74th Academy Awards
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| 74th Academy Awards | |
|---|---|
| Date | Sunday, March 24, 2002 |
| Site | Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California |
| Host | Whoopi Goldberg |
| Producer | Laura Ziskin |
| Director | Louis J. Horvitz |
| Duration | 4 hours, 25 minutes |
The 74th Academy Awards ceremony was significant for a number of reasons. It saw the return of the Academy Awards celebrations to Hollywood, after more than forty years away, taking place at the brand new Kodak Theatre. The ceremony was also the longest ever Oscar show. The ceremony also saw both the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars awarded to African-American actors for the first time in Academy Award history; this, in addition to Sidney Poitier winning the Lifetime Achievement award, led some to dub the ceremony The Bloscars and the Blackademy Awards. Furthermore the tone of this show was quieted by the recent occurrence of the attacks on September 11. This was the first year where the show would not open with a large production number or celebrity arrivals sequence. The 74th Academy Awards would be the first year that the award for Best Animated Feature was presented. According to the rules, at least three animated features have to be widely released in a particular year for the award to appear on the ballot.
Entertainment during the show was provided by Cirque du Soleil. Randy Newman would finally break his curse and win the Oscar for Best Song for Monsters Inc..
Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who would later win Best Documentary at the 76th Academy Awards, made a short film that was shown during the ceremony. The film shows almost 100 people discussing movies. Those featured range from Laura Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev to Iggy Pop and Lou Reed to Kenneth Arrow (1972 Nobel Laureate in Economics) to Morris' son Hamilton.
The longetivity of the ceremony drew in its lowest ratings since 1996 with an estimated 40.8 million watching and 25.2 households watching.
John Williams served as Musical Director and despite being nominated did not win.
This was the first Oscar show to have a female, Laura Ziskin (Spiderman producer) exclusively produce the show. She produced the 2007 telecast.
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[edit] Notable Quotations
- "Forty years I've been chasing Sidney, they finally give it to me. What do they do? They give to him the same night." - Denzel Washington upon accepting his Best Actor award, commenting on Sidney Poitier's Oscars.
- "For those of you keeping track, the score is Brilliant Mathematicians -2, Hobbits-4." - Whoopi Goldberg, mid-way through the evening, commenting on the race between the two Oscar front-runners that night, A Beautiful Mind and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- "I love my life." - Julia Roberts, upon opening the Best Actor envelope and seeing the winner was friend Denzel Washington. Roberts was widely criticized for the comment, which was perceived as self-centered and an effort to make the moment "about her" rather than the winner.
[edit] The Awards
This is a breakdown of only major winners. For a complete list of nominees and winners, see: 74th Academy Awards nominees and winners.
[edit] Feature Films
| Category | Winner | Producers/Country |
|---|---|---|
| Best motion picture | A Beautiful Mind | Brian Grazer and Ron Howard |
| Best foreign language film | No Man's Land |  Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Best documentary feature | Murder on a Sunday Morning | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, and Denis Poncet |
| Best animated feature | Shrek | Aron Warner |
[edit] Directing
| Achievement in directing | Ron Howard | A Beautiful Mind |
[edit] Acting
[edit] Writing
| Category | Winner | Movie |
|---|---|---|
| Original screenplay | Written by Julian Fellowes | Gosford Park |
| Adapted screenplay | Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman | A Beautiful Mind |
[edit] Trivia
- As the Emmy Awards were postponed in 2001, and the Oscar nominations were supposed to come out just after the attacks, many wondered if the Oscars would be postponed as well. Frank Pierson, then president of the Academy stated that the Oscars would proceed as scheduled, and to postpone would mean that "the terrorists have won".
- This Oscar ceremony had several young up and coming actors and actresses to present a few of the awards. Among them included Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Hartnett, Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire.
- To mark the return of the Oscars in Hollywood, the ceremony's set design rarely used that of a scenery. Instead HD screens were used throughout the ceremony much similar to the design at the 72nd Academy Awards (that was the first time an HD set was used). The visual graphics and idents were designed by Imaginary Forces (who designed graphics for several TV shows such as Ally McBeal and movies such as Mission:Impossible) using a 1080i "gold circles" motif consisting of gold circles that panned through the screen or rotated rapidly. The "gold circles" motif was designed in order for viewers at home to able to watch the ceremony in High Definition.
[edit] Special Events
Woody Allen made his first ever appearance at this year's Oscar ceremony to present a tribute to films shot in New York City, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
There was a tribute to the popular scores for motion pictures in the past 74 years.
[edit] In Memoriam
Presented by Kevin Spacey. The Academy first takes a moment of silence to remember those Americans lost in the September 11th terrorist attacks. The audience takes its moment of silence and with that it is then to take a look at those Hollywood icons that died in the previous year: Jack Lemmon, Nigel Hawthorne, Beatrice Straight, Eileen Heckart, Jason Miller, Ann Sothern, Harold Russell, Kim Stanley, director Michael Ritchie, director Ted Demme, director Budd Boetticher, director Hiroshi Teshigihara, director Herbert Ross, producer Julia Phillips, composer Jay Livingston, producer William Hanna, animator Chuck Jones, producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, costume designer Danilo Donati, cinematographer Sacha Vierny, cinematographer John A. Alonzo, Carroll O'Connor, Aaliyah, George Harrison and Anthony Quinn.
[edit] Breakdown
4/13 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
4/8 A Beautiful Mind
2/8 Moulin Rouge!
2/4 Black Hawk Down
1/7 Gosford Park
1/4 Monsters, Inc.
1/4 Pearl Harbour
1/3 Iris
1/2 Monster's Ball
1/2 Shrek
1/2 Training Day
1/1 For the Birds
1/1 Murder on a Sunday Morning
1/1 No Man's Land
1/1 The Accountant
1/1 Thoth
