Driving Miss Daisy

The producers bought screen rights to Alfred Uhry’s play in mid 1987 for $300,000, before it reached Off Broadway and before Uhry won the Pulitzer. Studios called the writing brilliant but said that in terms of wide appeal it was not exactly Batman; they landed Warner Bros. only by agreeing to cut the production budget almost in half, and it was made for $7.5 million. Eddie Murphy, first choice for Hoke, turned it down; Morgan Freeman carried over the role he had played Off Broadway. Bruce Beresford’s film took nine nominations at the 62nd Academy Awards, winning four: Best Picture, Actress in a Leading Role (Jessica Tandy), Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and Makeup. Tandy was 80, to that date the oldest winner in the category. Beresford was not nominated for directing, which went to Oliver Stone, making this the first Best Picture winner since Grand Hotel in 1932 with no directing nomination. In a 2015 Hollywood Reporter re-vote, academy members gave the prize to My Left Foot instead. A good fit if you treat the weight going to 25 years of daily friction rather than segregation as a choice, not a failure. Not for viewers who will bristle at how deferential Hoke is kept; its nomination was argued over that year beside Do the Right Thing.