nominations included A Simple Plan, Primary Colors, Out of Sight, A Civll Action, Prince of Egypt, Mask of Zorro and Brazil's Central Station (which would have easily taken the Foreign Oscar in a year without Life is Beautiful in the running.)
COMMENT PARTY QUESTION: Which films would you argue for if the Oscars had had a top ten?
The Celebration was a veritable who's who of Danish cinema in the late 90s / early Aughts
Films that endured (in some way) that were neither Oscar players nor box office blockbusters
Denmark's Oscar submission Festen / The Celebration was an international hit but Oscar voters were obviously skeeved out by it (and the Dogme '95 manifesto itself which was anti all the things Oscar loves). They wouldn't come around to Thomas Vinterberg until a dozen years later with The Hunt (2012) and last season in a big way with Another Round (2020).
People have long since forgotten this truth but in 1998, The Big Lebowski by the Coen Brothers was regarded as a disappointment. It was coming on the heels of the critically lauded sleeper hit Fargo and people were like 'what is this?'. Now of course it's one of their most beloved films. Two auteurs who went on to much greater fame had their key breakthroughs that year, too: Wes Anderson's Rushmore (his second feature) and Darren Aronofsky's Pi (his debut).
But what else? The remake of The Parent Trap, which made Lindsay Lohan a star, is still widely loved which is quite a feat for a remake since enthusiasm about those generally vanishes just a month after the initial release, reverting to the original. Many people would cite The Wedding Singer and You've Got Mail as a fine example of the romantic comedy genre which was big throughout the 1990s. Other films that have enthusiastic fanbases to this day are Practical Magic, Wild Things, and Ever After.
Notable films listed as 1998 at IMDb that US audiences didn't get until a year or two later
Germany's international smash Run Lola Run became an enormous arthouse hit in the summer of '99 and the Swedish teen lesbian classic Show Me Love (or Fucking Amål) crossed the Ocean a few months after it. Taiwan's acclaimed Flowers of Shanghai kicked around festivals for some time for years before a video release, Lars Von Trier's The Idiots was released two years after its original infamy for a short arthouse run in the US, and the classic Japanese horror film Ringu, never got a US theatrical release at all though its 2002 English-language remake became a blockbuster.
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 1998 (actually released)
If it has an arrow I've seen it recently enough to defend its placement. The others are much duller in memory. Time for a rewatch in a couple of years when they all hit their 25th birthdays!
- The Truman Show (Peter Weird, US)
- Festen / The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark)
- Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, US) 🔺
- Central Station (Walter Salles, Brazil)
- High Art (Lisa Cholodenko, US)
- Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon, UK/US) 🔺
- Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, UK/US) 🔺
- The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick, US)
- Living Out Loud (Richard LaGravenese, US)
- The Opposite of Sex (Don Roos, US) *listed as '97 at IMDb but it didn't open anywhere until 1998
But if either Run Lola Run or The Idiots had been released in 1998 this list would be different. Yes, I love The Idiots even though you're not suppposed to say so.
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
Typical covergirls (and boys) that year were, in no particular order: The Clintons and Monica Lewinsky, Lauryn Hill, Madonna, Brandy, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz, Liv Tyler, Christina Ricci, both Titanic stars, and anything related to the TV shows Ally McBeal, Seinfeld, South Park, The X-Files, and Dawsons Creek (note one of Michelle Williams first covers -- she was just a wee baby!)
And to give you a taste for how cyclical and long-running drama tends to be in pop culture there's even a headline about Disney "coming out of the closet" (the Lea Delaria "Out" cover). 23 years later the queer community is still having drama around whether or not Disney is sufficiently embracing them with their continual noncommittal queerbaiting.
Mix Tape (Select Smash Hits of '98): "My Heart Will Go On" Celine Dion, "The Boy is Mine" Brandy and Monica, "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" Aerosmith, "You're Still the One" Shania Twain, "How Do I Live" LeAnn Rhimes, "Together Again" Janet Jackson, "I Don't Want to Wait" Paula Cole, "Getting Jiggy wit It" Will Smith, "Adia" Sarah McLachlan, "Quit Playing Games with My Heart" The Backstreet Boys, "This Kiss" Faith Hill, "Gone Til November" Wyclef Jean, "Tubthumping" Chumbawamba, "One Week" Barenaked Ladies, and "Show Me Love" Robyn.
More Music: The Grammy Awards the following February, honoring the music of mostly 1998, would go big for Lauryn Hill's phenomenal "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" while Madonna FINALLY won long overdue Grammies including Best Pop Album for "Ray of Light".
Besides those two masterpieces other key albums released in 1998 included Rufus Wainwright's eponymous debut, Air's "Moon Safari", Hole's "Celebrity Skin", Tori Amos' "From the Choirgirl Hotel", Beastie Boy's "Hello Nasty", Marilyn Manson's "Mechanical Animals", Dixie Chick's "Wide Open Spaces", Alanis Morrissette's "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie", Cher's "Believe", Vonda Shephard's "Songs from Ally McBeal", Whitney Houston's "My Love is Your Love", and Massive Attack's "Mezzanine"
TV: Frasier won its fifth consecutive Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy for its fifth season, the most of all time (later tied by Modern Family) and David E Kelley's hit lawyer drama The Practice won Outstanding Drama for its second season. Though the Emmys are prone to repeat themselves, even more then than they do now, the mid 90s were unusually volatile in terms of Drama series winners with a different show selected for five consecutive years despite the nomination slate being mostly identical. The most talked about Emmy speech was definitely Camryn Manheim's "this is for the fat girls!" Supporting Actress win two decades before body positivity became a mainstream cause. Check it out...
Long running shows that ended in 1998 were Seinfeld, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, Murphy Brown (though it later resurfaced), The Closer, Cybil, Ellen, and daytime talk show Geraldo. Key debuts for new series in 1998 included sitcoms Wil & Grace, That 70s Show, Sports Night, The King of Queens, as well as MTV's claymation Celebrity Deathmatch (remember that?) and the delightful Powerpuff Girls.
Literature:
Portuguese author José Saramago won the Nobel Prize (his most recent novels had been "Blindness" and "All the Names") and Philip Roth won the Pulitzer for his novel "American Pastoral".
Stage: The Pulitzer went to Paula Vogel's "How I Learned To Drive" while the Tony Awards went to Yasmine Reza's "Art" (Best Play) and Disney's "The Lion King" (Best Musical). The Lion King had stiff competition from "Ragtime" which took Best Score and actually had the most Tony nominations that year. At that same ceremony Audra McDonald won her third "Featured" Tony Award (she later went on to the sensational record of six Tony wins -- the most for any actor and remains the only performer to win in all four Tony acting categories: Leading wins in both Play and Musicals plus Featured wins in both Play and Musicals). The revival sensation of the season was "Cabaret" which took home the Lead acting trophies for both of its stars, Alan Cumming (The Master of Ceremonies) and Natasha Richardson (Sally Bowles).
Meanwhile over in London, Patrick Marber's "Closer" was the Olivier winner for Play of the Year. It would transfer to Broadway in 1999 (one Tony nod, Best Play) and then to the big screen in 2004 where it would receive two Supporting Oscar nominations, one of which was for Clive Owen. He had originated the role of "Dan" on the London stage but switched to the role of "Larry" for the film, leaving Dan to be played by Jude Law.
ShowTunes To Go: "Ragtime" from Ragtime with Marin Mazzie, Audra McDonald, and Brian Stokes Mitchell and our favourite showtune of that particular year "I Will Never Leave You" from Side Show with Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner.