The Smackdown of '86 (with special guests) arrives in just 9 days. Before we get to the main event let's talk about what people were talking about that year in film, television, stage, music, and books...
Great Big Box Office Hits: Movie stars rather than IP still ruled so the top ten made room for Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, and Bette Midler vehicles along with just 3 sequels (can you imagine a top ten box office of the year with just 3 sequels nowadays? It's hard to do). Military men and women were also the rage with the marines of Aliens, the airforce bros of Top Gun, and the traumatized foot soldiers of Platoon all extremely popular with moviegoers.
- Top Gun (military drama)
- Crocodile Dundee (comedy)
- Platoon (military drama)
- Karate Kid Part II (sequel)
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (sci-fi sequel)...
- Back to School (Rodney Dangerfield comedy)
- Aliens (sci-fi action)
- The Golden Child (Eddie Murphy comedy)
- Ruthless People (Bette Midler comedy)
- Ferris Bueller's Day Off (comedy)
Just outside the top ten were another Better Midler picture Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the Paul Newman in the Hustler sequel The Color of Money, coming of age classic Stand By Me, and the now forgotten all-star comedy Legal Eagles with Robert Redford, Debra Winger, and Daryl Hannah.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
At the 59th Academy Awards, Oliver Stone's Vietnam war drama Platoon (8 nominations / 4 wins) and Woody Allen's dramedy Hannah and Her Sisters (7 noms / 3 wins) fought it out for the Best Picture prize with A Room With a View (8 noms / 3 wins) in third position. The Mission (7 noms / 1 win) and Children of a Lesser God (5 noms/1 win) were just happy to be nominated. Platoon dominated in the end winning Best Picture, the second and last Vietnam War picture to win (after The Deer Hunter).
Expanded Roster?
The Color of Money had pedigree plus Paul Newman career momentum so we assume it fell in the dread sixth spot given the response (4 noms / 1 win). The blockbuster sci-fi horror sequel Aliens circumvented the Academy's usual allergies to genre pictures (especially prevalent then) and its hefty nominations (7 noms / 2 wins) including that very deserved citation of Sigourney Weaver in Best Actress suggest it was somewhere within shouting distance so maybe 7th place? But what else? Beyond those two it's hard to say...
Other films with multiple nominations were: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Top Gun (4 noms each), Crimes of the Heart and Peggy Sue Got Married (3 nominations each), Hoosiers, Little Shop of Horrors, Round Midnight, Salvador (2 noms each). Nevertheless each of those films also had drawbacks, perception-wise at the time though some are more beloved now. Films with just 1 nomination that nevertheless might have been cited in a top ten Best Picture field included Blue Velvet, My Beautiful Laundrette, and Stand By Me. Our guess: Aliens, Blue Velvet, Color of Money, Hoosiers, and either Peggy Sue Got Married or Top Gun. WHAT'S YOURS?
Films that endured (in some way) that were neither Oscar players nor box office blockbuster
Sacrifice (Tarkovsky), Down by Law (Jarmusch), Matador (Almodóvar), She's Gotta Have It (Lee), Caravaggio (Jarman), The Big Easy, Big Trouble in Little China, Sid & Nancy, The Hitcher, The Great Mouse Detective, Labyrinth, 9 1/2 Weeks, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, River's Edge, and because they've been remade or interest was revived by association Howard the Duck (MCU), Manhunter (remade as Red Dragon), About Last Night, and The Mosquito Coast.
Notable films listed as 1986 at IMDb that most audiences didn't see until 1987 or 1988.
Ken Russell's psychosexual horror flick Gothic wasn't released until '87 and took awhile to gain its cult audience. Claude Berri's Jean de Florette and its sequel Manon of the Spring both became major arthouse hits the year after their French debuts. The British animated feature When the Wind Blows took its time travelling to other countries. As did Almodóvar's Matador (post '88 however Almodóvar had no problem getting his films released internationally)
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 1986 (actually released)
I haven't seen so many of these in a long time so take the numerical order as more of a light suggestion aside from the top four which I've seen many times and are undying personal favourites.
- A Room With a View (James Ivory, UK) masterpiece
- Aliens (James Cameron, US) masterpiece
- Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, US)
- Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, US)
- My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, UK)
- The Fly (David Cronenberg, US/UK/Canada)
- Peggy Sue Got Married (Francis Coppola, US)
- Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beinex, France)
...and I'm leaving two spots open for rewatches. Hoping to revisit Blue Velvet soon which I didn't understand the fuss about at the time though I was far too young for it. Notable films from 1986 which I've still never seen are (gulp) Sid & Nancy, River's Edge, Something Wild, and Caravaggio.
It's worth noting that both My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room with a View are listed as 1985 on IMDb but are more accurately 1986 pictures. That's especially true of A Room With a View so it bothers me that people consider it a 1985 film. Its sole 1985 showing anywhere was a "Royal Command Performance" so unless you were British royalty or on the invite list, you weren't able to see it anywhere (not even at festivals) until 1986. My Beautiful Laundrette did open (albeit only in the UK) late in '85 after two festival appearances (Edinburgh and TIFF) and was up for a couple of BAFTAs so the 1985 designation is more warranted but it didn't hit any other countries or festivals until 1986 when it became yet more popular, especially in the US where it then picked up a few critics prizes and an Oscar nom for Screenplay.
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
Typical covergirls (and boys) that year were, in no particular order: Kathleen Turner, Michael J Fox, Sigourney Weaver, Molly Ringwald, Woody Allen, Pierce Brosnan, Harrison Ford, Joan Rivers, Tom Cruise, William Hurt, Moonlighting, anyone from any primetime soaps which were all the rage in the mid80s (but especially Dynasty, Dallas, and Knots Landing), pop stars (but especially the women like Madonna, Aretha, Sade, and Whitney Houston)... and Mark Harmon who was almost as ubiquitous as Michael J Fox and Tom Cruise on magazine covers that year though he never became as mega-famous.
Mix Tape (Select Smash Hits of '86): "Venus" Bananarama, "Human" The Human League, "Walk This Way" Run DMC featuring Aerosmith, "Nasty" Janet Jackson, "Two of Hearts" Stacey Q, "Mad About You" Belinda Carlisle, "Sweetest Taboo" Sade, "Danger Zone" Kenny Loggins, "True Colors" Cyndi Lauper, "That's What Friends Are For" Dionne Warwick (Grammy for Song of the Year the following February), "I'm Your Man" Wham!, "I Miss You" Klymaxx, "On My Own" Patti Labelle, "Broken Wings" Mr Mister, "Love Bizarre" Sheila E, "How Will I Know?" Whitney Houston, "Party All the Time" Eddie Murphy, "Alive and Kicking" Simple Minds, "Never" Heart, "Kiss" Prince, "Higher Love" Steve Winwood (Grammy for Record of the Year the following February), "Sledgehammer" Peter Gabriel, "Take My Breath Away" Berlin (Oscar winner Best Original Song), "Papa Don't Preach" Madonna, "Manic Monday" Bangles, "What You Need" INXS, and "Talk to Me" Stevie Nicks.
More Music: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame held its first induction ceremony in January. Phil Collins "No Jacket Required" won the Best Album Grammy in February. Madonna releases "True Blue" in June which became the best selling album of 1986 globally, and The Smiths broke up at the tail end of the year after the success of their penultimate album "The Queen is Dead" (though one more album followed it to release after the breakup), Bands that released their first album that year were new wave favourites Book of Love with an eponymous album, and heavy metal darlings Poison with "Look What the Cat Dragged In". Other breakthrough albums released that year were "Control" and "Please" making superstars of Janet Jackson and The Pet Shop Boys, respectively. Other famous albums dropped in '86 included Depeche Mode's "Black Celebration", Jon Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet", Eurythmics' "Revenge", Duran Duran's "Notorious" and Paul Simon's "Graceland" (which won Album of the Year at the Grammys the following February).
TV: The year began with a disaster as CNN broadcast the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster live in January. Siskel & Ebert started the third and longest running variation of their hit TV partnership with ABC's "Siskel & Ebert & The Movies" which was later retitled "At the Movies" (they'd been a team for two previous similar series via PBS and syndication for ten years already) which would run until Siskel's death in 1999. Hit shows that debuted in the fall included Pee Wee's Big Adventure, LA Law, and Designing Women. Ellen Burstyn also tried her hand at a sitcom that year simply called The Ellen Burstyn Show but it was cancelled after 13 episodes.
At the September Emmys honoring the 1985/1986 television season, Golden Girls season 1 (Comedy), Cagney & Lacey season 5 (Drama), and Peter the Great (Miniseries) were the big winners. Unfortunately the groundbreaking NBC special An Early Frost starring Aidan Quinn, Gena Rowlands, and Ben Gazzara -- the first Network show on the topic of AIDS which was watched by 34 million households-- lost all of its nominations. It had to settle for being a major event and winning a Peabody. Notable actors who won Emmys that night included Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich (Death of a Salesman), Michael J Fox (the first of 3 consecutive wins for Family Ties), John Lithgow (Amazing Stories -- the first of his six Emmy wins), and Betty White, who was the first Golden Girl to win for that beloved show though eventually all four stars did.
Literature:
Larry McMurtry's bestseller "Lonesome Dove" took the Pulitzer for fiction on its way to becoming a blockbuster Emmy winning miniseries in 1989. New works published that year that went on to considerable fame included Diana Wynne Jones' "Howl's Moving Castle", Pat Conroy's "The Prince of Tides", Frank Miller's "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns", Robert Ludlum's "The Bourne Supremacy", Jackie Collin's "Hollywood Husbands", Patricia MacLachlan's "Sarah Plain and Tall" and Stephen King's "It."
Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman were the Merquise and the Vicomte in the first production of LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES
Stage: I'm Not Rappaport (play) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (musical) were tops at the Tony Awards. The House of the Blue Leaves had actually led the play nominations by a lot but lost the big prize. Interestingly enough Best Revival was not split into plays or musicals but they competed against each other (!) so a revival of the musical Sweet Charity (starring Debbie Allen) beat a revival of The Iceman Cometh. Apples and Oranges!!!
The two Best Actress winners were Lily Tomlin, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Play) and Bernadette Peters in Song and Dance (Musical).
Meanwhile across the ocean in the West End, Les Liaisons Dangereuses won the Olivier Award for best new play and was quickly made into the movie Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Andrew Lloyd Webber's blockbuster Phantom of the Opera won Best Musical and quickly made the leap to Broadway where it unfortunately never really closed (even COVID didn't kill it -- unfortunately it reopens on October 22nd for its 13,371st performance)
ShowTunes To Go:
Too few people realized it at the time but Little Shop of Horrors (1986) was exactly what the 1980s needed: a full blown brilliant movie musical. Ellen Greene should have been one of the Best Actress nominees that year for her indelible Audrey.