1980 Snubby Awards: The Winners

First off, apologies for being a day late; I went to see a concert and didn’t get back until late. Sometimes life gets in the way of fake movie awards.

Usually, we announce the Snubby winners and immediately continue on with the previous year. But this week we pause, because on Tuesday, the 2017 Oscar nominations will be announced, so Wednesday we’ll be back with the 2017 Snubbies nominating round, the following week we’ll vote on the 2017 Snubbies, and then the week after that, we’ll both announce the winners, and open up the Auteur Decade with 1979.

So, here are your 1980 Snubby Award Winners:

Best Cast
Airplane!
This was a close race, with 14 votes for the winner, 13 for The Blues Brothers, and 10 for The Empire Strikes Back.

Best Voicework
Frank Oz, The Empire Strikes Back
Oz’ second consecutive win and third overall, as he won Snubbies for 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper, and 1984’s The Muppets Take Manhattan. Oz beat Empire co-star James Earl Jones, who beat him in 1983 for Return of the Jedi. Oz was previously nominated in 1985 for Follow That Bird, and 2005 for Revenge of the Sith.

Best Stuntwork
The Blues Brothers
Jake and Elwood drive away with this one, with 18 votes to The Empire Strikes Back‘s 10.

Best Snubbed Supporting Actor
Leslie Nielsen, Airplane!
The role that launched Nielsen’s second career as a deadpan comic actor wins by a healthy margin over The Shining‘s Danny Lloyd and Superman II‘s Terence Stamp.

Best Snubbed Supporting Actress
Barbara Billingsley, Airplane!
This might be the first one-scene performance to win a Snubby, and we didn’t think to nominate scene-stealing costar Stephen Stucker until too late, not to mention scene partner Al White, who actually researched linguistics for his role as “Second Jive Dude” and wrote the dialogue for the whole scene, according to The A.V. Club‘s oral history of the film.

Best Snubbed Actor
Jack Nicholson, The Shining
The fact that Kubrick’s masterpiece wasn’t nominated in any category may be the most egregious non-Spike-Lee-related snub we’ve yet come across. Nicholson wins easily for one of his most iconic roles.

Best Snubbed Actress
Shelley Duvall, The Shining
Kubrick reportedly tortured Duvall to get her frayed-nerves performance, but the result might be the best performance in any horror film ever made. Duvall not only gets four times the votes of any fellow nominee, she also gets more votes than anyone in any other category.

Best Snubbed Director
Stanley Kubrick, The Shining
As egregious as it is that Hitchcock never won Best Director, the worst offense has to be against Kubrick, who was nominated for Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon but never took home a trophy. The fact that he wasn’t even nominated for The Shining (against some admittedly solid competition) may be even more of a shock.

Best Snubbed Picture
The Shining
It’s as close as the Snubbies have come to a sweep, as The Shining takes the top four awards, with 18 votes to The Empire Strikes Back‘s 11 and Airplane!‘s 10. For complete vote totals and every Snubby winner and nominee 1980-2016, feel free to peruse the Google spreadsheet. See you next week, when we take a brief foray into the present day!