1. Nino RotaThe Godfather

Rachel Zeffira: A lot of people don’t know that Nino Rota had previously worked with the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis. But when The Godfather did well, with Nino Rota working with Francis Ford Coppola and getting nominated for an Oscar, De Laurentiis was kind of vindictive. He wrote to the Academy and got other producers and composers to sign a petition accusing Rota of plagiarism. They sent the so-called evidence from a De Laurentiis film. The Academy heard it and took Rota off the nomination list the night before the ceremony.

But the music was something that Nino Rota had actually written. De Laurentiis knew that Rota had written it but he also knew that after making the accusation time would run out and Rota would be banned. He was pretty vicious. I think it happens to a lot of people. This year there were complaints about Antonio Sánchez’s score for Birdman, which is brilliant, but was ineligible because he also used classical tracks