Final Years The sixtieth anniversary of the Acad-
emy Awards fell in 1988, so it was celebrated at the
ceremony that honored the films made in 1987. The
nominations for those films reflected the changing
nature of the business. Four of the five Best Director
nominations went to international directors, two
British (Adrian Lyne and John Boorman), one Ital-
ian (Bernardo Bertolucci), and one Swedish (Lasse
Hallström). Some of the films honored were harder
edged than those of recent years had been, withFatal
Attraction,Wall Street,Ironweed,Cr y Freedom,Broadcast
News, andGood Morning, Vietnamall receiving nomi-
nations of one sort or another. Bernardo Berto-
lucci’sThe Last Emperorreceived many of the awards.
Whatever politically progressive impulse the
members of the Academy might have felt in 1988 did
not survive to the end of the decade, and the Best
Picture trophies awarded in 1989 and 1990 both
went to fairly benign films,Rain Man(1988) and
Driving Miss Daisy (1989), respectively. African
Americans Denzel Washington and Morgan Free-
man were both nominated for acting roles, however,
and Stone received another Best Director award for
Born on the Fourth of July, while the famed Japanese di-
rector Akira Kurosawa received the decade’s last
honorary Oscar.
The Academy Awards in the 1980’s continued
trends that had been set during the years following
the studio system’s demise around 1960. Epics and
films with high production values and a recognizably
classical Hollywood style continued to fare better
than did alternative films. African American actors
began to gain some recognition, however, and
the honorary Oscars continued to make up for the
Academy’s past neglect of deserving talent. Al-
though Stone was honored, Spielberg was not. Many
of the films honored were made in the United States,
some even in what was left of Hollywood. The tide
would change in the coming decades, as the Acad-
emy recognized more films that were independently
produced, of foreign origin, or made on smaller
budgets elsewhere than in California.
Impact The relatively conservative choices of the
Academy in the 1980’s confirmed that Hollywood,
even after the demise of the studio system, remained
in many ways a consolidated industry. Free agents
made films, and several, such as Stone and Spiel-
berg, achieved fame and success without the long-
term studio contracts of earlier decades. The spec-
trum of aesthetic choices open to such filmmakers
remained quite narrow, however, and if films with
politically controversial content could win Academy
Awards, experimental form was rarely represented
among the nominees.
Further Reading
Hayes, R. M.Trick Cinematography: The Oscar Special-
Effects Movies. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1986. A
specialized study of the technological wizardry
that shapes so many contemporary films.
Levy, Emanuel.All About Oscar: The Histor y and Poli-
tics of the Academy Awards. New York: Continuum,- Examination of what went on behind the
glitz and public face of the awards.
Matthews, Charles.Oscar A to Z: A Complete Guide to
More than Twenty-Four Hundred Movies Nominated
for Academy Awards. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Listing of the films, studios, and individuals nomi-
nated and winners by category.
Michael, Paul.The Academy Awards: A Pictorial His-
tor y.New York: Crown, 1975. Lavish picture book
of the stars and personalities associated with the
Oscars.
Osborn, Robert.Seventy Years of the Oscars: The Official
Histor y of the Academy Awards. New York: Abbeville
Press, 1999. Authoritative history of the Oscars
written by one of Hollywood’s insiders.
Pickard, Roy.The Oscar Movies. New York: Facts on
File, 1994. A comprehensive look at the films that
have won or been considered for Academy
Awards.
Charles L. P. Silet
See also Action films; African Americans;Blue Vel-
vet;Color Purple, The; Film in the United States;Ordi-
nar y People;Platoon;Raging Bull; Scorsese, Martin;
Spielberg, Steven; Stone, Oliver; Streep, Meryl;
Terms of Endearment;Wall Street.ACT UP
Identification Grassroots activist group
committed to direct-action protests to demand
increased resources for fighting AIDS
Date Founded in 1987
ACT UP’s primar y goal was to protest the difficulty of gain-
ing access to experimental drugs, the high cost of the few
AIDS treatments then available, and the lack of a coherentThe Eighties in America ACT UP 9