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Feb. 27th, 2007 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coyotegothI’m beginning to be seriously annoyed at articles like this one, that seem to suggest that winning an Oscar carries some sort of inevitable tragic aftermath with it, as though it was daring the retribution of the gods to be voted as being the best of the year. Do people honestly think that being validated in front of your peers (and roughly a billion other people) in one of the most hotly contested award ceremonies on the planet is somehow a bad thing? (Alternatively, are people so petty that they need to believe that?) To be sure, Oscar-winning directors have often followed their success with an overreaching flop (Michael Cimino, do any commercials lately?), but as Orson Welles could testify, one doesn’t need to win Oscars to plummet from the peaks (granted that he won one for the script of Citizen Kane; one relatively minor Oscar out of four nominations in one year hardly seems excessive to me.) And yes, Richard Dreyfuss had a string of poor career choices after winning an Oscar, and also struggled with a drug problem- but John Belushi didn’t need an Oscar to have far worse problems in adjusting to success. A brief quote from this article in the Guardian:
Before the Academy award nominations of 1999, Shakespeare in Love, which opened in the US in December 1998, had earned $36.1m. After the nominations on February 9 1999, and the Oscars of March 21 - where it won best picture - the Gwyneth Paltrow-powered romance earned another $64.1m. Its final domestic box-office number was $100.2m. Between its release in December 2001, and the nominations of February 12 2002, A Beautiful Mind, which earned Oscars for director Ron Howard and actress Jennifer Connelly, made more than $113m. Post nominations and a best picture win, it made an additional $57.4m. Final tally: $170.7m.
An even more dramatic example of Oscar's largesse - although much of it has to do with the number of theatres involved in the film's initial release - concerns Million Dollar Baby. Before being nominated for its multiple Academy awards, the Clint Eastwood-directed boxing drama made only $8.3m. After nominations it made $92.1m. Its domestic total ended up at $100.4m.
Taken together, the three films gained an average of $71.2 million at the box office from pre-nomination release to the ceremonies themselves; even allowing for the films' being released into extra theaters, that’s not exactly what I’d call a curse.
Before the Academy award nominations of 1999, Shakespeare in Love, which opened in the US in December 1998, had earned $36.1m. After the nominations on February 9 1999, and the Oscars of March 21 - where it won best picture - the Gwyneth Paltrow-powered romance earned another $64.1m. Its final domestic box-office number was $100.2m. Between its release in December 2001, and the nominations of February 12 2002, A Beautiful Mind, which earned Oscars for director Ron Howard and actress Jennifer Connelly, made more than $113m. Post nominations and a best picture win, it made an additional $57.4m. Final tally: $170.7m.
An even more dramatic example of Oscar's largesse - although much of it has to do with the number of theatres involved in the film's initial release - concerns Million Dollar Baby. Before being nominated for its multiple Academy awards, the Clint Eastwood-directed boxing drama made only $8.3m. After nominations it made $92.1m. Its domestic total ended up at $100.4m.
Taken together, the three films gained an average of $71.2 million at the box office from pre-nomination release to the ceremonies themselves; even allowing for the films' being released into extra theaters, that’s not exactly what I’d call a curse.
