1983 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

1983 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.

I think I was one of twelve people who actually saw A Christmas Story in a theater back in 1983. But having been a fan of Jean Shepherd for years, there was no way I was going to miss it.

Rumor has it you can see A Christmas Story on cable television sometime around December 24th or 25th, but don't quote me.

By the way, in case you've never seen the 1976 PBS special Phantom of the Open Hearth, based on another of Shepherd's classic story collections Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters, here it is complete for your entertainment:



P.S. Am I the only person who sees the movie title Terms of Endearment and immediately thinks of Sterling Archer's "Terms of En-Rampagement"?

Powers Boothe: 1948-2017

The Big Sleep (1946) is my favorite Philip Marlowe movie, followed closely by The Long Goodbye (1973) and Murder My Sweet (1944), and a lot of fine actors have essayed the role — Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Elliott Gould, Dick Powell, James Garner, James Caan — but my favorite Marlowe performance, the one closest to the books for my money, was by Powers Boothe in a little-seen HBO series from the mid-1980s.

In honor of Boothe, who passed away yesterday at age 68, we here at the Monkey present an episode from that series, "The King In Yellow," based on a Raymond Chandler short story.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1983)

Does anybody else remember Jean Shepherd, the writer and radio raconteur whose short story collection In God We Trust (All Others Pay Cash) inspired the holiday classic, A Christmas Story? Believe it or not, there's a second movie based on one of Shepherd's stories floating around out there nearly as funny as that other, better known tale.

It's called Phantom of the Open Hearth and it showed up on PBS in the mid-1970s. Based on Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (And Other Disasters), it's the story of Ralphie Parker (yeah, the kid who wanted the Red Ryder BB gun), now a grown up eighteen years old preparing for the prom. He wants to invite Daphne Bigelow, the most beautiful girl in school, but winds up taking Wanda Hickey who wears thick glasses and smells vaguely of sauerkraut, but who sure is good at math! She's also willing to go with him, so she's got that going for her.

Along the way are a number of amusing episodes including the famous "leg lamp" business (a major award!) repeated in A Christmas Story, as well as two additional bits: the story of a neighbor who mail orders a do-it-yourself house from a kit (which people really used to do); and the continuing saga of the great dish giveaway at the local cinema, which turns into the gravy boat war for reasons I'll let you discover for yourself.

You can watch it right here if you want to:



Or you can just skip right over to the Katie Awards for 1983.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Right Stuff (prod. Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler)
nominees:
Must-See Drama:

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: A Christmas Story (prod. Bob Clark and René Dupont)
nominees:
Must-See Comedy/Musical:

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: El Norte (prod. Trevor Black, Bertha Navarro and Anna Thomas)
nominees:
Must-See Foreign Language:

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Al Pacino (Scarface)
nominees:

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Eddie Murphy (Trading Places)
nominees:

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Shirley MacLaine (Terms Of Endearment)
nominees:

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Julie Walters (Educating Rita)
nominees:

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff)
nominees:

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam (The Meaning of Life)
nominees:

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Sam Shepard (The Right Stuff)
nominees:

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Linda Hunt (The Year Of Living Dangerously)
nominees:

SCREENPLAY
winner: Philip Kaufman, from the book by Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff)
nominees:

The Ox Is Slow, But The Earth Is Patient

And the Monkey is even slower—the question is, how patient are you?

After a long creative break, I'm getting back to work on my Silent Oscars series. Remember that? It's a history of silent movies, one made-up award at a time Up next, either something about Cecil B. DeMille, or Mary Pickford's Stella Maris or maybe a reposting of all the previous winners, or—well, we'll find out, won't we.

By the way, the line "The ox is slow, but the earth is patient" is an ancient Buddhist proverb, made up, I believe, for the 1983 Tom Selleck movie High Road to China. A rip-snorting action-adventure rom-com about a World War I flying ace who ferries a rich, young, beautiful socialite to China to rescue her missing father, High Road to China was supposed to be Selleck's consolation prize for missing out on the starring role in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Instead, critics mostly ripped it because it was clearly inferior to the aforementioned Raiders and it flopped at the box office.

Now we know, of course, that everything is inferior to Raiders of the Lost Ark, the best rip-snorting action-adventure rom-com ever made. High Road to China ain't Raiders, but it is entertaining: Selleck is appealing as always, Bess Armstrong as the socialite is the girl-next-door you wish lived next door, and John Barry's score is gorgeous, one of the best of an Oscar-winning career that included Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa and the James Bond movies.

If you haven't seen it, don't blame yourself—the film's been tangled up in rights-litigation/bankruptcy hell for nearly thirty years and was never even released (in this country anyway) on VHS much less DVD. Until now, that is. Circle April 17 on your calendars for the release of the Blu-Ray edition. (It's available as a DVD as well.)

And what does any of this have to do with silent movies? Um, well, Tom Selleck's character, Patrick O'Malley, owns two airplanes, "Dorothy" and "Lillian," a couple of French Stampes biplanes named for—yes, you guessed it—the Gish sisters, two of the silent era's greatest stars.

Whom I have also written about (here and here and here), and will be writing about again.

So there.