Awards Watch: The Brokeback Factor, Part 2

In last week's part 1 of "The Brokeback Factor", I speculated that a posthumous Oscar win for Heath Ledger for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight may partly be due to his overlooked performance in Brokeback Mountain. But there is another Academy Award hopeful this year that may benefit even more from the infamous Oscar snub of Ang Lee's landmark modern classic. That film is Milk.

The story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official anywhere, already has a history with the little gold man: Rob Epstein's The Times of Harvey Milk won the documentary prize back in 1984. This new Milk is a dramatic retelling of his life, with Academy Award winning actor Sean Penn in the title role and Oscar nominated director Gus Van Sant at the helm. In other words, Milk will certainly be on the radar of most Oscar watchers based on its pedigree alone.

In addition to Penn and Van Sant, other potential Milk nominees include screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and a slew of possible Best Supporting Actor nominees (who would, ironically, compete against Ledger), including James Franco (as Milk's lover Scott Smith), Emile Hirsch (as Milk ally and friend Cleve Jones) and Josh Brolin (as Milk's assassin Dan White). And then of course, there's the big one: Best Picture.

If Milk lives up to expectations at the film festivals, among critics and with such precursor awards as the Golden Globes, and if it is nominated for Best Picture, it may give the Academy a chance to overcome those nasty rumors of Hollywood homophobia that have been swirling around Tinseltown since that notorious Oscar night over two years ago. You recall that dark night when the over-rated mess of a movie Crash defied all predictions and won instead of the favored Brokeback, which was still the most honored movie of the year among every other major awards group. Certain pundits tried to insist that it wasn't due to Brokeback's gay content, that the Los Angeles-based Academy simply thought Crash was better (uh, have you seen it?) and/or that they wanted to honor a home-grown product (Brokeback was filmed mostly in Canada). Hogwash.

As the public statements of such moronic members as Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine attested to, some Academy members didn't even bother to watch Brokeback Mountain, proving that, despite its liberal reputation, homophobia still reigns in Hollywood (just ask all those actors and actresses cringing in the closet). In addition, the constant belittling of Brokeback by late night talk show hosts (mainly that idiot Jay Leno) and on the internet didn't help the film's chances, as some just viewed the whole thing as one big "gay cowboy" joke instead of just, you know, viewing the movie and judging it on its own merits.

Nevertheless, with its frank and honest portrayal of two men in love, Brokeback may have been too much for some people in the Academy, but it did pave the way for a possible victory for Milk. First off, Milk isn't primarily a romance (thereby not making all those straight guys in the Academy feel all funny inside), but a biopic, and the Academy loves biopics, especially about martyrs (see: Gandhi). Also, they especially love honoring actors when they play real people (the list begins with third Best Actor winner George Arliss as Disraeli and ends with last year's Best Actress Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose), so Penn could be looking at Oscar #2. And if Van Sant were to win, he would be the first out director to win for a gay-themed movie (and no, John Schlesinger for Midnight Cowboy and George Cukor for My Fair Lady don't count).

Of course, the jury is literally still out on this one until Milk is actually seen; it is scheduled to open December 5.

Awards Watch: The Brokeback Factor, Part 1

As Variety recently noted, 2008 is now more then half over and, save for a few below the marquee categories, the Oscar race is wide open. Of the films released so far this year, only Richard Jenkins' stand out performance in the indie drama The Visitor has garnered any acting buzz, and certainly no Best Picture contenders have bowed yet.

Longtime awards-watchers know that this is hardly anything new, as studios have always (at least since this all became a big expensive game) back-loaded their annual schedules with their Oscar bait pictures, hoping that the Academy's perceived short attention span will pay off in gold on Hollywood's night of nights. Naturally, things will start heating up once the fall film festivals begin screening their wares, followed by the annual prestige picture traffic jam known as December.

However, the big question of the year will soon be answered (in part at least) with the debut next week of The Dark Knight. And that question is: could the late Heath Ledger be nominated for an Academy Award for playing the Joker?

Prior to his accidental death in January, Ledger's performance was already gaining attention (for example, back in November, Kristopher Tapley at Variety's Red Carpet District called early online marketing for the film the start of the longest "For Your Consideration" campaign in Academy history); tragically or not, his death has served to increase that attention. By all accounts, Ledger's performance as the Clown Prince of Crime is both fearless and fearsome; could it overcome genre bias and get a nomination? After all, this is a comic book movie.

Well, one only needs to look back at the 1990 Oscars to see that it would not be without precedent. That year, Al Pacino was nominated not for playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III, but for his hammy, over-the-top turn as another gangster, Big Boy Caprice, in Dick Tracy, based on the classic comic strip. He was even favored to win by some (Joe Pesci eventually won, for playing yet another gangster, in GoodFellas).

Furthermore, if Ledger is nominated posthumously (the last actor to be so recognized was Il Postino's Massimo Troisi in 1995), could he win? (Peter Finch remains the only actor to win after his death, for Network in 1976.) Obviously, only time will tell and, admittedly, most everyone has yet to see the actual movie in question (advance word, to say the least, is good). Of course, it is his performance that should be judged solely for the honor, but we all know emotions will play into Academy voters' decisions (as they always do, regardless of what is said otherwise). Surely the fact that this will be the last chance to recognize Ledger's talent will play into member's decisions once it comes time for them to mark their final ballots.

Another factor may play into this scenario as well ... call it the "Brokeback factor". As Daniel Day-Lewis so eloquently expressed it in his Screen Actors Guild Award acceptance speech earlier this year, many were moved by Ledger's heartbreaking performance as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, and still are; his death has elevated it to iconic status, much like (another actor gone before his time) James Dean's Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause.

Academy history is riddled with instances of actors winning "make up" Oscars for previously snubbed performances, from Bette Davis (Dangerous instead of Of Human Bondage) and James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) to Cher (Moonstruck instead of Mask) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator for The Insider). So it is not that big a stretch to think that, in this instance, it could happen again.

Alas, the question remains: could an Oscar for Dark Knight, given in part for Brokeback memories, be Hollywood's final tribute to Heath Ledger?

Next week in part 2: Looking at the big picture, how the infamous Academy snub of Brokeback Mountain could help another eagerly awaited film's chances of scoring Best Picture glory.

UPDATE: Part 2 is now available.

Awards Watch: Oscar House Rules

Two of the always-controversial Oscar categories are affected by some new rule changes at the Academy, announced today.

First up, the award for Original Song has streamlined their "sing off" procedure, but the biggest change in the category is that, from now on, only two songs per film will be able to reach the final nominations ballot. Presumably, this is in response to the last two years, when Dreamgirls and Enchanted dominated the nominees with three tunes each.

And for the annual rules change in the Foreign Language Film category, judging of the nine finalists will now be altered so that three of those will be selected by a special committee. One can easily assume that this will eliminate such embarrassments as last year's snubs of expected shoo-ins 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Persepolis. Those two films in particular were acclaimed as the best foreign films of 2007 by every other awards group ... except the Oscars.

No other changes, such as in the confusing "native language" clause or the archaic "one film per country" rule, were made at this time. Nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards will be announced January 22, 2009, followed by the presentation of the Oscars on February 22.