Losses at Oscars

Bradley Cooper did not win an Oscar.

Even, this year. Though he’s had four Academy Award nominations so far.

But let us forget Bradley Cooper’s bad luck. What about Kevin O’Connell’s?

What? You don’t know him?

Well, this poor bloke is the "unluckiest nominee in the history of Academy Awards".

Despite 20 Oscar nominations, for sound-mixing, Kevin O’Connell never won a single Oscar.

Just imagine his expectations as he goes on to that red carpet, year after year. Imagine his heartbeats increasing when they announce the nominees for best sound mixing. And then imagine how he feels when they say, “And the Oscar goes to….” and announce one of his contenders’ names.

Yes. Imagine your work getting snubbed by the jury, twenty times, even though you worked on some of the best films ever, including those that went on to win ‘Best Picture’ Oscars.

Just look at his nominations. Terms of Endearment (1983), Top Gun (1986) A Few Good Men (1992),  Twister (1996), The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001),  Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Apocalypto (2006), and Transformers (2007). Phew!

The Academy Awards jury had always attracted criticism. It always had a reputation for leaving out not only some great technical people, but also some great actors and films.

Richard Burton, for instance, went to his grave without ever getting to hold that little statuette on stage.

In fact, his much-acclaimed, career-best performance  in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" was completely overlooked by the jury. But two of his co-stars in the same film, Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis won the Best Actress and the Best Supporting Actress awards respectively.

Burton actually received seven nominations for the Best Actor award. And never won.

Nor did Leonardo DiCaprio. Or Liam Neeson, Samuel L Jackson, Bruce Willis or Ian McKellen.

Now, take movies. When we put great ones against one another for the ‘Best Picture’ award, heartaches are imminent. Some win. Some lose.

'Citizen Kane' lost to 'How Green Was My Valley'. 'A Streetcar Named Desire' lost to 'An American in Paris'. ‘E.T.’ lost to ‘Gandhi’. "Midnight in Paris" lost to “The Artist”. An "Avatar" lost to "The Hurt Locker."  

Obviously, what people see and what the jury sees in the movies seem to be completely different.

James Cameron's "Avatar," is the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing over 2.8 billion dollars. But it had lost to "The Hurt Locker," which grossed only $49 million worldwide. Is that good judgement?

Even this year’s winner, “Birdman”, made only about $37 million in US ticket sales, but its competitor ‘American Sniper’ grossed a whopping $300 million in US ticket sales. Is that good judgement?

We don't know. The jury, we assume, considers a host of complex film production activities, in a much broader way that how you and I do.

The fact remains, therefore, that the Oscar awards will always make some people happy and some people very unhappy. But getting nominated will make everyone happy, according to Kevin O'Connell. 

Here is what he said when he received his twentieth Academy Award nomination - in 2007 for his work on “Transformers”: "If you could bottle up the way that I felt this morning when I found out I was nominated, people wouldn't buy drugs anymore because this is just the best thing on the planet."