Back during last year's Oscars we ran an editorial on the 5 Worst Oscar Winners where the writing staff got a chance to air their grievances over movies they felt lost out to less deserving Best Picture nominations over the years. Ranking number 3 was Gandhi, a choice I wholeheartedly agree with. Jared and Katey both laid it on the line over just why what was just another biopic should not have won and the small tale of a small boy befriending a small alien should have walked away with it. While I know Head Honcho Josh Tyler defends the success of Ben Kingsley with a tan I, like Jared and Katey, thought he was out of his damn fool mind.
So some might accuse Lord Richard Attenborough of suffering the ill effects of old age, but the 85-year-old actor/director revealed in an interview this week that he considers Steven Spielberg's E.T. superior to his own multiple-Oscar winning epic. Speaking on a radio interview for the BBC, Attenborough said that ET was "an infinitely more creative and fundamental piece of cinema" than Gandhi.
He also added: E.T. depended absolutely on the concept of cinema and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I'm very fond of, is a genius. I think E.T. is a quite extraordinary piece of cinema."
Many will continue to argue over this particular debate for time to come, but when one of cinema's most respected directors concedes that his own award-winning movie isn't as good as the movie that came second, there's a lesson in humility in there for quite a lot of egos in Hollywood.
