Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

Here’s an interesting comparison I just made between the films in the US National Film Registry and all of the films that have won Best Picture at the Academy Awards (up to the year 1995 because a film has to be ten years old to make it into the NFR).

Well, even though The National Film Registry is meant to preserve up to 25 films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” each year (since it was established in 1988), therefore it has had 425 chances to preserve each of the 68 Best Picture awarded films, it has yet to add 34 of them, half of all of the Best Picture winners.

In fact, if you take a look at the breakdown by years apparently a lot of real crap has been slipping in for far longer than anyone realized.

These are the films which won Best Picture but are not (yet) in the US National Film Registry. The films in parenthesis are films which are in the USNFR and were also nominated for best picture that same year.

Academy Award for Best Picture

1928–29: The Broadway Melody
1930–31: Cimarron
1931–32: Grand Hotel
1932–33: Cavalcade (42nd Street, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, She Done Him Wrong)
1935: Mutiny on the Bounty (Naughty Marietta, Top Hat)
1936: The Great Ziegfeld (Dodsworth)
1938: You Can’t Take It with You (The Adventures of Robin Hood)
1940: Rebecca (The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, The Philadelphia Story)
1942: Mrs. Miniver (Magnificent Ambersons, Yankee Doodle Dandy)
1945: The Lost Weekend (Mildred Pierce)
1947: Gentleman’s Agreement (Miracle on 34th Street)
1948: Hamlet (Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
1952: The Greatest Show on Earth (High Noon)
1956: Around the World in Eighty Days (Giant, The Ten Commandments)
1963: Tom Jones (America, America)
1964: My Fair Lady (Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)
1966: A Man for All Seasons
1968: Oliver!
1976: Rocky (Network, Taxi Driver)
1979: Kramer vs. Kramer (Apocalypse Now, All That Jazz)
1980: Ordinary People (Raging Bull)
1981: Chariots of Fire (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
1982: Gandhi (E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, Tootsie)
1983: Terms of Endearment
1984: Amadeus
1985: Out of Africa
1986: Platoon
1987: The Last Emperor
1988: Rain Man
1989: Driving Miss Daisy
1990: Dances With Wolves (Goodfellas)
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (Beauty and the Beast)
1994: Forrest Gump
1995: Braveheart

I finally got to see the inside of McCaw Hall a couple of weeks ago at a performance of Die Fledermaus (my friend Eleanor sings in the chorus at the Seattle Opera). Imagine my surprise as, on my way to the bathroom during the first intermission, I pass a wall with a dozen or so huge black and white paintings with birds on that look very familiar.

“Hey these look suspiciously like that one painting hanging over the fireplace in Blaine and Ret’s new house.”

So I go and check the signage: Sure enough, “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird by Michael Spafford, 1986,” which was based on Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird,” or was it based on Dennis Lucas’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Crow–after Wallace Stevens” as my own “A dozen or so ways of looking at a door” was in Jim Mitsui’s high school creative writing class?

The special guests at Prince Orlovsky’s party (which is apparently a tradition for Die Fledermaus) were “celebrating his 250th birthday, introducing Mozart!” (which I remembered from seeing Google change their logo yesterday on account of his birthday) who came out and introduced an up and coming diva whose name I didn’t catch but who sang a really beautiful aria from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and David Horsey, the editorial cartoonist for the P-I, who apparently is a repeat guest and used to play French horn in the Youth Symphony as a kid. The governor was supposed to come opening night, but the floods kept her busy. Jamie Moyer was supposed to come too, but cancelled. Jamie Moyer’s daughter was in Madame Butterfly as the child a few years ago. They did get Slade Gorton and the attorney general, but why mention that?

Great show. Especially since it was in English with English supratitles. I didn’t realize how well I knew the music already and had known it for years, and would be very surprised if the narrative device had never been lifted for a film script.

But that hall…wow…I mingled a lot and went out of my way to inspect the lobbies of all three tiers during the intermissions.

I believe that if you prefer women in skirts you should at least own your own kilt.

I believe that all you need to have a memorable evening are candles, music, incense, a dry red, cheese, cashews and chocolate.

I believe that music is the only sacred thing that we really have anymore.

It will always be KCMU to me, not KEXP.

I prefer Irish whiskey to Scotch, American Graffiti to Star Wars, and Van Morrison to Jim Morrison.

I believe that every film that was released between 1967 and 1982 was a masterpiece.

I believe in wearing Cool Water by Davidoff and putting the seat and lid down on the toilet when I’m finished using it.

I wrote poetry from 15-19, the same years Rimbaud did.

I wrote my first novel when I was 25.

If there weren’t already too many books about Bob Dylan I could write a book about him myself.

My ideal World Series would be the Seattle Mariners vs. the New York Mets.

My ideal Super Bowl would be the New England Patriots vs. the Seattle Seahawks.

I believe that Frank Gehry is at his best when designing buildings that look like binoculars.

I believe that we are all part of “God.” It’s only the powers that be which try to make us think we’re not.