THE OSCAR PLUNGE : You Heard It Here First : It’s going to be a good night for ‘Dances With Wolves,’ but in the acting categories, other films will be dancing with Oscar

During the final days of the 1991 Oscar campaign, before the final ballots were filled out and mailed in, rumors were circulating in Hollywood that Kevin Costner wasn’t the only Kevin who directed “Dances With Wolves,” that Costner’s old friend Kevin Reynolds had actually directed some of the movie’s best scenes.

“I don’t know what you want to do with this, but I thought you should know that without Kevin Reynolds, ‘Wolves’ would have been a disaster,” said one anonymous caller, speaking in hushed tones on the phone early this month. “It was Reynolds who really directed the movie.”

According to this caller, and other film people who’d heard variations of the story, Costner had gotten in over his head on his first directorial assignment and put out an SOS to Reynolds, whom Costner had acted for in a Steven Spielberg film called “Fandango.”

Crew members and production executives acknowledged that Reynolds did visit the “Wolves” set in South Dakota, and one person close to the principals said Reynolds directed most of the buffalo hunting sequence that became the film’s most memorable scene. But none of those contacted by Calendar considered Reynolds the de facto director on the picture, and all of them said Costner deserves the credit he’s been getting.

The point of repeating the story here is to demonstrate how seriously people in Hollywood take awards that are--by any artistic measure--meaningless, and how far they will go in attempting to derail a front-runner in an Oscar race. Last year, Oliver Stone-baiters managed to link Stone’s adaptation of Ron Kovic’s autobiography, “Born on the 4th of July,” to Kovic’s political aspirations and probably changed the outcome of the Academy Awards. Stone won as Best Director, but his acerbic, anti-Vietnam movie lost out to the uplifting and politically correct “Driving Miss Daisy.”

Nothing like that will happen tomorrow night. This year, the uplifting and politically correct candidate is the front-runner, and the acerbic R-rated troublemakers--”GoodFellas,” “The Grifters,” “Reversal of Fortune”--have all lagged behind. At the Governor’s Ball after the Academy Awards, “Dances With Wolves” and Costner will be dancing with Oscars. The only remaining questions are whether Costner will be dancing with two Oscars (for producer of the Best Picture, and for Best Director), or three (with another thrown in for Best Actor), and how many of “Wolves”’ other nominees will be dancing with him.

The good news for those of us who like to be surprised when the envelopes are opened is that the acting categories are as hard to handicap as any in years. “Dances With Wolves” could ride a sweep to victory in three of those categories--for Costner, for Mary McDonnell as Best Supporting Actress, and for Graham Greene as Best Supporting Actor--but, given their competition, all are long shots.

The guess here is that “Wolves” will win six times Monday. When it receives its fourth Oscar, late in the show, it will become the most honored Western in Academy Awards history, and its last Oscar of the night will make it the first Western since the 1931 version of “Cimarron” to be named the year’s Best Picture.

A category-by-category analysis:

BEST PICTURE

If America’s leading film critics were voting instead of moaning, the winner would be Martin Scorsese’s “GoodFellas,” in a walk. Scorsese’s gritty screen adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book “Wise Guys” earned more ecstatic reviews than any film in memory and swept the important critics awards. Seventeen of the 19 critics surveyed in the current issue of Premiere magazine gave “GoodFellas” the highest possible rating, while only seven felt as strongly about “Wolves.”

Since “GoodFellas” did not do especially well at the box office, are the critics simply out-of-step with moviegoers? And since “Wolves” will trounce “GoodFellas” in the Oscar count, does that mean card-carrying members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences are philistines?

Whether critics are out-of-step depends on what you expect from them: a guestimate as to how you will like a movie; or an intellectual evaluation of the work they see. Critics--at least those who think of themselves as more than reviewers--react to movies on more levels than the gut, and as filmmaking, “GoodFellas” is infinitely superior to “Dances With Wolves.”

But the Academy Awards have never attempted to be anything more than a celebration of the year’s best “achievements,” and in the greater Hollywood context, achievement includes a film’s ability to communicate its messages to a broad ticket-buying audience. On that count, “Dances With Wolves” deserves everything it’s getting.

If a hacker could work his way into the Price-Waterhouse computer, he would likely see that in the Best Picture category, “Wolves” won in a landslide, with “GoodFellas” second, followed by the disappointing “The Godfather, Part III” and the year’s two leading hankie soakers, “Awakenings” and “Ghost.”

BEST DIRECTOR

For a long time, it looked as if Scorsese’s stature would carry this category even if his film was defeated. Scorsese versus Kevin Costner sounds about as competitive as a sing-off between Frank Sinatra and Harry Connick Jr. But Costner, who got the vote of the Directors Guild of America Saturday, has gathered steam, and he will win.

The remaining nominees serve as mere filler on the ballot. Francis Coppola deserves the year’s Family Financial Planning Award for giving so many relatives work in “The Godfather III,” but the movie was less a continuation of the saga than a shadow of its former self. And though Stephen Frears (“The Grifters”) and Barbet Schroeder (“Reversal of Fortune”) did more sure-handed work than Costner, their movies didn’t even get nominated for Best Picture.

BEST ACTOR

If the voters paused to ponder the performances nominated, and if enough of them bothered to see all of them, this award will go to Jeremy Irons for “Reversal of Fortune.” Irons, who made an eerily enigmatic menace of Claus von Bulow, won the National Society of Film Critics Award, and it’s the one performance of the year that seemed to leap off the screen.

Robert De Niro, nominated for his role as a revived comatose patient in “Awakenings,” would seem to be Irons’ chief rival, but as appreciated as his performance might have been, many people were put off by the movie’s overly sentimental tone and its unlikely medical scenario.

Costner’s good will might have gotten him enough votes here to win too. And there is always the possibility that a few voters (it’s not unheard of for Academy members to let spouses, offspring, friends and gardeners fill in their ballots) will lose their place and think they’re voting for Best Director.

The other nominees--”Cyranno de Bergerac’s” Gerard Depardieu and “The Field’s” Richard Harris--had the misfortune of being foreigners at a moment when Americans’ national pride has hit an all-time high.

BEST ACTRESS

This should have been a “toss-up” between Kathy Bates, who scared the bejesus out of James Caan and the rest of us as the mad fan in “Misery,” and Anjelica Huston, who was the Bad Seed of Motherhood in “The Grifters.” But some Academy voters, like many moviegoers, are mad enough to kill about the current rash of screen violence, and the actresses may be punished for that.

If so, the winner Monday will be Joanne Woodward, whose engaging performance as a self-sacrificing matriarch kept many of us awake through the otherwise snoozy “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.” Woodward is a well-liked veteran whose victory would give the often-vulgar Oscar proceedings an air of dignity--and voters, with an eye to the worldwide TV audience, do consider these things.

Meryl Streep (“Postcards From the Edge”) owes her nomination to reflex action, and Julia Roberts (“Pretty Woman”) owes hers to one of the most successful saturation star-building publicity campaigns Hollywood has ever seen. (Note to brother Eric Roberts: Do a Disney movie immediately.)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

The most solid acting category of the year will be won by either Joe Pesci, the salty sociopath in “GoodFellas,” or Bruce Davison, who played the wealthy gay playboy whose strengths surface when his lover is stricken with AIDS in “Longtime Companion.”

Pesci has the higher profile, especially having followed “GoodFellas” with a role as a bungling burglar in “Home Alone,” but his character in Scorsese’s film defined social scum in a year when the screen was coated over with the stuff. Davison’s character, on the other hand, showed humanism in the face of a plague that even Hollywood’s conservative Old Guard wants something done about. And don’t worry about whether enough voters went out to see the movie; in the VCR era, movies go to them.

Andy Garcia, like Al Pacino years before him, will have to be content with being discovered in a “Godfather” movie. Pacino, meanwhile, has gotten as far as his sensational extended cameo as a skittering mob cockroach in “Dick Tracy” can take him, and Graham Greene, who played the sensitive holy man Kicking Bird in “Dances With Wolves,” can take pride in being in the finals in a very tough year.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Whoopi Goldberg, finally cast in a role that exploits her quirky charm, provided welcome comic relief in “Ghost,” a movie whose sentimentality threatened to end the California drought on a flood of tears, and she’s the surest non-”Wolves” winner on the night.

Lorraine Bracco, mobster Ray Liotta’s wife in “GoodFellas,” Mary McDonnell, adopted-Sioux Kevin Costner’s wife in “Dances With Wolves,” Annette Bening, the con woman with a panther’s appetite in “The Grifters,” and Diane Ladd, who played a David Lynch freak mom in “Wild at Heart,” are prohibitive long shots.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Don’t even think about quality in this category; that’s something for the Writers Guild members to worry about. Academy members who liked “Ghost” enough to put it on the Best Picture ballot have to credit something for its overall effect on them, and Bruce Joel Rubin’s script is it. Barry Levinson’s “Avalon” is the strongest contender, but this is one of the weakest years for original scripts in a long time.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

There is real competition here, between Michael Blake’s adaptation of his own novel for “Dances With With Wolves,” Donald E. Westlake’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel “The Grifters,” Nicholas Kazan’s adaptation of Alan Dershowitz’s nonfiction best seller “Reversal of Fortune,” and the script that Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi adapted from Pileggi’s “Wise Guys.” Since the credibility of events in “Awakenings” was seen as that film’s biggest weakness, Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of Oliver Sachs’ nonfiction book doesn’t belong in this company.

The writing for “Wolves” hardly measures up to that for “The Grifters,” “GoodFellas” or “Reversal of Fortune,” but the film’s central conceit--that the Native American got jobbed by both the white man and subsequent hordes of Hollywood filmmakers--brings credit to the script. Blake wins.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

“Cyrano de Bergerac,” from France, is the most entertaining (i.e., the most Hollywood) movie of the five nominees, and therefore the favorite. But this is one category where Academy members have to have seen all five candidates in order to vote and they saw two better movies: Germany’s “The Nasty Girl,” based on a true story of a school girl whose essay about the Nazi-era sins of her village elders nearly destroys her life; and Switzerland’s “Journey of Hope,” based on a true story about a Turkish family’s ill-fated attempt to migrate to Switzerland.

When Chinese officials attempted to pull “Ju Dou” out of the competition, and then refused to allow its director to attend the Oscar ceremonies, they assured that film the political sentiment vote, and that might have been enough. But the guess here is that the event movie--”Cyrano”--will win.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND FILM EDITING

Distinguishing between camera work and film editing is something that is not attempted by most paying movie customers, and even people in the business have trouble knowing which is working best when they’re enjoying a movie--particularly a “big” movie like “Dances With Wolves.”

Australian cinematographer Dean Semler caught terrific images for “Wolves,” but the scene that people remember most--the buffalo hunt--owes most of its success to the quick-cut pacing of film editor Neil Travis. Semler will win the cinematography award, over the superior efforts of Vittorio Storaro (“Dick Tracy”) and Allen Daviau (“Avalon”), but Travis could actually lose to something as mundane as Walter Murch’s editing of “Ghost,” simply because voters will remember Patrick Swayze walking through walls and figure those special effects were done in the Moviola.

Scorsese’s films are always well-edited and his longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker outdid herself on “GoodFellas.” But the award will go to either Travis or Murch, most likely Travis.

ART DIRECTION AND COSTUME DESIGN

Voters think of art direction as providing “the look” of a movie, and the most appreciative fans of “Wolves” have to admit the live-action comic strip “Dick Tracy” was more interesting to look at than the tepees and mud huts in Costner’s film. “Dick Tracy’s” veteran production designer Richard Sylbert and set decorator Rick Simpson will share the art direction Oscar. Milena Canonero’s colorful inventions for “Dick Tracy” were the most imaginative costumes on screen last year too, and she should win, despite competition from period films (“Hamlet,” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Wolves” and “Avalon”) that tend to dominate the category.

SOUND AND SOUND EFFECTS EDITING

The sounds you hear in a movie submarine are always compelling, and voters go for the sounds they remember best, which means the four-person team responsible for “The Hunt for Red October” will likely win the Best Sound Oscar. At the same time, best remembered sound gimmicks generally determine the winner in the sound effects editing category, so those eerily noisy journeys into the death zone in “Flatliners” ranks as the favorite in that category.

ORIGINAL SCORE

John Barry’s music for “Dances With Wolves” seemed somehow “wider” than the images on the screen, and though his repetitious theme served better to underscore the length of the movie than the action in it, he’s the winner. Who can remember the music from “Ghost,” “Avalon,” “Home Alone” or “Havana”?

ORIGINAL SONG

This is usually the easiest pick in the office Oscar pool. If one song is easier for you to remember than the others, that’s the one the Academy members will remember too. And even though Madonna may not be the girl voters would like their sons to bring home, her smoky rendering of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” in “Dick Tracy” is hard to forget.

MAKEUP

Only three nominees here and one of them--”Cyrano de Bergerac”--doesn’t count. What’s it take to make a latex nose? On the other hand, the makeup work for both “Dick Tracy” and “Edward Scissorhands” was equally original. Ultimately, the majority of voters probably came down on the side of “Dick Tracy,” if only for that the fact that there were more bizarre characters on display than in “Edward Scissorhands.”