Oscar Blooms For <i>American Beauty</i>

American Beauty, a dark comedy about family mayhem in suburbia, led a diverse slate of Oscar contenders with eight nominations Tuesday. The Cider House Rules and The Insider were right behind with seven nods each.

But the showbiz community is sure to be abuzz about how, for the second year in a row, Jim Carrey has been snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, even as he was honored with back-to-back Golden Globe awards for his work in Man on the Moon and, last year, in The Truman Show.

On the other hand, the two Golden Globe winners for best actress (in separate categories for comedy and drama) both picked up Oscar nods: Janet McTeer of Tumbleweeds and Hilary Swank of Boys Don't Cry.

Another nominee, new mother Samantha Morton, picked up a best supporting actress nod for Sweet and Lowdown, and she couldn't help passing Oscar excitement on to her infant daughter.

"I'm in shock, and my baby's crying," Morton, 22, said of her first-time nomination.

As for the top Oscar draw, during an interview Tuesday morning with CBS News Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel, American Beauty producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen said the key to the movie's success is the script by Alan Ball.

Ball himself told Gumbel that he felt connected to the script in a special way even as he was writing it.

"Hopefully, there was an honesty and some sort of real something," he said. "At least, that's the lesson I'm walking away with: Always follow the passion whenever I do anything."

It was also the first time that one of his screenplays was produced. "I just hit the jackpot with these amazing producers and director and cast," he added.

The budget for American Beauty was $15 million, low by big-studio standards. "Creatively, we made exactly the movie we wanted to make, and it happened quickly," Jinks said. "It was less than two years ago we first read Alan's screenplay. That's pretty quick in Hollywood terms."

Gumbel wanted to know when they'll start thinking about their acceptance speeches.

Cohen replied simply, "I started thinking about it when I was 8 years old."

The Oscars will be presented March 26 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Billy Crystal, who has been emcee for six past Oscar shows, will return as host after turning the job over to Whoopi Goldberg last year.

Here are the Oscar contenders in five major categories:

Best Picture:

• American Beauty
  
• The Cider House Rules
  
• The Green Mile
  
• The Insider
  
• The Sixth Sense

• Russell Crowe, The Insider
  
• Richard Farnsworth, The Straight Story
  
• Sean Penn, Sweet and Lowdown
  
• Kevin Spacey, American Beauty
  
• Denzel Washington, The Hurricane

• Annette Bening, American Beauty
  
• Janet McTeer, Tumbleweeds
  
• Julianne Moore, The End of the Affair
  
• Meryl Streep, Music of the Heart
  
• Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry

• Michael Caine, The Cider House Rules
  
• Tom Cruise, Magnolia
  
• Michael Clarke Duncan, The Green Mile
  
• Jude Law, The Talented Mr. Ripley
  
• Haley Joel Osment, The Sixth Sense