Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1976

The Contenders:

All the President’s Men (winner)
Bound for Glory
Fellini’s Casanova
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Voyage of the Damned

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1976

The Contenders:
All the President’s Men
Bound for Glory
Network
Rocky (winner)
Taxi Driver

Mermaid Avenue

Film: Bound for Glory
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

When you think of innovation in film, particularly technical innovations, movies like The Matrix spring to mind. The 1976 biopic Bound for Glory about the life of Woody Guthrie isn’t necessarily one that comes trippingly off the tongue. Be that as it man, Bound for Glory is the first film to use a steadicam. So, like it or not, this is a film that changed the way films are made, and it’s no mistake that it won an Oscar for cinematography.

It’s also an interesting film for its star, David Carradine, who hadn’t had any parts of note outside of Kung Fu and Death Race 2000 before this film. I’m guessing it would have been extremely easy to write off Carradine as someone incapable of a serious film in 1976. And yet here he is, playing Woody Guthrie and doing a far more than serviceable job of it.