Oscar 2013: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Kristen Wiig and Ben Stiller on the set of a future Best Picture nominee,
if not winner

Like with American Hustle, more lazy thinking on my part, but it has recently become pretty obvious that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty will be a big player in this year's Oscar's race.  When I update my prediction chart in June, it will debut pretty high.  In March, The Monuments Men kicked off the prognostication in the #1 position, but it didn't exactly smell like a winner to me (I still have yet to read the book and/or screenplay).  Presently, I would put Mitty at the top.  We'll have to see once I read the Monuments book, but I feel pretty comfortable placing it above August, American Hustle, and everything else.  For whatever it's worth, instinct tells me that Mitty might be the film that most don't see coming and blindside us all.  Or not.  Let's keep in mind that its star and director Ben Stiller has been kicking around the industry for a long time.  He has had plenty of commercial success with his Focker, Night at the Museum, and Madagascar franchises.  As an actor, director, producer, and writer, he has churned out a fleet of respectable films that have built up an impressive resume (despite his turkeys) like There's Something About Mary, Tropic Thunder, and Along Came Polly, and place in pop culture, with Zoolander and Reality Bites.  With nary a major award, his more serious projects have been few and far between, but have allowed him to indulge his ambitions and quietly spread his springs and hone his craft like Permanent Midnight.  And, I didn't realize until now what a respected group of directors he has collaborated with including David O. Russel (Flirting With Disaster), Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums), Noah Baumbach (Greenberg), and Neil LaBute (Your Friends & Neighbors).  As well, only bigger and better things await his romantic lead Kristen Wiig.

Stiller and Adam Scott battle
each other over a male doll

James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was published in The New Yorker in 1939.  The pint-size short story concerns a man chauffeuring his wife to a hair appointment, before he conducts a series of errands.  He's a depressed man, as he has lost interest in taking care of himself and his family enough that his apathy has turned his wife into a nag.  He also has gotten on in age, isn't very capable beyond whatever his profession was, and his better years are behind him.  Small visual and sound cues in his reality divert his attention and segue his attention to several fantasy worlds where he's a naval commander powering through extremely icy conditions, a surgeon, cinematic outlaw defendant in a murder trial, and a macho war pilot.  In his various imaginings, there is a fearlessness he is able to indulge that he lacks in his real life.  You can read it here.

Stiller displaying Herculean
strength on set

The story has been adapted several times on stage, as well as in a 1947 movie starring Danny Kaye.  For years, Hollywood has tried to take another stab at it, including Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard and it seemed like forever that Jim Carrey's name was attached to the title in the IMDb (how ironic if Stiller ends up taking an Oscar for this film).  Nothing went forward until Stiller took the reigns of Steve Conrad's script.  The screenwriter's oeuvre includes Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, The Weather Man, and The Pursuit of Happyness.  The IMDb reports that Stiller will play Mitty as a somewhat modern magazine photo manager who, much like Thurber's protagonist is scared of life and full of regret, and then finds himself challenging his status quo when he must go on a adventure to retrieve a lost negative (an archaic technological plot element suggesting perhaps a non-modern setting, also in the context of a story that will span several decades, but, alas, internet dating is in this film; or perhaps the photojournalist played by Sean Penn is strictly "old school").  Also in the cast is Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Shirley MacLaine, Patton Oswalt, and Penn.  The crew includes cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh (um, who, did, The Piano, hello!), composer Theodore Shapiro, production designer Jeff Mann, and costume designer Sarah Edwards, most of whom have worked with Stiller before.  It filmed a year ago in Iceland and New York City, among, I'm guessing, other locations.  Producers include Gore Verbinski.  20th Century Fox will be releasing it on Christmas Day.

Wiig probably radioing in
improvisational brilliance

After attending CinemaCon, Deadline's Pete Hammond spoke very highly of this movie's Oscar chances and alluded to the positive chatter it elicited.  When Forrest Gump was referenced, my knee-jerk response was, "Okay, that's it!  This movie is coming home with the gold."  Of course, that's WAY too premature and Hammond was pretty casual about his remarks.  However, MY gut tells me there is probably more than meets the eye.  And, considering that The Counselor doesn't appear to be a viable contender, this film will put Fox in the awards game in a major way.  You heard it here, er, second?

Previous Editions:

Is Stiller wearing overshoes?
Did he buy dog biscuits? 

American Hustle     August: Osage County     Foxcatcher     Fruitvale Station     Out of the Furnace     Prisoners     The Secret Life of Walter Mitty     The Way, Way Back