Is there anyone else on this board who think that Edward was totally screwed at the oscars for this movie. Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire won. I. Don't. Get. It. Edward's acting in this movie was top notch. Professional. Almost Perfect. Who votes on this anyway? I know this was a while ago but it still irks me hardcore. Anyone else agree?
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Sneeze, and it's goodbye Seattle."
I agree Edward Norton was great, much better than Cuba Gooding Jr whose role seemingly wasn't all that challenging.
shareYep, this movie is on of my all time favorites
shareI've always thought the Cuba Gooding Jr. thing sucked. I think it was because Jerry Maguire got a lot of love than Primal Fear. Popularity covets rewards.
Perry: "You, stop multiplying!"
In the Oscars, paying your dues is more important than acting skill. It's like casting a musical in high school... a senior will always get cast for the lead, because they've been there the longest. Even if there's a really good freshman who would be better for the leading role, they have three more years of performance ahead of them. The person who's been around longer will get it every time.
shareRumor has it that at that time, a lot of the male Academy members were letting their wives & girlfriends fill out the ballots.
Jerry Maguire was a feelgood romantic-comedy-drama and Primal Fear was a dark, cynical movie that dealt with unseemly material.
It's not that surprising that a movie that seemed to almost be a chick-flick would land Gooding that Oscar.
Plus "white guilt" was probably an issue as well.
Norton still took home eight awards for his performance (that's including a Golden Globe). Gooding "only" won seven! And Oscars don't mean *beep* anyway.
shareYou bet it was..but what of Irish Catholics being enslaved for 1,000 years indentured servants/could not own property/RUC and Protestant police pullig Catholics out of their homes and killing them.
Irish die be the boatload coming here./embarrassed at Ellis Island pushed into Civil War and died on both sides/ paid less daily than blacks.Having to fight blacks for food housing.
Cuba Gooding???
Yes I agree! Edward Norton OWNED this movie. After seeing this movie for the first time he became my very favorite actor and still is to this day.
He was ROBBED at the Oscars!
Thanks to computer savvy alcoholics, there's an app for that. ~ Dr. Sheldon Coopershare
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lester holt's epic mustache!
Where there's smoke, there's barbecue!
Yeah, that Cuba Gooding Oscar is one that really doesn't stand up. William H. Macy in Fargo, Edward Norton in Cape Fear, James Woods in Ghosts of Mississippi were all epic performances - in another league from what Cuba Gooding did.
"Boy that was really exciting. I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan aren't ya."
Norton and Pitt are the best actors of their generation and never won an Oscar. The Academy Awards are a sham anyway. I've totally lost faith back in the 00's when Fight Club (one of the top 10 best movie ever made) was only nominated for Best Sound Effect. The rip off of the century.
I'm not so much of a Fight Club fan, but think the acting was good and David Fincher did a great job putting it together. IMO, The Social Network could have ended up being pretty talky and dull if someone other than Fincher had made it.
I'm probably older than you, but Oscar ripoffs definitely predate Fight Club. Big ones for me are Scorsese not winning for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Goodfellas, Paul Newman's ONLY Oscar being for The Color of Money (like his 15th best performance), Ron Howard not getting nominated for Apollo 13. If I was older, I'd probably be talking about Oscar ripoffs from the 1940s.
Cuba Gooding, Jr. beating out Norton, Macey & Woods is one of the ones that really annoys me. So does Argo winning Best Screenplay for standard Hollywood suspense stuff.
"Boy that was really exciting. I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan aren't ya."
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Edward Norton was never in Cape Fear. Look it up dude.
No more IMDB boards for me!
Screwed? No, not really. But I can't really say that this is his own fault. His acting is quite brilliant and credible and compelling right up until his final scene, when it tanks. Going from credibly innocent to credibly insane is by no means an easy portrayal to perform, and the fact that he was nominated speaks volumes about it. However, in that final scene, when the confession comes out portraying a person with superior intelligence sufficient enough to successfully invent not one, but two, pseudo-personalities, happens to come out only because the newly portrayed super smart person fails to provide any of several quite obvious excuses for having appeared to slip up and need to confess.... all the alleged super intellect dissolves right away. None of this is the actor's fault, however. It is the fault of the director and the writer(s) and the editors. Not his. His acting skills were indeed rewarded by the nomination. No Oscar, however, would ever go to the performer of such a horribly-portrayed character.
shareThat's what I thought at first but I think it was intentional. It was a "Freudian slip". He said he was dying to tell Vail...
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super smart person fails to provide any of several quite obvious excuses for having appeared to slip up
The academy seem to love screwing over actor's who give career defining performances in their first feature films. (a perfect example is this and Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's list.)
I completely agree. I love cuba gooding Jr in Jerry Maguire, But, wow! Norton's performance here was *beep* stellar! Acting and theatre students still use this performance as a template to work from. Completely robbed (and robbed years later for American History X, the Oscar for which went to the least deserving of the 5 nominees)