Category Fraud At the Oscars Is Not A Thing Unless You're A Critic or Pedant Which The People Who Created It Are

 

I have always been aware that it can be very difficult to tell the difference between a lead performance and supporting one. I've also known that it has always been at the judgment of the actor, their agent or the Academy.

I also know that unless you're watching a film with a stopwatch and deliberately arguing how long a character is in a movie its also something that the overwhelming majority of filmgoers, creative forces and even the majority of critics, find irrelevant. So in a sense I have been waiting for someone to post an article online by the kind of mindless idiot who cares neither about film or criticism but just wants to get clickbait says that the thing readers should care about is 'category fraud'. Which, even if it’s a crime, it’s a victimless one because who wins an Oscar and in what category is a trivial debate, even among the kinds of trivial things that the Oscars genuinely are.

I have to say this article barely rises to the quality of clickbait; its cherry-picking of facts is debatable even by the standards of cherry-picking and the author can't even seem to argue that's it much of a crime. The only reason I'm bringing it up is because I knew these kinds of things existed and I found it odd that for all the data this writer tried to bring up they didn't go to the year when it was clearly the most 'rampant': 1996.

The most famous 'fraud' connected with it is with the classic movie Fargo. In this film Frances McDormand's iconic Marge Gunderson doesn't show up until half an hour into the movies screen time. Her total screen time is estimated at 32 minutes. By comparison William H. Macy, who plays Jerry, dominates the first fifteen minutes of the film and appears in roughly forty minutes of the movie.

Nevertheless no one complained when McDormand was listed as Best Actress in numerous critics awards throughout the awards season or when she was listed as Best Actress in a Comedy at the Golden Globes. Madonna, who was the star of Evita, won the Golden Globe in that category and later confessed she would wanted McDormand to win. McDormand of course later went on to win the first of three Academy Awards for Best Actress in a film and no one argues that it isn't a masterpiece.

As for Macy critics such as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel believing he should be listed as Best Actor. He would win that award from the Independent Spirit Awards that year. He was listed in both categories in various critics groups. However for reasons that I have never understood (perhaps after the Golden Globes shut him out entirely)  Macy chose to submit his name for Best Supporting Actor that year and the Oscars nominated him in that category. He lost to Cuba Gooding, Jr. for Jerry Maguire and if truth be known if he had been nominated in the Best Actor category he might have lost.

During the critics awards the performer who dominated the Best Actor category was Geoffrey Rush for Shine.  He plays the adult David Hefelgott in the movie, but we see David as both a child and an adolescent. Rush's screen-time is comparatively small – a little more than half an hour in a film that runs 1 hour and 45 minutes.  Nevertheless Rush's work was such a tour de force that he dominated the Best Actor prizes from the beginning of the award season to the end, winning the Golden Globe, SAG Award and eventually the Oscar for the role. One could argue that his role was as much supporting as say Noah Taylor's but I don't remember anyone questioning that.

A major film that was a contender throughout the 1996 awards season was The People Vs. Larry Flynt, which would win Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes. (We'll get to the winner in a minute.) Courtney Love played Larry Flynt's wife Althea in what was her film debut and it was hailed as an incredible performance. Love would win the Best Supporting Actress prize from the New York Film Critics and was nominated in this category by the Critics' Choice Awards. Yet when it came to the Golden Globes she chose to submit for Best Actress. (She would lose to Brenda Blethyn for Secrets & Lies in a role no one would question was a lead.)

By that point the Best Actress field had a lot of formidable contenders. In addition to McDormand and Blethyn Emily Watson had received multiple critics awards for her film debut in Breaking the Waves. It was expected that Debbie Reynolds who had given a sensational performance in Albert Brooks' Mother would be nominated, Madonna was a heavy favorite even before her Golden Globe win and there was a question as to who from The English Patient would contend in that category as well.  Love would have had more luck had she bitten the bullet and gone for a nomination as a Supporting Actress but she rolled the dice and went for Best Actress. In a wonderful Saturday Night Live sketch done the week of the Oscar nominations we saw how Love, Reynolds and Madonna were left out in the cold. In Love's case 'Category Fraud'' might have been a good option.

Now as I'm sure the author of this piece might add the big winner on Oscar night was The English Patient an overblown epic which for all its virtues was nowhere near the quality of Fargo or Jerry Maguire. It also really did commit 'category fraud.' Because of the structure of the film there was debate over whether Juliette Binoche, who plays the nurse Hannah or Kristin Scott Thomas who plays Katherine Clifton were lead actress or supporting. Binoche would win awards in both categories during the lead up and the National Board of Review gave both actresses the nod for Supporting Actress. Binoche had slightly more screen time than Scott Thomas but the decision was eventually made for Binoche to go for the Supporting Actress nomination and Scott Thomas to go for lead.

The move paid off but it seemed to make little difference going to the Oscars. Scott Thomas was expected to lose to either McDormand or Blethyn and the overwhelming favorite for Supporting Actress was Lauren Bacall for Barbara Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces. Bacall was a sentimental favorite (the film was generally received poorly) and when Bacall won both the Golden Globe and the SAG Award, it was considered the leadup to coordination. But in one of the biggest shocks in Oscar history on Oscar night Binoche ending up taking Best Supporting Actress.

Much of this was known to me at the age of eighteen and in Inside Oscar II all of the details are listed by the author. The writer has an incredible bias that overshadows that book's quality overall but the idea of this being some kind of 'category fraud' doesn't bother him.

Now I should be clear my instant reaction to all of this is basically the same as Bill Murray's argument about the Oscars about Supporting Actor or Actress: "Honestly who cares?" I may not be the best person to make this argument for many reasons. The most important being that while there are numerous awards shows I am invested in, who is nominated and who wins the Oscars has never even reached the level of being academic. 

Monday morning quarterbacking the Academy Awards is something critics have been doing practically since they came into existence and always will be in large part because there has always been a disconnect between the films the Oscars nominate, much less give prizes to, and the movies that are either box office hits or cinematic masterpieces. I've spent a lot of time among critics online and we consider who wins Oscars trivial pursuit at best. Occasionally we'll speculate if an actor won for the right film or not but that's basically where it ends.

I'm also relatively certain that the prize itself matters more than what category.  Does Brad Pitt object that he won his Oscar for Supporting Actor even though he was onscreen as much as Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood? I didn't get that in his acceptance speech.  Same with Olivia Colman in The Favorite or Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs which this writer name checks. They leave out that Hopkins was asked to do it as Best Supporting Actor due to the screentime but he refused. In his opinion it would have begging the Academy to give him an Oscar and if he would rather lose as Best Actor then win as a Supporting Actor.  He gambled and bravo for him.

And for the record while I do think that it was a fallacy for the Oscars to give Best Picture and Director to English Patient over Fargo I am perfectly fine with all four acting awards in 1996. Rush and McDormand more than deserved to win for their work; Binoche was by far the best thing about The English Patient and realistically against the competition Macy had a better chance in Best Supporting Actor then best Actor that year.  Furthermore I think if Love had gone for Best Supporting Actress she would certainly have been nominated and I honestly would have preferred her over Lauren Bacall in that category.

Even the author themselves acknowledges that 'category fraud' only counts for those who watch a film with a stopwatch and keep track of these things. To that author if they seriously do this I would gently suggest they do a mental inventory of all of their life choices that led them to this point in time where they thought this article was necessary.  To paraphrase William Shatner in his famous Saturday Night Live sketch: "Get a life! It's just an awards show!"

And just to be clear this is coming from someone who has gone out of his way to respect every aspect of awards shows like the Oscars. They are supposed to be fun. You're not supposed to take them seriously. Who gives a crap whether Kieran Culkin or Zoe Saldana should have been nominated as leads? Lest we forget (and this article didn't bother to mention it) there are only five slots in the actor and actress category. If every actor tried to classify it to your mathematical precision there were far more egregious omissions and exclusions that irritate people like you in the first place. I honestly think its high time the Academy expanded the number of nominees in every category but since that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon the actors and actresses are going to have to make tough choices like this if they want to be nominated much less win.

So please, please, don't use the term 'category fraud' ever again. Let's not put into usage, let's not write more article. Let's slit its throat in the cradle. The Oscars are already under enough scrutiny for something this relatively insignificant. Let's not make it worse by making award nominations follow some kind of ridiculous mathematical measuring.