The Academy Awards will be handed out to the year’s best films on March 2. Who cares? The night before, the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation gives out the Razzies—as in they “razz” the year’s worst films and film performances.
• In the 1970s and early 1980s, Los Angeles publicist John Wilson hosted a potluck dinner for his friends every year on Oscar Night. At his 1981 party, after the Oscars were over, Wilson asked his friends to vote on the worst movie of the previous year—it had some standouts. Wilson was inspired to crown the worst movie after watching a double feature of two stinkers: the Village People musical Can’t Stop the Music, and the roller-disco-based, Olivia Newton-John musical Xanadu. The winner: Can’t Stop the Music. As Wilson was a publicist, he put out a press release to announce it. The news was picked up around Hollywood, and it soon became an annual tradition, except they’re now awarded in an L.A. theater, not Wilson’s living room.
• In 2009, Sandra Bullock won the Best Actress Oscar for The Blind Side. The night before, she won the Razzie Award for Worst Actress in All About Steve.
• Bullock actually showed up at the Razzies ceremony to accept the award, joining only two other people who collected their trophy in-person: Halle Berry (for Catwoman) and Tom Green (Worst Actor for Freddy Got Fingered).
• In 1984, Amy Irving got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Yentl. Irving got a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actress for the same role.
• The 1988 Academy Award winner for Best Picture: Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise. The 1988 Razzie winner for Worst Picture: Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise.
• Person with the most all-time Razzie nominations and wins: Sylvester Stallone. He’s received 31 nods, and won eight times.
• This year’s Worst Picture nominees are After Earth, A Madea Christmas, The Lone Ranger, Movie 43, and Grown Ups 2. Adam Sandler, who starred in Grown Ups 2, is up for Worst Actor—if he wins, it will be three in a row, following recognition for That’s My Boy and Jack and Jill,
• Sandler’s Jack and Jill is in fact, the most Razzied movie in the awards’ 34-year history. Jack and Jill won every single award in 2012, 10 in all. It took home Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Sandler), Worst Actress (Sandler again, playing his other character’s twin sister), Worst Supporting Actor (Al Pacino), Worst Supporting Actress (David Spade in drag), Worst Screen Ensemble, Worst Director, Worst Remake (the Razzies nominating board felt it was a rip-off of Ed Wood’s drag B-movie Glen or Glenda), Worst Screen Couple, and Worst Screenplay.