Oscar nominees Bening and Sorkin share common past: 'The American President'

By Sarah Sluis

I saw Annette Bening in two films last year, as a parent traumatized by loss in Mother & Child and as a wine-swilling lesbian mother in The Kids Are All Right. While Bening performed admirably in both the roles, I was reminded of how well she does comedy in her latter role. Her first post-Oscar nomination project, The Third Act, will team her up with Rob Reiner, who directed her in one of the few movies I'm guaranteed to stop on while flipping through cable channels, The American President. And it just so happens that Aaron Sorkin, nominated for an Oscar this year for The Social Network, wrote the screenplay.

Before this year's Oscar nomination and four years before he created "The West Wing," Sorkin made one of the best late-century romantic comedies out there. Roger Ebert admired the movie for combining romance, comedy, and politics: "It is hard to make a good love story, harder to make a good comedy and harder still to make an intelligent film about politics," he praised in his four-star review (I knew I wasn't the only one who liked this movie!). Perhaps politics was the special something that made this movie go over the top. After all, the combination of romance and comedy tends toward the unfunny and unromantic these days. Or maybe it's that Michael Douglas and Bening got along well on set, if you believe what she said about him at an AFI event.

Whatever the reason, The American President is a charming movie and it's no surprise that both Sorkin and Bening are nominated this year at the Oscars. What's more surprising is that this gem with a level of feel-good on par with The King's Speech didn't get any Oscar love. How did this movie, rated four stars by Ebert, fare at the Academy Awards? It received one nomination, for Best Original Score. As a recent post by Kevin Lally on overlooked performances shows, the Oscars have missed crowning some of the best movie moments. Let's hope both Bening and Sorkin get their due, even if it's not for whatever film will eventually be considered their best.