The Hot Button by David Poland

Thursday, 11 February 1999

PRE-OSCAR® FANTASIA: I have to admit, I'm excited about Fantasia 2000. If not for the new animation, for the way that the film will be gently handled by Disney. First, in December, there will be a five-city tour with a live orchestra playing with the film. (Those cities would be Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.) Wow! Then, four months on 100 IMAX theaters around the world, an event that could mark the next step in the evolution of the massive film format toward more traditional films. I'm hoping that Disney will be giving us some kind of sneak peak at ShoWest, which will be covered in-depth here at The Hot Button in March.

FUN WITH OSCAR: Sir Ian McKellen charmed with his response to Daily Variety's inquiry about how he got the news that he was nominated at the theater in which he is currently working on The Tempest: "I was told to sit quietly in an office and wait for the phone to ring, which it didn't do. And I thought, 'Ah, well.'" He later found out that he was nominated by catching the update on the Oscar.com site. McKellen told Variety that he likes the idea of being called, forever, a movie star. "People call me 'the English stage actor' or 'the English Shakespearean' or, worst of all, 'veteran actor.'" But he laughed and added, "Movie star. That's a dangerous thing to be." Indeed.
Two others, one a non-nominee who I feel got rooked (more on that in ROTD) and another who I was thrilled to be rightly rewarded for her amazing work, also spoke out. The director of Best Picture nominee, Elizabeth, Shekhar Kapur had some gentle perspective on being passed over. He told Variety, "I had to stop and consider why I didn't feel disappointed about not being nominated. And certainly some of the reasons are rationalizations like the fact that it took the Academy a long time to recognize Mr. Spielberg. The thing is, I was blessed to be involved in a film that eventually became larger than any of its parts. That association has given me much more independence to choose what I will do next, and I'm humbled by what my involvement has meant to young filmmakers in India who have contacted me. In essence, I feel as if I were nominated because of the tremendous accolades given to those involved with Elizabeth." Huzzah!! But you waz robbed.
On the flip side, Rachel Griffiths, who was nominated as Supporting Actress to Best Actress nominee Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie, figured that she hadn't been nominated. So when a friend called with the news, "I just screamed so loudly." Great. She added, "As a little girl from the other side of the world, its just enormous." I, for one, couldn't be happier for you.
BITES OF THE OSCAR® APPLE: Unlike what I printed on Tuesday, Life is Beautiful is the second film to be nominated for Best Picture and Best Foreign Picture. (The other one was Costa-Gravas' Z, which ended up winning Oscars® for Best Foreign Film and Best Editing) Roberto Benigni, nominated for the film as writer, director and actor, joins only Orson Welles (Citizen Kane won only Best Screenplay), Woody Allen (Annie Hall won Allen Oscars® for screenplay and direction; he lost for acting, though Diane Keaton won and the film won Best Picture) and Warren Beatty (Reds won Beatty only a Best Director, though the Vittorio Storaro won for Best Cinematography and Maureen Stapleton won for Best Supporting Actress) as triple-crown nominees. (Speaking of Beatty, the writing nomination he shares with Jeremy Pikser is his 14th nomination.)
MORE BITES: For a little more perspective, Citizen Kane lost the Best Picture Oscar® to How Green Was My Valley, Welles lost Best Director to John Ford and Best Actor to Gary Cooper. Annie Hall's Woody Allen lost Best Actor to Richard Dreyfuss (for The Goodbye Girl, not Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and was joined in his loss by three little-known actors: Richard Burton, Marcello Mastroianni and John Travolta. Woody's directing win came at the expense of former Oscar® winner Fred Zinnemann and future Oscar® winner Steven Spielberg. Warren Beatty lost the Best Actor to Henry Fonda's last performance; he beat Louis Malle, Hugh Hudson, Mark Rydell and (who else?) Steven Spielberg for Best Director. Beatty lost Best Screenplay to Chariots of Fire (Colin Welland) and his film lost the Best Picture to Chariots, as well.
STILL NIBBLING: In a little more perspective, the year Citizen Kane hit the Academy Awards, Walt Disney was given a special achievement Oscar® for Fantasia. When Annie Hall won Best Picture, it beat a film that I think may be of interest this year. That was Star Wars. (Allen also beat George Lucas for the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards, but Lucas's film and Spielberg's Close Encounters both got Special Achievement Oscars®.) It's a small world after all.
UNIVERSAL GOES UNIVERSAL: As all the Oscar® hoopla went on, Seagrams quietly started the dismantling of Polygram Filmed Entertainment that I now assume will not be stopped by a last-minute purchase by a prince with too much money and too little understanding of Hollywood. (By the way, Universal was not left out of the fun. Besides a Best Original Song nod for Babe: A Pig in the City, the studio is co-producer of Shakespeare in Love with Miramax, even though journalists -- including me -- always seem to give all the credit to Miramax.) The biggest news for now is that Universal is turning the PFE international releasing apparatus into a Universal international releasing apparatus. The company will be called UPI, as opposed to the biggest international distributor of the moment, UIP. Ironically enough, the loss of Universal product by UPI will be a blow to UPI, an organization that has long been considered too big for its international britches.
PREMIERE NIGHT: I was at the premiere for 200 Cigarettes at Paramount Studios last night. There is something eternally surreal about premieres and premieres at Paramount, doubly so, because they are on the lot and have the feel of almost talking place on a set. The cast and crew did their duties, smiling for the still photographers and talking to the video crews. One of the things I find so bizarre about the entertainment media is that we scream for almost any actor alive and yet, no one noticed as Paramount's Sherry Lansing and Jonathan Dolgen arrived. I'm sure that if I pointed them out, that my compatriots would give me a blank stare and wonder aloud who Jon Dolgen is. These are the people who write the checks, kids!
It was also a nice opportunity to see the great Pat Kingsley at work as she guided Courtney Love through the maelstrom. Pat is one of the most-feared women among the Hollywood press and yet, she is remarkably charming and smooth. I guess that's why she is the most powerful publicist alive today. She arrived early and checked every media slot along the line well before Courtney arrived. Her. Not her assistant or another publicist. And as she worked Courtney through, she gave time to many outlets, large and small and managed to move Courtney to the next without ever being brusque or making people feel that they were being pushed aside for a bigger outlet. It's become so standard to hate publicists because they protect their clients so rigidly, but Ms. Kingsley is a charmer. I'm sure she has a snake in the basket for many of the writers who have "done her wrong," but despite her keeping many clients unavailable to me at my whim, she is part of the charm of this silly machine we all work in out here. At least for me. (As soon as Jeffrey Wells reads this, my phone will ring with a screaming rant. Guaranteed.) Keep your eye out for photos from the premiere.
READER OF THE DAY: As promised above, here is a note from Andy: "Do you think Shekhar Kapur's exclusion from the directorial race is a bias against non-white directors? A friend of mine is pretty convinced it'll be a cold day in hell before a non-white director gets a directing Oscar®, simply because it's near impossible for them to get a nomination. He became convinced after Ang Lee didn't get nominated for Sense and Sensibility. And he is right in the fact that you can count the number of non-white directorial nominees on one hand. I'm not convinced, but with every passing year, I become more so."
And a letter in reverse from THX: "I'm sick and tired of this one-sided argument that is being brought up about the fact that blacks were not represented in the movie Pvt. Ryan or any other movie. It's not the fact that they're not in it, rather it's the way these minorities are asking the questions and phrasing them. For instance take the statement that Spielberg forgot about black soldiers. First off, whomever is asking this question is doing the exact same thing they are accusing Spielberg of and that is being ethnocentric. What I'm getting at is the fact that all they are concerned about is blacks being in the movie, forget every other ethnic group on the planet. Let's just focus on blacks. Let's not ask about any other minorities. Why? Because we're just concerning ourselves with whichever group we put ourselves in. Not the Jews who were being exterminated. First of all, there are more Chinese, more than one billion of them, and I don't see them in the movie. Statistically speaking, it is more shocking to find out that one out of every six people in the world is not being represented in this movie. Better yet, women make up more than 50 percent of the world's population and I don't see them fighting in this war. Where is the bloody gender discrimination? Forget racial. What about that? What about the Russians, the British, Japanese and everyone else that fought in the war. And we can't forget about the disabled.
"I'm not dodging the issue that was brought up by who knows, there were no blacks in the movie but the main group of people being discriminated against were the Jews. More then six million, at the least, were wiped off the face of the earth. While we're at it, I didn't see any gypsies in the movie. I know Hitler went after them. Or how about Native Americans, Hispanics, Indians, Mongolians and every other ethnic group that we failed to mention. So get off your self-centered @#$ and stop creating the same ethnocentric problems that you are accusing someone else of doing. Don't get so caught with race and miss what is being said. There's more to the world then whatever bloody ethnic group, culture, religion or race one wants to put themselves in, Michael. And for anyone who wants to know, I'm a human being with the same number of eyes, arms and all that other stuff we have in common."

E ME: Race always seems to be part of the race, don't it? You have so much to write about. If I were you guys, I would be choking on it all. (Monica Lewinsky as Madge in the new Palmolive commercials, "You're choking on it!") Anyway, it's time to vent your spleen with as much RAM as you can muster.

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