BY CHRIS HEWITT, Pioneer Press
After three straight Academy Award nominations, Barrie M. Osborne is glad he gave up on renting tuxedos.
“I decided the first year it might be wise to buy a tux,” says the 1966 Carleton College graduate. A nominee for producing each previous movie in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, he anticipated Tuesday’s news about being nominated yet again for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” his own favorite of the three. “I’m very happy. I would have been surprised if we weren’t nominated, to tell you the truth, but winning is another matter.”
Oddsmakers have 11-time-nominee “The Return of the King” as a prohibitive favorite to take home the trophy, so Osborne is optimistic about his chances when the awards are handed out Feb. 29 at the 76th Annual Academy Awards: “When we haven’t won, I honestly feel it is an honor to be nominated, so I haven’t been disappointed. But it’s always been a dream for me to win an Oscar, a real thrill and a lifetime dream.”
The dream began when he was a student at the Northfield college, attending screenings of classic movies at the school’s film society. “We used to watch all the foreign films and the David Lean films, and I got excited about what an honor it would be to make a film like any of them,” Osborne said.
Having spent five years working on the trilogy, Osborne is ready to cap it all off with an Oscar win. And, yes, he will have a speech ready, just in case he needs it.
This is an article that was printed today in the Minnesota St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper about LOTR producer Barrie Osborne.
