Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1969

The Contenders:

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (winner)
The Damned
Easy Rider
The Wild Bunch

Swing(er) Your Partner

Film: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Before I delve too deeply into Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, I want to remind long-time readers and inform newer readers of just how much I hated The Big Chill. I say this because these two movies have a significant element in common. The characters here are of the sort who cannot seem to help but indulge in whatever they think is worth indulging in. In a lot of ways, this is sort of The Big Chill for the early part of the Baby Boomer generation. It’s the movie for those people who were just a little too old to fall in with the Hippies but didn’t want to miss out entirely on all of that free love goodness.

We’re going to start in the company of Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol Sanders (Natalie Wood), who are at some sort of retreat where they are being “open” and “honest” about their feelings. They emerge from the weekend with some sort of spiritual awakening of being completely open and honest with each other. They reveal this truth to their friends Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice Henderson (Dyan Cannon), who find this change in their friends a bit startling.