It was the year of David Fincher’s Se7en. It was the year of the Usual Suspects. It was the year of Nixon. And it was the year that Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 and Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility split up the early vote sending the Oscar race into a tailspin. Up until this past year, not having a Best Director nomination really meant something so when Ron Howard was shut out of the Directors category, he ended up winning the DGA award — but the scales inevitably tipped towards Braveheart. Some say it was the screeners that did it. Others say the lack of a director nod for Howard did it. Either way, the best film nominated that year was Sense and Sensibility, though Ang Lee was also shut out in the directors category.
The directors nominated that year instead were Tim Robbins for Dead Man Walking and Mike Figgis for Leaving Las Vegas. Probably the same thing happened the way it did last year: voters assumed Howard and Lee were givens so they put their votes elsewhere the way voters assumed Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow were givens.
Either way, 1995 was a great year for movies overall. Do you have any questions or comments about 1995 you’d like us to discuss on the podcast? Leave them in the comments and we’ll read them online.