"And even Moonstruck - for some reason the audience were just in the mood for a very romantic film, because it's one of the few romantic comedies to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar"
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Jewison’s line slips in sideways: a director explaining a career milestone by crediting something as fickle as “the mood.” It’s a disarming move, and it doubles as a quiet critique of how prestige gets assigned in Hollywood. By framing Moonstruck’s Best Picture nomination as an atmospheric accident rather than a triumph of craft, he punctures the myth that awards are clean meritocracies. The subtext is less false modesty than practical wisdom: the industry loves to narrate success as inevitability, but filmmakers know distribution, timing, and cultural appetite can matter as much as the work itself.
The phrase “for some reason” is doing heavy lifting. Jewison implies there are forces no one can fully script: audience longing, a collective swing toward tenderness, maybe even fatigue with cynicism. Moonstruck arrived in the late ’80s, when romantic comedy was popular but rarely treated as “serious.” Calling it “one of the few” to break through to Best Picture isn’t just trivia; it highlights a bias baked into awards culture, where comedy and romance are often discounted as lightweight, domestic, or (quietly) feminized genres.
What makes the remark work is its double register: warm admiration for the audience’s openness, and a cool-eyed acknowledgment that gatekeepers only occasionally let pleasure count as art. Jewison isn’t begging for respect; he’s noting, with a director’s pragmatism, that sometimes the world has to be ready to hear the thing you made.
The phrase “for some reason” is doing heavy lifting. Jewison implies there are forces no one can fully script: audience longing, a collective swing toward tenderness, maybe even fatigue with cynicism. Moonstruck arrived in the late ’80s, when romantic comedy was popular but rarely treated as “serious.” Calling it “one of the few” to break through to Best Picture isn’t just trivia; it highlights a bias baked into awards culture, where comedy and romance are often discounted as lightweight, domestic, or (quietly) feminized genres.
What makes the remark work is its double register: warm admiration for the audience’s openness, and a cool-eyed acknowledgment that gatekeepers only occasionally let pleasure count as art. Jewison isn’t begging for respect; he’s noting, with a director’s pragmatism, that sometimes the world has to be ready to hear the thing you made.
Quote Details
| Topic | Romantic |
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