Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman

Author:Michael Schulman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

Audrey Hepburn came out to present Best Picture. It was a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sweep—the first film to win the “Big Five” since It Happened One Night in 1935. (The sweep would not be repeated again until 1992, with The Silence of the Lambs.) Like Capra, who had tapped into a yearning for class mobility, Forman had captured something elemental about the country. The wild yell of Easy Rider had crescendoed into McMurphy’s mad fury—and, in both films, Nicholson’s character had been snuffed out by an uncomprehending world. Producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz ascended the stage with arms around each other and thanked everyone from Kirk Douglas, who had stayed with the project for fourteen years, to the state of Oregon.

One name that went conspicuously unmentioned: “Ken Kesey.” The author was watching with a rowdy crew of friends at his blueberry farm. The group applauded every time Cuckoo’s Nest won, jeered whenever the winner failed to mention Kesey. (Only Forman did, while Kesey was doing chores in the milkshed.) When it won Best Picture, he switched off his ratty TV and announced, “Any one of them could have thanked me for writing the book and won all the arguments. But they blew their big chance to be in the big times, the big league.” As congratulatory calls poured in, he groused, “I’m sure it’s a good movie in the sense that Nixon’s ’72 campaign was a good campaign because he won.”

Moments after Cuckoo’s Nest’s triumph, Elizabeth Taylor emerged in a red dress and invited everyone to celebrate the United States bicentennial with a rendition of “America the Beautiful.” The audience awkwardly rose to its feet, and out marched a line of uniformed sousaphone players—Altman couldn’t have staged it better. Fletcher went back up with her Oscar. As she looked out, she saw Altman staring at her from his seat, twiddling his hands in mock sign language. “I was shocked,” she said. “I just was shocked.”

The next morning, Forman read his pile of congratulatory telegrams, including one from the seventy-eight-year-old Frank Capra. Four decades after It Happened One Night’s sweep, he wrote: WELCOME TO THE CLUB.

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, ALTMAN WAS asked about the single Oscar for Nashville. “Well, the Academy is a private club, so its members can do whatever they want with it,” he groused. Awards campaigning had put him off. “I don’t know what United Artists spent promoting Cuckoo’s Nest, but I’ll guarantee you it was over $80,000. That’s the trouble, the whole thing becomes like a national election.”

Four years later, when John Lennon was assassinated, a Washington Post reporter called Altman and asked if he felt responsible. “What do you mean, ‘responsible’?”

“Well, you’re the one that predicted that there would be an assassination of a star.”

“Don’t you feel responsible,” the director replied, “for not heeding my warning?”

Louise Fletcher, meanwhile, was still fuming at Altman. “I have nothing against Lily Tomlin, and I understand she was wonderful in the part,” she said in 1976. “I have not been able to see the movie myself.

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