The Person With the Biggest Oscars Losing Streak Also Lost a Nomination

Winning an Academy Award, whether it is for Best Picture or an unheralded below-the-line category, should never be taken for granted. Not only is an Oscar the highest honor in the industry, but it also recognizes a limited number of artists and craftspeople. Peter O’Toole, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Mitchum, and Cary Grant, along with being prodigious figures in Hollywood, all share one commonality: they never won a competitive Oscar in their lifetime. Living stars such as Glenn Close, Amy Adams, Tom Cruise, and Willem Dafoe are still chasing that coveted statuette, even after countless nominations. However, no Oscar contender has had quite the bad break that sound mixer Greg P. Russell has experienced. If going 0 for 17 in nominations wasn’t defeating enough, Russell had one of his nods stripped away from him by the Academy.

13 Hours

During an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya, a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.

Release Date

January 14, 2016

Runtime

144

Writers

Chuck Hogan , Mitchell Zuckoff

Studio

Paramount Pictures

Greg P. Russell Holds the Record for Most Oscar Nominations Without a Win

The celebration of behind-the-scenes technical craft and artistry is what separates the Academy Awards and its respective telecast from the rest of the major awards bodies. Giving both a costume designer and a movie star like Robert Downey Jr. — who is expected to win Best Supporting Actor for Oppenheimer at this upcoming ceremony — an equal stage in front of a primetime audience emphasizes the importance of every single person who makes a film come together. The job of a sound mixer is taken for granted by the general audience, but their job is vital to amplifying the spectacle of cinema and the theatrical experience. The Academy Award for Best Sound, which was previously split into two categories (sound mixing and sound editing), primarily rewards films that exist in a world where loud noises are prevalent, such as live music, combat, and vehicular racing. Quality sound design can be demonstrated by deafening films, such as Christopher Nolan‘s Best Picture frontrunnerOppenheimer, or by the scarcity of sound in eerie films such as The Zone of Interest.

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Greg P. Russell certainly has a resume to dignify the importance of a sound mixer and editor. With over 200 credits to his name, Russell has been a Hollywood sound mixer since the 1980s. Throughout his prolific career, he has worked with directors such as Michael Bay, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Tim Burton, Barbra Streisand, Paul Verhoeven, and Sam Raimi, with Bay being his most frequent collaborator. Russell has a thoughtful approach to his profession, which he refers to as both an art and a craft. “One of the most gratifying aspects of being a re-recording film mixer is that the full experience of a filmmaker’s vision happens here on the dub stage,” he told Cinemontage, the journal for the Motion Pictures Editors Guild. Russell’s contributions to beloved and popular films such as Armageddon, Spider-Man, Apocalypto, and Skyfall have not gone unnoticed by the Academy, as he has received a whopping 17 nominations. All of his nominations are apt, as these movies are predicated on an immersive technical experience that exploits the advantages of high-spectacle, big-budget filmmaking.

Why Was Greg P. Russell’s 17th Nomination Rescinded by the Academy?

After being nominated 17 times since the 1990 Academy Awards, where he received his first sound nomination for Ridley Scott’s Black Rain, Russell’s awards shelf remains empty. As of 2024, he has never won an Academy Award, despite the suggestion that his craft is worthy of admiration based on the vast pool of nominations credited to him. To add insult to injury, Russell’s 17th nomination, which was for sound mixing Michael Bay’s biographical war-thriller, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, was rescinded by the Academy upon the discovery of a violation of campaign regulations. The decision was made after the Board of Governors discovered that Russell had called his fellow members of the Sound Branch during the nominations phase of voting to make them aware of his work on the film. This act of campaigning for a vote is a direct violation of the Academy’s regulations, which prohibit telephone lobbying. While Russell’s nomination was removed, 13 Hours retained its nomination for Best Sound Mixing.

If it makes Russell feel any better, 13 Hours did not go on to win Best Sound Mixing at the 2017 Academy Awards. Another biographical war film from that year, Hacksaw Ridge, was honored with that prize. Coincidentally enough, one of the four credited sound mixers for Mel Gibson‘s film was Kevin O’Connell, who worked alongside Russell across multiple decades, each sharing nominations for their work on The Rock, Armageddon, Spider-Man, and Transformers. They viewed themselves as a creative partnership, and their excitement of learning that they received Oscar nominations never got old. Now split up heading into the 2017 Oscars, Russell and O’Connell combined for 38 nominations, but it was the latter who finally got the monkey off of his back with a win for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge. Until that night, O’Connell held the record for most nominations without a win. With this win for his 21st nomination, he passed the record of Oscar snubs down to his old sound-mixing partner.

Will Greg P. Russell Ever Win an Academy Award?

Since this turning point at the 2017 Oscars, O’Connell and Russell’s appearances on the Academy nomination list have decreased. After a seven-year hiatus, O’Connell received his 22nd nomination for Oppenheimer. Russell, on the other hand, has been shut out of nominations since his 13 Hours controversy. However, he continues to work steadily through 2024 on both film and television. His work can be heard in major franchise installments such as Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, the Scream reboot series, and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Russell’s most recent credit is for the acclaimed FX series, Shōgun. If Russell’s old collaborator, Kevin O’Connell, proved anything, it is that waiting for the Oscar statuette and all the glory it provides, can take upwards of 20 nominations.

The canon of the Academy Awards has its fair share of intriguing trivia. Many records seem unfathomable and forever impossible to break, including Lord of the Rings: Return of the King completing an 11 for 11 sweep of nominations, Walt Disney winning 26 Oscars in his lifetime, and John Williams receiving 54 nominations throughout his active career, which continued with his recently nominated score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Greg P. Russell’s feat of losing 17 nominations without a win ranks among the most outlandish. This ill-fated accomplishment is so extraordinary that Russell being stripped of his most recent nomination is merely a footnote.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

Watch on Paramount+