Vintage Sand Episode 42: Alternate Oscars - 1990's Edition

Vintage Sand

In Episode 42, Team Vintage Sand returns yet again to the source of some of our most popular episodes: Danny Peary’s hard-to-find 1993 classic "Alternative Oscars". In the past, we have used Peary’s model to approach the Best Picture Academy Awards from the 1930’s, the 1950’s, the 1970’s, the 1980’s and the 2000’s. For this episode, we hop in the Way-Back Machine and travel to one of the most interesting periods in film history: the 1990’s. As best described in Peter Biskind’s must-read book "Down and Dirty Pictures", that decade began with the promise of an honest-to-goodness revival of independent films emerging from smaller companies, most notably Miramax. It was also marked by the rise of the Sundance Festival, a time long before that event became the completely corporatized show it is now. That period, from roughly 1989-1995, witnessed the arrival of such new voices as Steven Soderbergh, Richard, Linklater, Todd Haynes, Kevin Smith, Carl Franklin, John Dall and most notably Quentin Tarantino. But that fertile era came to a crashing halt with the sale of Miramax to Disney, and the subsequent absorption of most of the smaller production companies into the studio conglomerates. As a result, things turned a bit flabby in the middle of the decade, only to return with a boom in 1999, considered by many film historians to be one of the great years in the history of the medium. Another interesting aspect of the 90’s with regards to the Oscars is that unlike in the other decades which we have examined, the Academy made an unusual number of solid choices for Best Picture, such as "The Silence of the Lambs", "Unforgiven" and "Schindler’s List". Who could argue with that? (Hint: us.) But there were plenty of head scratchers as well, such as "Dances with Wolves" over "Goodfellas", "The English Patient" over "Fargo" and perhaps most egregiously, "Forrest Gump" over "Pulp Fiction". So kick back, relax and join us as we return to a uniquely fascinating decade, and remember: you’re entering a world of pain, Smokey. A world of pain…