Answering my Own Questions About Sideways

Little did I realize that Driving Miss Daisy was actually the most nominated Best Picture nominee of 1989 with 9 nominations. Whoops. I guess E!’s expert isn’t the only one without a clue.

By my quick count, since 1970 only four Best Picture winners have had 7 or fewer nominations. Of those four winners, one was tied for second least nominations of the Best Picture contenders (Silence of the Lambs, with 7 nominations, tied The Prince of Tides, was outgunned by JFK with 8 and Bugsy with 10, and just barely surpassed Beauty and the Beast’s 6 song-fueled nominations). One had the second least number of nominations (Chariots of Fire had 7 nominations to Atlantic City’s 5, Reds’ 12, On Golden Pond’s 10 and Raiders of the Lost Ark’s 9). And two tied for last place (Ordinary People tied Tess with 6 and was outnumbered by The Elephant Man and Raging Bull with 8 apiece and Coal Miner’s Daughter with 7 while Annie Hall’s 5 were matched by The Goodbye Girl and surpassed by Star Wars, Julia and one of the biggest losers, The Turning Point with a whopping 11 nominations each).

That would make a win for Sideways unprecedented in the modern era (defined as since 1970 for the sake of this argument). Annie Hall is the only Best Picture winner in that time to have as few nominations as Sideways finds itself with. And no Best Picture in that time has had the absolute fewest number of nominations. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done (the first rule of Oscar prognosticating is that there are no rules), but it’s not a good sign either.

More bad news for Sideways…

I asked in my last post about Best Picture winners that failed to garner Best Editing nominations. There have been nine. Since the category was first introduced in 1934 (when there were only three nominees, and Best Picture winner It Happened One Night was not among them).

Here are the poorly edited Best Picture winners:

1980 – Ordinary People
1977 – Annie Hall
1974 – Godfather Part II
1966 – A Man for All Seasons
1963 – Tom Jones
1955 – Marty
1948 – Hamlet
1937 – The Life of Emile Zola
1934 – It Happened One Night

That’s it. And as you can see, the last time this phenomenon occurred was in 1980. There was a Best Picture winner without a nominated director more recently than there’s been a Best Picture with an un-nominated editor. Sure, even blue moons appear once in a blue moon, but I just don’t see it happening this year.

I know Annie Hall, and Sideways is no Annie Hall.