Transcript and Bulletin.
This
year the 90th Academy Award nominations were announced a few weeks
ago and, as usual, there are dozens of nominations. The final voting won’t
begin for a few weeks on February 20. The Oscars will be awarded when they are televised
on March 8th in Los Angeles and Jimmy Kimmel will host for the
second time.
At
least thirteen of the nominated films in all 24 of the categories, including
Best Picture, Actor and Actress, are based upon books, or have spawned books. Most
of the DVDs for these films have not yet been released, yet all of the books
are in the library. They can be found on the library’s fiction or non-fiction
shelves, on the Speed Read shelf, and on a special display devoted to all nominated
films. Six of these nine films were nominated for Best Picture along with
eleven nominated for best actors and actresses. Others were nominated in the
Best Song, Best Director, Best Cinematography or other categories. 
One
of the most-talked about films of 2017 is the Post (starring Meryl Streep as
Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee), based on the Pentagon Papers.
The 1971 drama of the papers leaked by Daniel Elsberg has been recently
referred to as the WikiLeaks of its day. While the New York Times was the
newspaper that defied President Nixon in 1971, and exposed the secrets of the
Johnson administration and the secret government study of the Vietnam War, it
was the local paper, The Post, headed by Katharine Graham that got its hands on
the Papers and printed the stories about them. Both newspapers had to risk the
ensuing battle in Supreme Court and their reputations. The most recent (2017)
publication of The Pentagon Papers is an informative account writted by five
authors – historians, political scientists and journalists. It includes
chapters on the history and build-up of the Vietnam War during the Eisenhower,
Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Two of the authors, Neil Sheehan and James
Greenfield, worked secretly with Daniel Ellsberg to release the Papers. Director
Steven Spielberg (not up for an Oscar this time) will probably be thrilled with
a Best Picture win.
A
handful of other films based on other historical moments were nominated for
awards this year. The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo and
The Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink were
published in 2017 and are the history behind the films. Another, Thurgood Marshall: American
Revolutionary by Juan Williams was first published in 1998 and inspired the
2017 film, Marshall. It is a biography of Justice Marshall, his victory in the
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and his subsequent appointment to the
Supreme Court. The film stars Charles Boseman and Kate Hudson and is nominated
for Best Song, “Stand Up for Something.”
Another
biographical film, The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman, is nominated for
best song, “This is Me.” The film follows the life of P.T. Barnum. Obviously,
the book that inspired the film is Barnum’s autobiography Barnum’s Own Story,
actually published in 1927.
Victoria
and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant by Shrabani Basu was
published in 2011. Abdul, and Indian Muslim, arrived in England as a waiter at
Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. What followed is a story of tender love
between them.
John
Pearson wrote a biography of the Getty family, Painfully Rich: The Outrageous
Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty in 1995. The book
included the anguished tale of the kidnapping of grandson Paul Getty and the refusal
by his grandfather to pay the ransom. The film, All the Money in the World, is
based on Pearson’s book, republished as a movie tie-in of the same name. Molly’s Game was also published in 2017 as the
movie tie-in. It stars Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba and Kevin Costner and is
the memoir of Molly Bloom who “gambled everything, won big, then lost it all.”
The
Disaster Artist is a most ironic choice for a nomination. The film was
nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Interestingly, it is a film about a
disaster of a 2003 film that cost over $6 million to make: The Room earned
$1800 at the box office. The book, The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero is
subtitled My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made. And IT’S
up for an Oscar! (James Franco was snubbed for a Best Actor nomination due to
allegations of sexual misconduct.)
Best
Picture nomination, The Shape of Water, was followed by a 2018 novelization by
producer and director, Guillermo del Toro and his co-author Daniel Kraus. The publication
of the screenplay of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri by Martin
McDonagh followed the release of the film starring Frances McDormand and Woody
Harrelson. That film is up for seven Oscars, including ones for both McDormand
and Harrelson. It is the story of a mother’s frustration that there has been no
resolution about the death of her daughter and her struggle with the local
police force.
I
chuckled as I made my way up to bed. My husband Gerry had given up at least an
hour earlier. He’s just not THAT into films. Or Academy Awards. I shook my head
as I climbed into my side of the bed mumbling something about having witnessed
an unbelievable mind-boggling mix-up of the Hollywood kind. Gerry didn’t even
wake up.
