Recounting all the anecdotes and curiosities of the Oscar Awards, granted by the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, would be enough for an entire book. And not only in terms of pure data on the number of awards and nominations that a single film has achieved, the exits from the award ceremony or the times in which absurd successes have been achieved.
Therefore, it is preferable to focus on an anecdote that is curious enough to merit such a text about it. Like the time when a domestic mammal from the canid family, an animal known to everyone as a dog, received a nomination for the Oscars that were awarded in 1985. And this is not a joke, although neither is what you may be thinking about. from the collie Lassie, the Saint Bernard Beethoven or the terrier Uggie.
The point is that Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, a film directed by Hugh Hudson in 1984, was the umpteenth film adaptation of the novel written by the American Edgar Rice Burroughs about such a famous and jungle character. The film came closer to it than its predecessors and moved away from them by presenting us with a Tarzan that was not simple but quite intelligent, accepting variations on the original story to delve into greater verisimilitude and, in its second section, radically deviating from the course of Burroughs' novel. Robert Tawne's disagreements with Warner Bros. led him to give up the credits for his script for Greystoke to his Hungarian shepherd PH Vazak
He articulated all of this screenwriter Robert Tawneformerly the author of an original libretto as revered as that of chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), Oscar winner, or the later vigorous Mission: Impossible (Brian de Palma, 1996), in addition to several scenes from the essential The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) as a script doctor that he was.
But a couple of things happened that would end up putting the spotlight on this man's best friend: Warner Bros., producer of Greystokefired Tawne after the failure of his debut as a total film author with Personal Best* (1982), starring the ill-fated Mariel Hemingway and for which this company was its distributor; and since he had spent several years working on the script for Greystokediscovered the rewriting of several scenes and did not agree with important changes that had been introduced, The response he gave was to demand that PH Vazak, his own Hungarian sheepdog, be credited.as the one who had written it. So it was the name of the woolly animal that appeared as the screenwriter of the film both in the titles and in the credits.
Specialized critics were divided in their evaluation of the film, and received three Oscar nominations for those released in their year, two of which had a particularity: the first, that the British Ralph Richardson died before being nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Sixth Earl of Greystoke; and the second, the possibility of it winning the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. That is to say, since Towne had renounced his screenwriting credit in favor of his good Vazak, this became the only dog absurdly nominated for an Oscar in history.
But, In the end, Peter Shaffer won for his script. Amadeus, the great winner of Miloš Forman, that night in March 1985. So we can say that Vazak was deprived of the opportunity to go on stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, on all fours and with his best bow tie around his neck, to collect the golden bald statuette of the Academy.
If this dream could have happened, perhaps he would have had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame like Uggie and before him.. But no one can take away his nomination**.