A long, long time ago in the year 1976 A.D., far before the internet and video blogging and Skype and Tout and Vine, a young gentleman named Steven Spielberg documented himself and some acquaintances (one of whom is The Godfather and Rocky actor Joe Spinell) watching the 48th annual Academy Awards nominations being announced.

See Spielberg had made a little film called JAWS in 1975, and the movie was up for a potential 11 nominations. You might think that a young up-and-comer such as he was would be overcome with excitement just to get one Oscar nomination, but, as we would all come to learn, this man is a different kind of animal than other directors. The video begins with Spielberg stating quite confidently that they expect the movie to score a clean sweep in all 11 categories, but things don’t quite go as planned.

Continue below now to check out the video of Spielberg and his…eccentric…friends reacting to the the 48th annual Academy Awards nominations.

JAWS was ultimate nominated in four of the 11 categories, including Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Film Editing. It won all of them except Best Picture, which went to the classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The categories Spielberg was most surprised to not be nominated for were Best Director, obviously, and Best Special Effects, which is an obvious head scratcher to this day.

While you can understand a confident young director like Speilberg being a little let down, you also have to look at who was nominated instead. For Best Director, just as an example, the official nominees were Milos Forman for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (who would go on to win), Federico Fellini for Amarcord, Stanley Kubrick for Barry Lyndon, Sidney Lumet for Dog Day Afternoon, and Robert Altman for Nashville. Looking back you could certainly make a case for Spielberg replacing some of those directors, but the names speak for themselves.

As for special effects there was no annual category at the time. From 1972 to 1977 there was the Special Achievement Academy Award, which went to The Hindenburg for both sound and visual effects. Mr. Spielberg maybe has an argument there.

Video

[Source: BuzzFeed]