How Denzel Was Robbed

The man probably least surprised when pre-Oscar night favorite Denzel Washington did not grab the Oscar for his winning performance as boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in the film Hurricane was Denzel Washington. I'm sure he reads the three Hollywood trade papers, the Daily Variety, Weekly Variety, and the Hollywood Reporter. And he knew from even the most cursory reading that his chance to become only the second African-American to win the top acting award in the 72 year history of the Academy Awards ceremony washed away months before the night of the awards.

That was when DreamWorks, a creation of film director Steven Spielberg and his pals, made a decision to pour close to a $1 million (known) into an ad, promotional and lobbying campaign to virtually buy an academy award for its film American Beauty and anyone involved in the making of the film. DreamWorks executives remembered how their film Saving Private Ryan lost the best picture award in 1999 to Miramax Studio's Shakespeare in Love.

DreamWorks screamed that Miramax won the award because it dumped money into a last minute ad and promotional blitz for the film. DreamWorks was determined to rip the page from Miramax's text. Even before a single movie patron had seen American Beauty, DreamWorks PR hirelings smoozed and stroked reviewers and critics to get them to gush over the film. It trotted out its top stars Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening and director Sam Mendes for appearances on major talk shows to hype the film.

It sent its writer Alan Ball to celebrity dinners and tributes to hob knob with academy voters. The strategy was to keep the film and its performers in the eye of as many of the more than 5,600 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science members that pick the Oscar winners as possible. The ploy worked. DreamWorks lavish cash spree tipped the scales in favor of the film and Spacey for best actor.

But there were other heavy feet tipping the scales against Washington. Many film critics nit-picked the film to death for its alleged inaccuracies and glorification of Carter's life. The critics trash Hurricane campaign almost certainly chased some Academy votes away from Washington. The same critics barely uttered a peep about the inaccuracies in the film, Boys Don't Cry.

A glaring omission was there was no mention that the reason that female Teena Brandon became transsexual Brandon Teena, on whose story the film is based, was because she was raped. But this didn't scare voters away from awarding the best actress award to Hillary Swank for portraying Teena. Another heavy foot on the scales against Washington was that of a group that called itself The families of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's victims. Presumably the group is made up of family members of the three men Carter was charged with murdering.

Although the identities of these Carter haters remain unknown. Their mission was to raise as much hell as possible about the film and Carter. A spokesman for the group claimed they were able to lobby more than a thousand academy members to snub the film (i.e. Washington). Whether true or not the fact that such a group existed if nowhere other than on paper probably convinced some academy members inclined to reward Washington with the award to change their minds.

Washington could find few black academy supporters to offset the backlash against Hurricane and frontlash for American Beauty and honor his towering performance. They are still mostly invisible in the voting ranks of academy members. Less than 200 of the academy voters are black. This does much to explain why in the decades that Hollywood has ladled out its top awards a grand total of six blacks, and that includes Washington for a best supporting actor award in 1989 and Sidney Poitier for best actor for his role as Homer Smith, the happy-go-lucky traveling laborer in Lilies of the Field in 1963, have won awards.

The machinations by the studios, critics, academy members at this year's academy awards ceremony gave lie to Hollywood's claim that the academy awards go purely for merit and performance. The robbing of Washington of the top award for Hurricane more than proves that it doesn't.

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