Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1981

The Contenders:

Paul Newman: Absence of Malice
Dudley Moore: Arthur
Burt Lancaster: Atlantic City
Henry Fonda: On Golden Pond (winner)
Warren Beatty: Reds

Best Original Screenplay 1981

The Contenders:

Absence of Malice
Arthur
Atlantic City
Chariots of Fire (winner)
Reds

Stop the Presses!

Film: Absence of Malice
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

My wife and I met when we both worked on a college newspaper together. After college and for a bit after we were married, Sue was an editor for a small town newspaper. During those years, she wanted to watch any movie that involved or was about newspaper reporters. We watched a lot of them, including Absence of Malice. Sue also doesn’t tend to remember movies that well, so when this showed up in the mail, I reminded her that we’d seen this together years ago. She didn’t remember, not that I was surprised. She hasn’t worked for a newspaper in a couple of decades, so she doesn’t have the same fondness for reporter-based films anymore.

Absence of Malice is gets into the moral issues of news reporting in a way much deeper than most films of a similar bent. The movie asks the question of how far someone should go for a story and what moral responsibilities that reporter has for the people affected by that story. In a world of the 24-hour news cycle and tabloid journalism, it’s a question that doesn’t seem to be asked much anymore, and it’s one worth asking.