It was tough being a film critic in central Wisconsin. Humble Stevens Point may be a college town, but it’s also a community with a fairly small population and an availability of movie screens that’s commensurate with the number on the green highway sign on the way into town. This means that art house films and other offerings with a staggered release schedules took quite a while to get to one of our local theaters, if they arrived at all. This was frustrating throughout the year, but especially during Oscar season. Films that were playing only in major cities (to be sure they qualified for the awards) were still getting immense attention from the national media, effectively being dangled before us like a piece of string in front of an anxious kitten, seemingly always held out of reach of our batting paws. Though it felt differently at times, this wasn’t just some flyover land neglect. When the local theaters got those critically acclaimed films they often ran for a single week apiece, playing to small crowds. For everyone involved whose livelihood was staked on ticket sales, it was more prudent to devote screens to the crowd pleasing antics of cantankerous elderly gentlemen (who enjoy fishing on ice) than whatever grimly challenging fare was being positioned to claim some Academy attention.

Usually those smaller films didn’t even start dribbling into town until after the Oscar nominations were announced. Then, in the few weeks before the Academy Awards, nearly every film with a nomination in the Best Picture category or one of the four acting categories made a stop in Stevens Point as part of its awards season victory loop (the nomination being nearly as useful from a marketing standpoint, if not more so, as a win). Famine gave way to feast, and nearly every weekend promised a fresh opportunity to see one of the movies that the Academy had anointed as among the year’s–well, the previous year’s by that point–finest. Among the many challenges of this delayed gratification was the risk that something might get spoiled along the way.

In our current era, it seems inconceivable that The Crying Game preserved its central secret for as long as it did. It’s original release in New York and Los Angeles happened in November and it was months before it made it to central Wisconsin. It didn’t exactly bound into other cities rapidly in the meantime, either. Of course, the preservation of its surprises was the result of a canny campaign by Miramax Films. The independent studio implored critics and entertainment writers to keep plot details sparse in their write-ups, often leading to breathless raves that rang weirdly hollow, most critics so reliant on recounting story details to make their points that conveying the value of the film without them was entirely outside of their skill sets.

The Crying Game is a great film. In my estimation, it was the best film of 1992. And the secret, while I’m glad it was kept from me before I had a chance to see it, is the least of its many charms. There’s one other timely lesson to draw from the film. For all the silly hand-wringing in the Oscar-watcher sphere about the exclusion of on stage Best Song nominee performances from this year’s awards show, it’s worth remembering that some of the most memorable uses of music in films involves songs that would never be eligible for the award anyway. I would have gladly traded the performances of all five Best Song nominees to instead see Boy George take the stage to regale the assemble Hollywood hot shots with his version of the old Dave Berry song that gave The Crying Game its title.

Of course, I would have gladly traded that performance to watch Siouxsie and the Banshee confusing the hell out of the Oscar night audience by performing their song that was fully eligible for the award that year. But that’s a matter for another Friday.

Boy George, “The Crying Game”

(Disclaimer: For all know this song has turned up in all sorts of places, but it originates on the soundtrack to The Crying Game, which appears to be out of print. I understand that Boy George can probably use the money he’d get from the sale of this song, but if you’re really feeling for him, maybe you can buy a Culture Club album or something. If someone with due authority to do so asks me to remove this song from the Interweb, I will gladly comply. This is especially true if it’s someone associated directly with Boy George since I already feel a little bad about the mildly mean joke I just made.)