OSCAR SNUBS AGAIN: ACTORS VOL 3

1) MATT DILLON (DRUGSTORE COWBOY)

Perhaps his CRASH nomination years later was to make up for not getting the best actor nom for this modern classic about a creative traveling drug user Bob, who never ran out of ideas or resources…

2) STAN SHAW (THE BOYS IN COMPANY C)

A little known Vietnam film, this was one of the first… And Stan Shaw, as a black pimp named Tyrone Washington going through Boot Camp and Vietnam with a survival instinct and contempt for everyone around him, and a plan to smuggle heroin into body bags, rules the screen…

3) R. LEE ERMEY (FULL METAL JACKET)

Sure it’s an ex military drill sergeant playing a drill sergeant, but R. Lee Ermy’s first half of FULL METAL JACKET made it a great film… Years after screaming at Stan Shaw in COMPANY C, Ermy made the boys in Stanley Kubrick’s antiwar drama, including Matthew Modine and Vincent D’Onofrio, a living, breathing, and completely entertaining hell…

4) VINCENT D'ONOFRIO (FULL METAL JACKET)

So how could we leave out Private Pyle from this list? Vincent gained weight for the role as the slow kid in Boot Camp that turns from slob to psycho in the course of forty minutes…

5) DUSTIN HOFFMAN (STRAIGHT TIME)

This is Dustin’s most underrated and amazing roles, playing Max Dembo, a convict fresh outta prison and trying to survive against a ball-busting Parole Officer, who eventually returns to what he does best: robbing banks and anything with an alarm… The book’s author, real life convict Edward Bunker (Mr. Blue from RESERVOIR DOGS, pictured with Dustin above), instructed the method actor to imagine everyone he looks at as possible victims… It's no wonder much of Hoffman's power is in the eyes, cold and calculating...

6) JACK NICHOLSON (THE LAST DETAIL)

A few years later this would be an example of Jack being Jack, but this came out before he was the guy we all know and love… He plays Buddusky, one of two Navy lifers on a detail to take a naive kid (Randy Quaid, who did get nominated) to prison: but not without showing him a good time on the way…His drunken diatribes alone were worth the gold statue...

7) SAMUEL L. JACKSON (JACKIE BROWN)

Robert Forster as good guy bail bondsman Max Cherry was nominated, which was truly deserved, but so was Jackson's villain Ordell Robbie, a cross between PULP FICTION hit man Jules Winfield and the Grim Reaper himself… Heck, he even uses Johnny Cash for motivation...

8) ROBERT DE NIRO (THE KING OF COMEDY)

The iconic actor’s portrayal of obsessed pop culture fanatic Rupert Pufkin is anything but funny… Well he’s hilarious, at times, but this is a truly twisted character, one that Scorsese said was even more "dangerous" than Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER… You can even say his “kidnapping to fame” scheme was the precursor to the reality show celebrity we’ve been cursed with for the last twenty years… And for anyone who says De Niro can only play mobsters (or that Scorsese can only direct them), check this out this bizarre 1983 masterpiece...

9) KEVIN CONWAY (FUNHOUSE)

Horror movies are beloved by fans but often ignored by Oscar, and this underrated horror classic by TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE icon Tobe Hopper has underrated character actor Kevin Conway in dual roles: playing brothers who run a macabre carnival funhouse snaring a group of curious, and possibly doomed, teens…

10) BRUCE DERN (THE DRIVER)

The epitome of stealing scenes, Dern’s crooked vulture cop has all the great lines… In fact he provides most of the dialogue, constantly lecturing brooding getaway driver Ryan O’Neal in search of truth that only he (the cop) knows…

OSCAR SNUBS VOL 3 BY JAMES M. TATE