Recently, my mom mailed me some odds and ends from my childhood—old photos, favorite books, bits of writing, etc.

Imagine my amazement when I uncovered “Cinderella in ’88,” a story I wrote in 1988 that is remarkably prescient about the person I would become. Apparently, my core interests and my love of camp were already cemented when I was nine years old.

After the jump, I am happy to present this story in full. If you are a television or film executive, please email me to discuss development deals.

Note: Punctuation and phrasing are recreated exactly as they appear on the print-out my mom saved.

Cinderella in ’88

by Mark Blankenship (age 9)

One day in 1988 there was a maid. She had to clean all day. She had two wicked stepsisters and an awful father. She wanted to listen to Bon Jovi instead of clean, but all she had were some old Linda Ronstadt records.

One day a letter came. It was from Michael Jackson, inviting them to a concert.

“You can’t go!” said her stepsisters. “You have to paint our faces to glow in the dark. You’ve got to get hot pink socks for us to wear.”

Later that night a porsche drove up.

“We’ve got to go,” said the sisters.

“What about Father?” asked Cinderella.

“It’s my bowling night,” he replied.

“Oh.”

So Cinderella decided to watch some old westerns.

Suddenly a young man appeared!

He said, “I’m your wizard stepfather. Let’s go to the concert!”

“Dressed like this?” she asked doubtfully.

“They told me you would be picky in wizard school,” he grumbled.

“I thought you were supposed to make me the greatest one at the concert — turn a potato into a porsche and all that other neat stuff!”

“Now I remember,” he exclaimed.

“What’s my curfew?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“Seven o’clock?”

“Yes, Michael [Jackson's] bedtime.”

“Oh.”

She was the hottest thing at the concert. Once Michael asked her to dance. She said, “Bug off, bozo.”

Then she met a guy she really liked. They started seeing each other a lot. They got married. She got a singing contract. Now they are known as:

Sean Penn

and

Madonna

Moral: Success can come to those who are patient and clever

Please welcome back critic and editor Mark Peikert, who has some wonderful advice on how you  can spend your Labor Day: It involves a cocktail, Shirley Jones, and the phrase “big-assed whore.”

—-

There are a lot of reasons to love the little-known 1969 film The Happy Ending, written and directed by Richard Brooks. There’s Michel Legrand’s usual gorgeous score (including the Academy Award-nominated song “What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?” with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, should you like that sort of thing). There’s Shirley Jones as you’re probably unprepared to see her, playing a professional mistress who memorably claims that the only options available to a woman without a college degree are “big-mouthed housewife or big-assed whore…. And [she] wasn’t going to be a big-mouthed housewife. Bobby Darin pops up as a campy gigolo pretending to be an Italian paparazzo, preying on wealthy American women in the Bahamas. And then there’s Jean Simmons’ Oscar-nominated performance as a drunken, raging, bitter housewife, the kind of character who might very well have inspired Stephen Sondheim’s song “Ladies Who Lunch.”

Simmons and the film are at their best before Mary decides to escape her icy husband (an excellent John Forsythe) and concerned friends for a spontaneous trip to the Bahamas, where she learns to cast off the shackles of a patriarchy and learn to be an independent woman. A worthy and worthwhile lesson, to be sure, but what keeps The Happy Ending humming are the lengthy flashbacks to Simmons’ messy Mary. She guzzles vodka on her anniversary while watching Casablanca. She hides bottles of the stuff in hatboxes. She’s an afternoon regular at a dive bar. The movie’s tagline is a line Mary throws at her husband during a boozy brawl. “We’re not in love,” she snarls. “We just make love. And damn little of that!”

In a few years, characters like Mary would cease to exist, but this is 1969, so the booze and prickly sexual politics flow freely.

Would a woman like Jones’ Flo, so nonchalant about her promiscuity, get a happy ending today? (Simmons got the sole Oscar nom for acting, but Jones certainly deserved some recognition for a matter-of-fact monologue about supporting herself through college with her body.) Would Mary’s dismal mothering skills—that her daughter found Mary after Mary’s suicide attempt is not reason enough to keep Mary from fleeing her unhappy home—be let off the hook as easily now as Brooks lets them? And are there any actresses left in 2011 whose faces retain the fine lines and character that Simmons so wearily flaunts here?

As is the case with Brooks’ other dark film about women and sexuality, 1977’s Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The Happy Ending isn’t available on DVD, but the movie has recently arrived on Netflix Streaming. Go ahead. Pour yourself a screwdriver and settle in.

As part of the Dog Days of Summer Movies project over at Tomato Nation, I have just written a review of 1997‘s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which is one of the most wonderfully terrible movies I have ever seen.

Here’s a snippet of what I wrote:

As for activities, that leaves a session in the tanning bed, which Karla suggests to Julie as a way to clear her head. (She’s nervous, you see, because several island staffers have been gruesomely murdered.) It works, until FisherKiller locks her in the bed and cranks up the heat. She could cook in there, y’all! Especially since when her friends find her, none of them has the presence of mind to turn the damn roaster off before trying to get her out of it.

To read the rest—including my analysis of why this movie’s title is a syntactic nightmare—just go here.

I’d like to welcome guest critic Mark Peikert, managing editor of the New York Press and City Arts, to tell us why the movie Frances is perfect viewing when you need to cut a bitch then buy a new gown. — Mark Blankenship

—–

When the world is a mean and infuriating place, there’s a little movie that I like to turn to: a two-hour-plus drama about a crazy blonde actress in 1930s Hollywood; her manipulative, fame-seeking mother; and a whole lot of hair acting. I’m speaking, of course, of 1982’s Frances.

For a movie as bad as Frances is (and it’s really terrible), Jessica Lange’s performance as the doomed Frances Farmer is unexpectedly good. Farmer’s tumultuous attempt at stardom has been largely fictionalized here, climaxing with Farmer being lobotomized, which… didn’t actually happen. At all. Director Graeme Clifford says on the DVD commentary, “We didn’t want to nickel and dime people to death with facts.” So instead we get a fictional best friend (Sam Shepard), a doctor performing that lobotomy with a hammer and an ice pick, and lots of mental asylum rape. Did much of it happen? Whenever Lange is on screen, it doesn’t much matter.

Lange belongs in that weird category of actress like Holly Hunter and Renee Zellweger: People either really hate her, or feel total ambivalence. (When was the last time you heard an impassioned defense of Zellweger?) Maybe it’s her voice? Like Hunter, Lange’s voice always seems to be coming from the corners of her mouth. Or maybe it’s her endless tics—some of her performances sound like a grandfather clock. All the reasons people dislike Lange are already there in this, her fifth film, but she is still capable of completely abandoning them as the shrieking, clawing, cursing Farmer, who never met an authority figure she didn’t rail against.

Arrest her for drunk driving with her headlights on during WWII blackouts? She’ll make a scene on the side of the road, in a white gown she stole from the hostess of the party she just left (where she took the liberty of bathing). Drag her to the police station after she socks a bitchy hairdresser? Well, okay, but don’t expect a genteel movie star attitude. When she’s asked for her occupation, she looks the cop dead in the eye and says, “Cocksucker.”

There isn’t a single moment we aren’t cheering her on. Who hasn’t wanted to scream “Fuck you all! Bastards!” and leave work abruptly in the middle of the day? Who hasn’t dreamed of returning to their hometown and telling off the small-minded people who spurred our departure? And, more importantly, who doesn’t want to do all of those things while looking fabulous? That combination of gritty determination against the odds (and the odds were stacked so high against the real Farmer that the fictional stuff feels like overkill) and old Hollywood glamour is irresistible, even as the movie turns into a muddled soap opera. So next time you have a shitty day, fire up Netflix Instant and let Frances Farmer say all the things you want to. You’ll feel better. Even without a lobotomy.

You guys, the YouTube-iverse has done us a major solid: It has given us Margaret Cho’s 1994 HBO standup special.

If you’re like me, then you watched this thing about a hundred times on Comedy Central. Cho’s skintight black jumpsuit is forever burned into my brain, as are the following jokes:

* “I’ll just cover it with leaves and hope somebody falls in.”

* “Stick it in!”

* “Moraaaaaan!”

* “A zaftig perhaps?” “A what?!?!” “A soft drink.”

… I could go on, but I’ll let Margaret tell us:

—

Damn. These jokes are still really funny, and in 2011, they have new poignancy. When I listen to Cho talk about her ABC sitcom and how the executives wanted her to lose weight before it went on the air, I think about I’m the One That I Want, her revelatory (and hilarious) 1999 show that details how the experience of that sitcom almost killed her.

What do you guys think of this special? Have you seen it before? What are your favorite moments? And were you as surprised as I was to discover all the material in these videos that Comedy Central cut out when they edited the HBO original for basic cable? That bit about the kid selling a finger is amazing!

You may have noticed that I love pop music. No, seriously!

I also love the Oscars. Stop! I mean it!

You also may have noticed that Roommate Joe and I love to discuss Oscar victors and pop music of yesteryear. No! We really do!

So it was a given, then, that Joe and I would eventually come to this: A year-by-year retrospective of all the Best Song Oscar nominees from 1980-1990. You know, that golden time when almost all the songs in this category were awesome and really deserved accolades.

But looking back, which Oscar-nommed tunes are the best? Which should’ve been dumped? And which winners truly deserved the crown? That’s what we’re here to discuss, one ballad-soaked year at a time.

This project will alternate between The Critical Condition and Low Resolution, and today, Joe is kicking things off with our look back at the Oscar-worthy songs of 1980. Take a look, leave a comment, and start humming the theme from The Competition.

NOTE: To see all the entries in this project, just go here.

By Doug Strassler

Well, it’s here. The flip-flops and shorts are out, the shore traffic is gridlocked, and half-day Fridays have begun. Forget what the calendar says, summer’s here! And for that reason, I’m writing about one of my all-time favorite summer songs: Madonna’s “Borderline.”

Technically, it’s not exactly a summer song. Released right after Valentine’s Day in 1984, it was really during the summer months that “Borderline” hit the charts, becoming, as Mark has pointed out here, the first Top 10 of Madonna’s blondely ambitious career. And while the next album saw several bigger hits – “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl” – that became far more iconic, it was “Borderline” that helped introduce her early signature sound and persona.

I actually have a different summer memory of “Borderline” altogether. In 1987, my best friend at summer camp was a girl named Lisa Lucas, who told me that her father, Reggie, produced the song. “Borderline” instantly became my favorite song ever because at that time (except for eating next to the guy that played the governor on Benson) she was my closest connection to fame. I’m not sure how, given this was pre-YouTube, but I remember watching the video all the time.

Later, I learned that Reggie Lucas is a huge deal, and was a major player in Madonna’s early career. He wrote and produced “Borderline,” as well as a lot of Madge’s debut album. Which means a lot of the credit must be given to him for creating such a pure pop gem.

I mean, think about it. Yes, the song starts with that unforgettable keyboard lick, but this isn’t just a fun song. The bubbly sound belies an honest depiction of a girl trapped in a toxic relationship she knows isn’t good but cannot quite bring herself to leave. He promises to treat her right, then fails her again: “Something in the way you love me won’t let me be/ I don’t want to be your prisoner so baby won’t you set me free.”

And you know what’s great? She’s not afraid to tell him so. Remember, “Borderline” came around at a time when Dreamgirls reigned on Broadway and on the radio, with lines like “I don’t wanna be free.” Madonna’s alter ego in “Borderline” stands up for herself and demands to be heard, however: “Stop driving me away, I just wanna stay/ There’s something I just got to say.” This song gets the push-pull of love (particularly young love). It can be thrilling and intoxicating but it can also overwhelm. Sometimes, though, what feels good isn’t always what’s good for you, and the singer knows this. Props to Reggie Lucas for daring to saying this, and for being able to arrange it in such an accessible way. The sound of this song is, after all, quite complex, and more of a callback to ‘70s soul pop than the ‘80s dancey stuff out at the time.

And major props are also due to Madonna herself, for a masterful pop delivery. Madonna’s range may be limited, but her tone her is clear and expressive, and matches both the song’s youthful vibe as well as its sentimental tone. “Borderline” is a major milestone in her career. In the nascent days of music video, the songs really still mattered; the strength of a single was enough to either launch or lynch a budding career. This song, in my mind, helped give birth to one of the most important careers in music.

“Borderline” is also a song with legs. Some truly kickass musical acts have covered the song. I knew about versions by the Counting Crows, Duffy, and Jody Watley, but it was just a few months ago that my good friend Joe introduced me to a cover by The Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs. This is a must-hear, a virtuosic arrangement that builds into an aggressive, intense attack, proving just how rich Reggie Lucas’s songcraft was from the get-go.

And you know what? I think “Borderline” is totally immune to attack. In the (sigh) 27 years since this song came out, I have not met one person who has a bad thing to say about it. Non-Madonna fans enjoy it. When it comes on in a store, people smile. This is pure pop at its greatest, and I plan to listen to it again and again. I dare someone to tell me they dislike it – and then explain why.

And Lisa Lucas, if you’re out there, I’d love to hear from you.

By DOUG STRASSLER

Every now and then I do a little mental math that makes me realize just how old I really am. For example, Achtung Baby came out two decades ago now. And it was seventeen years ago that The Arsenio Hall Show went off the air. That means that someone who was born as Arsenio gave his last fist pump is now about to graduate high school (we hope).

Holy cow.

Recently I was thinking about one of my all-time favorite ‘80s movies, as I do, when I pulled that same old subtraction and gasped. The movie Just One of the Guys is now more than a quarter of a century old. WTF?!?

For those unfamiliar with this movie, I offer my condolences, as well as a little recap. Terry Griffith (Joyce Hyser) is an Arizona teen with dreams of becoming a hotshot journalist. When she doesn’t get a summer internship at a local newspaper, her teacher, Mr. Raymaker (Kenneth Tigar), implies that she might not be taken seriously because she’s a woman (and a super-hot one at that. More about that later.)

Conveniently, Terry’s parents are out of town for like two months, during which time Terry decides to disguise herself as a dude and attend a rival high school where no one will know who she is. She enrolls as “Terence,”, but complications ensue. She has to face a bully, her real boyfriend begins questioning her, another girl (Sherilyn Fenn, in her movie debut) develops a crush on her, and, most importantly, she starts to have feelings for her new friend Rick (Clayton Rohner), who buys Terence’s act as a dude. It’s really quite Shakespearean when you think about it.

But don’t think about it that hard. I first saw this movie when I was seven, and what I like about it now is what I liked about it then. Guys doesn’t suck because it’s so cliché-ridden; rather, it works as a neat little artifact because it embodies every single ‘80s high school movie cliché there is. There are Terry/Terence’s ploys to get out of having to shower after gym class. There’s the case of the missing parents. I mean, where could these people be for that long? And when they travel, do they visit Christina Applegate’s mom from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead? And there’s of course quintessential me-decade bully William Zabka (also of The Karate Kid and Back to School fame) as the cocky jock Greg.

Most importantly, though, is the climax taking place at prom at the beach. Not sure where the beach is in this Arizona town. Also not sure why if it’s the senior prom, Terry was only looking for an internship and not a summer job or making college plans. No matter. What does matter is that this is where Terry (26-year-old spoiler alert!) reveals to Rick that he’s really a she. And when Rick doesn’t believe her, she has to offer proof. So she flashes him one of the greatest racks ever preserved on celluloid. (Sorry, Mom!)

Really, it’s awesome. I mean, it’s still enjoyable to watch now, as an adult. But as an elementary school-age kid watching this, we’d just been handed the keys to a forbidden kingdom. Nudity in a movie airing before 8pm was unheard of at the time on cable! How did this slide? Props to Hyser (who also had a nice two-season run as Jimmy Smits’ girlfriend on LA Law; it’s the storyline for which he won his only Emmy). This sequence likely runs second only to Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in terms of teenage male inspiration. And I was convinced that shenanigans like this happened every year at every high school.

(Oddly enough, this is the movie that actually first made me consider a career in journalism. Just like Risky Business is the movie that first made me start thinking seriously about the college application process. Weird that that was my takeaway, but hey, I was twelve. Given these motivating factors, it’s a miracle that I ended up with any kind of education or career at all. But I digress.)

Of course, Guys is no Fast Times. It’s totally derivative, looks kinda cheap, and some of the acting is just so-so. (Although Tigar is a great classical actor and is currently onstage in Treasure Island at Brooklyn’s Irondale Center). But I can’t say that it isn’t at all influential. I mean, would we have had Ladybugs or She’s the Man without Guys?

I miss the days when high school movies were nothing more than shameless fun, bearing none of the self-seriousness of ‘90s flicks like Kids or the self-knowing irony of aughts movies like Superbad. ‘80s high school movies may not have been better, but they were purer, and a result, will always be the comfort food to which I’ll turn when I want to feel young again.

Have I preached to the choir? Have I converted of the uninitiated?

Welcome to the second installment of Oscar Actors In Retrospect, a four-part series wherein Roommate Joe and I revisit the Oscar-winning performances from 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 and see how they stand up to historical scrutiny.

Today I’ll be taking you through our reactions to Best Actor and Best Actress from 1995. To look at how we ranked the supporting categories, just visit Joe at Low Resolution. In all cases, let us know your rankings as well.

And join us next week for 2000, the year that Steven Soderbergh directed everything, up to and including your school play.

BEST ACTOR

1. Nicolas Cage — Leaving Las Vegas (WON OSCAR)
2. Sean Penn — Dead Man Walking
3. Richard Dreyfuss — Mr Holland’s Opus)
4. Massimo Troisi — Il Postino (The Postman)
5. Anthony Hopkins — Nixon

Mark: It’s funny, because even though it was the year that fucking Braveheart won Best Picture, 1995 itself still holds up well to scrutiny. For proof, just look to these Best Actor nominees. Nicolas Cage may have pissed away his credibility—You might say it was gone in sixty seconds. Hey-oh!—but looking back, the Academy was dead right to give him the award. At the time, his turn as drunk and suicidal screenwriter Ben Sanderson seemed like the capstone to over a decade of increasingly nuanced and interesting work (from Valley Girl to Raising Arizona to Moonstruck), and the prize felt like an acknowledgment of his many accomplishments. In retrospect, it also seems like a perfectly-timed honor for an actor who was just about to start sucking. Unlike Al Pacino, whom they honored way past his prime with Scent of a Woman, the Academy can feel good that gave Cage the prize when it did. (I say a win for 2002′s Adaptation would now seem a little after-the-fact, by the way.)

I’m putting Sean Penn’s exquisite work as Matthew Poncelet in second place because looking back, that performance feels slightly less Crucial, but only slightly. Whereas Vegas shows us a good actor at the top of a game he was about to lose, Walking is the launching pad for a great actor’s lengthy streak. However, there’s no question this role is still relevant—it’s the one that made Penn “a serious actor” instead of “the ex-husband of Madonna who is also Spicoli.” I even like this movie more than Vegas, but my gut insists on upping Cage.

It’s entirely my heart, though, that puts Dreyfuss in third place. Is this performance the hammy center of a film made of ham chunks and ham Jell-O? Yes. But at the time, I loved it. I loved him signing a John Lennon song to his deaf son. I loved him arguing with Olympia Dukakis. I loved it. And really, it’s the only role Dreyfuss played after 1988 that I can still place. I’ve got to give a performance credit for making a movie star of the 1970s seem just a tiny bit relevant in 1995.

As for Troisi… The Postman is the only reason I’ve heard of him, and the Academy can give itself a big pat on the back for (a) recognizing a sweetly understated foreign performance when it could’ve nominated Mel Gibson for screaming and showing his kilted ass (b) making Troisi one of the few posthumous acting nominees in history, thus assuring his place in the minds of trivia buffs who might have heard of him otherwise.

And then… Nixon. Yeah, okay, sure. I’m sure this movie is good, but where I was living, nobody have a damn about it one way or the other, and nobody’s talking about it now. When actors play Kennedy or W. or Reagan, you never hear people say, “Oh, can so-and-so match the presidential grandeur of Anthony Hopkins in Nixon?” Put another away, I didn’t see this movie at the time, and no mounting cultural significance has convinced me I should.

Overall Grade in Retrospect: B

Joe’s Rebuttal: Yes, props to Nicolas Cage’s Oscar-winning performance for still holding up as a worthy decision even after a decade and a half of just mind-blowing crap (…and Adaptation). But I’d still probably place him second to Penn. No matter how accomplished his career becomes, this remains THE Sean Penn role, for me, and the film he should’ve won that first Oscar for (sorry, Mystic River). Also, I’m going to stick up for Nixon. That’s right! It got caught up in the surrealistic pillow of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers acid-trip period, but I watched it again about a year or two ago and I was awfully impressed by how effectively the headiness and paranoia of the film fits Nixon’s narrative, and Hopkins’s burlesque of Tricky Dick is a great fit. This is probably me skewing a bit more personal than historical, but eff it, I’m writing this dissent. I will Scalia this shit if I want.

—

BEST ACTRESS
1 – Susan Sarandon — Dead Man Walking (WON OSCAR)
2 – Elisabeth Shue — Leaving Las Vegas
3 – Emma Thompson — Sense and Sensibility
4 – Sharon Stone — Casino
5 – Meryl Streep — The Bridges of Madison County

Joe: What a fantastic lineup, both in terms of performance quality and in terms of historical staying-power. While “Best Actress nominee Sharon Stone” may sound weird today (to be honest, it sounded weird back in 1995 too), I’m going to stand by her performance in Casino, which was showy and scenery-chewing and everything that overlong beast of a movie needed. And while we’re looking at the bottom of the list, I should note that Streep ranks so low because I personally don’t have very strong feelings about The Bridges of Madison County, but many smart people say it’s actually one of her best.

The top of the list is pretty unimpeachable. Sarandon won the Oscar after half a decade’s worth of fruitless nominations and award-ceremony activism from her and Tim Robbins (remember when that was a thing we had to care about? Susie S. was to Bush I what Michael Moore was to Bush II. I’m kind of glad I just get to think of her as an actress these days). I absolutely loved Dead Man Walking, and if Sarandon couldn’t win for Thelma and Louise (in another frightfully strong Best Actress year), I’m glad she could pull it home for this.

Leaving Las Vegas was an out-of-nowhere shocker for Elisabeth Shue in 1995, and unfortunately from the 2011 vantage point that’s how it looks too. It’s such a bummer that she was never able to completely harness the momentum from this nomination into a lasting career full of great roles. I mean, you won’t find too many people who appreciated her in Piranha 3-D more than me, but still. But despite any sadness over career trajectories, this is a performance people have been talking about for 15 years, and they’ll continue to do so.

Finally, what else can you say about Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility? The perfect Emma performance in the perfect Emma role, written by Emma herself. She won her second Oscar for that screenplay, but I bet if you asked 100 people, most would tell you she won her Best Actress for this movie too.

Overall Oscar Grade in Retrospect: A-

Mark’s Rebuttal: I’d say you’re underestimating the significance of Meryl Streep. Back in 1995, her performance and the movie itself were considered almost magical, since they made something touching out of the hokey crap in the Bridges novel. Also, Streep hadn’t received an Oscar nomination since 1990 (!!!), and considering the minor successes of Death Becomes Her and The River Wild (and the out-and-out failure of She-Devil), it was starting to seem like she’d lost her edge. This performance shot her right back into everyone’s heart. I’d say that puts her third, behind Susie’s obvious crowning glory and Lizzy’s shocking ascent.

Quick: What’s Biutiful? Who is John Hawkes? If you’re following the Oscars this year, then you probably know the answers to those questions, but will you still know the answers in five years? In ten?

Obviously, the Oscars are great at crystallizing the most powerful cinematic moments of a given year. (Even if we’re furious that our favorites are left out, we can still use the actual nominees to clarify our love for the snubbed.) But as time passes, the awards become interesting in a completely different way. Eventually, old Oscar slates evolve into fascinating documents about who and what remains in the cultural memory. Quiz Show may have been a Best Picture nominee in 1994, but has it lingered in our minds as much as Speed, another film from that year? Meryl Streep won the 1982 Best Actress prize for Sophie’s Choice, and doesn’t that still seem like one of her defining roles?

Juicy questions, right?

To that end, Roommate Joe had the excellent idea of prepping for this year’s Oscars by putting some older contests to  the historical test. For the next four Thursdays, we’re going to look at the acting categories for 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005, and we’re going to rank the nominees in order of their cultural staying power. We’re talking less about the greatness of a performance or our personal preferences—though we’ll consider them—and more about how relevant a performance seems in the harsh light of retrospect.

After the jump, you’ll find our takes on  Best Supporting Actor and Actress, 1990. To read our thoughts on Best Actress and Best Actor, just click on over to Low Resolution. And of course, let us know how you’d rank the categories.

And now… the return of Kicking Bird!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

1. Joe Pesci — Goodfellas (WON OSCAR)
2. Graham Greene — Dances With Wolves
3. Bruce Davison — Longtime Companion
4. Andy García — The Godfather Part III
5. Al Pacino — Dick Tracy

Mark: Yikes. If it weren’t for Joe Pesci, this category would be the dinner guest who keeps telling fart jokes: You don’t make eye contact, you don’t engage, and you don’t feel like eating anymore. I mean… seriously. Could any performance be less relevant to our understanding of Al Pacino than his work as Big Boy Caprice? I think he’s great in the role, but the only reason he got this nomination is because no one could believe he’d never won an Oscar. (That said, as an eleven year-old, I though <i>Dick Tracy</i> ruled.)

Meanwhile, do you think Andy Garcia even cops to The Godfather Part III anymore? It may be his only Oscar-nominated work, but even Ocean’s Sixteen has had more staying power. Davison is in the middle because his nomination memorializes Hollywood’s first big AIDS film, though his work has less traction than the themes of the film itself. And speaking of “important issues,” Graham Greene gets a begrudging second place because his was the first-ever acting nod for a Native American. It’s historically important by default, even if no one really knows who Greene is or ever sits around going, “For me, Dances was all about Kicking Bird.” (ETA: Make that second acting nod for a Native American. First came Chief Dan George in Little Big Man. My bad.)

But all this becomes moot when you look at who’s number one: Tommy fucking DeVito. Even people who don’t know Goodfellas can say, “Do I amuse you? Am I a clown to you?”, and that’s because Pesci is at his pinnacle here. This lineup gains an entire letter grade for including a performance so good that it makes me politely overlook 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag

Overall Oscar Grade In Retrospect C

Joe’s Rebuttal: The fact that I can never remember Graham Greene’s nomination here puts him at the bottom of my list, because I am a narcissist. I’d probably rank Garcia second as it’s the only role of his I ever bother to think about, plus the infamy factor of all those creepy-ass seduction scenes with Sofia Coppola at least makes him more memorable than Bruce Davison.

—–

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

1. Whoopi Goldberg — Ghost (WON OSCAR)
2. Lorraine Bracco — Goodfellas
3. Diane Ladd — Wild at Heart
4. Annette Bening — The Grifters
5. Mary McDonnell — Dances with Wolves

Joe: It’s tempting to think that winning the Oscar gives you an automatic leg-up as far as historical resonance goes. And that’s true, to a point — certainly, nobody’s would remember Butterfield 8 today if Elizabeth Taylor hadn’t won an Oscar for it. But I have to think that we’d remember Whoopi Goldberg’s Oda Mae Brown today even if she hadn’t raised that gold statue to the ghost of Hattie McDaniel that night. Think of indelible line deliveries like “Molly? You in danger, girl.” Or my beloved “Damn, baby, what you do to your hair?” Is it Strasbergian acting at its finest? No, but it is a textbook star turn and a master class in stealing a movie directly out from under your less-compelling co-stars.

Out of all these nominees, who’d have thought in 1990 that Lorraine Bracco would be the one-hit wonder? Give or take her television work in The Sopranos, Bracco never again came close to her Goodfellas performance. But an actor’s legacy doesn’t necessarily need to have aged well so long as the performance has, and her Karen burns brightly with every televised rerun.

Diane Ladd’s Wild at Heart nomination still holds up as one of the straight-up strangest ones the Academy has ever bestowed. A polarizing, weirdo movie in which she gives a polarizing, weirdo performance that doesn’t fall into any of Oscar’s usual preferences (beatific and/or monstrous mothers; long-suffering wives; hookers in Woody Allen movies). And if the curiosity that this nod even happened isn’t good enough, then surely the scene where Ladd breaks down and coats her face in red lipstick at least ensures her performance will be remembered.

Annette Bening ranks comparatively lower on this list only because her subsequent career has evolved to the point that The Grifters doesn’t really define her in any way anymore. It’s still a great performance, though. Which is where she differs from Mary McDonnell, who is also almost never remembered for this performance anymore, as she’s evolved into a very different actress since then. Fortunately, she’s evolved into an actress whose performances put Stands with a Fist to shame.

Overall Oscar Grade in Retrospect: B

Mark’s Rebuttal: Oda Mae forever! Can I keep this pen? They’re waiting for you, Sam! These rankings suit me fine, though I might swap Ladd and Bracco, simply because I think Bracco is equally remembered for The Sopranos and Ladd’s career, despite her subsequent nomination for Rambling Rose, pretty much begins and ends with this film (in the public’s imagination, at least). I’m not committed to that argument, however, because while you could say Bracco is one of the five best things about Goodfellas, she doesn’t even make the top ten of awesome Sopranos elements.

(To cast your gaze on 1990′s Best Actress and Best Actor, visit Low Resolution.)

NEXT WEEK: 1995, when the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us believe that Kevin Spacey would be awesome forever.