FILM 2148: MELVIN AND HOWARD (1980)

TRIVIA: Jason Robards was nominated for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar for playing Howard Hughes in this movie. It was the third time in five years that Robards had been nominated in this category at the Academy Awards. The first two times, in 1977 and 1978, Robards had achieved the extraordinary feat of winning back-to-back Oscars. The films Robards won consecutive Academy Awards for were Julia (1977) and All the President's Men (1976).

One of writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's favorites films. Actor Jason Robards' final cinema movie was Anderson's Magnolia (1999). The photography in Anderson's The Master (2012) is said to have been inspired by this picture.

Actress Mary Steenburgen won several Best Supporting Actress Awards for this movie. These included the Academy Award (Oscar), the Golden Globe Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the National Society of Film Critics Award and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award.

The first film in the sub-genre "biopic of someone undeserving" or "BOSUD" from Dennis Bingham's "Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre". Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski later popularized this notion in their screen-writing for Ed Wood (1994), Auto Focus (2002), Man on the Moon (1999), and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996).

CAMEO: Melvin E. Dummar: The real life "Melvin" as a man behind a bus depot counter.

DIRECTOR CAMEO: Jonathan Demme: As a man at the wedding.

Summary and trivia from IMDB.com

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This is featured on the podcast Blank Check episode Melvin and Howard (and Jordan Hoffman) https://soundcloud.com/griffin-and-david-present/melvin-and-howard-and-jordan-hoffman