400 Screens, 400 Blows - How Rourke Wrestled Milk and Lost
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.
The Oscars are history now and soon people won't even be able to remember the winners. But I keep thinking about that Best Actor race that came down to a near-draw between Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler (291 screens) and Sean Penn for Milk (111 screens). My group, the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, simply called it a tie. We agreed that both men gave the performance of their lifetimes. Other critics groups and other year-end awards also split between them; there was no clear consensus. For my annual predictions, I went with my gut on this one: I got the vague impression that, just from the cultural temperature, people were really into Rourke. But Penn won. And now that it's over -- with some hindsight -- it makes perfect sense. The Oscars didn't want to ruin The Wrestler for us.
The Wrestler is just a couple of months old now, but it has already gained a certain type of following. It has actual fans; people love this movie rather than just admire it. Milk has become a good movie for students to watch in school, but The Wrestler is a film that they will choose to watch, in their free time. It's a cult film now. And cult films don't win Oscars. It automatically disqualifies them from cult status. A cult film is something that people discover on their own. If the Academy acknowledges it, then it has been plucked away and turned into something official. It has a stamp of approval, and cult films are all about not being approved.
You can bet that Citizen Kane wouldn't always poll as the best movie of all time if it had actually won Best Picture in 1941. (The actual winner, How Green Was My Valley, is a good film, but it doesn't get nearly the same kind of love.) Think about films like Showgirls (1995), The Big Lebowski (1998), Fight Club (1999), Donnie Darko (2001), Memento (2001) or Brick (2006). Together those six beloved cult films earned a total of three Oscar nominations, and all lost. (Fight Club for Sound Effects Editing, and Memento for Screenplay and Editing.) Part of the fun of enjoying these films on a cult level is the idea of coming to their rescue, pulling them from obscurity and planting our own flag on them.
Additionally, I seriously believe that part of Martin Scorsese's enduring, loyal following from 1972 all the way through 2006 came from the fact that he never won an Oscar, and thus was never officially accepted. (Just look at his Oscar-winner colleagues like Coppola, Schaffner or Avildsen.) Now Rourke is riding on this cult success. Now that he has become our actor and not their actor, we will demand -- and get to see -- him in lots more films. I imagine the odds are only about 50-50 he will ever be nominated again, but won't it be fun to see him going nuts in two, three or even four movies a year? But better still, just imagine if Penn had lost. He'd probably go back to making more angry, message-laden films, hoping for more nominations. But now that he's got two Oscars, he has stopped, smiled and taken a role as Larry Fine in the upcoming Three Stooges movie! That alone will be worth his Oscar victory.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
Shelf Life: Fight Club_thumbnail.jpg)
Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
_thumbnail.jpg)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-26-2009 @ 9:38PM
Lane said...
Interesting, I like your theory here. It promotes a more nuanced appreciation of film than year end of or top 100 lists. And the popularity of the films you cite support this appreciation.
Reply
3-26-2009 @ 9:35PM
cynthia said...
Rourke was robbed blind. The reason MLK won was strictly political. Yeah, Penn's performance was good, but it was not great and even in the sex scenes he was uncomfortable at best. The movie was a piece of Hollyweird political agenda, period, and guess what, the rest of the planet is not Hollyweird and could give a toss about a gay rights film. The Wrestler was an incredible piece of film making, and you are abosolutely wrong about Rourke standing a 50/50 chance of an Oscar. The man is a fighter and he was robbed last year, and he will be back in the right vehicle and at the right time, and they will not be able to ignore him. He is our actor, an everyman, who besides whatever mistakes he made will demand the attention of the academy over and over again, and his acting in The Wrestler, put Penn's performance to shame. Penn said it best, "commies and homo loving people" voted for him. Period. It was not about the best performance.
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 6:54AM
Joy said...
BRAVO!!!!!!!!!! You said it in a great way. I agree with you total. Mickey is the BEST! The BEST SINCE BRANDO.............
3-26-2009 @ 9:46PM
Marty said...
I tipped Sean Penn in my Oscar tips for the following reasons:
1. Proposition 8 - Hollywood was incensed at the passing of Prop 8 banning gay marriages so the voted for Penn to highlight the injustice of it all, especially given the fact that harvey Milk was a champion for equal gay rights.
2. Mickey Rourke started to abuse the privilege of the Oscar nomination by flouting around town boasting about having a wrestling match with WWE wrestlers. The Oscar is sacrosanct and the Academy does not take too kindly to those that abuse the honour.
3. Mickey Rourke is a Bush-supporter and has been quite open about it in interviews. This is a no-no in the liberal fantasy land of Hollywood.
Reply
3-26-2009 @ 10:32PM
irishgrl said...
Unfortunately your "cult films dont get oscars" theory doesnt hold water. Brokeback Mountain anyone?
Ive noticed a very disappointing trend in what receives the "stamp of approval" lately, be it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Madonna a ROCK star? puh LEEZ!) or Sports Hall of Fame induction (Barry Bonds should be YANKED), so Im not at all surprised at the snub by the Hollywood Hoi Polloi. Yes, Hollywood is a hotbed of Liberal leanings, but so am I. Thats not my issue. MY issue is that these decision makers are so out of touch with reality that they choose to make a political statement rather than honor true talent, which is what the Oscars are supposed to be about.
Sean Penn, to his credit, slipped in the heartfelt declaration that should have been acknowledged (and wasnt) by the Academy. No matter, I have not a doubt in my mind that Mickey Rourke's Wrestler will stand in years to come alongside Brando's Wild Ones or Orson Welle's Citizen Kane, or Jame's Dean's Rebel without a Cause. Milk, in spite of its vainglorious statue will gather dust on the movie rental shelves.
Nuff Said.
Reply
3-26-2009 @ 11:00PM
Andy said...
I think you said it best in the very first sentence:
"The Oscars are history now and soon people won't even be able to remember the winners."
You're right, I saw 'Milk', I enjoyed 'Milk', I learned something. I'm done with it.
But 'The Wrestler' haunted me for a couple of weeks. I just couldn't get it out of my head. I will watch it again in years to come. And it goes down as my scrappy movie that got pretty much shut out...including Bruce Springsteen's amazing theme. Maybe I like it that way.
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 9:25AM
ML said...
I appreciate your remarks, but ...
So you're saying that Casablanca ISN'T a movie that people watch over and over on their own and ISN'T one of the most beloved movies of all time? Or am I mistaken and it actually isn't a Best Picture winner? Or perhaps you're saying it would be even more beloved had it not won best picture? Or is it the exception that proves the rule?
... just sayin'
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 12:51PM
Glemaud said...
Jeffrey isn't saying that all Oscar winners are horrible and don't deserve any love, what he's saying is it has a cult following. Think about say Eraserhead. The people that LOVE Eraserhead can tell you why they love it, and really couldn't care less if it won an Oscar, as for Casablanca, there are plenty of people who only know about Casablanca because it won the Oscar.
There's a difference in discovering a film on your own and learning about it through it's awards only.
3-27-2009 @ 9:59AM
Vince said...
I agree. Acting wise it might have been a tie, but The Wrestler is a much better movie. Not that Milk wasn't good, it was just... expected.
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 1:53PM
Branden said...
That is so true. The Academy doesn't know a good movie if it bit them on the ass. I'm glad the viewing public decide what is a good movie and what is an Oscar-baity movie.
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 12:01PM
Rob said...
Some of you sound really homophobic, but that's neither here nor there.
Sean Penn won for Milk because it was a brilliant performance, but a performance nonetheless. People know enough about Sean Penn to be knocked over the head at every scene with the fact that Sean Penn was nowhere to be found in that movie. He was totally the character.
The acting in The Wrestler was far too naturalistic to really be recognized by the academy, which really prefers showier performances. Also, Rourke was handicapped by the fact that there was a lot of ink spilled about how closely the film resembles his life story, and there could've been a sense that Rourke wasn't really "acting" with a capital A.
I'm also not really convinced that Wrestler was better than Milk, but I can certainly see why it appeals to the average joe contingent more than Milk (which I found really moving).
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 2:29PM
Shelley said...
The Oscars have no credibility as far as I'm concerned. It's so pathetic to use awards to make political statements.
Mickey Rourke was robbed! He was phenomenal in the Wrestler, I thought he did a much better job than Sean Penn did in Milk.
I enjoyed both, but the acting overall in the Wrestler was much better.
And no, that doesn't make me homophobic, like so many people imply.
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 3:36PM
Kumar said...
I'm sorry, did you just cite "Showgirls" as evidence that Academy overlooks cultish, deserving films, but rewards blow-hardy political diatribes? Seriously? "Showgirls"?
I do not deny that it has a cult following. But the last time I perused the "cult" section of my local video store I saw a lot of C-R-A-P crap. So I fail to understand the correlation you're drawing between cult status, Academy recognition, long-term popularity, and genuine quality film making.
And doesn't fact that the Academy even nominated some cult films at all place on them the aura of respectability? Wouldn't it have been better (from a cult standpoint) if the Academy had failed to even nominate them in the first place?
I mean, if your point is that upon reflection you feel Rourke's was the better performance, and "The Wrestler" the better overall movie, just say so! But be kind to your readers and cite some, you know, evidence from the respective movies that demonstrates what you're talking about.
Otherwise how do we know that your own opinion wasn't moved in Rourke's direction solely BECAUSE he lost? And that if he'd won you'd be writing this exact article with Rourke and Penn's names transposed?
Reply
3-27-2009 @ 5:25PM
Jim said...
Excellent post Kumar. Couldn't have said it better.
I would like to add that people really should, in general, research things before writing or responding. For example, I see that a fan of The Wrestler believes that the Academy is out of touch with reality and the American public specifically. How then, do they explain the fact that Milk out sold The Wrestler at the box office - $31 million for the former, $25 million for the latter. Surely that difference wasn't due solely to the Academy members seeing Milk over and over, unless they're paying a hefty premium for their tickets. No - obviously more people went to see Milk. If they were out of touch with reality, Milk would have made less money than The Wrestler. Oh, and while yes, Milk was released in more theaters, it was only a tiny difference between the two of them (106).
Reply