Oscars Outsider - The Oscars Have No Idea What a Score Is

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

This week on Oscars Outsider, we dive into one of the Academy’s strangest and most confusing categories: Best Original Score.From the early days of studio music departments to decades of split categories, reunited categories, musical exceptions, adaptations, and shifting definitions of what “original” even means, the Oscar for film music has had one of the messiest histories of any Academy Award. We trace how the category changed over time, why musicals caused so many problems, and how the Academy ended up rewarding — and ignoring — some of the most famous scores in movie history.Along the way, we talk Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, Duke Ellington, West Side Story, John Williams, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Hans Zimmer, The Lion King, and why Oscar voters keep struggling to separate great movie music from great scores.

Welcome back to Oscars Outsider, a podcast about the awards race in Hollywood history. I'm Dylan. And over there, as usual, is Craig. Hey, Craig has it going. Ladies and gentlemen. Yo, what's up? All right. Thanks for listening, everybody.

We'll see you next week. Oh, great. Happy to have you back, Craig. And also happy to have back with us for the first time. in a while. Sean O'Rourke, Sean, welcome back to the show. How's it going? Hey, good. Happy to be back. I did request Carl Orffs Gassenhower

to open the show, but that's fine. Fix it in post. Yeah. This fits the theme a little bit. So we are going to be talking music. This is upper bow. We are going to be talking music today. We're going to do a bit of a history lesson.

We're going to do one of the shows where we dive into the history of a category. We've done this before in the show. we talked about the history of the Best Cinematography Award. So I thought tonight we talked about the history of the Best Original Score Award. One of the more kind of complicated, weird, and tortured histories of any award out there, a category that has been split and reunited multiple times over the years. We'll get into that at a bit. And we've each picked one specific year from Oscar's History, where we want to highlight the best original score race.

Before we do that, Craig, we like to start things. off with a quick little roundup of what's been going on in the world of the awards race since we last spoke. It hasn't been that long since we last spoke. We just did a show a few days ago. Has anything changed since then? So there were just a couple headlines that I saw. One was that Curry Baker, the director of Obsession, confirmed that Focus has said that they are going to be mounting an Oscar campaign. They said specifically Oscar campaign. So it does look like they are going to be targeting the Oscars for this award season, which is great. I actually saw this movie since we talked about it and I loved it.

I thought it was fantastic. I think that I feel like Indy never, oh, never going to say her last name, right? Indy never going to see her last name right. Yeah, that's right. That's how you say it. I thought that she was fantastic in it. And I think that there's potential for supporting. or lead whatever they think is the least competitive category this year, which is shaping up like it might be a little bit of a weaker year, at least in terms of the discussion that's happening right now.

There's like, I think Renata Rensovae is the person that most people are talking about in terms of the actress awards. But no one else is really emerging as a super strong contender. I guess Emily Blunt, I've heard that name tossed around a little bit as well. So I think that there is also the possibility for being in the screenplay conversation here, which I would love to see. It's the story of the box office this year, I think. So I wouldn't put it past the voters to really want to honor that. Yeah. I mean, if it does get into the race, that's going to be a point for you and not for me because the last episode I gave it a 0% chance of getting into the Oscars race.

So when we do our draft, I'm safe to keep it to my like 10th pick and and you're not sure you're. I'm sure you are. Okay. Yeah. The other thing is that it seems like Disclosure Day is performing at the box office, which which is great. Not that that is going to mean a whole lot. Still yet to see that one. But Minotar also won in the Sydney Film Fest or Sydney Critics Choice awards.

award. So that one has a little bit of momentum as well. But aside from that, I haven't seen too much, but we just talked a few days ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hard to imagine much has changed in the past few days. Sean, have you been keeping any fingers on any pulses around the movies coming out this year? Or have you been kind of checked out? I'm pretty behind so far. My summer project is to catch up. I'll start with Disclosure Day and then see where I end up. Yeah, I'm also stoked to see Disclosure Day. The reviews coming out around it are all over the map, which is great. It sounds like it.

Your soundboard is just on another level today. You just loaded it up. You just spent the day just charging it with it. I'm here for it. Yeah, why can I say I'm a maniac? Anyways, I am also excited to see Disclosure Day and hopefully we'll get to do that maybe next week. And we can talk about it. I think it's total toss up if it's something that does end up being Oscars race material.

But we discussed that last week and we shall see. So should we just jump into our topic right away? Yeah, we should. Nice. So I thought we'd talk about the history of the best original score award, which is what it's currently called. It has been called a bunch of other things in the past. which I'll get to. So if you listen to our episode covering the very first Academy Awards from 1929, which you should.

If you haven't, get caught up on that. You will know that the first Academy Awards happened at around the same time as the first sound movies were appearing. There's real coincidence in historical timing between sound cinema and the Oscars. Early synchronized sound movies often did not have original scores, pose for them. They had kind of pastiche scores. The ethos of putting music onto a, into a sync sound film kind of followed in the footsteps of the way that the pianist in the, in the theater halls, accompanying silent films would approach the material. They would set the vibe for a scene by kind of dusting off some familiar melodies from popular operas or well-known symphonies or

some of the standard pop songs that were contemporary at the time. It wasn't that common for purpose-built symphonies specifically designed for a film until really 1933 with the release of King Kong. So King Kong had a score by Max Steiner. Steiner was Austrian. He was kind of a wonder kid from a Viennese musical family. He was schooled by Gustav Moller. when he was a child. I think he wrote his first operetta when he was 12 or something, a very precocious figure in the

Viennese music scene and ended up in World War I kind of stranded in America due to political circumstances had been detained as an enemy alien in London and kind of had to rebuild his career from scratch in America, which ended up bringing him to Hollywood. Steiner was working jobs with RKO Radio Pictures when he got the gig to do music for Mary and C. Cooper's King Kong. And Mariancy C. Cooper basically told him, you know, go nuts with it. Do whatever you want to do. I'll underwrite it.

So with Cooper's money, Max Steiner was able to assemble an 80-piece orchestra and produce a kind of rich symphony that was very like Wagnerian in the way that it had used a lot of late motifs in it. And also was very like precisely timed to what the action that was happening on the screen. Like, you know, there's a moment where the tribal chief is walking down the stairs and the bass is that the brass section is going boom, boom, boom, with each step that he takes. That kind of like, both the kind of Wagnerian repeating intertwining late motifs and the kind of precision timing to things happening within the frame was very uncommon, at least at the time. And that was something that became a huge part of King Kong. in some ways as much as part of the special effects were in terms of showing audiences and showing Hollywood,

like what a spectacle movie really can be. And that really kind of kicked off an arms race among the studios to have their own kind of high-end symphonies with talented composers behind them. The kind of the first domino to fall was when Wolfgang Korngold, who was another Austrian guy, was hired by Warner Brothers to head their new symphony. After that, Alfred Newman, an American composer, was hired by Fox. And Cornigold, maybe more than Steiner, was the guy who kind of continued in that very romantic tradition of music scoring and was also a big advocate for celebrating music being

written for film. So it was largely because of Wolfgang Korngold's advocating that the Academy decided to add a category for original music, which was, or just best scoring, as it was originally called. So the first Oscar for Best Scoring appeared at the 7th Academy Awards held in 1935. And that was awarded to the music for One Night of Love. The trophy was inscribed to Columbia Studio Music Department, Lewis Silver's Head of Department, thematic music by Victor Scherzinger in Gus Kahn. So one thing you'll notice is that there's no composer actually credited on the award.

So Corngold actually wasn't happy about that. He was happy they finally had an Oscar for music, but he was advocating now that it should be for the composer and just the composer. And the Academy did actually start doing that in 1939 when the trophy, which has since been remained, best original score was awarded to the Adventures of Robin Hood. And the only name on the trophy for the first time was that of the composer, which was Wolfgang Gold. Now, so about the name change. So they added the word original for the first. time there. And that's because the Academy quickly ran into an issue with awarding trophies for film music, and they still grappled with that issue today. And this has kind of been like

the big issue throughout the history of the award. And that's the question of originality. So the previous year to that, 1938, the winning film was the musical 100 Men and a Girl, a film that you will never be able to find on a torrenting site. And that was awarded to Charles Previn, who was head of Universal Studios Music Department. but no composer was credited that year because there was no composer for the film because it was pastiche of various previously existing pieces of music. And so that was a very controversial win. Composers really weren't happy that that's who the film that won the award.

So that's why the very next year they changed the name from best scoring to best original score to kind of respond to their complaints and saying that, okay, it should specifically be for new music purposely written for a, film. But the Academy didn't actually render scores using pre-existing music ineligible for Oscars, instead they split the category in two. There would now be one Oscar for Best Original Score, and a different Oscar simply called Best Scoring. And that would be the first in a series of contentious schisms and reunifications that would torture the history of the category. For the 14th Oscars in 1942, they decided to split the category along different lines,

since musicals were just kind of winning too often to the chagrin of dramatic composers, the Academy decided that there will now be one category called Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, which was awarded for the first time to Bernard Herman for The Devil and Daniel Webster, and a separate category called Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, awarded for the first time to Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace for Disney's Dumbo. So the two trophy division between musicals and non-musicals basically held until 1962. In 63, they kept the two categories split, but maybe because of the proliferation of adaptations of stage musicals at the time, they decided to redefine the categories using the more or less original terms as the 42 split. There would be one trophy called Best Music Score substantially original, and another called Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation, or Treatment.

In practice, they were still essentially giving one trophy to musicals and one to non-musicals, but because the Oscars have always been alone. to dividing awards by genre. They had decided to return to the original idea of, well, original versus not original as the basis for the segregation. And for the longest time, the Academy could just not make up their minds what these categories should be called. The category for musicals or not original original music had its name changed 10 times between 1962 and 1985, as they tried to.

out various awkward titles like Best Original Song Score and its Adaptation or Adaptation Score. Meanwhile, the other category, the once in future Best Original Score tried out different names, including for 1969 and 1970, probably the most honest name it ever used, which was just Best Original Score for a Motion Picture in brackets, not a musical. In 1985, the two categories were reunited again into the single Best Original Score Award, and they probably found this reunification easier to do in the 80s because by then musicals had fallen out of favor, so they weren't as much of a problem. But the old schism reappeared one more time temporarily in 1996. And this was because between 1990 to 1995, four of the six best original score trophies went to Disney movies.

The Disney Renaissance titles like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. And a lot of people were frustrated that the academy members were still just voting for the movie with the catchiest songs. So from 1996 to 1999, there was Best Original Dramatic Score and also Best Original Musical or Comedy Score, this time Comedy crossed the aisle, apparently, before they were finally reunited again in 2000, which is more or less where we stand today. Though they still struggle with the original part of Best Original Score, and it wasn't until 2020, the COVID Oscars, the ones held in a train station and directed by Steven Soderberg, that they actually defined the criteria in original for a first time declaring that to qualify

a movie's music must be 60% original. But apparently some felt that was too strict because the very next year they downwardly revised that to only 35%. So for sequels, the burden is 80%. And that's still where it stands today. So we have each decided to kind of look into one year that we find tickles our interest a little bit in the history of the Austin. and and choose a year that'll be a lens to see how the Academy has treated music over the years. Sean, do you want to start us off with our little roundtable here? Yeah, yeah, I can go first.

I'm going to one up you, Craig, right away. I'm going to do the 67th Oscars, which are the movies of 1994, I think, right? Okay. So I'm going to try to thread the needle here. I have some complaints about these nominees, some general, and one very, very, very specific. And I think a way of like analyzing, a way of maybe analyzing culture through this. So the best original score did go to the Lion King in the Disney Renaissance this year composed by Hans Zimmer. And I think I want to look at these nominees and the winner through the lens of something, Dylan,

you mentioned when we talked about the Oscars from 98 or 99, which is the sort of American exceptionalism end of history sort of feeling. In the 1990s, we have American military economic and cultural hegemony now established. There is no more danger. Punk is dead. David Gaffin-own's grunge, the globe is now one market to be subsumed by capital and filtered for consumption as commodity back in the metro pole. So I think that a lot like capitalism in general, this is like a little bit kind of good and also very bad. With the Lion King, I have no real complaints about the score. I think it's fine. It's not hands-in-earned.

Simmer's best work, and I'm going to get to that later. But I think the music is fine, and it's like Graceland for little kids. So it can sort of broaden the horizons and maybe expose one to some more cultural elements than they're going to see. But it is filtered through this maw of Disney, which has a way of sort of colonizing, I think, history and culture into what end up being. sort of blandly mediocre artifacts with a balance sheet

that are made for the broadest possible appeal. And if we zoom out into the rest of the nominees here, they all to me seem very bland and samey and don't stand on their own as pieces of music. In a couple of cases, they're fine scores and they work okay, but they don't really add anything to a film. And I think my main problem with the Academy Awards, at least in my lifetime, is that in the best original score, they're often picking what I feel is something safe and boring. So if I go through the list, we have two from Thomas Newman, little women, which I haven't seen, but I did listen to the score.

It's period appropriate and fine, but not memorable. We have the Shawshank Redemption also from Thomas Newman, which is like fine for the movie, but I think very unchallenging. and like flavorless. We have interview with the vampire, which actually I think is pretty good. So we'll leave that one alone. And then we have the major criminal Forrest Gump, which is like,

I think a perfect score for that movie because the original score is completely insipid and lackluster and saccharin and like terrible. Which I think. which I think captures this feeling of like... You reached with that one, Craig. You reached it. Just one of those days.

It captures this feeling of cultural mediocrity, right? So then if we look at Hans Zimmer, Hans Zimmer, in his early career, he's got like some interesting bona fides. He works with the Buggles. He works with some Italian new wave bands. He works with the Damned on History of the World Part 1. I think his first Oscar nomination for Rain Man is a really interesting score. Like it's a bold score.

It's memorable and it stands on its own. But when we come to the Lion King, even though it's a fine score, I think the legitimizing of Hans Zimmer in the Academy is like the beginning of the end, which leads to him becoming very bland and repetitive at the turn of the century, like after the thin red line, and leads to the greatest cinematic crime of the century, which is the score of Inception, which started Browcore in like every commodity movie like this,

every trailer with a horn going, is Hans Zimmer's fault. And I think we can trace that back to the Lion King. So that's why I found this one interesting. I also want to point out, I know we weren't talking about original song, but this year had a song called Make a Make a, Your Mind by Randy Newman, which is from a movie called The Paper that I don't think really

exists, but the song rules and should have won over Can You Feel the Love Tonight? And everybody should listen to that song. I just want to point out that paper actually kind of kicks ass. So, oh, does it? Is that, oh, wait, hold on. Am I mixing it up with the clock? No, it's Michael Keaton, I think it's Michael Keaton. Yeah. Michael Keaton. Yeah, yeah. It's a Michael Keaton movie. But as soon as I said that, I just realized maybe I'm mixing it up with the clock, which is another Michael Keaton movie from around there, which also rules, which, you know what, maybe the paper doesn't exist. You might be right about that.

It has the look reflected onto another film. It looks like a movie they would cut two on 30 Rock, like the poster I saw for it anyway. Well, yeah, the 67th Oscars are the epitome for me of 90s American blandness. And in our world of like LLM searches, it's just important to remember we need friction in our lives. Not everything has to go down smooth. Nice. Michael Keaton was the king of movies that feel like they're just like a sitcom pilot. Multiplicity.

Yeah, that too, right? Like these movies just feel like sitcom pilots that he used to do a bunch of those movies that just kind of disappeared into the void as soon as their theatrical run was out over. Except, you know, they probably live on cable TV or whatever. Yeah. Nice. I like that. So what was the one that should have won for you then? Would it have been interviewed with the vampire, Elliot Golden Thel? Out of those, I guess you can give it to Shawshank because it's fine. It's like, me, but none of them are something that I'm going to put on and listen to.

I mean, out of those, I think it would maybe be the Lion King's probably the closest one of something I would listen to on its own. Like the Zimmer part, it's not the Elton John ones. I don't think I have a 94. I did come up with a little list, if you want, of movies that were never nominated that I think fit my criteria of a bold choice that stands on its own. But I don't have one for that year. But if I can go through that really quick. Yeah, do it. Are there any from the year that I'm covering?

No. Although I do, there's one from the year you're covering I do really like. But I wanted to mention sweet smell of success by Elmer Bernstein and the Chico Hamilton Quintet from 1950. which was not nominated. I think it's the first, at least American film, to have two separate soundtracks. It has this really interesting big band kind of paranoid big band score by Elmer Bernstein,

and then a really good modern jazz, by which I mean like 1950s post-pop, jazz quintet, on the same themes. Really, really cool score. I don't look up the nominees for that year, so I don't know what it should have been. Then in 1974, David Shire had back-to-back jacks with the conversation, which is a sick piano score that's very hypnotic. And the taking of Pelham, one, two, three, which is a much more like boisterous, bold score.

Yeah, it has a little bit of like, it's got like some groovy blues on R&B, but it puts a little bit of 12 tone in it. Like it's a little bit cheeky, like the dialogue of the movie. And of course in 1985, friend of the pod, Philip Glass, I assume Mishima Life in Four Chapters. I think my favorite score ever. Also used in the Truman Show, one of those pieces at the very end. And then we have Damon Alburn and Michael Nyman in 1999 for Antonia Bird's Raveness, which is a criminally underrated movie that has, I think, a lot to say and has a really excellent score. And finally, 2006, Graham Reynolds, a scanner darkly, Richard Linklater's rotoscoped adaptation, is a really interesting one.

But none of them got Academy Notice. One thing I noticed that's interesting with the 67th Academy Awards is you got two members of the Newman clan there, Thomas Newman who did the Shossack Redemption and Randy Newman with his original song for the paper, as you mentioned. Wait, are they related? Yeah, they're related. They're part of the progeny of, um, they're part of the progeny of, um, Alfred Newman, who I mentioned in passing, was one of the original big composers going back to the 1930s.

And he's had multiple children, cousins, nephews, who all went on to work in movie music, including Randy Newman and Thomas Newman. I'm not sure what the exact relation is, but I know they're all part of that family. Some kind of removed. Craig, I will say for years,

the firm fits my criteria. of a really good score that stands on its own and is bold choice. So if we want to segue into the year that I'm covering, which is the year right before, the 1994 race for the films of 1993, the firm would be my pick of the nominees in terms of what I think is the most inspired pick and like maybe my favorite choice to be nominated here. but if you guys were to like conjure up what do you think is the most iconic film score of the early night uh Jurassic Park is that year Jurassic Park you're fishing before and I feel like that's hard to ignore yeah yeah so Jurassic Park was this year and it was not nominated John Williams amazing score John Williams did end up winning this year for Schindler's list um Honestly, I think it's a crime for this film not to be nominated.

If you were to pick one film from the early 90s that has a score that I think most people with who were around at the time could hum, it would be the Jurassic Park. I mean, I'm not saying favorite. I mean, just mean the biggest cultural impact. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like one of my favorites is actually home alone score, which is also a John Williams score. But I think that that one has like so much texture and just like it is has great like Christmas motifs and there's like this darkness and a mischievousness to it as well that I really love. But anyways, I'll get into the ceremony a little bit here.

And so this was Whoopi Goldberg's first time hosting the Oscars, which makes it like an iconic 90s Oscar's ceremony and this is one of those years where there is like one film that is kind of the center of gravity for the year and that that year was it was schindler's list which had 12 nominations and it won seven of those so including best picture best director which was Spielberg's first after six prior nominations which is crazy and then of course best original score for john john williams and the other nominees that year were Elmer Bernstein for the Age of Innocence, Dave Gruzen for the firm, Howard,

or James Newton Howard for the fugitive, and Richard Robbins for the remains of the day. And I think that, like I mentioned before, the firm is the one of these nominees that stands out to me the most, like as the most inspired pick, because it has like a really like it's like a solo piano concept score that really like breaks type for the film. And I think that it's just like a really interesting and inspired choice as opposed to, you know,

someone like John Williams who has been doing orchestral themes for the longest time. And I think I wanted to talk about this year because I wanted to talk about John Williams. And I think that his story is really interesting. His collaboration with Stephen Spielberg is really interesting. The fact that he, when Steven Spielberg first came up and was looking for a composer for his first film, he went to John Williams and they immediately collaborated. and Spielberg sought Williams out because of his orchestral themes. And then when they worked together on Sugarland Express, he ended up coming back with this like harmonica forward,

more naturalist score, which is really interesting because that is not what John Williams is known for. And that's not kind of the type of collaboration that Spielberg and John Williams have, but it is kind of representative of the time that this took place because New Hollywood was really putting the nail in the coffin of the orchestral score at this point. It was we had all these New Hollywood directors that were reaching for more contemporary instrumentations for their scores. And we had films like 2001 with its needle dropping of classical and we had American graffiti with its jukebox scoring that really made it

feel like the classical orchestral score was dead. And Stephen Spielberg was someone that really appreciated the orchestral score and that's why he sought out John Williams. And so for their first collaboration to really break that type and lean more into that new Hollywood naturalist score, I think is really fascinating. I just want to shout out two titles, if I could jump in there quickly, two titles that I think maybe were had more of an influence than any others in moving Hollywood away from our orchestral scores and towards jukebox scores, the graduate and easy rider, both come out in 1969.

And I think those really set the stage for, like you said, the new Hollywood sound, moving away from the symphonic sound and towards like, let's just run a mixtape of cool pop songs. Yeah, and I think it's also really interesting that American graffiti is another big one that comes to mind immediately for people. And of course, that is George Lucas, whose collaboration with John Williams is one of the biggest and most well-known orchestral scores of all time for Star Wars. The second collaboration between Williams and Spielberg was Jaws, which is an orchestral score. And but there's it it's very modern there's it's not like leaning into those like sweeping epic um orchestral themes it's like jaws has a clear theme and it's used to great effect but it is like a lot more

modern feeling of a score than you know when william's next moves on to work with with lucas for Star Wars, that is like the epitome of this orchestral classic theme. And so yeah, I, I really thought that this, this collaboration, this, the way that John Williams almost single-handedly was able to reestablish this classic orchestral feel when, you know, there was such a powerful movement within New Hollywood that was moving away from it. Modern Taste was moving away from it. And, you know, we see that influence on the relationship, the early relationship between Spielberg and Williams and the way that he was able to kind of pivot things back to the more classical orchestral sound, I thought was really interesting, especially like Williams is someone that

came up through, through jazz. So he's not someone that is necessarily like a, has a classical upbringing, but he was able to kind of adapt, but then also. take those classical notes and, you know, basically rebirth the idea of the modern film score. Yeah. So John Williams is, how many nominations does he have? Do you guys know? I think he's the leader among living people for nominations. If I'm not mistaken, I think Walt Disney is the leader all time, including dead people.

And I think John Williams is the leader among living people. it's a high number. I'm going to, I don't know what it is, but let me take a stab at it. Maybe I'd go 40. Sean, is that too high?

Price is right rules? He has 54 nominations and five wins, which is, what was this crazy? What was his first win? The hit rate's kind of low, though, actually. The hit rate is very low, which is interesting.

Oh, I had his first, his first nomination was, for Valley of the Dolls in 1960. And the first win was for, any guesses? I can give you the year if you need a hint. I'm wondering, is it pre-Star Wars or post-Star Wars? Give me a year, yeah.

1971. Oh, wow, I've no idea. Is that Sugar Land Express? It is not. Sugar Land Express is 70. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. It was for Fiddler on the roof.

It was an adapted score. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, so he used the mournful Jewish violin a couple times. Yeah. Which I will say the Schindler's list score is good. I do think it is a good score. Yeah, it is a good score.

I think that it does some interesting things. I rewatch Schindler's list in preparation for this. Actually, I watched it for the first time. I had never seen it before if you can believe that. but I thought it was interesting that the score does not come in until like 20 minutes into the film. And it is used very sparingly. Like I was surprised at house like reserved it is in terms of using it. But it makes it really effective when it is used.

So I think that it is a really great score. I think the violin part is iconic, not as iconic as like the score for Jurassic Park or Home Alone. or Indiana Jones or close encounters of the third kind or Star Wars or Jaws or we can keep naming John Williams films that it is not as iconic as but it is like it is very very powerful I think it is a good score I'm not going to say it's a bad winner I think there are more inspired there is a more inspired pick that is nominated and I think the final thing I kind of wanted to talk about with regards to this year is there is another omission within the nominees

that I was surprised wasn't nominated when talking about this year. Any guesses as to what I'm kind of painting at? 93, right? Yeah. Is it the piano? Because the piano was a big player for a movie with a musical instrument in the name. I'm surprised not to see it. Yeah. Yeah, and the whole like stick of that film is that she expresses herself through the piano. Like that's like she doesn't talk and that's how she chooses to express herself. And so the fact that they did not honor that film is like is pretty surprising for me at least. I've never seen it. Does she express herself with original music or is she kind of playing the hits?

I don't know. It's Michael, Michael Neiman, who's, I don't think he's ever been nominated, but he does, he has like. Well, yeah, he did the 40% of the Ravenous score. Oh, okay. Okay. But yeah, I have never seen those. From his own admission. Okay.

I read the wiki recently. Okay, okay. yeah so that's that's all i wanted to kind of talk about for for that year nice um all right i'll take up the baton i wanted to go a little bit further back to a period in oscar's history that i find pretty interesting the 34th academy awards so we're talking 1962 is when the ceremony was held for the films of 1961 i like this year i like this period because it's a neat time. You see, especially when you look at the variety of the nominees, how Hollywood is kind of starting to make steps towards something a little more modern and freer and looser.

The blacklist is kind of starting to thaw at this period. So a lot of the people who have, who were forced out of jobs by the House on American Activities Committee during the witch hunt, the communist witch hunt period. Some of them are starting to find work again. the production code, which had essentially been more or less heavily censoring movies throughout the 40s and the 50s, was starting to weaken its grasp on the industry. So you start to see more variety of perspectives and more subject matter being treated than you did through most of the 50s when there was kind of a more limited range of what you could see in a holiday movies just because of basically those twin conservative forces of the blacklist and the production code,

we're still very far away from getting to like the breakdown of the studio system and the production code and the new Hollywood. But when you look at the movies that are nominated for, especially for Best Picture, but all over the awards for the 1962 ceremony, it's a pretty interesting list that shows how there was like a lot of a lot of interesting producer directors doing some pretty uh some pretty challenging and interesting material at the time so the movie that was expected to win best picture that had 11 nominations was judgment at nurenberg stanley kramer's movie about the uh the american led effort to to to put some nazi judges on trial in the aftermath of world war two which is an awesome movie have you guys seen the judgment

of nurenberg yeah you know yes yeah no i haven't uh you got you got to get it on that's That's a really good movie. Do not see Nuremberg from last year, though. That's a skip. In addition to I feel like I'm to sports arena this episode. It's just every time doesn't break in action. So in addition to judgment of Nuremberg,

the best picture race also included the Guns of Navarone Fanny and The Hustler which is another classic from that period as well as Westside Story and so yeah

there's some interesting pretty gritty dramas going on there and if you look elsewhere in the movies and the people that were nominated Federico Felini was up for best director that year for La Dolce Vita despite the fact that La Dola Vita despite the fact that La Dola Vita was actually not nominated for Best

foreign language film. So it kind of shows how it feels like the personal celebrity of Felini is outstripping the actual movies. But it's cool that they've got Felini there for Best Director that they're looking outside of Hollywood for that. More Italian influence, Sophia Loren would surprisingly win the best actress

for Victorio de Sica's two women becoming the first woman to win best actress for a non-English language performance. And if you're wondering who did win best foreign language film it was Ingmar Bergman for Through a Glass Darkly. Oh, sick.

Yeah. So there's some interesting, some interesting stuff there. Maximilian Schnell would win best actor for Judge Bennett Nuremberg. He is, I think he's Swiss German or maybe Austrian. I think he's Austrian, actually.

But anyways, Best Actor and Best Actress are both non-American performers this year. So you're seeing a bit of kind of a broadening of horizons. There's a lot of potential in this moment. it feels like for Hollywood to take inspiration from Europe, from international film, and to seize the opportunity of loosening censorship to explore more topics. And they do to a certain extent.

And yet the film that wins best picture that year is West Side Story, which I'm not anti-West Side Story by any means. It's a pretty fine movie with good choreography and editing and all that. But it also set the tone for musicals, adaptations of stage musicals, winning Oscars every other year, almost every year throughout the 1960s, which was a little dispiriting just because it was a symptom of Hollywood showing that what they want to celebrate, what they want to double down on is the big spectacle films, which they had been cranking out as a way to try to challenge television as America's favorite pastime. and putting all their resources into sword and sandal spectacles often, but especially those big musicals, things like the sound of music and stuff, that really sucked up a lot of the available funds in Hollywood and maybe took some of the wind out of the sales of some of the more challenging dramas that were starting to burble up being made by filmmakers like Stanley Kramer and John Sturges.

and the snitch, Elyacazan, and, uh, and, um, Otto Preminger, you know, guys like that, who, who were like a kind of at a peak of activity around when we get to 1961. So if we took our attention to the music here, this was a period when we do have the, the split still in effect as there was for the, the majority of, um, uh, of the history of this award. So they, they're called it best music in brackets, music score. dramatic or comedy picture on one hand in best music and bracket scoring of a musical picture on the other hand this year that's how they called it so when we look at music score for a dramatic or comedy picture our nominees are henry mancini for breakfast at tiffany mclos rosa for

el cid uh that is a very kind of classic romantic hollywood score micklish rosa a few years earlier had done the score for ben-hur which i know a lot of people hold up as kind of the the most iconic example of the classic Hollywood epic score. Rocha was a very, very active and big figure in doing those kind of big romantic scores for many years. Fanny, score by Morse Stoloff and Harry Suckman, Guns of Navarro, scored by the Russian Dmitri Tiomkin, also of Rocha's generation, somebody who'd been active for a very long time. In Summer and Smoke, score by Elmore Bernstein, another veteran who'd been around for a very long time. Not to be confused with Leonard Bernstein,

though they were friends. And apparently their friends refer to him as Bernstein, East and Bernstein West to differentiate them. And nominated in Craig's year as well. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. For Age of Innocence.

There you go. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Age of Innocent instead of won. Honestly, that movie is so fucking good. So out of those movies, the one that wins is maybe not the most surprising, something that feels very 1961.

It does go to Henry Mancini for breakfast at Tiffany's. Henry Mancini's music was very of the moment at the time. He had been kind of a jazz standards guy a decade earlier, but had kind of reemerged during those kinds of. a very modernist, easy listening sort of music. A couple of years later, he would do the Pink Panther music, which like his score for Breakfast of Tiffany's really entered the public consciousness in a big way. It's a huge year for breakfast activities. The best music song category went to Moon River, which he wrote for the film.

The Moon River also won Best Album and, sorry, best record and best song at the Grammys that same year. So it was a moon river sweep for Harry Mancini that year. And Mancini's music, especially in Breakfast at Tiffany, which is often just kind of reprises of the moon river theme over and over again, does have that quality that feels very like early 60s. American modernism, very crisp, clean, confident, optimistic, very kind of like three martini lunch music. and it's good. It's nice. It's fun stuff. But it feels like a very kind of speaking to the vibe that the kind of classy bourgeois we're trying to go for at that period. And to have it beat out, especially Miklis Rocha's score for El Cid does show a little bit of maybe a changing in preference away from kind of Vagnarian romanticism and Bombay. and towards something a little more jazz inflected and modernist. So speaking of jazz inflection, I would like to move over to the race that I find even more interesting, which is the best music scoring of a musical picture.

Because there we've got a really interesting smattering of scores. West Side Stories music is nominated. That was Bernstein sort of a Sondheim musical, but the music for the film is credited to Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sit Raymond, and Erwin Castile. Also, Babes in Toyland, which is a Disney movie. Music by George Bruns is there. Flower Drum Song, there's Alfred Newman returning. That is a, as a Rogers and Hammerstein musical that has been adapted there. I'm rounding out the best music score of a musical picture category. We also have Covenchina by Demetri Shostakovich and Paris Blues,

by Duke Ellington. So there's a couple pretty interesting mid-century inclusions there. The inclusion of Covenchino, which is a Soviet musical, is really interesting to me, and I'm honestly slightly baffled

by its inclusion, just because I can't find much of a record of their being like an important American release of that film. This is a this is a Russian ballet from the 19th century that had a new adaptation.

with music by Shostakovich, who was a big Soviet composer at the time, who had a contentious relationship with the Soviet Union over the years. And I can't find a single, a contemporary review of an American screening of Kovinschina, but it must have screened on some American in some American theaters to end up in the Oscars, that it's very rare to see a Soviet film get an Oscar mention here. This is, even like the cranes are flying, which a few years earlier did actually get a number of screenings in America and was fairly well screened, did not get a nomination for Best Foreign Film or anything.

The first nomination for Best Foreign Film for a Soviet film would come in, I think, in 1967 for Surly Bonnerchuk's War and Peace. So to have Soviet art be noted in this way, even if it is just a nomination and A category, it feels pretty interesting. Like, it's not that Americans were unaware of Soviet art at the time. Like, there's definitely a lot of celebration for things like Boris Pastornex, Dr. Chevalgo, and Schulzenitzen. but those were also dissident writers whose work was actually being pushed by the CIA as well in America.

So to have Shostakovich, who had a testy relationship with the Soviet Union, but by no means was a dissident, to have his work on this Soviet ballet be apparently organically included based on some people's enthusiasms into the nominations does show an interesting kind of, again, broadening of horizons

among the people who are voting on these things. And then after that we have Paris Blues. So Paris Blues is a pretty neat film with a film with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier that came out that year. Not very well remembered today, but it's, um, uh, it was an interesting movie about, uh, jazz musicians in Paris at the time. And, um, in some ways, it's, it's, it's very kind of challenging and modern.

It has, you know, storylines about, uh, about drug addiction, uh, the, the, uh, the, The romantic lead is an unmarried woman who has children. You know, things that just thought 10, even five years earlier would be basically unthinkable in a Hollywood that was more bogged down by the production code's censorship. Though, at the other hand, it is a movie that had to back off some subject matter. It was originally written for Sidney Poitia's character to have a relationship with a white woman and the producers got cold feet and ended up forcing them to change that storyline. but one thing that's interesting about about that movie is that we have a score by Duke Ellington and this becomes really the first fully like the first full musical score by a black jazz musician to get into the to get into the nominations I believe Duke Ellington also did a score for

for anatomy of her murder for Otto Preminger a couple years ago which did not make the nominations which was also something very different. Obviously, it's not weird to have jazz music in movies by 1961. Jazz music has been in movies since the very start, literally, the first doc is called the jazz singer. But to have a extra diagetic score, not like just a scene where they're going to jazz club or whatever, but an actual extra diagetic score completely written by a black jazz musician was something that was only starting to happen in like the late 50s, early 60s, in the wake of Ellington doing anatomy of a murder and also Charles Mingus doing elevator to the gallows. That was in France in 57, but still was an

influential movie in America as well. So we have this kind of fun window into the modernism that would have been experienced by an American bourgeois at the time. And it's a little more kind of interesting and varied than you might think it would be that that this person might be listening to both Duke Ellington and Dimitri Shostakovich, as well as a number of kind of tacky musicals, I guess, too. But the variety of nominees here is pretty interesting to me, though the winner, unsurprisingly, was again, West Side Story. It ended up being a West Side Story sweep at the Oscars that year. Out of 11 nominations, West Side Story 1-10, so it won all. It won all. almost all its nominations and really cleaned up.

So for all the variety of films and composers and actors and directors that we had in this really interesting year, the Academy did again and again punch their ticket for the adaptation of a stage musical. And that did kind of point the direction that Hollywood would take over the rest of the decade, at least in terms of the people holding most of the big purse strings. You know what, Craig, if you don't mind, can we just circle back to your subject again? because I just have the Wikipedia page open for your year. And I realize you didn't touch on,

I know it's not technically the category we're doing, but best original song is right there. And you didn't even look at it. I didn't even look at it. Oh, okay. Well, it's not going to tell me about it. Well, we've got two songs from Philadelphia, one by Bruce Springsteen and one by Neil Young.

I do not know there's a Neil Young song in Philadelphia. It's not bad. It's a little bit Neil Young, strange, but it has a nice piano melody. Nice. There's a Janet Jackson song from Poettington. justice. It's kind of fun. It's not her best work.

No, I've never seen poetic justice, actually. Either have I. Apparently, it's girls in the hood. Sounds good to me. Yeah. And the song from Beethoven's second, the sequel to the movie about the big dog. Okay, that's why you made that joke before we started rolling, Sean. I was like, okay. Yeah. That song also is schmaltzy garbage.

James Ingramman. got his smooth music I'm not shocked by that. Awakening Smile is okay, except it's the Harry Conic Jr. performance, which is like terminally dorky. Yeah.

I think the Springsteen win for that one is a little weak. It's like, I don't, that's not a Springsteen song. I'm throwing on. Yeah. I mean, Philadelphia was a big movie that year too.

And Springsteen was very huge at that time. So it just feels like it makes sense to me. More so. than like the song from Beethoven's second. Yeah. I think Dolly Parton was the other, it's like a duet ballad. Oh, Dolly Parton's in that song? I think it's her and James Ingram performing it.

Yeah. It's like your classic late 80s, early 90s bullshit, shmaltz duet. It's everything you think it's going to be. All right. All right. Yeah. Interesting.

In my year, there were three songs from the line. one of those songs is sung by the actress who stars in the film and then another three of those are films that have Tom Hanks and then the last one has a talking dog in it does but it does have Charles Grotin. Does Beethoven not talk in the movie? So I guess he does he does. Does he talk? I don't know. Let us know in the comments. It's the only way we're going to know.

Maybe they like did the airbud route. and like he didn't start talking, but later on, they ran out of ideas. Does Airbud talk in the later ones? In the Air Buddies movies, the sequel is based on a group of puppies,

they talk. Oh, that's crazy. A little bit used to like that's crazier than a dog playing basketball. That's true. Several degrees crazier, yeah. I actually revisited Airbud,

by the way. Okay, no, yours is more important. This was not, really. I found a little Easter egg in the original songs from Dylan, from your year, year there's a Frank Sinatra performance of a song called Pocket Full of Miracles. And there is a melodic phrase in Pocketful of Miracles that is almost note for note the same as a melodic phrase from a winner of my year, Can You Feel the Love Tonight? They resolve to a different note. I think it's

about a semi-tone apart, but have fun finding that phrase. Okay. I'll get it right. on it, Sean. Let us know in the comments when you found it. I've never seen a pocketful of miracles, but I'm really intrigued by this. Is it a musical? I know it's a Frank Capra movie. I know nothing about it.

I just heard the song like yesterday for the first time. No, it's not actually a musical. Okay. All right. I mean, it has it also an Oscar nomination for Peter Falk in that movie. And it just doesn't, Peter Fox's early career compared to his later career is a very fun contrast to me. This is not at all related to score, but my aunt is from Germany, and she was talking about TV in Germany when she was a kid.

And they dubbed Peter Fox's voice in Colombo. And that seems like an awful crime to me, but I really badly want to see German Colombo. Yeah. I mean, why would they not dub him? It's on German TV. subtitles. You need Peter Fogg's voice. It's television. You always dub it on television. They should have just had Peter Fopp dub it himself, like just given phonetical German and have him read it up. It's true. I didn't actually really talk about the songs my year, but quickly, no, I did actually. I said that Moon River won the songs and that's basically all you need to say. Yeah.

Though there was actually two Henry Mancini songs that were nominated. The other is for Bachelor in Parish. Yeah, it sounds exactly like you think it does. It's like an Austin Powers kind of song. Oh, yeah. Nice. All right. Do we have any other thoughts on the subject of Best Original Score while we're at it? I don't think so. Oh, Moonlight should be La La Land. That's it. Yeah. What do we think is going to win this year? Do we think it's going to be another hand Zimmer win? Is there a Ludwig Gorinson movie out this year?

Yeah, right. He must be doing one of them. Did Johnny music do Disclosure Day? Yeah, there is one. I can't remember. Or did he do the Odyssey? Who did The Odyssey? Is that going to be Gorinson or is that going to be?

Oh, yeah. I think that is, that is him. Oh, yes. If Gorinson does the Odyssey, that's like a clear front runner. Yeah. What are his wins? Sinners, Oppenheimer and something else? He's won like three of the last four years, I think.

Yeah. What's the other movie he got in that year? Did he do Dune? Or was that Hans Zimmer? I don't know. Did he get it? No? Let us know in the comments. Yeah.

It might be for... Yeah. He's almost there. Was it for Black Panther, too? Oh, yeah, it was probably one of the Black Panthers. You know what? I actually really liked the music in Black Panther, too. There's some weird shit in there. That was pretty cool. The best part of the movie. That movie sucks, but I liked his music. Gordon's good.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't dislike him at all. I do think that he was... I don't like his music in Citters. I think that was... I don't like his music in Citters. I think that was a bad, a bad choice, personally. I just thought of my favorite capsule review of sinners I saw. Somebody wrote, like, oh, a celebration of black culture is ruined when a creepy white musician shows up. But enough about Libby Gorenson. Maudly funny.

Yeah, one of the weirder wins for me. But that was, but I get it. I get it. It's a music movie. All right, let's stop rambling here. So any final thoughts on anything we've talked about this here tonight before you kick yourself for not thinking about it when we log off in a few minutes. There was one anecdote about John Williams and Spielberg that I forgot to mention while I was talking about it. But I thought it was kind of cute.

I watched music by John Williams, which is the documentary that came out, I think in 2024 about John Williams. And there is a scene where Spielberg and Williams are doing a Q&A. And they tell the story about how when Steven Spielberg approached John Williams to do the score for this film, he showed him the film without music. and then John Williams went and did a lap of the studio and came back and he says, Stephen, you need a much better composer than me, this film. And Spielberg says, I know, but they're all dead.

So I just thought it was like, it was really cute. Is that for Sugar Land Express or are we talking about a different movie? For Schindler's List. Oh, for Schindler's List. Okay, okay. Yeah. Makes more sense. The dynamic between them in this documentary was like, it was pretty cute.

And like in terms of being like a collaborative duo that conjure up from the past like 50 years, Williams and Spilberg, I just like getting that insight into their kind of dynamic. And there's more little quips like that where they're doing an interview with Williams. and he's at his piano and playing while talking. And he's playing something and Spielberg comes in and like crashes the interview. And he says something like, oh, it sounds like a wedding march. And William says, oh, we were married a long time ago. I don't know. I just like kind of like that dynamic of these two that are just like so comfortable

and their collaborative and like personal lives that they have this kind of banter that and charisma that comes across on camera. So just cool. Yeah. I don't recommend the documentary. It's kind of boring, actually. I'm just that scene. I might be half remembering this, but I remember an anecdote about the making of Jaws where

when John Williams sat down Spielberg for the first time and played his two-note theme for the first time. And it was like, this is going to be the theme. I'm going to build it around. And Spielberg was like, I just thought it would be something a little more sophisticated. And John Williams said, well, if you wanted a more sophisticated, skated score, you should have made a more sophisticated movie. It's just one of those days! That's like a Pauline K.L. line.

Yeah. She might have, you know, it might come from her and she might have just made it up. That sounds obvious. Very likely now that I say it out loud. All right. Well, guys, it's been fun. Hopefully we can come back together and do another one of these at some point. in the future.

Yeah. So we'll be back at some point in the coming days with more coverage of everything going on an award season and maybe a bit more of Hollywood history over the years. And we'll get your reactions on the summer movies once they start trickling out and once we're able to see them. Craig, any final words for audience? No, that's it for me. Nice.

Bye. Short and sweet. I'm Dylan Ferguson. You can find me on Substack writing about movies very occasionally. Sean, thanks for being with us tonight. Yeah, thanks for having me and letting me ramble about a bunch of bullshit. I always like it. Rambling about bullshit is what we're here for.

It's the name of the podcast, I think. I've never checked. All right, guys, have a good night. We'll see you next time on Oscars Outsider.