The Hot Button by David Poland

It's two days after Oscar® and all's well.

Because of your enormous e-mail response, I'm going to give you all an extra page today and tomorrow to print some of your letters. Don't feel bad if yours didn't make the cut. There were a lot of letters. I tried to pick ones that represented the many points of view, whether I agreed or not. If you don't see your voice represented here or in tomorrow's mail page, feel free to send another e-mail. I will say this: for a guy who dubbed her Little Gwynnie on these pages, I think that the rage at Gwyneth Paltrow is a bit much. Likewise, some of the anti-Benigni sentiment is a shock (more on that in tomorrow's Rant and Rave). And while I wasn't spending the whole evening watching her, it seemed to me that Whoopi Goldberg did fine. Lots of venom, gang.

OSCAR WRAP-UP ON LETTERMAN: Letterman had a list of previous winners of the award that Elia Kazan was honored with Sunday night: 1996 -- Mark Fuhrman, 1997 -- Mao Tse-tung, 1998 -- Saddam Hussein. And projected for 2000, the judges who threw the Holyfield fight.

OSCAR KAZAN WRAP-UP: As far as Kazan goes, let me try a new tact. If you want to defend McCarthyism, there's just no point in discussion. You are too wrong to even have a conversation with. If you want to claim that informing to the HUAC was a personal issue and not a professional issue, then you need to explain to me where you draw that line. If you rape your secretary, should you still get a performance bonus and a slap on the back? If you are using the "he was scared" defense, please explain to me then why he is still defending his cowardly actions. And if you really think his actions were heroic, think about this: when will you be considered a threat to American society? None of the people he gave up were actively trying to bring down the government or passing information to the Russians. They believed in a different political philosophy. The freedom to believe differently is at the core of being American. Should we hunt homosexuals because the right wing hates them and feels they are unrepentant sinners? Perhaps Jews should be sought for not believing in Christ. Or hey, maybe the threat is people who believe in Christ too much! Left, right or center, persecution for your beliefs -- not your aggressive, dangerous actions -- is not American. It is immoral. Or, perhaps you think that interring Japanese-Americans during World War II was a good idea. If so, as I said, what's the point of talking about it? We live on different philosophical planets. (Also, I'd like to acknowledge Army Archerd again for taking a very public stand with more ferocity than anyone else with something to lose on this side of business.)

OSCAR NUMBERS WRAP-UP: The overnights for the Oscars (that covers just 44 markets and the final numbers are usually down, not up) were a 32 rating and a 49 share. That's down from a 40.4/60 final figure last year. In fact, final figures could end up behind the year of Driving Miss Daisy, which did a 31.8/49 in overnights ratings.

OSCAR MEDIA WRAP-UP: There is a really good piece on dumb questions from the print media, who were in a different room than I was, by Chris Petrikin of Daily Variety (even if Chris has sent me nasty unsigned mail in the past). Less insightful was a piece titled "Tiny Miramax Teaches Hollywood New Tricks." First of all, Miramax has been doing the same trick for a decade and gotten more financing for their trick in the last five years c/o Disney. But, more to the point, the article is yadda, yadda, yadda until the writer gets to the point. Miramax releases the films it intends to push for Oscar in December and pushes them through January and February. And "tiny Miramax" shells out tens of millions of dollars to do it. I'm still not saying that Miramax has done anything wrong. They are playing by the rules. But the rules that allow this have a bit of a mockery of the Oscars. I don't really have a good answer, I admit. Like political election spending reforms, how do you make rules that are really fair? There is an entire industry built around V&A (Videos and Advertising) for the Oscars. But a great film should be able to be released at any time of year and win an Oscar. Let Miramax promote a summer release to an Oscar and THEN I will say that they've taught the industry a new trick.

RETURN TO THE MATRIX: I went to see a second screening of The Matrix last night. I'm sure that some of you might think that I am making a valiant effort to become a quote whore by writing this. I'm not. There's little doubt that this thought is too intense for Warner Bros to ever publish. But The Matrix is not only the most innovative action film since T2, it's a better film than T2. And here's why. For all of T2's pretensions of relating its story to the threat of nuclear war, in the end it was a brilliantly made movie with effects we had never seen before and little more. (Hardly an easy mark to make.) But The Matrix actually gets under your skin. The film asks and answers questions that we all ask ourselves all the time. From the real reason for deja vu to the choice we all make each day to be sheep or to face the slaughter, The Matrix is completely unreal and yet completely within our grasp. And besides that, it kicks cyber-ass as a straight-forward action film from beginning to end. This is the last I'll be writing on this film until we close in on its opening next week. But for those of you who read AICN, keep this in mind: The Matrix is beating Centropolis' The Thirteenth Floor to theaters. The Matrix is most likely a vastly superior film. The Thirteenth Floor is about to get hit by a filmic tsunami if all is right with the world. They will be the follow-up version. So, who is best served by providing mediocre reactions to The Matrix? You tell me.

UNLUCKY 13: Sometimes, when a movie doesn't seem to want to get made, the result is an Academy Award-winning box office dynamo that makes everyone who passed on it blush. But the other 98 percent of the time, everyone was right. And, so now, the saga of Thirteen Days moves on to New Line. After Universal dumped the $90 million-plus Cuban Missile Crisis saga starring Kevin Costner and directed by Phil Alden Robinson, Sony jumped on it. But then, Costner dumped Robinson and Universal had the option to pick it back up. It didn't. And Sony didn't stick with it either. So now, with rumors of Francis Ford Coppola coming aboard, New Line is thinking of picking up the film. And here are my two cents: New Line missed with Pleasantville, American History X and Living Out Loud this awards season. Unless this movie is fool proof -- and it hasn't been so far -- stay away. Or isn't the bad buzz around the star driven, high-budget Town and Country, combined with the series of misses, enough to turn your company heads?

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E ME: Are you as happy as me that it's all over?