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There have been 82 Academy Awards presentations. During these lavish ceremonies, almost 2,800 recipients have been given 1,825 Oscars. Obviously, no one is going to make 1,825 consecutive correct decisions. The Academy has gotten it wrong once or twice. In this column, we place some of their choices in the spotlight, revealing films and performances that got the shaft in a big, bad way.

My first experience with Dennis Hopper was in 1994's Speed on Father's Day. Though I was only ten at the time, my dad wanted to see the movie, so he took me and my brother. At the time, Dennis Hopper was a stranger to me, but he captured me with his psychotic bomber, proving that the best mindless action movies have an engaging villain. To my father, Dennis Hopper was somebody else. He was one of the bikers in a little film he saw his sophomore year of college in 1969 called Easy Rider, a manic follower of Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, a drunk father in Hoosiers and a sociopath in Blue Velvet. Looking at his career in retrospect of someone born close to 30 years after Hopper's debut in Rebel Without A Cause, his importance to a generation isn't the easiest to comprehend. While many of his peers embraced and were accepted by the mainstream, Hopper distanced himself and was even shunned by it for close to 20 years, which is perhaps why Hopper was constantly ignored by the Academy. Hopper has legitimate claims to many performances for which he was robbed, but his omission came in 1986 when Oscar chose to nominate his more accessible role in Hoosiers over his unsavory portrayal of Frank Booth in the controversial Blue Velvet.

Despite the myriad of roles Hopper took in the last 20 years of his career, and the distinctive performances of Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet has become the iconic Hopper role. As Hopper has famously commented regarding to why he had to play Booth, "I've got to play Frank! I am Frank!" Hopper completely embodies the role, and is the fulcrum point of why Blue Velvet succeeds beyond being a twisted Hardy Boys movie. Too many times, actors are concerned with giving a backstory and motive to twisted characters. Hopper bypasses this nonsense and instead injects a terrifying personality into Booth. To identify Frank's story would nullify Lynch's vision, in which ordinary good people are met with bad men with unknown motives. Frank Booth is always seen through of the eyes of Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan), so it is Jeffrey who gets to define Frank, a fact that Hopper's performance never loses sight of. For Jeffrey, Frank is beyond just a bad man, but the epitome of evil and a force he can't comprehend, so Hopper imbues a since of mystery in Booth, making difficult for the viewer fully understand the character.

Yet, despite Jeffrey's and the audience's misunderstanding of Booth, Hopper never lost insight into the central figure of the villain he was playing. For the viewer, Hopper makes Booth mysterious, terrifying and even mesmerizing. Booth switches between multiple personas, most notably that of baby and daddy when dealing with Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini). Hopper moves between these characters seamlessly, with Booth's inhaling of an unknown gas only adding to the appeal of the character. Booth's proclivity for the word fuck and Pabst Blue Ribbon contribute to the enormity of the character. To say Hopper chews the scenery would be an understatement. Hopper understood the larger than life persona of Booth. He knew explicitly how Frank would talk, walk, scream and laugh. Because he knows Booth explicitly, this approach never hinders the movie, but only adds to the overwhelming nature of Booth's personality.

Unfortunately for Hopper, he also chose to star in the more sentimental Hoosiers. In honoring their time honored tradition of honoring an actor's less challenging work given multiple choices, the Academy leaned towards his fine but non-memorable work in Hoosiers. A sentimental drunk is far more accessible than a violent rapist, kidnapper and drug user, so Oscar's choice to side with his Hoosiers role is none too surprising. His performance in Hoosiers is not without merit, and I'm sure Hopper was honored. Yet, given the highly personal nature of the role of Frank, Hopper would have felt more honored to be recognized for his Blue Velvet performance. Yet, Oscar also likes showy performances like Hopper's, especially in a villainous role (recent wins by Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Day-Lewis and Kathy Bates come to mind). The fact that it was a showy yet restrained and powerful performance should have helped Hopper's cause, an example of scene chewing at its best - something that seems to be lost on Al Pacino.

Hopper saw competition outside of himself in Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe from Platoon, both fine performances but neither nearly as memorable as Hopper's. Denholm Elliot was nominated for a A Room with a View, and Michael Caine earned his first win in one of Woody Allen's strongest films, Hannah and Her Sisters. Of the five nominated performances, Michael Caine's is the best of the four I have viewed, and despite his fine performance, Caine's work doesn't equal Hopper's stunning creation of evil in Blue Velvet. Frank Booth has been named one of the greatest characters by both Premiere Magazine and the American Film Institute. Anyone that lists Pabst Blue Ribbion as his beer of choice while cutting off ears in his spare time certainly has a few issues. Though Frank Booth hasn't been seen by as wide of an audience as Hannibal Lecter and Anton Chigurh, Frank Booth remains burned into the moviegoing psyche.