Comedy vs. Drama: The Epic Battle

Yesterday, I opened my mailbox and found something from SAG that’s slightly exciting. A ballot for the SAG Awards! This is the closest thing I can get to voting for the Oscars for awhile so it’s a little bit interesting. But more exciting was the thought, wait, I can get some screeners!

I’m waiting for some. Nothing’s come yet. But there’s still till the end of the month. So we’ll see. Anyway, after perusing the ballot, I realized I haven’t seen very many of these movies. Let’s take a look shall we?

Outstanding Performance By A Male Actor In A Leading Role:

–Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
–Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
–Peter O’Toole, Venus
–Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
–Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

I have see oh, NONE of these movies. I want to see Blood Diamond, almost saw The Last King of Scotland, and thought about seeing The Pursuit of Happyness till the aforementioned ridiculous Rubik’s Cube moment from the preview.

So you see, a screener copy would be perfect for me! So producers and production companies of major motion pictures—take heed! I need these to make an informed decision.

Let’s take a look at something else too. Let’s check out Outstanding Performance By The Cast Of A Motion Picture. Now remember, this is SAG so it’s going to be focusing on actors. Anyway…

—Babel
—Bobby
—The Departed
—Dreamgirls
—Little Miss Sunshine

I was thinking, it’s a shame they don’t break it up like they do in t.v. because I think that Little Miss Sunshine was the runaway comedy of the year. Got to jawing with the girl who sits next to me and she was wondering if a comedy has ever won Best Picture. So I looked it up. As far as I could tell, these are the only comedies that have won:

You Can’t Take It With You, 1938.
The Apartment, 1960
Annie Hall, 1977
Terms of Endearment, 1983
Forrest Gump, 1994
Shakespeare In Love, 1998
Million Dollar Baby, 2004*

*Just kidding. It seemed like it though didn’t it? Anwyay, The last three are completely mixed genre movies. They are both dramatic and comedic and romantic and all of that together. But the first three are out and out comedies. Especially, You Can’t Take It With You. That’s a classic zany comedy.

So sometime between 1977 and today, it became the fashion to think comedy wasn’t on par with drama in terms of recognition. That a comedy isn’t as high an art form as drama. But why then the saying, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” And things like that? One wonders.

So put your thinking caps on, what are movies from the last 30 years that you think were worthy of Best Picture status, but were comedies?

I’ll give you some help first. Here are comedies that were nominated in those 30 years.

—Tootsie, 1982
—Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986
—Working Girl, 1988
—Four Weddings & A Funeral, 1994
—Pulp Fiction, 1994
—Babe, 1995
—Fargo, 1996
—As Good As It Gets, 1997
—The Full Monty, 1997
—Lost In Translation, 2003
—Sideways, 2004

What else? (I realize some of those are out-and-out comedies, but still–they are comedic.)