Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1980

The Contenders:

Brubaker
Fame
Melvin and Howard (winner)
Mon Oncle d’Amerique
Private Benjamin

Doing Time

Film: Brubaker
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I imagine for a particular type of actor, playing the crusading hero is kind of fun. Personally, I’d rather play villains because they tend to get the best lines. But at a particular stage in a career, I guess a lot of actors want to look back at something they did that might have had more of an impact than just cackling madly and chewing scenery. Thus we get Robert Redford’s performance in Brubaker where he plays the role of a crusading prison warden.

We don’t know this initially, by the way. The film begins with Henry Brubaker (Redford) riding on a bus to Wakefield State Prison in an unknown (but likely Southern, based on accents) state. For all we know, he’s just one of the inmates. What he finds is a place rife with disturbing behaviors, terrible conditions, and a great deal of illegal activity from the higher-ups and many of the prisoners. The general population is given sub-standard food that is rife with maggots, sleep in terrible conditions, and are farmed out as slave labor for local businesses. The prisoners who act as trustees actually live pretty well. The food grown on the prison farm is sold off to businesses at a profit, and the food the prison buys for the inmates is also sold for a profit. When one of the death row inmates (played by Morgan Freeman in his first credited big screen role) threatens the life of another inmate (David Keith), Brubaker blows his cover and starts reforming the prison.