Let's face it, The Academy Awards (or the Oscars) have a history of getting it wrong or missing the cultural moment. A body of members that has increased and diversified over the years, the monotony of its past winners can be glaring especially with the benefit of hindsight. But, in a year full of so many gems, a year recently the topic of a book to show what a rare cultural moment 1999 was, this year is packed with great films.
As a result, it's only right that, at some point in time, there's an attempt to right those wrongs done by The Academy. So, in the spirit of awards season, let's redo the major, pivotal awards at the 2000 Academy Awards. A year when directors like Sofia Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, and Claire Denis went largely ignored in favor of the usual Oscar bait.
8 Best Original Screenplay
What Was Nominated: American Beauty – Alan Ball (winner); Being John Malkovich – Charlie Kaufman; Magnolia – Paul Thomas Anderson; The Sixth Sense – M. Night Shyamalan; Topsy-Turvy – Mike Leigh
What Should’ve Been Nominated: The Matrix - The Wachowskis (new winner); Being John Malkovich - Charlie Kaufman; Ghost Dog: Way of The Samurai - Jim Jarmusch; The Sixth Sense - M. Night Shyamalan; But I’m A Cheerleader - Jamie Babbitt
TheAmerican Beauty moment in 1999 was palpable. Released in early-September, the theatrical run would last into June of next year to the tune of $356.3 million. But, with the benefit of hindsight, is it the best or the most original? Even then, the idea of a disgruntled, privileged, upper-middle-class man trying to take control of the domestic life he's lost has been done before. Films like Being John Malkovich are an idea from the singular mind of Charlie Kaufman that was harnessed and digested by another warm-hearted weirdo Spike Jonze. 1999 had far more original ideas not considered by the Academy, and ignored. M. Night Shamyalan's travail through the undead and Jamie Babbitt's But I’m A Cheerleaderscript about a lesbian cheerleader and gender norms were ahead of the curve, a fit perfect for the moment today — and even Jim Jarmusch, a filmmaker that has never been nominated for an Academy Award. Though Jarmusch’s aesthetic has never been in line or considered by the Academy,Ghost Dog: Way of The Samurai is his most accessible and cleverly designed screenplay. Jarmusch blended his zen aesthetic with gangsterisms of the old Italian way, the perfect alchemy for his quiet filmmaking and writing style.
Even with all of the scripts that permeated theaters from original ideas, none can quite hold a candle toThe Matrix. Pulling from influences from the likes of Hong Kong cinema, science fiction, Buddhism, Jean Baudrillard, and simulation theory, The Wachowski sisters created a wholly original world. A world that still influences today. But The Academy was not ready to nominate films like The Matrix — not until The Dark Knight would they consider blockbuster action films — so the script was ignored by voters. But the heroic journey of Neo encapsulates a perfect piece of original screenwriting.
7 Best Adapted Screenplay
What Was Nominated: The Cider House Rules – John Irving (winner); Election – Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor; The Green Mile – Frank Darabont; The Insider – Eric Roth and Michael Mann; The Talented Mr. Ripley – Anthony Minghella
What Should’ve Been Nominated: Election - Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (new winner); Eyes Wide Shut - Stanley Kubrick, Arthur Schnitzler, and Frederic Raphael; Fight Club - Jim Urls and Chuck Palahniuk; The Virgin Suicides - Sofia Coppola and Jeffery Eugenides; The Iron Giant - Brad Bird, Ted Hughes, and Tim McCanlies
The Academy Awards love to award warm-hearted period pieces with a flair for prestige filmmaking and sweeping romantics. The mid- to late-90s was a time for Tobey Maguire, starring in The Cider House Rules leading up to his Spider-Man fame. But, it was an obvious choice for The Academy even though a bevy of other materials were adapted to delight. The Iron Giantdidn't quite make the impact it's known for having today, even though the script is a mighty feat of Spielbergian fun and adventure, where the innocence of childhood is tested against the powers of military governance. Fight Club was too toxic at the time to be tackled by The Academy; David Fincher’s precise direction rides the script tight and unpacks a twist for the ages, courtesy of Tyler Durden. Sofia Coppola’s masterful debut, The Virgin Suicides, is a melancholic tale of suburbia. The film is ignored by voters, even though the final shots and scenes are as honest and devastating as any film Coppola has made. Along with the last Stanley Kubrick film: A perfect mediation on the terror of secret societies and the pitfalls of a sexless marriage.
Alexander Payne’s adapted script of the novel of the same name by Tom Perotta, Election perfectly encapsulated the snares and greed of American politics, but isolated to a small town high school. With a wonderfully delirious Reese Witherspoon as the girl-boss archetype of Tracy Flick, who goes on to try and dominate her school’s election, Payne’s script spares no soul. Everyone, from the disgruntled principal (a hilariously depressed Matthew Broderick) to the sweetness of Chris Klein, gets eviscerated in a film never short on laughs.
6 Best Supporting Actress
What Was Nominated: Angelina Jolie – Girl, Interrupted (winner); Toni Collette – The Sixth Sense; Catherine Keener – Being John Malkovich; Samantha Morton – Sweet and Lowdown; Chloë Sevigny – Boys Don't Cry
What Should’ve Been Nominated: Toni Collette - The Sixth Sense (new winner); Nicole Kidman - Eyes Wide Shut; Julianne Moore - Magnolia; Cameron Diaz - Being John Malkovich; Chloe Sevigny - Boys Don’t Cry
While being praised for her hard-edged performance in a small-budgeted, somewhat sleazy look at mental illness, Angelina Jolie rode the acclaim for her role in Girl, Interrupted to an Oscar. While the film has aged fine, Jolie benefited from the film being less than her performance and standing out in a weak field. The truly great gonzo performances in this category belong to Julianne Moore for her work in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnoliaand Cameron Diaz going full eccentric in Being John Malkovich. Two actresses that were ignored, even as Moore reaches for heights unknown with her over-the-top yelling, she is undoubtedly one of the more memorable parts in a stacked ensemble. The same goes for Chloe Sevigny who instead opts for a subtle, desperate, and loving performance even when tragedy strikes in Boys Don't Cry. Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman plays ice-cold and hardened in Eyes Wide Shut, better than most actresses working today.
However, the standout, layered, and powerful performance of the bunch is Toni Collete in The Sixth Sense. An actress who would later relish in similar territory with Hereditary, the domestic drama and terror was a perfect ground for Collette to tap into the tragedy a mother goes through when she fails to connect with her son. In an incredibly heartfelt and harrowing scene, where she connects with Haley Joel Osmet as he suffers through his gift of seeing the dead, Collette finds humanity in a role that could've easily entered schlock and ham-fisted territory, delivering it with subtle strokes of light bursting through.
5 Best Supporting Actor
What Was Nominated: Michael Caine – The Cider House Rules (winner); Tom Cruise – Magnolia; Michael Clarke Duncan – The Green Mile; Jude Law – The Talented Mr. Ripley; Haley Joel Osment – The Sixth Sense
What Should’ve Been Nominated: Tom Cruise - Magnolia (new winner); Jamie Foxx - Any Given Sunday; Haley Joel Osmet - The Sixth Sense; Brad Pitt - Fight Club; Hugo Weaving - The Matrix
Though having already won the Best Supporting Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters some 12 years earlier, the Academy decided it was time to honor the great Michael Caine with another award. The Cider House Rules is typical Oscar bait, and many great performances got overlooked in favor of his. Jamie Foxx was nothing short of electric as Willie Bement, the hot shot mobile quarterback in Any Given Sunday. Brad Pitt became an icon with his turn as Tyler Durden in Fight Club, blowing any and everyone off the screen with his anarchist diatribes. Haley Joel Osment made waves with a mind-blowing turn as the kid who can talk to the dead, channeling a cold maturity beyond his years, in The Sixth Sense. Also, in a category nearly always reserved for villains, it's impossible to think how Hugo Weaving didn't get nominated for his maniacal Agent Smith in The Matrix — delivering sinister line after sinister line, going toe to toe with Laurence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves throughout.
The transcendental performance in the supporting category in 1999 belongs to none other than Tom Cruise in Magnolia. In a film buried with incredible, off-the-rail performances where every actor attempts to wrestle the film under control, it's Cruise, playing the womanizing, self-help guru T.J. Mackey, who rises above the rest. Dawning a pony-tailed mullet befit only for the worst of the worst, Cruise gets broken down as he attempts to reconcile his star person with the death of his real-life father. As a consequence of filming, Jason Robards, who was also on death's door, plays the dad character. Finding catharsis at the end, it's the most vulnerable and humane Cruise has allowed himself to be in a movie.
4 Best Director
What Was Nominated: Sam Mendes - American Beauty (winner); Lasse Halstrom - The Cider House Rules; Spike Jonze - Being John Malkovich; Michael Mann - The Insider; M. Night Shyamalan - The Sixth Sense
What should’ve been nominated: Stanley Kubrick - Eyes Wide Shut (new winner); Claire Denis - Beau Travail; The Wachowskis - The Matrix; David Fincher - Fight Club; Sofia Coppola - The Virgin Suicides
Even for as safe as The Academy Awards often plays it, the Best Director category stacked out to be an eclectic bunch, with Spike Jonze scoring a surprise nomination for his absurd work on Being John Malkovich. But, at a time when it was still hard for women directors to make way, outstanding works were directed by women. The first is Beau Travail, Claire Denis’ soft, mediative look at masculinity and male bonding. The other is the debut work of Hollywood royalty, Sofia Coppola, who delivered a work of stark melancholia and honesty about coming of age in suburbia with The Virgin Suicides. The Wachowski Sisters set the industry ablaze with their pioneering of new technology to create their vision, The Matrix. While David Fincher continued to show his sleek precision as a director to bring dark unadaptable material to life on the screen with Fight Club. It was a great year for film and one that was ushered in because of the incredible work behind the camera.
In all his years on the frontier of cinema, crafting, creating, and inventing new ways to look through the camera or giving an audience a new way to look at the screen, Stanley Kubrick’s sole Oscar is for Best Visual Effects (2001: A Space Odyssey). The Academy missed the perfect opportunity to grant a true master with an award recognizing his lifetime contribution to a medium indebted to his artistry. His final master stroke was Eyes Wide Shut. A hypnotic, dark, and cold film about fleeing to the underbellies of America’s secret network of societies where sex is in abundance. Likely too dark and odd for the Academy, Eyes Wide Shut has all the hallmarks of Kubrick’s touch to bring us into the odd, inhumane, and perverse.
3 Best Actress
What Was Nominated: Hillary Swank - Boys Don’t Cry (winner); Annette Benning - American Beauty; Jane McTeer - Tumbleweeds; Julianne Moore - The End of the Affair; Meryl Streep - Music of the Heart
What Should Have Been Nominated: Kirsten Dunst - The Virgin Suicides (new winner); Hillary Swank - Boys Don't Cry; Natasha Lyonne - But I’m a Cheerleader; Julia Roberts - Notting Hill; Reese Witherspoon - Election
In a year brimming with new, fresh talent coming to the horizon to strut their artistic merits and range as performers, The Academy instead opted to nominate a usual gang of suspects, but also films like Tumbleweeds and Music of the Heart that have lost all relevance. Instead, performances from the likes of Reese Witherspoon and Natasha Lyonne should've been celebrated. Lyonne, for her delicately balanced comedic performance with a fierce vulnerability in But I’m A Cheerleader, discovering sex for herself in a setting where the powers that be would happily have her conform instead of being who she is. Meanwhile, Witherspon ignited the scene with her can-do attitude, sly charisma, and biting humor in Election. Shattering all expectations of the High School it-girl and instead giving a vile but complex turn as she vies for the High School throne.
The real winner of 1999 should've been Kirsten Dunst. In another turn from a young actor that year (the other being Haley Joel Osmet), Dunst quietly carries a film dripped in suburban ennui as the entire neighborhood gazes on in confusion. Playing the deeply mysterious Lux Lisbon as she leads her sisters through the oddity of love where the local boys do their best to kindle up some kind of romance, Dunst plays the role with subtle strokes of coldness, love, and discovery, and fills in all the fuzzy gray areas like looking at an old Polaroid, attempting to understand what time had lost. A performance beyond her years, making The Virgin Suicides one of the great films of 1999.
2 Best Actor
What Was Nominated: Kevin Spacey - American Beauty (winner); Russell Crowe - The Insider; Richard Farnsworth - The Straight Story; Sean Penn - Sweet and Lowdown; Denzel Washington - The Hurricane
What Should Have Been Nominated: Jim Carrey - Man On The Moon (new winner); Nicolas Cage - Bringing Out The Dead; Bruce Willis - The Sixth Sense; Forest Whitaker - Ghost Dog: Way of The Samurai; Matt Damon - The Talented Mr. Ripley
For all accounts, in a year with so much exceptional talent delivering heart-wrenching, nuanced, and fun work to bring to theaters, the nominations for Best Actor were a bit boring. Overlooked was Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley, changing identities in his pursuit of envy, lust, and fortune. Damon has never been better at playing the bitter and smarmy American. The same goes for Bruce Willis, who will likely go his entire career without an Oscar nomination even though he should've landed one for playing the morose, drunk, and grief-riddled therapist in The Sixth Sense. Some of the best dramatic work of his career. Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage teamed with the great Martin Scorsese to make Bringing Out the Dead; turning his over-the-top person down to instead reveal his character's inner turmoil through his piercing, deadening blue eyes, Cage delivered one of his finest. As did Forest Whitaker in his only collaboration with Jim Jarmusch: Whitaker plays the quiet but deadly hitman who abides his life by the code of the samurai.
Man on the Moon feels like the forgotten gem of Jim Carrey’s career as it tends to get lost in the rubble of other iconic movies. In one of those roles he should've garnered major awards attention for — including The Truman Show — Carrey goes method and gets deep inside the spirit of Andy Kauffman. Director Milos Forman, who is no stranger to the biopic with films like Amadeus and The People Vs. Larry Flynt under his belt, uses Carrey as the heartbeat of the film and never lets go of his frequency. As we indulge in all the eccentric and nebbish pranks the jokester Andy Kaufman pulled off in his lifetime. While also showing the lows and backlash of Kaufman's reckless behavior, the humanity afforded to one of the pop culture's great pranksters — Man on the Moon is singular.
1 Best Picture
What Was Nominated: American Beauty (winner); The Cider House Rules; The Insider; The Sixth Sense; The Green Mile
What Should Have Been Nominated: The Matrix (new winner); Fight Club; Eyes Wide Shut; Magnolia; Beau Travail; The Sixth Sense; The Talented Mr. Ripley
If there is a crown for Best Picture from 1999, there must be much consideration for the varied and large body of work that accumulated through such a great year. The Sixth Sense is a rare commodity amongst Best Picture nominees, considering its horror/sci-fi origins and a majestic, dramatic grace to Shyamalan's storytelling. It's easy to see why it was nominated. Then, the final work of Stanley Kubrick. But also, Claire Denis’ Beau Travail, a film recently inducted into the coveted 100 Greatest Films of All Time list from Sight & Sound magazine. The Academy has shown through the years their willingness to nominate foreign films in their prestigious categories. Then, there’s the epic follow-up to Paul Thomas Anderson’s wave-making Boogie Nights. Magnolia, while cited as a mess by many, is an undeniable force of filmmaking with a stacked ensemble. But, the two front-runners should be Fight Club and The Matrix. Two films, that have left their mark on the culture.
There isn’t much else to say about The Matrix that hasn’t already been said. With the combination of sleek genre fair, immaculately cool set-pieces, and a high sci-fi concept executed to perfection by Lana and Lily Wachowski, The Matrix has lived in the minds of audiences everywhere since its release. The movie is designed with mind-bending special effects and the popular “simulation theory” that has permeated every day since the “Meta-verse” has started up. Even before seeing the film, the “bullet time” scene was known everywhere and has since been a staple of film culture. A sure-fire Best Picture winner.