The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
Driving Miss Daisy. With performances like those of Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, there's no reason why the film shouldn't have been a hit, especially since its hopeful message about race relations was bound to appeal to middle-class white liberals. But the extent of its success seems to have taken the Academy by surprise, since it became the first best-picture winner since Grand Hotel whose director, Bruce Beresford, was not a nominee.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| Do the Right Thing |
Spike Lee's film takes a much less hopeful approach to race relations than the best-picture winner did, but it's more provocative and at least as entertaining. When some thick-headed critics suggested that the film might provoke racial violence, Lee denounced them vociferously, and he had a point: His film is less violent than such contemporary action thrillers as the Lethal Weapon films, and a good deal more meaningful. In the end, it received only two nominations: Danny Aiello for supporting actor and Lee for his screenplay. (He lost to Tom Schulman for Dead Poets Society, a film about white preppies, which only rubbed salt in Lee's wounds.) But he became a mentor for young black filmmakers, and revealed that he was in touch with an audience that mainstream Hollywood had ignored.
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