The “absolutely murderous” mind-games that robbed ‘Saving Private Ryan’ of its finest hour
Almost 30 years after its release, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan remains the benchmark by which all modern World War II movies are measured, and rightly so.
It was the highest-grossing WW2 film ever made until it was usurped by Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, and which picture did the director name as the single biggest influence and most towering inspiration on his own nail-biting story that unfolded during a pivotal time in the conflict? You can probably guess.
The D-Day sequence remains the definitive depiction of immersive, authentic, jaw-dropping, and stomach-turning combat that’s ever been committed to the screen, with Spielberg effectively flying by the seat of his pants, foregoing storyboards and shot planning to shoot on the fly, which worked wonders.
Sometimes, a nailed-on front-runner for awards season emerges, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it. Spielberg knows that, with Schindler’s List virtually guaranteed ‘Best Picture’ from the moment it was released, and so does Nolan, who experienced much the same thing with Oppenheimer.
In most people’s minds, there was no doubt whatsoever that come the Academy Awards on March 21st, 1999, there was no other name being read aloud onstage than Saving Private Ryan. However, Harvey Weinstein had other ideas and strong-armed his way into causing one of the biggest upsets and most egregious robberies in Oscars history, when fucking Shakespeare in Love won instead.
Was it the best movie of 1998? Was it fuck. Was it the worst ‘Best Picture’ nominee of 1998? That depends on how you feel about Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, but it was definitely inferior to Saving Private Ryan, Elizabeth, and The Thin Red Line. And yet, putting his hands into his pockets, the disgraced mogul spent big to ensure that his campaign would yield the undeserved success he craved.
“He also would say to people from time to time, me included, that he wanted to be one of the great moguls, and that he had to win an Academy Award, personally, to be one of those,” Mark Gill recalled. “So, for Shakespeare in Love, we used the playbook for The English Patient, turbocharged, on steroids. It was just absolutely murderous the whole way through.”
Weinstein dispatched his minions to carpet-bomb the press with ads, coverage, and campaign spots for his period rom-com, with former DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press revealing that Spielberg refused to play dirty, instructing him that, “No matter what, I do not want you to get down in the mud with Harvey Weinstein,” which he might have regretted come Oscars night.
Saving Private Ryan should have been a lock for ‘Best Picture’, and it was undoubtedly the most deserving winner of the five, but thanks to Weinstein, his resources, his willingness to do what Spielberg wouldn’t, and his desperation to claim the prize he coveted so dearly, it wasn’t to be.
