Our annual Turkey Awards made their first appearance in The Post’s pre-Pulse entertainment section on Thanksgiving Day 1998. They weren’t called awards, and were originally more like a premature year-end 10-worst list crossed with Esquire’s famous Dubious Achievement awards.
My former colleague Thelma Adams wrote what was intended as a one-shot piece headlined “H’wood flips us the bird — the Top 10 movie turkeys of the year.’’
Her list included such deathless classics as “Meet Joe Black’’ (“You might have to be a necrophiliac to love this movie’’) and “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn’’ (“We thought he had reached a new low with ‘Showgirls,’ but nooo’’).
There was no sequel in 1999, but the next year, the first editor of the newly named Pulse section, the late Marc Kalech, remembered Thelma’s piece and thought it was an easy and funny way to fill the section’s single page of editorial copy on Thanksgiving, then The Post’s lowest readership day of the year.
Thelma had left, so I made my debut on Nov. 23, 2000, with “Thanksgiving Turkeys — These Stinkers Are For the Birds.’’ The first film mentioned was Nora Ephron’s mercifully forgotten “Lucky Numbers’’: “It’s hard to make a movie less rewarding to sit through than the ludicrous ‘Battlefield Earth,’ but a lethargic John Travolta managed that awesome feat with this witless farce.’’
It became an annual event, and by 2002 — “among the worst years since the introduction of sound 75 years ago’’ — I was enthusiastically roasting the likes of such deathless bad-movie classics as Eddie Murphy’s “Pluto Nash” and the Madonna remake of “Swept Away.”
I ratcheted up the vitriol to 11 the next year with “ ‘Gigli,’ the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez bomb that set a new standard for unwatchable celluloid.’’ That film’s most infamous line (Lopez invites cunnilingus by telling Affleck, “It’s turkey time — gobble, gobble”) was quoted in my Thanksgiving Day columns for years afterward.
I started singling out a star or stars for special mention on the cover in 2007, beginning with “frozen-faced’’ Nicole Kidman for her performance as a pod person in “The Invasion’’ and her “even scarier’’ character in “Margot at the Wedding.’’ For the occasion, her face was Photoshopped onto a turkey on a platter.
Others earning this rare accolade were Al Pacino (in 2008, for his “jaw-dropping grimaces’’ in “88 Minutes’’); joint winners Will Ferrell (“Land of the Lost’’) and Vince Vaughn (“Couples Retreat’’) in 2009; and siblings Julia and Eric Roberts sharing the prize in 2010 for “Eat Pray Love’’ and “The Expendables,’’ respectively.
By that point, the Turkey Awards had become so popular, they were moved from Thanksgiving to the day after.
Nicholas Cage, cited back in 2001 for “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin,’’ finally took top honors in 2011 for “Drive Angry’’ and “Season of the Witch.’’ Last year it was Robert De Niro for his “paycheck hamming’’ in the likes of “Red Lights’’ and “New Year’s Eve.’’
Want to take a trip down memory lane? Here are links to all 17 Turkey Awards:
2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1998.