Peter O'Toole rejects Honorary Award

[Jedi Master Carr]

I read that he doesn't want it because he wants to win it outright but the Academy is saying its his, can he still reject it? And has somebody who has recieved an honorary award (who was still alive) decided not to take it?

[JonathanLB]

What a tool!

I'm writing/finishing my Lawrence of Arabia review right now, that is ironic you posted this.

[ReaperFett]

Sure he can. He just doesnt pick it up :)

And Jon, it's "WHat an O'toole" ;)


I think his point is, he doesnt want an Oscar for just being there. He wants to earn it like others. A career one maybe doesnt mean so much to him.

[Darth Viscera]

http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/strangelove/images/dr_arm.gif

Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?

[Loki Ahmrah]

What a guy. Peter O'Toole is great. :D

[CMJ]

I read about this the other day. I actually think he'll probably win the Oscar on his own next year for "The Final Curtain" because of this.

I read part of his note that he sent the Academy. It was pretty funny. :) Basically what I got out of it was something along the lines of "I'm not dead yet people...don't give me a carrer award."

:D

[Jedieb]

I have a theory about why O'Toole has never won an Oscar. I think he spent most of the 60's sleeping with every other Academy's voter's wife. He's probably brutal when he's drunk. CMJ's right, anything worthwhile he does in the next couple of years and he's bound to finally win. how many times has he been nominated? Isn't it somewhere around 8?

[ReaperFett]

I can see that argument too. His career is still going :)

[CMJ]

This for Jedieb...Peter O'Toole Oscar history:

1962 - nominated for Lawrence of Arabia - lost to Gregory Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird (Lawrence of Arabia won Best Picture)
1964 - nominated for Beckett - lost to Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady, which also won BP
1968 - nominated for The Lion in Winter, lost to Cliff Robertson for Charlie (Oliver won BP)
1969 - nominated for Goodbye Mr. Chips, lost to John Wayne for True Grit (Midnight Cowboy won BP)
1972- nominated for The Ruling Class, lost to Marlon Brando for The Godfather, which also won BP
1980- nominated for The Stunt Man, lost to Robert De Niro for Raging Bull (Ordinary People won BP)
1982- nominated for My Favorite Year ("Live?!"), lost to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi, which also won BP

[JonathanLB]

Feel free to disagree, but I think O'Toole was the rightful Best Actor for Lawrence of Arabia over Gregory Peck.

I really enjoy both films, nobody would deny that To Kill A Mockingbird is a total classic and I think Peck is really the strongest part of that film. He's great in it, but in that year, at least, O'Toole had a more impressive and epic performance, IMO, in a movie that is basically double as long. Plus, he is a more enigmatic character (Lawrence). Oh well, but my vote would have been with O'Toole.

[CMJ]

That's just one of those races either way the Academy went, people would have second guessed them. Those were 2 wonderful performances.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I think he just had a lot of bad luck look at the guys he lost to
1962 - nominated for Lawrence of Arabia - lost to Gregory Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird (Lawrence of Arabia won Best Picture) Now this one is a fair toss up he could have won but Peck did a great job, so I can see why he won.

1964 - nominated for Beckett - lost to Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady, which also won BP Harrison was great in My Fair Lady no question he deserved that one

1968 - nominated for The Lion in Winter, lost to Cliff Robertson for Charlie (Oliver won BP) Now here maybe he should have won. Robertson was great in Charlie but O'toole was terrific in Lion.

1969 - nominated for Goodbye Mr. Chips, lost to John Wayne for True Grit (Midnight Cowboy won BP) Did John Wayne ever win before that? If not they may have just gave it to him.


1972- nominated for The Ruling Class, lost to Marlon Brando for The Godfather, which also won BP Now here no question Brando deserved heck Pacino probably would have been my choice actually.

1980- nominated for The Stunt Man, lost to Robert De Niro for Raging Bull (Ordinary People won BP) Again De Niro just did the better job

1982- nominated for My Favorite Year ("Live?!"), lost to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi, which also won BP Kingsley did a great job here as well

Also I agree with him he is still alive when does this new movie of his come out, CMJ? Also he did win an emmy for Joan of Arc (he was terrific as the evil Bishop of Cauchon) so at least he has won something.

[CMJ]

"Final Curtain" is supposed to open sometime this year.

[JonathanLB]

My Lawrence of Arabia review is my 2nd longest on the site, behind the Citizen Kane one you read, CMJ.

I have added it today.

http://www.jlbmovies.com/LawrenceOfArabia.shtml

[CMJ]

I'll get right on it. :)

"Why do you love the desert?"

"Because it's clean."

[JonathanLB]

Indeed.

I have a lot of quotes in my review, though that is not one of them. Inevitably I could not quote everything, but yeah, that's a good one.

I'd say maybe my favorite is where Lawrence goes back to rescue Gasim in the Nefud, then he says, "Nothing is written." When he returns, with Gasim, he says again to Ali, "Nothing is written," before he drinks the water. Ali later says, in awe basically of Lawrence's success, "Truly for some men, nothing is written unless they write it." Great line. :)

The entire discussion about politics, the passage that Alec Guinness (Prince Fiesal) delivers is great and I quoted it all in an indented paragraph, hehe.

You don't have to read the review, CMJ, lol. It is the 2nd longest, but only half the length of the Citizen Kane review (55% actually).

I'm returning home for the weekend effective now. Got lots of movie watching to do this weekend.

I saw Scarface (1932) Wednesday night, sweet movie. I had no idea any film of that time would be so violent, haha. No way is violence a new thing to movies, bah. The picture quality sure looked good, too, I'm surprised (most prints from that era just didn't hold up all that well).

[CMJ]

"Lawrence" is such an awesome flick. I may have to rewatch it now. :D

I did like the "written" line. I LOVE the music, and the cinematography is astounding. I love Omar Shariff's entrance...breathtaking.

Actually I believe my favorite quote is something along the lines of, "Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution."

Brilliant!

[JonathanLB]

That quote you mentioned is in my review, in the indentation. It's one of the better lines in the film, and easily one of the most philosophical. I like Lawrence's quotes more for their bravada and almost cockiness, haha, and I like Alec's quotes for their philosophical nature.

"I love Omar Shariff's entrance...breathtaking."

Heck yeah, everyone has to love that. One of the best entrances in cinema history. I think that the entrance in The Third Man, for Welles, is great too because, as he observed, everyone is talking about his character for like an hour before he first appears, so there is this huge build up for when he actually does first come on screen.

[Sejah Haversh]

Man, Lawrence is such an awesome move, and I'm glad you finally saw it.

O'Toole is an awesome actor, and I wish he would have taken the award, but, I guess if he feels he doesn't want it, he doesn't need to take it. Still, looking forward to Final Curtain.

[JonathanLB]

You know, it's a darn good thing I like Lawrence of Arabia. I am just surprised that I really had not seen it until now, when I am 20 years old.

My full name, which I just sign on reviews as "Jonathan L. Bowen," is actually Jonathan Lawrence Bowen. I was literally named after Lawrence of Arabia. My parents told me that since I was like 5, but I just never saw the movie for whatever reason. How weird is that?

Lawrence is cool though :)

[Jedieb]

Lawrence was on AMC the other night. No commercial interuptions and they even included the intermission. Thank goodness for AMC! Am I the only one that got the impression that Lawrence may have been sexually abused while in the custody of the Turks?

[Jedi Master Carr]

I really don't know I have read that TE Lawerence was gay though I am not sure if that is true or not I might be confusing him with another famous solider of WWI.

[JonathanLB]

Well O'Toole was openly gay as I understand? That is what I have been told anyway. I also read that Lawrence of Arabia hints at T. E. Lawrence being gay... but I didn't pick up on that without reading about it.

AMC is a really good channel sometimes, actually, I mean at least they show some of the great movies of the past instead of like DirecTV where all you get is "The Best New Movies," i.e. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Master of Disguise, and The Banger Sisters, haha.

I dream of the day, someday, where there will be a database of several thousand movies on a station that is pay-per-view, then any number of people can select whatever movie they wish to see, pay $3 for it, $4 for it, or whatever, and then the movie will play, uninterrupted, on their TV sets without having to go to Blockbuster, rent from Netflix, or anything else. That'll be great.

I am stoked though that "The Strike" just became available the other day through NetFlix (it has been rented out) and I had it at the top of my queue, so it should arrive Thursday. It is Sergei Eisenstein's first film, before The Battleship Potemkin. I'm very curious (Russian formalist film).

[Jedi Master Carr]

O'Toole is not gay as far as I know heck Jedieb said how he slept with so many wives of famous people. Lawerence is a different story he may have been I am not certain.

[JonathanLB]

I see...

[Jedieb]

I think O'Toole may have done some "experimenting" at one time. As for Lawrence being gay, that still wouldn't lesson the impact of any abuse he may have endured at the hands of the Turks.

AMC and TMC are two great places to find old films. It's interesting because you get a chance to see many older B.O. successes that for one reason or another never caught on and became classics. Heck, many classics had underwhelming B.O. runs but found a home on TV, then later cable. We see pretty forgettable films today have decent B.O. runs (Scooby Doo anyone?). It's interesting to see what kinds of movies were hits in the 60's, 50's, and even 40's.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I am sure there were plenty of bad movies that were huge hits back in the 40-60's, Cleopatra is the first one to come to my mind. As for Lawerence sexuality, I don't think it is important at all, I could care less what he was, he was a great man who did some important things.

[JonathanLB]

Yeah there are a number of notable classics that were actually not very commercially successful, and even rarer still, there are those few gems that have somehow beat the million-to-one odds against them by overcoming both critical distaste and audience confusion/apathy to become important classics. In that class, with not many other movies there, would be Blade Runner, for instance. That's a unique situation, too, where the director's cut helped change critical and audience opinion of the film, but many filmgoes in general would rank Blade Runner in the 50 greatest films of all time. I have seen polls where it had no problem ascending to #7 or so, usually polls conducted in the U.K. (for some reason?).

The Wizard Of Oz was not profitable in its first release. It became a much bigger hit with its broadcasts on TV in the '50s and beyond.

Fantasia was somewhat of a dud on its first release, having great difficulty appealing to huge numbers of moviegoers and it was very expensive to create, too. Yet it remains one of the most important films and has literally changed the way movies were made, along with Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, which was quite popular.

I am curious to see some films that were huge hits in their era but that time/history has simply dismissed. I think those are rather interesting, how history makes a judgment retroactively about something that at the time seemed destined for years of appeal.

In any given year, you figure there are only a few films that will really survive as classics. Even most of my favorite movies each year are unlikely to be in that category. For instance, obscure movies like Simone and Equilibrium (which may achieve cult sci-fi status, I hope!), but even something like The Rookie. One wonders if that will be remembered at all in 5 years, yet it really was a great film! It wasn't awe-inspiringly fantastic, didn't make my top 10 of the year, but it was worth remembering for me.

Sometimes it only takes history several years to judge a film. Instances of that would be Pulp Fiction (1994, yet by 1996 it made the AFI top 100 list and has absolutely not lost any appeal; if anything, it is even more discussed than it was originally), perhaps Fargo (1996), and of course Schindler's List (1993), a new movie really (a decade old is VERY new in the sands of time, hehe) that has managed to become a top ten favorite for critics and film audiences largely.

Still, I do not have the vision to say what films from 2002 are going to survive similarly. Many Best Picture winners have been entirely ignored 10, 20, 30 years later and many films not even nominated for Best Picture (like about 30 on the AFI list) have managed to be huge classics. There are several films on the AFI list that received ZERO Oscar nominations. There are yet others with about 2-3 noms. Even at the time, Annie Hall was a Best Picture winner, but time has proven that Star Wars was at the very least the more significant film to world history, popular culture, and film history (I say world history because it has been used as political references by Reagan, for instance, seen in numerous other countries and influenced people to become engineers, astronaughts, computer effects wizards, etc.). Which is better is a matter for debate, but I of course vote Star Wars as did the AFI (Annie Hall is probably one of my top 10 favorite comedies; it's a great film).

It will be interesting to look back 10 or 15 years from now and rewatch some of these 1997, '98, 2002 films, etc. just to see how they rank, what lasts, what doesn't. Also, cinema history is not set in stone. It is ever changing. A movie that hasn't been remembered and seems to be unimportant for decades can actually make a return and become very important after all. There are certain "absolutes" (The Birth of A Nation is going to be remembered, The Jazz Singer, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Star Wars, etc.).

[CMJ]

Peter is gonna be there now...:D

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=794&ncid=790&e=8&u=/eo/20030213/en_movies_eo/11283

[Jedi Master Carr]

I kind of figured he would accept it, I am sure he will make some remark about it at the Oscars.