Let's face it, half the time Oscar doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Great films go un-nominated (Modern Times, Rear Window, Touch of Evil), films of questionable quality win big (Cimarron, The Greatest Show on Earth) and performers with a lifetime of great achievement go unnoticed (Toshiro Mifune, Myrna Loy, Joseph Cotten). But this has come to be expected of Oscar. He's a little flaky and his judgment leaves much to be desired. Sometimes, however, Oscar really goes loopy.
Oscar often seems to make up the rules as he goes. That's because he does. Usually it takes a bizarre event to bring a problem in the process to Oscar's notice. One of the oddest acting situations that forced Oscar to do some rule changing occurred for the year 1944. The great actor Barry Fitzgerald was nominated for a Supporting and a Lead Oscar. No problem there. We've seen it happen many times since, most recently in 2002 with Julianne Moore, nominated for Best Actress for Far From Heaven and Best Supporting Actress for The Hours. But here's the thing with Barry: Both of his nominations came for the same performance. That's right. For his role of Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way Fitzgerald was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor. He won the supporting award.
The problem was this: Before introducing the Best Supporting award, it was understood that Best Actor or Actress meant whoever gives the best performance no matter the size of the part. By 1936 it was clear that smaller roles were being shut out so the supporting categories were 
born. But the original intent of the Best Actor or Actress Oscar was still in the minds of many of the voters. So when marking their nomination ballot they felt that Fitzgerald had given the Best Supporting performance of the year and that that supporting performance was also the best performance of the year period. So they marked him twice. Uh oh. Oscar scratched his head and decided from now on whichever category the actor in question gets the most votes for is the category he will be nominated for. If the exact same amount of members vote for him to be nominated in both categories then screen time will be used to break the tie. How much screen time? Well, no one's really sure. That's why Oscar decided a long time ago to make it clear to the studios that they have to decide in advance and push said actor to be nominated in one category or the other.
Oh that Oscar, always passing the buck.
Which puts me in mind of Harry Truman. You know Harry had a sign on his desk that said the 
buck stops here. Later he was portrayed on stage by James Whitmore in a one-man show, Give 'Em Hell Harry. In 1975 one of these performances in Seattle, Washington was videotaped by directors Steve Binder and Peter H. Hunt. The videotaped performance was shown on Los Angeles legendary Z cable station. It also showed on cable in New York. The Academy members saw it on Z around the clock. The station was new having just started in 1974 and Give 'Em Hell Harry was played over and over. The result? Academy members nominated James Whitmore for Best Actor. Not for giving a performance in a one-man film, like Philip Baker Hall in Secret Honor. No, no. He was doing his usual stage performance before an audience and it was videotaped. So in a way, you could say that this is the only time an actor was nominated for a performance that didn't really occur in a movie.
But the above two examples are nothing compared to the double rule change whammy that occurred after the 1972 awards.
The Academy has always relied on release date in North America (specifically Los Angeles and New York) for eligibility, essentially stating the movie doesn't exist, no matter how many times it has been seen abroad or in how many places, until it plays here. Thus films like Brief Encounter, Bicycle Thieves and The Third Man all received nominations a year after they had taken in awards abroad because it was full year later when they finally premiered in the States. This nebulous policy, as well as a rule for musical scores, led to a bizarre incident for the 1972 awards
Everyone was sure that Nina Rota would win the Oscar for Best Musical Score for his beautiful score to The Godfather. Then it was discovered that elements of the score had been drawn from previous work he had composed and since it had to be completely original to the film being scored, Rota's nomination was withdrawn. Since the sure bet was now withdrawn the Academy voters were free to be creative, if you will. The Oscar for Best Original Score for 1972 went to ...
Limelight. Scored by Charlie Chaplin. In 1952!
Because of the inability to get distribution deals with the United States distributors since Chaplin was officially Persona non Grata due to suspected communist sympathies, it was not released in the States until 1972. And that's when, according to Oscar, the film now officially existed. People were happy to see Chaplin get an award but there was enough jaw-dropping to embarrass Oscar into swiftly dropping the release date rules and going with a new more vague rule of thumb that any film over two years removed from its original release date (wherever that may be - no longer just America) could not be considered. Oscar also decided that composers could employ previous compositions into a new work and still be considered for the Original Score Oscar. How nice of him. This worked out well for Carmine Coppola two years later when he employed a large chunk of Nina Rota's original Godfather score for Part II and then won the Oscar himself. I have no evidence of this, but I'm guessing Nina Rota despised Carmine Coppola after that. Although Oscar was nice and gave an Oscar to Rota too for that same film. Even though he hadn't worked on it. Because, you know... 1972 had happened.
Oscar sure is funny. One artist is nominated for the same work twice (Fitzgerald) and another is withdrawn from nomination because he use the same work twice (Rota). A third wins based on the second's work (Coppola) and a Hollywood legend walks away with an Oscar for a musical score he'd probably forgotten he ever did. This would all fall under the category - "You Can't Make This Stuff Up."
Will there be more bizarre behavior by Oscar this year? Let's hope so because let's be honest: Oscar's getting old and when he's not screwing up the rules six ways to Sunday, he's pretty boring.
UPDATE
Oscar did it again! Johnny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood was disqualified for nomination due to other music (Brahms) being used for the film. In case you're wondering here are the relevant guidelines:
1. The work must be specifically created for the eligible feature-length motion picture.
4. The work must be recorded for use in the film prior to any other usage including public performance or exploitation through any of the media whatsoever.
5. Only the principal composer(s) or song writer(s) responsible for the conception and execution of the work as a whole shall be eligible for an award. This expressly excludes from eligibility all of the following:
(a) supervisors
(b) partial contributors (e.g., any writer not responsible for the over-all design of the work)
(c) contributors working on speculation
(d) scores diluted by the use of themes tracked or other pre-existing music
(e) scores diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs
(f) scores assembled from the music of more than one composer.
Take a look at the guidelines again. Okay with number 1 I can understand that Brahms' work was not created for the picture. But this has always been given a pass in the past. Let's take 1999 for an example. Two films up for Best Original Score that year were American Beauty and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Both used music on their soundtracks from other sources not written for their respective pictures (music from South Pacific in American Beauty and multiple jazz selections, specifically Charlie Parker in The Talented Mr. Ripley)and yet neither was ruled ineligible.
Now look at number 4. The music must be recorded for the film before being used anywhere else in any media. As The Godfather Part II used music from the first it is in clear violation of this rule and yet, again, no one seemed to care. The Godfather Part II also violates rule 5f which states any score compiled from the music of more than one composer is ineligible. So somehow Carmine Coppola and Nina Rota were the same person? Was it like Ray Milland and Rosey Grier? Did they have one body and two heads? No. Oscar was still embarrassed over 1972 and by god they were going to make sure Rota and The Godfather won for that music one way or another. So they ignored the rules they had so foolishly applied just two years earlier.
Now it's 2008 and Oscar has suddenly noticed his rule book again. I may be wrong in this (I probably am) but I have a feeling older, more conservative composers in the Academy were hemming and hawing about this Radiohead boy and his dissonant music everyone is talking about and jumped on the fact that Brahms is used to put him out of the running. Just a hunch.
There used to be a category for Best Adapted Score so that studio composers could be honored for their arrangements of other people's music but this fell by the wayside as adapting a score was simply conducting someone else's music. In another category there still is an adapted version: Screenplay. Now with screenplays, adapting a book to the screen is indeed a true adaptation and the screenwriter deserves credit for making it work. But in some cases it's outright ludicrous. This year Johnny Greenwood was disqualified for using Brahms in his almost completely original score but in 1996 Kenneth Branagh received a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet, which is notable for being the first time the entire play was actually done word for word up on the screen, instead of in truncated form like Olivier's 1948 version. Greenwood uses some Brahms and he's out but Branagh inks not a single word of a screenplay and he's in. Clearly the Academy has an another guideline that overrides all other guidelines. That would be the one that states, "We must always follow our guidelines except in those cases in which it is deemed by the over/undersigned authorities of the Academy, it's board and all paid servants herein, including pets and bit players, that when we don't want to we don't have to - HA!"
And so the Academy plays fast and loose with the rules again. I'd write more about it but I'm working on this screenplay adaptation of King Lear and it's pretty time consuming. I have to add the word "screen" in front of the word "play" before we begin shooting. Hold on... okay done. I think I smell a nomination coming my way. Keep your fingers crossed.
