The Oscars need to start recognizing the real storytellers.

Many times, edgy movies lost the Best Picture Oscar to something safe and boring: Giant loses to the truly terrible Around the World in 80 Days, Apocalypse Now loses to Kramer v Kramer, Raging Bull loses to Ordinary People, Dead Poets Society loses to Driving Miss Daisy, Shawshank loses to Forrest Gump, Brokeback loses to Crash, Social Network loses to King’s Speech.

Sometimes the undeserving winner is a musical: Double Indemnity loses to Going My Way, Streetcar loses to American in Paris, The Defiant Ones loses to Gigi, Doctor Strangelove loses to My Fair Lady, Lion in Winter loses to Oliver.

And on and on. Private Life of Henry VIII loses to Cavalcade, Raiders of the Lost Ark loses to Chariots of Fire, Fargo loses to English Patient, Lord of the Rings loses twice to Beautiful Mind and Chicago, Avatar loses to Hurt Locker which actually made bomb-disposal boring.

Citizen Kane loses to How Green Was My Valley. And by the way, so did Maltese Falcon.

Network, Taxi Driver and All The President’s Men all lose to Rocky.

Out of Africa should have lost to two films that weren’t even nominated, Brazil and Back to the Future.

I am not counting Saving Private Ryan, which was good, not great, and has no cause to complain for losing to Shakespeare in Love.?The “rescue” of Matt Damon and his need to prove the value of his life trivialized military sacrifice, and Spielberg changed his mind a dozen times on whether to tell a good story or pursue the illusion of “realism” in the Normandy sequence. There were a dozen WWII movies in the 1960s that were just as good, that didn’t get the Oscar either.

The Academy has made stupid mistakes in many award categories, and the writers got screwed just like Peter O’Toole and Orson Welles did. Regularly the best script got beat by the big movie of the year, or a splashy musical with a lousy script. Here are the screenplays that got screwed the worst by Oscar.

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THE TEN WORST SCREENPLAY ROBBERIES.

1941, Here Comes Mister Jordan beats the Maltese Falcon.

1944, Going My Way beats Double Indemnity.

1947, Miracle on 34th Street beats Gentleman’s Agreement.

1951, American in Paris, absurd romance meets unendurable ballet, beats Ace In The Hole.

1958, Gigi beats Cat On a Hot Tin Roof.

1959, Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk beat Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries.

1990, Dances With Wolves beats Goodfellas.

1994, Forrest Gump beats Shawshank.

2001, the truly terrible Gosford Park beats Amelie.

2005, the awful Crash beats Good Night and Good Luck.

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DISHONORABLE MENTION.

1929, Big House beats All Quiet on the Western Front.

1930, Cimarron beats Little Caesar.

1946, Seventh Veil beats Notorious.

1951, A Place in the Sun beats Streetcar.

1952, the Bad and the Beautiful beats High Noon.

1954, Country Girl beats Caine Mutiny.

1955, Interrupted Melody beats the Court Martial of Billy Mitchell.

1956, Around the World in 80 Days beats Giant.

1959, Room at the Top beats Some Like It Hot.

1964, Becket beats Doctor Strangelove.

1967, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner beats Bonnie and Clyde.

1971, French Connection beats Clockwork Orange.

1982, Missing beats Sophie’s Choice.

1988, Rain Main beats Bull Durham.

1994, Pulp Fiction beats Bullets Over Broadway.

2003, Lost In Translation, which practically had no script, beats Finding Nemo.

2010, King’s Speech beats the Fighter.

The old award shows need to think about relevance. In a market that has shattered into dozens of pieces, where audiences no longer all go to see the same movies at the same theater and then on the same handful of channels, how do we avoid that weird feeling on Oscar night when one award after another goes to a movie nobody’s ever seen? How do they give out Oscars for movies when we can’t define what a movie is? How do they keep giving out prime time Emmys when prime time has no meaning?

Jack is a writer with 29 feature screenplays and a series completed, almost all of them with female leads, three under option. Check them out on this site and let’s get one filmed! https://threewibbes.wordpress.com/