Newark’s Kenny and Keith Lucas — the Lucas Brothers — have been nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay for “Judas and the Black Messiah,” leading a group of New Jersey-connected nominees at this year’s Oscars, announced Monday morning.
Three movie in contention for best picture, including “Judas,” have local ties.
The Lucas Brothers, who came up with the story for the movie, are nominated alongside co-writers Shaka King (the film’s director) and Will Berson for the screenplay. The film is also nominated for best supporting actor (twice), cinematography and original song.
These are the first Oscar nominations for the twin brothers, who are nominated as producers of the film. They started out as stand-up comedians and first learned about the subject of their movie — Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party — in an African American studies class at The College of New Jersey.
“Fred Hampton’s a footnote in Black history,” Keith Lucas, 35, told NJ Advance Media last month. “Even in that class, his story wasn’t emphasized. It was almost like in passing.”
The Lucases set out to tell Hampton’s story through the FBI informant who helped set in motion the events that led to the leader’s fatal shooting by police in 1969.
Daniel Kaluuya, who plays Hampton and won a Golden Globe for the role, is nominated for best supporting actor alongside LaKeith Stanfield, who plays FBI informant William O’Neal, a Black Panther security chief who gave police intel ahead of their fatal raid of Hampton’s home.
“Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao, 38, who made history as the first Asian American woman to win best director at the Golden Globes, makes history again as the first woman of Asian descent nominated for best director at the Oscars and as one of two women nominated, which is itself an Oscar first (Emerald Fennell is nominated for “Promising Young Woman.”)
Zhao received an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay for turning journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book of the same name into a film that is now nominated for best picture (Zhao is also nominated for film editing).
Bruder, 42, who grew up in Montclair, lived in a van named Van Halen while documenting nomadic older Americans who ditched rent and traditional homes for life on the road as “workampers,” living in vans, cars and RVs while moving from job to job, including warehouse work for Amazon. Real-life senior nomads star in Zhao’s film alongside Frances McDormand, a producer of the film. Oscar winner McDormand was nominated for best actress for playing Fern, a workamper in the movie, which debuted on Hulu in February after hitting the drive-in movie festival circuit in the fall.
Bruder became so immersed in van living during her reporting that returning to life off the road was an adjustment.
“When I got back, it felt so strange to be waking up in a bedroom,” she told NJ Advance Media in February. “It actually made me nervous.”
Wyckoff’s Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers and his wife, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, announced the Oscar nominations from London.
The best part of their appearance was probably watch the celebrity couple say “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” both times that movie was nominated.
Another Oscar nominee with a Jersey connection is Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which premiered on Netflix in October and filmed in various New Jersey locations including Paterson, Morristown, Newark, Clifton, Montclair and Hoboken.
The film is nominated for best picture, original screenplay, film editing, original song and cinematography. Sacha Baron Cohen is nominated for best supporting actor for playing activist Abbie Hoffman in the movie, which is based on the real trial of a group of men who organized protests in connection with the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Hoffman co-founded the Youth International Party, whose members were known as Yippies.
Earlier this month, Sorkin won the Golden Globe for best motion picture screenplay for the film.
The 1968 protests — anti-Vietnam War and counterculture events which arrived in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy — became violent when police officers and the National Guard clashed with protesters. Organizers Hoffman, Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) and Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot. The Chicago 7 were acquitted of conspiracy charges, but some were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot. In 1972, those convictions were overturned.
“Trial” filmed in Chicago but also at Paterson’s Community Baptist Church of Love and a mansion in the city’s Eastside Historic District as well a city hall in Newark, Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison (the Florham campus) and Morristown’s Saint Elizabeth University (formerly the College of Saint Elizabeth). With “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the movie is one of two films this year to portray Fred Hampton. Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays Hampton in Sorkin’s film opposite Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Panthers chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale.
Other “Trial” Jersey connections: Ben Shenkman (“Billions”) plays attorney and Belleville native Leonard Weinglass, who defended the men alongside attorney William Kunstler, played by Oscar winner Mark Rylance (“Bridge of Spies”). Bayonne native Frank Langella (“Frost/Nixon”) plays Judge Julius Hoffman, who ordered Seale to be chained and gagged during the trial. And Noah Robbins (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) plays Lee Weiner, a member of the extended Chicago 7 who went on to become a professor of sociology at Rutgers University.
The Oscars will air 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m PT Sunday, April 25 on ABC from Union Station in Los Angeles and the Landmark Dolby Theater. Here is the complete list of nominees:
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Maria Bakalova – “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”
Glenn Close, “Hillbilly Elegy”
Olivia Colman, “The Father”
Amanda Seyfreid, “Mank”
Youn Yuh-jung, “Minari”
COSTUME DESIGN
“Emma”
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
“Mulan”
“Mank”
“Pinocchio”
ORIGINAL SCORE
“Da 5 Bloods”
“Mank”
“Minari”
“News of the World”
“Soul”
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”
“The Father”
“Nomadland”
“One Night in Miami”
“The White Tiger”
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
“Judas and the Black Messiah,” screenplay by Shaka King and Will Berson, story by Kenny and Keith Lucas, Berson and King
“Minari,” Lee Isaac Chung
“Promising Young Woman,” Emerald Fennell
“Sound of Metal,” Darius Marder and Abraham Marder
“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Aaron Sorkin
ANIMATED SHORT FILM
“Burrow”
“Genius Loci”
“If Anything Happens I Love You”
“Opera”
“Yes-People”
LIVE ACTION SHORT FIILM
“Feeling Through”
“The Letter Room”
“The Present”
“Two Distant Strangers”
“White Eye”
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sacha Baron Cohen, “The Trial of the Chicago 7″
Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah”
Leslie Odom Jr., “One Night in Miami”
Paul Raci, “Sound of Mental”
LaKeith Stanfield, “Judas and the Black Messiah”
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“Collective”
“Crip Camp”
“The Mole Agent”
“My Octopus Teacher”
“Time”
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
“Colette”
“A Concerto is a Conversation”
“Do Not Split”
“Hunger Ward”
“A Love Song for Latasha”
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
“Another Round,” Denmark
“Better Days,” Hong Kong
“Collective,” Romania
“The Man Who Sold His Skin,” Tunisia
“Quo Vadis, Aida?,” Bosnia and Herzegovina
SOUND
“Greyhound”
“Mank”
“News of the World”
“Soul”
“Sound of Metal”
PRODUCTION DESIGN
“The Father”
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
“Mank”
“News of the World”
“Tenet”
FILM EDITING
“The Father”
“Nomadland”
“Promising Young Woman”
“Sound of Metal”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7″
CINEMATOGRAPHY
“Judas and the Black Messiah”
“Mank”
“News of the World”
“Nomadland”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7″
VISUAL EFFECTS
“Love and Monsters”
“The Midnight Sky”
“Mulan”
“The One and Only Ivan”
“Tenet”
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
“Emma”
“Hillbill Elegy”
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
“Mank”
“Pinocchio”
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
“Onward”
“Over the Moon”
“A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon”
“Soul”
“Wolfwalkers”
ORIGINAL SONG
“Fight for You,” “Judas and the Black Messiah” – H.E.R., Dernst Emile II and Tiara Thomas
“Hear My Voice,” “Trial of the Chicago 7″ – Daniel Pemberton and Celeste Waite
“Husavik,” “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga” – Savan Kotecha, Fat Max Gsus, Rickard Goransson
“Io Is (Seen),” “The Life Ahead (La Via Davanti A Se)” – Diane Warren and Laura Pausini
“Speak Now,” “One Night in Miami,” Leslie Odom Jr. and Sam Ashworth
LEAD ACTOR
Riz Ahmed, “Sound of Metal”
Chadwick Boseman, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Anthony Hopkins, “The Father”
Gary Oldman, “Mank”
Steven Yeun, “Minari”
LEAD ACTRESS
Viola Davis, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Andra Day, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday’
Vanessa Kirby, “Pieces of a Woman’
Frances McDormand, “Nomadland”
Carey Mulligan, “Promising Young Woman”
DIRECTING
Chloé Zhao, ‘Nomadland’
Thomas Vinterberg, “Another Round”
David Fincher, “Mank”
Lee Isaac Chung, “Minari’
Emerald Fennell, “Promising Young Woman”
BEST PICTURE
“The Father”
“Judas and the Black Messiah”
“Mank”
“Minari”
“Nomadland”
“Promising Young Woman”
“Sound of Metal”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7″
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.
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