Best Picture: Midnight Cowboy Easy Rider
The Wild Bunch and Midnight Cowboy are better directed, and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid is better written. Still, no film captures 1969 in all its drugged-out glory like Easy Rider, the ultimate road flick with gorgeous desert vistas, acid intercuts and power performances from Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, all backed by a soundtrack of Steppenwolf, The Byrds and The Band.
Best Director: John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch)
Best Actor: John Wayne (True Grit) William Holden (The Wild Bunch)
Best Actress: Maggie Smith (Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?)
Best Supporting Actor: Gig Young (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) Jack Nicholson (Easy Rider)
Best Supporting Actress: Goldie Hawn (Cactus Flower) Katharine Ross (Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid)
Best Original Screenplay: Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (William Goldman)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Midnight Cowboy (Waldo Salt from a novel by James Leo Herlihy)
