How to make Oscar fall for you

Michael Smerconish: How to make Oscar fall for you
3.11.10
By Michael Smerconish - Daily News
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Opinion Columnist

LAST week, I interviewed a guy who told me who would win the top three individual Oscars, and in the remaining big four individual categories, he correctly narrowed the field to two.
How did he do it? He analyzed the nominees according to the criteria that have dictated recent Oscar history.

In a word, you have to be edgy.

Jacob Bernstein, senior reporter for TheDailyBeast.com, correctly predicted that Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique would earn the statuettes, and narrowed the best actress field down to Meryl Streep and eventual winner Sandra Bullock.

Bernstein laid out the road map to the podium: (1) Play a famous person, (2) be physically or mentally disabled, (3) speak with a funny accent, (4) be old, (5) play gay or transgendered, (6) get fat or go ugly, (7) be a monster, (8) experience the Civil War or Holocaust, (9) play the piano, (10) die.

Consider some recent examples. Last year, Sean Penn won best actor for playing Harvey Milk - meaning he went famous, gay and died a tragic death all in one role. Before that, Philip Seymour Hoffman struck gold as Truman Capote. That was a year after Jamie Foxx - of "Booty Call" fame - portrayed Ray Charles (a real-life blind pianist) en route to his trip to the podium. Adrien Brody, meanwhile, took home a statue after for playing a real-life musician who survived the Holocaust in "The Pianist."

On the other side of the aisle, Kate Winslet won for best actress last year after playing a former Nazi concentration-camp guard in "The Reader." Before that, Helen Mirren won for depicting Queen Elizabeth II. Mirren's triumph came a year after Reese Witherspoon played June Carter in "Walk the Line."

Three years earlier, in what is probably the best example of sticking to the Oscar playbook, Charlize Theron won for her role in "Monster." The pinup punched her ticket by gaining weight, going ugly, playing a lesbian and enduring lethal injection at the film's close.

Bernstein's formula emerged victorious on Sunday night as well. But after yet another ceremony that stuck to the script, I'm wondering: What do the results say about Hollywood, the movies that get recognition and the ones that will manage to make it to a theater near you in the future?

For one thing, this is clearly a self-perpetuating cycle. When all these edgy films and extraordinary characters win year after year, they are emulated by aspiring screenwriters and studios who seek to piggyback on the Oscar success.

Which makes me wonder if the next iconic character could get shuttered because he or she isn't seen as "Oscar-ready." Michael Douglas won best actor in 1987 for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko, one of the most enduring characters of my lifetime, in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street."

But I doubt he'd get the same recognition today. After all, Gekko isn't gay, disabled, old, fat or dead by film's end. He has no accent and caresses no ivory keys. Sure, he's a capitalist monster. But insider trading is nothing compared with the crimes Daniel Day-Lewis' character committed en route to winning the Oscar for "There Will Be Blood" 20 years after Gekko went to jail.

The problem? Year after year, more "conventional" films are relegated to the cutting-room floor. Want to know why there aren't more movie adaptations of stories originating in your back yard? Because the characters aren't exotic enough. They're too normal. So a film like "Up in the Air," an insightful and funny look up and down the corporate ladder during the Great Recession, didn't stand a chance.

"One of the things that all of these things fall under is 'have a real transformation.' And George Clooney is a fantastic movie star, but he doesn't typically transform himself into other people," Bernstein told me. "The academy really responds to transformative performances."

In that case, I've got a script idea for an aspiring screenplay writer, and this one is dialed up for an Oscar nod.

THE LEAD is a homosexual soldier from Mississippi whose father is a Holocaust survivor. The soldier turns to alcoholism after being dismissed from the military as a result of don't ask, don't tell.

The stress of his sudden transition to civilian life leaves leads to his physical and emotional breakdown, which ultimately ends in his undignified death as a broken old man. Despite his near-redemptive experience of providing free piano lessons to a young neighbor with one arm.

Sounds like a winner to me.

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.smerconish.com.