Let's go back to the 1992 Academy Awards, a year when the Film of the Year Awards were thrilling, but they all lost out to a "silent" film: "The Silence of the Lambs," which is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
How exciting was the 1992 Oscars? Animation gangster Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" is menacing, and it has won the best movie of the year with the posture of an animated film; "The Proud Sea" is a self-written and self-directed all-round talent Warren Beatty's work... There is also the talented Barbara Streisand's confident work "Prince of the Tides" and so on. Even if you're only starting to watch these 1991 movies now, you'll still get a lot of enjoyment.
Then, the silent Lambs won. Winning best film of the year is already the highest honor of the Oscar, but "The Silence of the Lambs" is like the killer "Buffalo Bill" in the film: "The Silence of the Lambs" also won five awards such as best director, best actor and actress, and best adapted screenplay. This means that it not only won the biggest prize, but also swallowed all the other big prizes in one go. "Pride", which had the most 10 finalists, only won 2 technical awards; "Prince of Tidal Waves", which was shortlisted for 7 awards, was completely destroyed. This is an amazing phenomenon, because, whether the content of "The Silence of the Lambs" is of good quality or not, it has the basic conditions for failure at the Oscars:
First, The Silence of the Lambs was released a year before the Oscars: it was released on Valentine's Day on February 14, 1991, while the 64th Academy Awards ceremony took place on March 30, 1992. We're all familiar with the so-called "grand prix season" that follows November every year, and if you want to squeeze into the Oscars, you can't help but fight in this autumn and winter when commercial films are resting, so that the jury members can see the movies a few weeks before voting, so that they will remember your movies vividly when they vote. And "The Silence of the Lambs" has been released for more than a year, and even the videotape has been released for a long time, and the judges should remember that this film is also within the Oscar nomination range, which is not easy.
Again, Valentine's Day was just mentioned: "The Silence of the Lambs" doesn't match the romantic schedule of Valentine's Day at all, and it's also a horror movie, a movie that will make your boyfriend scream louder than you. "The Silence of the Lambs" seems to be not suitable for couples to enter the scene, and, unlike the romantic movies that are generally starred by the male gods and goddesses, the male gods in "The Silence of the Lambs" have no muscle lines at all, and the former American sweetheart Judy Foster, in this movie, always frowns, or is frightened, and does not make people think of the word "goddess" at all. To put it simply, "The Silence of the Lambs", which does not conform to the time of day, seems to arouse the enthusiasm of the audience, let alone attract the attention of the members of the Academy of Film Arts through the good results of the box office, and then induce them to vote.
The more important reason is the "enticing" thing. Studios, along with the PR firms they hired, need to promote their films before the Oscars. This so-called publicity includes all kinds of test screenings (to make sure members have seen your movies), all kinds of parties (so that members who don't watch movies can also know your movies, and let them eat softly), and most importantly, all kinds of advertisements in the streets of Hollywood, leaflets, T-bar billboards, and cute little cards that are quietly crammed into the cracks of the door of the academy members. And these publicity tricks to ensure that your film can be seen by as many people as possible require money, manpower, and more importantly, planning and care. The infamous Harvey Weinstein, through this marketing war, made his art films become the big winners of the Oscars.
Then, "The Silence of the Lambs" did the opposite: it didn't have any publicity campaign for the Oscars. Some members who are very interested in the film think that the production of Orion Pictures, or the Colombian Samsung Pictures responsible for distribution, will prepare a luxurious marketing dinner to invite the four parties to beat "The Silence of the Lambs". As a result, these members were disappointed, "The Silence of the Lambs" is really quiet, no advertising marketing, it seems that they really bet on their minds, really think that they are the "highest quality quiet" - the wine is not afraid of the deep alley, the film does not need any publicity.
In fact, the lack of publicity may not be deliberate, the biggest problem is that "The Silence of the Lambs" has really been released for too long, for medium-sized studios such as Colombian Samsung or Orion Pictures, "The Silence of the Lambs" did not let them spend another amount of money, especially the real necessity of marketing the Oscars.
Such films are classified as entertainment films, so even if they win big at the Oscars, they will not make "The Silence of the Lambs" particularly eye-catching at the box office. Again, if the studios really wanted to push "The Silence of the Lambs" to the Oscars, they should not have released it as early as a year before the Oscars were held — the truth is that even the distributors themselves are not very optimistic about "The Silence of the Lambs".
"The Silence of the Lambs," with no time, no peace, no publicity, slaughtered other excellent finalists at the Oscars on the evening of March 30, 1992: Disney valued their latest princess movie so much that it was even convinced that Beauty and the Beast would triumph. Beauty and the Beast was the first time Disney animated film was nominated for best picture, and it was also the highest-grossing film in the United States that year, and it also won the entertainment blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day with a small margin of $3 million. Then Bell and the Beast fell to Dr. Hannibal.
The Oscars are just one example of how unpopular "The Silence of the Lambs" is, which is hard for audiences to imagine today, because "The Silence of the Lambs" has established an immortal place in film history. But in the early '90s, The Silence of the Lambs was a lackluster in Hollywood: no one thought a movie with a man-eating habit of killing people had any selling points, and worse, not many people actually read the novel written by Thomas Harris...