OSCAR POST-GAME 2002

It didn’t feel long… but it didn’t feel quick.  Whoopi was good… but not quite memorable.  I loved the idea of a New York film package… but it would have been a lot better had it been cut together by “New York Filmmaker”/ad guy Jerry Della Famina instead of Nora Ephron.  The show production was clean… but felt like the most over produced Oscar telecast ever.  Love Cirque De Soleil… but weren’t we celebrating the movies, not live theater… was there any real connection other than an inspired producer?  It was fascinating, hearing the thoughts of filmmakers about the Best Picture nominees… but couldn’t do we really need more EPKs on Oscar night…. wouldn’t a well-chosen scene do the job and actually connect to the movie more effectively?  Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close have two of the great voices in this business… but they are also great actors and having them reduced to Oscar Don Pardos made me uncomfortable and embarrassed for them.  Sidney Poitier is a good man and a great inspiration to Black actors and Black Americans… but isn’t Oscar perpetuating the cultural ghetto by having only Black actors pay tribute to his work? 

So how did I feel about the 74^th Annual Academy Awards?  Okay.

Tom Cruise set the tone, I thought, when he intoned, “Dare I say it?” in a speech that was clearly written very carefully.  There is nothing daring about reading copy.  The line was as phony as the sentiment it got in the way of was heartfelt.  (I was the one who called for Amelie to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival at 12:01 a.m. on 9/12, as a celebration of the continuation of life and the hopeful humanity of the cinema.) 

Things didn’t get any better when Jennifer Connelly and Akiva Goldsman both gave icy cold readings of their written winner’s remarks, in the face of their clear, underlying emotionality. 

And after Halle Berry sobbed publicly and gave her memorable, but mind-blowingly egocentric, “I am the vessel” speech, did she really have to go on to list her agents, publicists, lawyers and manicurist?  Is her idea of Black equality to be as much the Hollywood ass-suck as the White girls and boys? 

Even the one major surprise in the major categories, Jim Broadbent’s win for Iris, was a bit tainted, because you will never convince me that the voters weren’t really voting him the Oscar, at least in part, for his performance as Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge.  I mean, really, thank God he got it.  If ever an Oscar were given, as with other award shows, for an actor’s work over a given year, there could be no more diverse one-two than Broadbent’s this year.  Still…

Of course, the shine was taken off the apple weeks ago, as the “smear campaign” story became so overblown.  Ironically, Roger Ebert, whose comments on the subject on the Howard Stern Show were often quoted as proof that there was a campaign on, switched onto the “I don’t think there really was any smear campaign” track on Sunday night. (And it was the right thing to do… he could have just avoided the subject or used the “there was a backlash against the campaign” line.)  Likewise, different media outlets were still attributing the campaign to different sources at different studios as late as Sunday, suggesting more than ever that you should be very careful whom you are listening to as an authority on these subjects. 

I was watching one of the pre-game shows and the idiocy of the entertainment media came to a head when I heard someone talking about Moulin Rouge really making Oscar inroads… over the weekend.  Uh, the balloting closed last Tuesday.  How can anything be changing over the weekend?  Well, obviously, it can’t be.  But this professional prognosticator had “polled Academy members” and was hearing some positive buzz on Moulin Rouge.  Well, the fact that the poll was probably 4 people at a cocktail party wasn’t mentioned.  (“Polling methodology courtesy of The National Enquirer.”) 

And I’m sure that we’ll all be reading about how “they” decided it was time to “give it to the African American community” and how “they” really love Ron Howard and how “they” did or did not react to Russell Crowe’s fight at the BAFTAs.  But there is no “they.”  At least not one as dramatic and single minded as “we” suggest.  Think about your group of friends, which is all The Academy really is, a large entertainment industry club.  Do you think as a monolithic “they?”  Of course not.  But I bet your circle of friends agree on certain things.  Do Academy members think about things like awarding someone as Oscar two years in a row?  Yes, I’d say so.  Are your friends, in the vast majority, pro-life or pro-choice?  Are Academy voters older, as a rule, and do they avoid controversial material?  Seems that way.  And are most of your friends single or married?

Joe Leydon pointed out by e-mail this morning, “Pearl Harbor -- yes, the much-maligned, critically-lambasted Pearl Harbor -- won more Oscars than Memento, Mulholland Drive, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sexy Beast, Ghost World, Amelie and In the Bedroom put together.”  Are we now going to be subject to story after story about The Academy spitting in the face of indie film?  I hope not.  The only two indie films to be given Oscars this year were Iris and No Man’s Land.  And as I already wrote, I think Broadbent won for Moulin Rouge as much as for Iris.  And No Man’s Land?  The foreign-language winner.  But Oscar has always preferred “Hollywood” movies.  Nothing new there.  And isn’t it ironic, given that Robert Redford got a special award for Sundance last night. 

I kept score during the telecast, figuring that I’d tout my touts.  But who really cares how I did?  I’m just a well-informed guy making guesses.  A lot of norms were varied this year and many others were right in line.  After all my whining about Judaism and the doc winners, the non-Jewish doc won… in fact, it was probably the least seen of all the docs… which has actually become a strategy in the doc category, since it is one of only four slots (two forms – docs and shorts) that require that voters in the final round promise to have seen all five nominees.  Howard Shore won after his first nomination, for Lord of the Rings, and Randy Newman won for the first time after 16 nominations… for the weakest of his 16 entries. 

I still got a few chills running up my back during the ceremony.  But, ABC’s pre-show special and their cuts to their Time Square facility felt like a giant corporate promo.  Perhaps the show will feel a little more intimate after they’ve had a few years in the Kodak Theater.  Or maybe it’s only going to get slicker.  I hope not.  For the first time, I felt that the live audience was getting a better show than the home audience.  It was lovely that the Academy, which disses Errol Morris year after year, paid him to do a segment for the show.  (Next time, give him his well-due Oscar.)  But outside of his piece, the filmed segments were so slickly produced that they felt quite cold and heartless.

Maybe it was the year.  Maybe we just aren’t ready to celebrate like normal.  Or maybe I’m just too aware of things like the Elton John Amfar party becoming the Elton John Foundation party.  Or maybe I’m just too cranky about the fact that so few other writers bother to notice.

Anyway, it’s over.  There has been no legitimate Oscar candidate for next year released yet this year.  (Yes, Ice Age will be up for Best Animated Feature, along with Spirit and Lilo and Stitch and maybe Treasure Planet.  Okay?)  The next big landmark is Cannes and the “Has Martin Scorsese actually been rejected by the festival?” controversy.  On June 21, Minority Report becomes the summer’s first “Can a summer movie be an Oscar movie?” story.  Then there’s Road to Perdition and K-19: The Widowmaker.  And then it’s fall. 

In other words, seven months of Oscar mothballs… except in Jeff Wells’ column.

A PERSONAL NOTE:  I love this business, much as it irritates me sometimes.  All of this “they” crap that I’ve been hearing and reading in recent weeks just bugs me to death.  We in the entertainment media have a horrific tendency to report fifth-person hearsay as the gospel without remorse.  Sure, it happens on other beats, but the lack of cynicism about what we are being told and ourselves is stunning.  I am certainly no one to complain about intellectual extrapolations by writers.  But why can’t more of us just come out and admit, “This is what I think, based on this fact, this fact and this fact”?  Instead, we hide behind one another, quote anonymous internet reviews of unfinished screenings, rewrite press releases and fail to look anywhere that our masters (not just our editors, but the studios and publicists) don’t point out to us.  I think that feel-good writing has its place in this business as well.  But the way some stories, like the “smear” story, suck in the best of us… we all need some more time with a stick shift and less time cruising along in our automatics. 

I was incredibly fortunate to be allowed to publish what I knew as well as what I was told for years at TNT and to be paid well for my work.  I was blessed to have the freedom to ask, “Who are ‘they?’“ and not just print the same old filler to fill my column inches or my dead air.  I need to find a new home for my work sometime soon.  But more and more, packaging overwhelms any depth of content in this business.  It is a quandary.

READER OF THE DAY:  Fibs writes:  “well, where to start.  how kewl to finally see the woodman attend an oscar.  he seemed to be enojoying himself so maybe he'll actually return to stand up.  god knows, any more like the jade scorpion.

poitier was classy, though i thought those of us watching at my house were hoping he'd mention will smith as his son! 

not much into fashion, though my friends and i thought that j lo looked like she came out of a 60's prom. and what the fuck happened to gwenyth?  her bod looked like those comic drawings of little old ladies in playboy.  blythe must have been ashamed!  sharon stone looked hot.  great to see the way we were reunion, though both babs and bob do tend to talk with quite a bit of self importance. 

wonderful milestone with halle and denzel's wins.  great coincidence that two such deserving performances that allowed two black actors to win. now had denzel not been nominated and will smith won, then it would smack of political correctness. does that make sense?  in any event, i'm sure that jesse jackson will still have something to belly ache about tomorrow. ‘y no black sound editors?’ “

E ME:  How was The Parade Of Baldies for you?