Oscar bait success of summer blockbusters like "Jaws" and "Star Wars" (both of which had also been nominated for Best Picture), independent filmmakers refined Carr's methods of exploiting the Oscars. Merchant Ivory, who produced lavish costume dramas, often based on novels by Henry James or E. M. Forster, began to time their releases to align with the awards season. Their 1985 adaptation of Forster's "A Room with a View" won three of the eight Oscars it was nominated for. By 1991 the modern film-release calendar, in which studios released the movies they had the highest Oscar hopes for in autumn and December,
Mrs. Ted Bliss Ford), " Galatea 2.2" (by Richard Powers, "Moo" (by Jane Smiley), and "The Tent of Orange Mist" (by Paul West). Elkin had earlier won in the same category for his 1982 novel "George Mills". Mrs. Ted Bliss Mrs. Ted Bliss is a 1995 novel by American author Stanley Elkin, published by Hyperion Books. It concerns the last eventful years in the life of an old widow. Elkin won the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award in the fiction category for this work. Mrs. Dorothy Bliss is an old woman in her early 80s living alone in a retirement community near