Robert Evans' autobiography

People like tarantellas more than they like jazz?

I think you do have a point. I mean, Rota had already won for the original Godfather - I think there was a big carry-over from that. Goldsmith's was a masterpiece - AFI named it the 8th best movie score of all time. They also rank the original Godfather at #5.

So, perhaps unfair to Goldsmith, but also bad luck. Considering that the Godfather II score was also very good makes it a hard case to call it one of the worst Oscar wins off all time. There is a lot of competition for that dishonor.

In general, when people think of the worst Oscars, they are probably more likely to think of Best Picture, director or the Actor awards - the big 4.

Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate.

Robert Evans was not one of the more beloved producers of his time, and this surely hurt Chinatown at the Oscars.

---

I'd say so. He makes the point in his autobiography, and it makes sense that voters would not want to reward "A Robert Evans" production. The Best Picture award is given to the producer(David O. Selznick, not Alfred Hitchcock, received an Oscar for Rebecca.) The many nominations that Chinatown got awarded the right people(Nicholson, Dunaway, Polanski)...and its one win was perhaps the best one it deserved: Best Original Screenplay.For it IS a great screenplay, and the Best Screenplay Winners(whether adapted or original) is where one finds a lot of "shoulda been Best Pictures" likePulp Fiction and LA Confidential and Fargo.

---

Also, despite his youth, he had the air of Old Hollywood about him that F.F. Coppola didn't have.

---

That's true. Evans had started as an ingénue actor in the late fifties(The Sun Also Rises, The Best of Everything) and was a bad one. He segued into men's fashion with his brother's company, Evan-Picone, bought a book (The Detective) for the movies and produced it, and somehow landed in a studio spot(Paramount was on life support when Evans was brought in.)

He was , in short, an outsider in Hollywood and one who put on some pretty weird airs...super-tan lounge lizard with mumbling voice.

He was also...a Republican. (He brought Henry Kissinger as his special guest to see the premier of "The Godfather.")

---

In addition to this, Chinatown, while a hit, wasn't quite the blockbuster many think it was.

---

Indeed. That downbeat ending killed word of mouth and the R rated violence and incest themes kept kids out of the theater.

"Chinatown" was a hit in the summoer of 1974 but the very next summer -- 1975 -- saw Jaws and the exsample of a REAL summer blockbuster.

What "Chinatown" did have was that kind of "instant classic" acceptance by critics(though not all critics; Time's Jay Cocks felt it wasn't much) and a continuing life as an "analyzable film" for the film journals of the world.

--

It put Jack Nicholson, after several years as a kind if superannuated hippie star into on the A list, and he's never really been off since.

---

Exactly. Though he goes through much of the movie with a huge bandage on his nose, or scars on his nose, Nicholson is a romantic leading man in Chinatown, which is blessedly plush and lush and shiny for the early seventies, when so many movies looked like documentaries filmed on 16mm.

That Nicholson is still A-list(though possibly retired now) is a marvel of career management. Nicholson handled one slump as a leading man by taking great supporting roles(in Reds and Terms of Endearment, which won him an Oscar), handled the next slump by agreeing(after a savvy long, long hold-out period of negotiation) to play the Joker in Batman(a huge blockbuster that made Jack superrich), and somehow managed to alternate big entertainments(A Few Good Men) with more serious stuff(The Crossing Guard) until his A-list status was assured. Key to the Nicholson career: all the "not great movies" he turned down.

---

FWIW: Marathon Man and Black Sunday are two movies I'm rather fond of,

---

Me, too. One has to give Robert Evans credit. Essentially, he produced three great thrillers of the 70's and he produced them with top budgets, top directors, and top stars.

--- especially the first, which gets into Hitchcock territory, might have been a masterpiece of its kind if it could have downplayed its Blacklist and Holocaust channeling, but then that's what, for many people, drove the movie. Director John Schlesinger would have been wiser to have studied Hitchcock's films very closely, studied what made them tick.

---

Marathon Man came out in the fall of 1976. It was preceded in the spring of 1976 by Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, and the two films were contrasted and compared both during production and release...to the deteriment of Family Plot.

Some casting showed up the problem. Hitchocck offered Roy Scheider, hot off of Jaws, the villain role in Family Plot. Scheider turned Hitchcock down to play a decidedly shorter role(rather a Marion Crane part) in Marathon Man. The actor who DID play the villain in Family Plot -- William Devane -- was also in Marathon Man, but as a secondary villain to Big Prestige Star Laurence Oliver.

Family Plot looked low in budget and modest in production, dangerously close to a TV movie. Marathon Man looked big and major, with locations in Europe and South America before settling in to New York City, and with Dustin Hoffman, Oliver, and Schedier as major stars in the cast.

That said, I would agree with you, telegonus, that something about Marathon Man didn't quite work -- perhaps its Blacklist/Holocaust channeling made it too serious (and pretentious) for its own good.

I've always said the big problem with Marathon Man is its ending, in which hero Dustin Hoffman(who is, frankly, rather whining and sniveling all through the movie, even if for good reason after dental torture) confronts ultra-villain Nazi Laurence Olivier...and bungles the physical confrontation, almost getting killed. Dustin Hoffman is to blame for this bad ending -- he refused to follow the ending of the novel(by William Goldman) and simply shoot Olivier. What he does INSTEAD is contrived, silly -- and stupid. And Oliver falls on his hidden wrist spring-knife.

One more thing about Marathon Man: its most famous scene(actually several scenes in a sequence) has Oliver torturing Hoffman's tooth nerves with various dental tools. Little is shown, but much is heard and described("That nerve is dead -- I'll have to find a fresh one") and audiences practically fainted (I had walk-outs at my 1976 screening.)

In his novel, William Goldman actually has the Hoffman character think to himself "this dental chair is like the shower in Psycho" and the two scenes are both famous for connecting US to the violence(everybody takes a shower, everybody goes to the dentist.)

The thing of it is, I think that the Marathon Man dental torture sequence went too far and was too "real" and graphic. It took the thriller enjoyment right out of the movie for audiences. By contrast, the shower scene made people scream, but never grossed them out.

And thus, in 1976, Family Plot may have been more modest and minor than Marathon Man...but in some ways, the Hitchcock film knew what it was doing better than the Schlesinger one.