Oscars are so rarely about the performance. Yeah, some are "undeniable." Ironic example: George C. Scott won his Oscar as Patton in the first five minutes of the movie, hands down. But...he refused the Oscar.
And as Oscar winner Jack Palance said: "The performance doesn't win. The CHARACTER wins." You betcha. Patton. Forrest Gump. Rooster Cogburn. Palance in "City Slickers"(but NOT in Tango and Cash.) Erin Brockovich.
But more often than not, the Oscar is about "something else." The movie it is in. The competition that year. If the winner is "owed." Etc.
LA Confidential is a great movie. And if it had been nominated in another year, it might have won Best Picture. But it was the year of Titanic, so...no.
LA Confidential had a large group of great male performances. The three co-leads: Spacey, Crowe, Pearce. The supporting men: Cromwell, DeVito, Straithern.
As it turned out, there were too MANY great male performances, they seem to have cancelled each other out in the balloting. And who was the male lead? Spacey? Crowe? Pearce? Who should have been the Best Actor Nominee?
Evidently Warner Brothers didn't promote any one of them too much.
But there was Kim Basinger out there all by her lonesome as the female character of consequence.
It seems that she was nominated -- and WON -- to represent all those men, and the movie.
But she was good enough on her own terms. There was some dues-paying. She'd been "the pretty girl" going back to TV days and a Bond girl in Never Say Never Again. She was "the girl" in a blockbuster: Batman (and that gave her a name.) Those were dues paid.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Basinger played a hooker who had wanted to be an actress("We get to act a little" as hookers, she notes.) She played a hooker who took on a lot of powerful men. She played a hooker who could actually fall in love with a man(Bud White.) And who could retire. And was a bit too old for her profession anymore. And who looked a little bit like Veronica Lake.
Basinger was good enough to "front" for LA Confidential. It was bittersweet that she won right at the beginning of the Oscar broadcast; folks thought that maybe LA Confidential would "pile on" the awards that night. But Titanic was in the way. (As Good As it Gets cleaned up in the acting categories where no LA Confidential players were.) At least LA Confidential won was possibly the most meaningful award it could win: Best Adapted Screenplay. It was a HELL of an adaptation. Lemmon and Matthau gave the award and were praised by writer-director Curtis Hanson as "Billy Wilder actors" -- for Wilder, too, was a great writer-director.
But other than Best Adapted Screenplay, all LAC got was Best Supporting Actress...and that's why all these years later we still remember Kim Basinger in the role.
She represents the movie...and the men.
PS. Though it was a sure bet that Gloria Stuart would never get another shot at Oscar...it was probably Kim's last chance, too.
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