44 days til Oscar nominations. Screenplay stats!

by Nathaniel R

With only 44 days until Oscar nominations and lots of confusion as to what might be nominated for screenplay (there are seemingly 7 locks for Original and only 1 contender for Adapted -- the math doesn't work. Haha!) let's use today's numerical trivia prompt for writing awards. Fact: Oscar's 4 favorite screenwriters have 44 nominations between them for writing. That's a lot of hogging of writing honors. They are...

OSCAR'S 20 FAVORITE SCREENWRITERS
(Numbers below are for screenwriting categories only)
01 Woody Allen (16 nominations and 3 wins)
He's also been in the Acting and Directing races. Classics include Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan and more...
02 Billy Wilder (12 nominations and 3 wins)
He's also been in the Directing and Producing races. Classics include Sunset Blvd, The Apartment, Some Like it Hot, and more...
03 John Huston (8 nominations and 1 win)
He's also been in the Acting, Directing, and Producing races. Classics include The African Queen, The Asphalt Jungle, Prizzi's Honor and more...
04 Federico Fellini (8 nominations but he never won for writing)
He's also been in the Directing, and Producing races and of course his films have taken multiple Foreign Language Film Oscars. He's the Academy's favorite Italian... yes, even more than Sophia Loren. Classics include La Dolce Vita, I Vitelloni, 8½ and more...

It's perhaps no surprise that all of these writers are also directors and thus were in charge of bringing their own words to visual life. With greater control comes greater consistency in results. Without checking before you hit the jump can you guess which working writers are next in line to join this group?

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Happy New Year: "The Apartment" (1960)

by Chris Feil

The week between Christmas and New Year’s can be a disorienting time - an inescapable amount of parties, reflections on the closing year, and hope for the one to come. For the more somber sort, it’s the feeling of being alone in a series of crowded rooms you can’t escape. New Year’s Eve is simply the worst holiday - like “Auld Lang Syne” it proposes joy and companionship, but always comes up feeling solemn.

Such is the emotional terrain of Billy Wilder’s classic romance The Apartment, a very best Best Picture winner. In its indifferent, wintery New York City, it’s easy to feel isolated and cast aside when everyone else goes on about their lives - but the very thing that sets you apart is what will make you feel less alone when you see it reflected in another person. The film is all the more romantic for being a love story for the melancholy, its soaring hope all the more hard won and transformative.

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The Furniture: Bored at the Border in "Hold Back the Dawn"

"The Furniture" our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the release of Hold Back the Dawn, the film for which Olivia de Havilland received her first Best Actress nomination. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t we have a whole month of de Havilland back in June, in the lead-up to her 100th birthday? Yes, we did. But I am here to inform you that celebrating this two-time Oscar-winner isn’t an occasional thing. It's an essential part of life.

Besides, the film is great. It’s a smart, cynical melodrama about a Romanian playboy named Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer), biding his time in a small Mexican town while he waits to be granted entry into the United States. It’ll be years, thanks to the National Origins Formula. Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder’s script was adapted from a story by Ketti Frings, but also took inspiration from Wilder’s own experiences as a refugee stranded by the quota system.

Fed up, Georges looks for other ways to get across. On the 4th of July he meets Emmy Brown (de Havilland), a thoroughly wholesome schoolteacher. She’s taken her students on a cross-border field trip... 

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6 Days til Oscar. Trivia Party

We're less than a week from Hollywood's High Holy Night. Are you excited yet?
For today's trivia party we'll look at the only people to win exactly six Oscars. Four men. It's always men (sigh). Only 11 people have won more Oscars than these four men. I did not include confusing cases like Visual FX guru Dennis Murren -- IMDb argues exactly 6 but that depends on how you count them since his prizes are many and a confusing jumble of technical achievements, special Oscars, and regular competitive statues. (Unfortunately I couldn't find photographs of the set decorators) 

Gordon HollingsheadGORDON HOLLINGSHEAD (1892-1952)
This producer won more Oscars in the short film categories than anyone other than the legendary Walt Disney and Frederick Quimby (of Tom & Jerry fame) but he won them for live action films. His first Oscar, though, was in the inaguaral year (1933) of a category called "Best Assistant Director" which the Academy cancelled just a few years later. 

THOMAS LITTLE (1886-1985)
This set decorator, originally from Ogden Utah, nearly made it to 99 years of age but he quit the business in the 1950s. He won six Oscars in the Production Design category (formerly Best Art Direction) from How Green Was My Valley (1941), This Above All (1942), My Gal Sal (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943)*, Wilson (1944), and Anna and the King of Siam (1946). His last nomination was for Viva Zapata! (1952) and he retired from the business the next year.

WALTER M SCOTT (1906-1989)
Another set decorator! Walter M Scott was originally from Ohio and worked on close to 300 films in his very long career. His Oscars came from The Robe (1953), The King and I (1956), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Cleopatra (1963), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Hello, Dolly! (1969)

BILLY WILDER (1906-2002)
The mega talented ridiculously versatile writer/director/producer helmed so many classics it's rather mind boggling including but not limited to: Ninotchka (1939), Double Indemnity (1944), Sabrina (1954), and Some Like It Hot (1959). His six Oscars came for only three films though: 2 Oscars for The Lost Weekend (1945), 1 Oscar for Sunset Blvd (1950), and 3 Oscars for The Apartment (1960). He later was honored with the Irving Thalberg award. 

Do you think anyone in your lifetime is going to become a six time winner?
The closest to achieving this currently is John Williams with 5 Oscars. He's mostly retired now but if he wins for his score for The Force Awakens, he joins this very small club. He hasn't won since Schindler's List (1993) despite constant nominations since then. Iñárritu, who currently has 3, will almost be in this club IF he wins Pic/Director this year for The Revenant, and the following working artists have 4: Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, the Coen brothers, Milena Canonero in costume design and Nick Park in animation. If Sandy Powell wins for either Carol or Cinderella this year in Costume Design she'll join the 4 Oscar club. 

*If Emmanuel Lubezki wins his 3rd consecutive Oscar in cinematography he'll be the first to do so in that particular category but he won't be the first person to achieve it in any craft category since Thomas Little did it in art direction in the 40s (and possibly other people have done it elsewhere, too).

Beauty vs Beast: Thoroughly Modern Mistress

Happy Monday, everybody -- Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" poll here for you to ponder. I've been trying to use older films for this series lately since it's more likely you'll participate if you've, you know, seen the movie at hand, but this week it just couldn't be helped; we have to go current. Not only is it director Noah Baumbach's birthday later this week (he's turning 46 on Thursday) but just yesterday Nathaniel admitted (MUCH TO MY HORROR) that he didn't much like Baumbach's new film Mistress America. What what what? I... disagree. (Here's the review I wrote.) While I can't say MA kicked my beloved Frances Ha to the curb or anything quite that psychotic (it would take a miracle or a nuke to come close) I reveled in Mistress' heady mix of madcap silliness and sadness - nothing's made me feel quite so simultaneously goofy and gallant in some time. What a script; what a sharp-edged choreography of words and full-screen wiliness. Anyway hopefully you have seen it by now, and can judge this week's contest for yourselves...

PREVIOUSLY Yesterday the 1954 Supporting Actress Smackdown put that year to bed for this month at TFE, but wait, one last thing -- who successfully won Sabrina, says y'all? It was a shockingly close battle between the brothers, but in the end William Holden's, well, William-Holden-ness, beat out Bogie. Said Leslie19:

"All William Holden, all the time. Who else can sit down on champagne glasses with such aplomb?"