Ray Richmond: Thirty years later, it’s finally time to release Marisa Tomei from the bondage of Oscar infamy
Following her surprising (some thought shocking) Best Supporting Actress triumph at the Academy Awards in 1993 for her role in “My Cousin Vinny,” poor Marisa Tomei has been forced to endure a Mount Everest of disrespect. Her name has become literally Exhibit A for what’s wrong with he voting process, a punchline of outrage – the poster child of head-scratching awards season jokes. For years, she topped the list of “How the hell did this happen?” Oscar moments.
Forget the fact that in the years that followed her win, Tomei has generated another pair of supporting nominations – for “In the Bedroom” in 2002 (a Todd Field movie – hello) and “The Wrestler” in 2009. The presumption was that Tomei wasn’t nearly a talented enough actress to win, though they usually don’t find a whole lot of lousy performers generating three Oscar nominations. No matter. The prevailing wisdom was that she was a lightweight who somehow slipped through the Academy Awards victory cracks.
One of the issues was that Tomei came out atop a particularly stellar nominee field in ’93: Judy Davis for “Husbands and Wives,” Joan Plowright in “Enchanted April,” Vanessa Redgrave for “Howard’s End” and Miranda Richardson for “Damage.” People looked at the quality of the actresses and their performances and thought, “How does Marisa Tomei hold a candle to these women?”
Of course, it’s one thing to wonder how she won, totally another to outright question the legitimacy of it. Yes, that’s what happened, as none other than the dapper, self-important critic Rex Reed was evidently so flummoxed by Tomei’s win that he propagated a rumor that picked up steam until it veered out of control. The rumor was this: Jack Palance, who opened the envelope and presented the trophy to Tomei that night, said her name by mistake. How Palance could read a name that wasn’t on the card isn’t clear, but this wasn’t supposed to make sense. It was just supposed to bring shame on an actress who hardly deserved it.
According to this ridiculous scenario, Palance was too drunk or stoned or whatever to get the name right. And once he blew it, the film academy opted to cover it up and bestow the award on a mistake winner rather than make it right, purportedly having no choice since a global television audience had just heard him say “Marisa Tomei.” The academy was forced to debunk this, and debunk it, it did. We already know that getting it right is what’s paramount, not avoiding embarrassment. We certainly saw this during the 2017 “La La Land”/Moonlight” Best Picture fiasco.
Anyway, Reed was sticking to his story, opting not to let the truth get in the way of a good conspiracy. Snopes invariably had to weight in on it, confirming there was no factual base for what was being claimed about Tomei not having won fair and square. But real or imagined, it had the infuriating effect of diminishing Tomei’s win, which was in fact transparently elitist. This was really all about the fact that Tomei won for portraying a brash chatterbox of an Italian bimbo named Mona Lisa Vito in a comedy deemed lightweight. That’s how good she was in the movie: people like Reed and other critics confused the character with the actress and the heft of her performance with the impact of the movie itself.
In case anyone was wondering, yes, Tomei felt minimized and humiliated by this. “That was very hurtful for me,” she said in an interview years later. “I was a young actress and it was exciting, but there was a cloud over (my win).”
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On the surface, if you’re a cinephile, it was impossible to imagine Tomei’s beating the likes of a Vanessa Redgrave. It’s easy now to make fun of the stuffy middlebrow respectability that somehow eliminated the possibility of a legitimate win for an actress in a movie filled with gags and stereotypes. Watching the film again 30 years after seeing it for the first time, Tomei was even better than I remembered, turning in a delightful performance that steered well clear of caricature. She exhibited not merely some well-oiled comic chops but also some serious chemistry with Joe Pesci.
Yeah I know, that still doesn’t explain how Tomei knocked off all of those serious actresses in her category. That right there, ironically, is one of the problems with the Oscars: the lack of respect for comedy and comedic work. It’s much easier and significantly less risky to simply reward drama, and why it’s so thrilling to see a film with so much comedy like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” poised for a colossal night on Sunday.
In fact, it showed courage back in ’93 for Oscar voters to choose Tomei over her significantly more serious competition, and the backlash against it demonstrates why it’s so rare. The lead acting categories almost never reward comedy. Supporting at least will sometimes honor a Tomei, and nominate a Maria Bakalova for the “Borat” sequel or a Melissa McCarthy for “Bridesmaids.” The difference is that Tomei actually won.
It’s long past time for us to actually applaud the win for “My Cousin Vinny” rather than denigrate it. Three decades on, in fact, I am officially – right here and right now – releasing Marisa Tomei from the bondage of Oscar infamy. Now 58, this woman has survived and thrived as a working, Oscar-winning character actress for nearly 40 years, boasting 90 credits. A little respect would be nice. A lot of respect would be better.
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