5 Great Careers Destroyed By The Post-Oscar Curse
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Just look at those smug guys up on stage, wearing their tuxedos and hoisting their Oscars. Little do they know that a dark cloud hangs over them. It's the post-oscar curse, and it means that even a nomination can cause their next film to turn into a career-destroying turd. It's not a "curse" in the Egyptian mummy sense, but rather a combination of Napoleonic egos, studio shenanigans and sheer bad luck. Here are their cautionary tales: #5.
Francis Ford Coppola
From 1972-1982, Francis Ford Coppola was not only at the top of his game, he was at the top of anyone's game. Ever. Between The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II and Apocalypse Now, Coppola's films had won so many Oscars that he could smelt them all down to make the most critically acclaimed suit of armor in all the land. After the rigors of Apocalypse Now, one would think that Coppola would've taken a break--after all, this was the film that caused him to famously quip, "We had access to too much money, too much equipment and, little by little, we went insane." Instead, Coppola went to Vegas--or at least a $26 million movie version of it--and bet the farm on "Technicolor weird-ass musical."
Coppola's gamble was called One from the Heart, a surrealist Las Vegas love story fueled by the music of Tom Waits. Instead of filming on location, Coppola built replicas of Vegas on sound stages. The set shot One from the Heart's original $2 million budget into the stratosphere, leaving Coppola to pick up a more than $20 million tab when the film earned only $600,000. And to add insult to injury, the film got terrible reviews. One from the Heart left Coppola on the verge on bankruptcy from the late 80s to early 90s. To keep ahead of his creditors, Coppola directed films he would've otherwise passed up, including The Godfather, Part III and the "Robin Williams as a giant 10-year old" flick, Jack. That's right, One from the Heart was responsible for freaking Jack.
Now let's make it extra clear: Even if the man just filmed himself pooping on a glass coffee table every year after 1982, Coppola would still go down as one of the most important filmmakers ever. But still, you have to wonder what crucial part of himself he lost after Apocalypse Now. In the last 27 years, the most memorable thing he's directed was that Michael Jackson ride at Disney World. And, hey, we're not complaining. Captain EO fucking ruled. If The Godfather, Part III had been three hours of that, he'd have a few more gold statues on his mantle right now. #4.
John Boorman
In 1972, English director John Boorman oversaw the backwoods thriller Deliverance. Audiences delighted in the film's dueling banjos, the handsomely hirsute duo of Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight and perhaps the most celebrated anal rape scene in cinema history. The above is "aesthetically significant," according to the Library of Congress. The film's Southern-fried sodomy went over surprisingly well with the stodgy Academy, and Boorman rode Ned Beatty's bare bottom to a Best Picture and a Best Directing nod. High off his newfound critical clout, Boorman next made his 1974 mind-fuck vanity project Zardoz, which starred Sean Connery traipsing around a post-apocalyptic wasteland in a loincloth and suspenders.
Comparing Deliverance to Zardoz is like comparing apples to oranges that have been hollowed out and turned into bongs. A critic would have to, more or less, invent a new language to describe its plot, so we're just going the film's preview speak for itself: Yes, that was a huge floating head saying, "The gun is good" and puking rifles to a crowd of diapered men on horseback. Once you bought your ticket, you got to hear the head finish the sentence ("... The penis is evil.") The product of a grossly negligent studio system (and what must have been an entire roll of Bounty soaked with lysergic acid), Zardoz tells the tale of a sexual dystopia, topless psychics and immortals who can't achieve erections. Sean Connery's character, the "brutal exterminator" Zed, is the hero of the piece precisely because he can get a boner. Again, 100 percent serious here.
Boorman's later films never received the praise of Deliverance, and while we can't pin all of his troubles on Zardoz, you can't put Sean Connery in a wedding dress and expect much good to come of it.
#3.
William Friedkin
After winning Best Director for The French Connection and being nominated for The Exorcist, William Friedkin tried for a hat-trick with 1977's Sorcerer. According to Friedkin, the movie's sorcerer was "an evil wizard [,] and in this case the evil wizard is fate." Evil wizard? Dungeons & Dragons fans everywhere were ready to line up, preferably in costume.
But, in a blatant case of false advertising, Sorcerer contained no sorcerers. The movie followed four criminals hired to deliver nitroglycerin to a South American oil rig, with the assistance of no magic at all. Karma's backlash against the film was brutal. A hurricane decimated the set. Spooked villagers blamed the filmmakers for causing a historic drought and threatened to detonate a $1 million prop bridge. Friedkin caught malaria and lost 50 pounds. The $15 million budget soon ballooned to $21 million. If fate truly is an evil wizard, as Friedkin believed, then that wily wizard did everything in his power to fuck up the production of Sorcerer.
Friedkin's troubles continued upon the film's US release. Audiences expecting mystical weirdness a la The Exorcist walked out of theaters. This prompted ads warning that Sorcerer was "NOT A FILM ABOUT THE SUPERNATURAL." Audiences confused by subtitles in the opening scenes also walked out. This prompted lobby placards declaring "SORCERER IS AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM." Oh, and a little film called Star Wars opened a month earlier. This prompted no one to see Sorcerer. Despite good reviews, the film recouped only $9 million and severely damaged Friedkin's status as an A-List director. None of his later films proved as memorable as his Oscar-nominated work, unless you count Al Pacino's gay S&M thriller Cruising. Which we do.
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I had a teacher who was fired in the Heaven's Gate debacle. Then wrote a best-selling book about it.
I find it funny that David Lynch is at #1 -is it because he had the most successful career post-Oscar? 'Cause I hear that Twin Peaks show was pretty big.
HA! Zardoz is awesome..Especially if you like weird ass movies that make no sense what so ever! Took me months to track that movie down about 5 years ago. Strangely I still watch about twice a year..
Sci-fi channel Dune > Lynch's Dune. by a mile. seriously, it takes a lot of weed to make me appreciate that crap.
And where's Shylaman?? His first 3 movies, excellent. Last 3 movies, among the worst of ALL TIME.
lol'ing at itsnotlupus and Throbert
I'm in the same boat, to downl- er, rent Zardoz or not? Something tells me it will only be good for the feeling like I just got mind raped.
CUBA GOODING JR. went from a few good men and jerry mcguire to daddy day camp and the land before time 7...he needs to be on the actor list
Dune sucked because they hired someone who'd never read the book...that explains so much! I always wondered from where the hell some of that stuff came.
why are these all about directors?
what about the actors?
Pacino more or less gave up acting after Scent of a Woman (some would say he gave up acting during Scent of a Woman)
Dune was a f*****g terrible movie.
Where's Brad Dourif!?
Went from being nominated for an Oscar as Billy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to becoming a crappy character actor in countless D-Movie horror/slasher films.
He also plays one of the weirdos of Frank's gang in Blue Velvet.
Hey, Francis Ford Coppola directed Dracula, which I recall reading a positive mention of in an article here on Cracked... Also, the movie won 3 Oscars, but not for Coppola...
I couldn't help it... as soon as I read this article I went and downl... I mean rented, Zardoz.
What can I say? It has to be the biggest f**k-up in high-profile movie history, what with the lame effects, the cheesy acting, the pretentious script and the small tits.
Seriously, wtf were Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling thinking? Same case as Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren in Caligola.
The tooth.....the tooooooooooth
Also, at one point in Friedkin's career, doing one-frame "subliminal" shock scenes became a sort of trademark for him. Thus, in "The Exorcist," we get a REALLY SCARY DEVIL FACE onscreen for a barely perceptible fraction of a second, while in "Cruising," Friedkin treated audiences to a 1/24-of-a-second glimpse of anal fisting.
No data on how popcorn sales were affected in either case...
In re Friedkin: Years before "Cruising" he also brought "Boys in the Band" from stage to screen. A couple notable things about "BitB":
(1) Pauline Kael's scorching review of the movie for the NY Times famously used the word "faggots" something like 25 times;
(2) The story is basically a prolonged b***h-fight between a neurotic gay Jew and a neurotic gay Catholic. The gay Jew is played by Leonard Frey -- who one year later would be cast as the super-nerdy "tailor Motehl Kamzoil" the film of "Fiddler on the Roof."
HAH! I'd forgotten about Zardoz for a moment after reading this article. When I came back to read it yet again, ZARDOZ!
You guys can argue all you want about Dune, I stand by what I said earlier and I agree with elvisjulep: M. Night Shyamalan belongs on this list.
D'you know what his next project is? A live-action version of that Nickelodeon cartoon, "Avatar: The Last Airbender."
Am I the only one who thinks this guy is fucked in the head, ESPECIALLY after "Lady in the Water" and "The Happening"?!?!?!
On the plus side, William Friedkin did eventually give the world To Live and Die in L.A. Then again, it was To Live and Die in L.A. . . .
2 of my top 10 favorite films -- ZARDOZ and SORCEROR -- on the same list! I seem to be the Kiss of Death for popularity.
I guess this is all about directors, which explains the omissions of Geoffrey Rush and F. Murray Abraham and damn near every Best Actress winner (Mercedes Ruehl, anyone?). Regardless, M. Night Shyamalan belongs on this list. In a decade he has gone from toast of Hollywood and the next big thing, to a gimmick and a joke. After Lady in the Water and The Happening (where Marky Mark apologizes to a plastic houseplant SPOILER!!), nobody should take him seriously.
Boorman went on to direct Excalibur and The Emerald Forest, but his son has gone on to outshine him as a motorcycle adventurer (with Ewan McGregor).
Copolla was in dangerous waters before Apocalypse Now, but the success of that film pushed him over the brink. He started calling himself a "film composer" and One From the Heart is a genuine suckfest with Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr as the romantic leads (!!!!)
Heaven's Gate is not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, but it ain't good either. Still, how many westerns have Jeff Bridges and Kris Kristofferson roller skating? The last scene is so full of smoke that you can't even see what's happening. Still, it's worth a rental on a rainy day to see what all the fuss is about.
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Well, losing at Hollywood, winning as author. Í might be wrong, but after Lady in the Water (or The Happening) Shyamalan got the cover of the Cahiers du Cinema. If you know a word of cinema, you know what Cahiers du Cinema means in historical terms. Probably the worst movie Shyamalan made was Sixth Sense. Honestly, it is a poor movie, Unbreakable is his best thing, but was sold like Sixth Sense II. Signs was sold like Sixth Sense III. The Village; Sixth Sense IV and Lady in the Water sold as Sixth Sense V. Probably tired of needing to include crazy twists on his plots he spitted out everything and made that cleany ending for Lady in the Water. Check around if someone tried to sell The Happening as Sixth Sense VI. So it worked. And The Happening is probably his 2nd best work. As most of the work from the 90's ahead, we live in a time of "reference movies" and it is explicit how Shyamalan grates Hitchcock's movies. Specially in the "actors are cows" stuff.
Heaven's Gate is probably the best thing the 80's gave to cinema. Flamming that movie is almost like not watching it. Thinking that Kris Kristohfodgfgygfygason and Jeff Bridges was such a bad choice? There's like a list of actors you should use when making an epic western? Remembering that Henry Fonda and Montgomery Clift worked on westerns before and they really didn't have westerns' face. You can check a major influence made by Cimino's cinema and, specially, the "final battle full of smoke" on Michael Mann's movies, specifically Heat.