More Academy Awards® headlines

Web posted March 26, 2000

Actor Kevin Spacey holds his Oscar for best actor aloft during the 72nd Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Sunday, March 26. Spacey won for his role in "American Beauty." Associated Press Photo

'American Beauty' wins five Oscars

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — When ``American Beauty'' hit theaters last fall, many were surprised when it became a box-office hit and an Oscar front-runner.

By Sunday night, though, it came as no surprise that the sobering satire of suburbia dominated the Academy Awards. In an industry whose recent top honors have mostly gone to splashy epics, ``American Beauty'' had simply built up too much critical and popular esteem to be denied.

The film won five awards: best picture, best actor for Kevin Spacey, best director for Sam Mendes, best original screenplay for Alan Ball and best cinematography for Conrad L. Hall.

Might the success of the dark yet wildly absurd ``American Beauty'' herald Hollywood's return to such thoughtful, character-driven films as ``Midnight Cowboy'' and ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' both best-picture winners?

First-time director Mendes, steeped in such films growing up, hopes so.

``The more of these sorts of movies that get made and the more they get acknowledged by the mainstream, the better,'' said Mendes, an acclaimed theater director.

Spacey, whose character undergoes a transformation after almost consummating an affair with his daughter's high-school friend, said the movie hit home with audiences because ``we got to see all of his worst qualities, and we still grew to love him.''

``We get a chance to see characters have experiences that make us feel that we're not the only ones who have those feelings,'' said Spacey. ``We sort of have a collective admission when we see characters do those things that we do.''

The best-picture win was sweet revenge for ``American Beauty'' distributor DreamWorks, the studio co-founded by Steven Spielberg, whose ``Saving Private Ryan'' lost best-picture honors last year to Disney-owned Miramax's ``Shakespeare in Love.''

Spielberg, who won for best director last year for ``Saving Private Ryan,'' presented the director's award to Mendes. It was the first best-picture win for DreamWorks, founded five years ago.

The evening was not a sweep for ``American Beauty.'' Hilary Swank, a virtual unknown, won the best actress award for another dark film, ``Boys Don't Cry,'' based on the true story of Brandon Teena, a woman who lived as a man and was killed when her true gender was uncovered.

``I consider myself someone who cares a huge amount about humanity and I think that this movie opens the door to letting people know what goes on in society and hopefully putting an end to intolerance in the future,'' Swank said.

Other top winners included Angelina Jolie for best supporting actress for her turn as a hospitalized sociopath in ``Girl, Interrupted.'' Michael Caine won his second best supporting actor award for his role as an ether-sniffing abortionist who runs an orphanage in ``The Cider House Rules.''

John Irving won for best adapted screenplay for the script of his novel ``The Cider House Rules.''

Phil Collins took the Oscar for original song for ``You'll Be in My Heart'' from ``Tarzan.'' Pedro Almodovar's ``All About My Mother'' won for foreign-language film.

The glitzy sci-fi thriller ``The Matrix'' won in all four categories for which it was nominated — visual effects, film editing, sound and sound-effects editing.

Caustic and kooky, ``American Beauty'' was a seriocomic tale of suburban lunacy that ran counter to big-picture epics such as ``Titanic,'' ``Schindler's List,'' ``Braveheart'' and ``The English Patient'' that have dominated the Oscars.

The Oscars have occasionally gone dark and disturbing in recent years. In 1991, the serial-killer flick ``The Silence of the Lambs'' was an atypical winner, while Clint Eastwood's anti-hero western ``Unforgiven'' took top honors the next year.

Shot for $15 million, ``American Beauty'' has gone on to top $108 million at the box office while playing in barely half as many theaters as many top Hollywood movies.

The movie, however, had all the quirks, tics and warts that should have relegated it to the list of critics' darlings and modest box-office successes.

Consider its characters: A middle-aged chump who lusts after his daughter's friend; a shrill wife empowered by her pistol and her farcical fling with the local real-estate king; a homophobic Marine colonel who tests his son's urine for drugs; and a teen-age video voyeur who peddles pot and philosophizes about a plastic bag dancing in the wind.

Screenwriter Ball said ``American Beauty's'' triumph taught him to ``write what moves you.''

``The lesson I've learned out of this is really follow your heart and follow your passion, and follow your guts and just sit down and write it,'' Ball said.