I got an e-mail this morning that put a lot of stuff in perspective.  In some ways, it is a bit indulgent of me to run the thing.  But just days after the Oscars, this celebration of a woman who really loved the movies – and kind of liked reading about them as well – just hit the mark.  She’s a part of our community… the part of our community that is all to often forgotten.  The letter was sent to Reel.com’s Jeff Wells and I.

“Hi David and Jeff - never thought I'd be writing you guys together, and especially about this, but I couldn't help needing to share something with you. A reader of yours and my very best friend of sixteen years, Ashley Evans, died in San Francisco late last week. We didn't even get to have a last "will win/should win" conversation and my heart is heavy. A lot of our conversations would start with "did you read David today?" or "did you see Jeff's column this morning? I KNEW that dialogue but I was too late." The very first time I wrote David my e-mail began, "as my best friend would say, who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?" That was Ashley.

Ashley was the kind of friend who, when we were both young and broke and living in Manhattan, brought a slice of pizza and a Diet Coke to my office when I couldn't get out to an ATM or lunch. When I twisted my ankle and had to have an MRI, she sat by me and read to me from Premiere through the whole thing.

Ashley loved movies, good and bad. We sat through Virtuosity, Showgirls and Crash together.  We were in the first row for Alien 3.  She was the best Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon player the world has ever known.  She could throw quotes from All About Eve and Broken Arrow at me in the same conversation. 

One hot summer day in Brooklyn, she sat me on her couch with a bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese and made me watch Wim Wenders' "Until the End of the World" all the way through. I was bored out of my mind but she loved me anyway, and I forgave her because she introduced me to Hal Hartley and the original, Dutch "The Vanishing." 

So a toast to Ashley Evans.  She preferred Stoli lemonade, or a white cherry icee at the AMC in San Francisco's Chinatown.  Thanks for listening.  She loved you guys.  All best, Jillana Devine”

Here’s to you, Ashley.  And Jillana. 

I considered leaving today’s column as just that letter, but I imagine that such a move would have pissed off Ms. Evans, leaving her hanging for something to talk about.  So I’ll do a few items and then let some other readers continue the Oscar debate.

ANOTHER LOSS:  Dick Sylbert is dead.  He had a 44-year run in this business, building a reputation as one of the best production designers to have ever walked a backlot.  A Face in the Crowd, Murder, Inc., The  Manchurian Candidate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, Reds, The Cotton Club, Dick Tracy, Mulholland Falls, My Best Friend’s Wedding – just a partial list of this man’s amazing work over the decades.  Coppola, Kazan, Nichols, Lumet, Polanski, De Palma, Beatty and Frankenheimer are just some of the directors he worked with.  He was Hollywood royalty.  He will be missed.

REEL POWER:  With all the fuss over the skin tone of Oscar winners this year, the only color that really matters in this business is still green.  Denzel Washington makes people a lot of money.  As a result, he is making his next movie with Carl Franklin behind the camera and Training Day co-star Eva Mendes as his co-star once again.  It’s not that Carl Franklin is not a quality director or that Ms. Mendes is not worthy.  But Washington has the power to bring people along or to push them aside.  Halle Berry doesn’t have that.  Lion’s Gate is going to try to rev up the box office of Monster’s Ball, which is pretty impressive for the kind of film it is, hovering around $20 million.  But while Ms. Berry will have a wider variety of studio scripts coming her way, until she becomes box office, she’s going to have a hard time throwing her weight around.  The set of X-Men 2 might become an all-too-interesting place to be.

OUCH:  According to the UCAL Anderson Forecast, 18,000 jobs or 12 percent of the industry workforce lost their jobs last year.  Much of that was due to the rush to produce films before the stroke that never happened, leading to layoffs in the downtime.  The recession didn’t help either.  But the most interesting element of the report, which is being released today, but which was released to the press yesterday, is the vision of Los Angeles as the home of the business side of the business and not as a production center, as runaway production continues to run.

READERS OF THE DAY:  Fast Jonny opines:  “The most satisfying moment of the Oscars for me (besides seeing the Woodman) was having the Academy relegate Moulin Rouge to the MTV Music Video Awards -- where they should add a new category for Best Music Video -- Long Form.

Once you get past the impressive eye-candy coupled with a tremendous publicity push, the Emperor that is Moulin Rouge just doesn't have any clothes.”

DAVID RESPONDS:  Jon, you stupid slut!  (Ha!)  As a happy part of that publicity push, I have to tell you that the Emperor is quite well dressed, fat and happy and will hopefully spawn more inbred siblings.  We haven’t seen a real musical in a long, long time.  But Moulin Rouge is just that… and only that.  “Truth. Beauty. Freedom. Love. Above All, Love.”  What else would you ever expect of a musical?  I admitted back in my first review of the film that it took me a few screenings to really connect to the film.  But connect I did.  And now, it is a treasure to me.  I hope it is to you someday. 

Ms. Grayson writes:  “Well...really how could PROMISES win...when you actually come away from it with a pro-Palestine feeling? Come on...go for the HBO doc! Everyone knows Nancy and Sheila own the Oscars....I was sorry though, about PROMISES... I heard that was that the main kids attended the Oscars and if it had won they were going to make a plea for MidEast peace...and that might have been much more touching than all that overblown, let's pay homage to fallen heroes/actors/new yorkers/plus cram in Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier and get Woody Allen in the mix...oh yeah plus cirque du soleil..and hey! Put Whoopi on a swing....JEEZUS! I came away from that show stuffed full from too much cotton candy with a stomach ache instead of a small, elegant meal with the four food groups and nothing else.

Bottom line? They really should have gone with Less is more.”

Two Js adds:  “Anyone else notice these Oscar night boo-boos?  Sam Jackson was introduced as a nominee for Pulp Fiction in 1997 -- three years after the movie came out.  Neat trick.  And Julia Roberts managed to diss Bill Conti for the second year in a row by referring to last year's "stick man" as "Tom Conti."  I bet the actor Tom Conti was quite confused to hear his name coming out of that famous mouth.  

As for breasts, Uma Thurman looked "udderly" fantastic.  I assume she's pregnant again?  As for Christina Ricci, I guess that's the big drawback of losing weight -- breasts are made of fat.  And didn't Gwyneth's look much bigger in "Flesh and Bone" and "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle?"  And was that the same Jennifer Connelly we saw in "The Hot Spot" a dozen years ago?  She's still the most beautiful woman on the planet, but her diet has cost her dearly in the boob department.”

And The Woman Who Writes wraps up the whole shebang:  “The Oscars were a big giant over-long BORE. I was rooting for MOULIN ROUGE, but I had pretty much written it off as a serious contender weeks ago (I did, however, predict that Jim Broadbent would win Best Supporting Actor for just the reasons you mentioned). While I thought Whoopi did an okay job as host (I liked the Ashcroft joke and the very pointed remark about overlooking Baz Luhrmann for Best Director, that's about it), the ceremony dragged worse than any Oscar telecast in recent memory. There were too many montages, and while Cirque du Soleil was amazing, I did wonder WHY THE HELL they were there. My huge disappointments of the night were in the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography categories. I really shouldn't have been surprised that the older, stodgy, Hollywood-movie-oriented Academy didn't give GHOST WORLD the Best Adaptation award, but I was. No such excuses for Best Cinematography, though... WHY haven't they given the award to Roger Deakins yet? He's been nominated five times so far... he's one of the best working cinematographers (I'd complain about Dante Spinotti not having an Oscar yet either, but he wasn't nominated this year so that's a rant for another time)... and no Oscar. He managed to make *snow* interesting in FARGO and, judging from the clips and stills I've seen, actually knows what he's doing with black and white in THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE. Still no Oscar. I should be accustomed to random acts of insanity by the Academy, but that's ridiculous. Fashion faux pas: all these pale, PALE women [Jennifer Connelly, Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman et. al.] wearing beiges and pinks that make them look sick/washed-out... and clear lip gloss. They all look like they're in the last stages of consumption. Male fashion don'ts: Russell Crowe's rather... um... feminine hairstyle, Brian Grazer's Barton Fink 'do, and that godawful fringed tuxedo one of the costume or makeup winners was wearing. A lackluster year in aesthetic terms as well as in the field of nominees. The one real highlight of the evening for me was when they read passages from the actual screenplays in the Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay categories. It was nice to see them giving props to what screenwriters actually do... even though I would've liked to see reaction shots of the writers themselves as the nominees were announced. Otherwise, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that next year [with impending films from Wes Anderson, Sam Mendes, and Steven Soderbergh] will be better.”

 E ME:  What haven’t I been writing about that really, really, really needs to be written about?