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1989 Best Picture:
Driving Miss Daisy
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Competition:
Born on The Fourth of July, My Left Foot, Dead
Poet's Society, Field of Dreams
Other Winners:
Best Actor: Dustin
Hoffman, Rain Man
Best Actress: Jodie Foster, The Accused
Best Supporting Actor: Kevin Kline, A Fish
Called Wanda
Best Supporting Actress: Geena Davis, The Accidental
Tourist
Best Director: Barry Levinson, Rain Man
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Cast:
Jessica Tandy, Dan Ackroyd, Patti LuPone, Esther Rolle, Jo Ann Havrilla,
William Hall Jr.
Storyline:
When an elderly southern woman is no longer fit to drive her own car, her
son hires a black man to chauffer her around, and the two form a unique
friendship.
Did it
deserve to win:
Are you kidding? Driving Miss Daisy was a sweet movie, but the
Academy owed it to themselves and to people to vote for something just a
little more daring.
My Left
Foot was a tender movie about a quadrapalegic. The scene where
Brenda Fricker carries Daniel Day Lewis up the stairs is worth the price
of admission alone! Field of Dreams was a sweet movie about a guy
who builds a baseball diamond, and dead baseball players start showing up
to use it. Dead Poet's Society was a touching movie, with Robin
Williams inspiring a group of students.
Born of
the Fourth of July was the only movie that wasn't sweet. It was
Oliver Stone's latest look at the Vietnam war, with Tom Cruise in a great
performance.
The film
that a lot of people felt should have won, and which wasn't even
nominated, was Do The Right
Thing. Like Driving Miss Daisy, it dealt
with racism, but in the modern day, and with a twist not seen
before.
Critique:
Driving Miss Daisy is a sweet film. Jessica Tandy and Morgan
Freeman work well together. It's hard to be critical of this film,
because, for what it is, there is nothing wrong with it.
My
problem with Miss Daisy, was the fact that it won the Best Picture, when
there is really nothing unusual or outstanding about it. The fact
that it deals with racism is all well and good, but it does it in a way
that is comfortable to the audience. We can pat ourselves on the
back for how far we have really come, but it ignores the problems that
still exist.
Spike
Lee's Do the Right Thing was topical, and you leave the film feeling mixed
emotions. Perhaps Miss Daisy's win demonstrates how far behind the
Academy voters can be, or perhaps how we can be critical, but never of
ourselves.
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Behind
the Scenes: Driving
Miss Daisy was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and won four of
them. Jessica Tandy's win for Best Actress made her the oldest
recipient of the award. She was 83 when she won.
Director Bruce
Beresford was not nominated for his work, which led Billy Crystal to
jokingly refer to the film, "as the movie that directed
itself." Films get nominated for Best Picture, with the
director not getting nominated, all the time. Rarely to the films go
on to win Best Picture. The only exceptions have been early films,
Wings, Broadway Melody, and Grand Hotel.
After the Snow White
fiasco of the previous year, the show's producers cut the opening number
from the program that year. Billy Crystal hosted for the first time,
and he was an instant hit. In his monologue he did a take off on
opening numbers that eventually became his trademark, singing a tribute to
each of the Best Picture nominees.
Kim Basinger broke
from her script to chastise the Academy for failing to vote for Do The
Right Thing as Best Picture. That's about a controversial as the
show got that year.
Miramax emerged on the
scene as the king of independent cinema, boasting and campaigning for My
Left Foot. To promote their film about a disabled Irish writer, they
created a screening room to accommodate the disabled. Then, they
handed out foot shaped feet to the voters. And finally, they had the
film's star, Daniel Day Lewis, testify at a congressional hearing on a
bill for the disabled.
Over the past few
years, Jessica Tandy had been enjoying a renaissance in her own
career. While she was a big hit on Broadway, she had only supporting
roles in films over the past fifty years. The film Ron Howard film,
Cocoon, was what put her back on the map in 1985.
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Jessica Tandy
is on 'cloud nine!' |
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