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January 20, 2003
With apologies to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory…
Sunday night’s Golden Globes provided next to nothing in terms of clearing up the Oscar race. In fact, quite the opposite.
You can’t call Chicago’s three Globe evening dominant. With eight nominations in seven categories, three was no coronation. It was no shocking failure either. They weren’t beat out for Best Musical/Comedy.
But Adaptation won the two film acting awards that were not split between Drama and Musical/Comedy. Nicholson beat Daniel-Day Lewis head-to-head and About Schmidt writers Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, in perhaps the most shocking win of the night, beat both Adaptation and Chicago for Best Screenplay… and all three hope to compete again, as adapted screenplays, at the Oscars.
Until the last two awards, it looked like we had seen the last of The Hours. Then, Nicole Kidman reasserted herself as the Best Actress bet for the Oscar and the film won Best Drama, which is certainly no guarantee of a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, but a loss would have put it firmly in the “less likely” category.
Chicago – 3 wins
About Schmidt – 2 wins
Adaptation – 2 wins
The Hours – 2 winsAlso getting two wins was Gangs of New York. This film is, unfortunately, the greatest challenge for many of us to write about. I am not being a gamesman when I say that Scorsese is my favorite working director. I have been with him through the films that others spat upon. But I do not believe in the release version of Gangs of New York. All of the elements that I love in the 3-hour version are there… but all movies are made up of elements. And how you put them together can be more powerful than the elements themselves.
My point is, campaigning against Martin Scorsese pains me. Yet, the “it’s about time” argument for Scorsese, like the “it’s time for black actors to be rewarded” talk last year, is far beneath the dignity of an artist of Scorsese’s caliber. (Just as it was an unfair minimization of the wins for Denzel and Halle.) Scorsese deserves his tribute. But not this way.
Only two films won single globes. Frida’s Eliot Goldenthal - for whom Miramax has been waging the most serious composer campaign of all the composer campaigns - and Talk To Her (Habla Con Ella), Almodovar’s latest, which is not eligible for Best Foreign Language film and is a talked-about and eligible, but highly unlikely, Best Picture nominee. Both are non-issues.
So, besides the awareness that Lara Flynn Boyle needs to fire her stylist, that Laura Linney and Meryl Streep looks great in low-cut gowns and that if Renee Zellweger wins an Oscar, she could make Halle Berry’s meltdown look like Joe Gillis to Renee’s Normal Desmond, what have we learned from last night’s awards?
Well, I don’t want to get too far ahead of my Thursday Oscar column at MCN, but…
The best Picture race is still nine films deep. Of the five films that won two Globes (and the one that won three), only Chicago now seems to have an Oscar slot sown up. And it’s not because of the Globes. It’s because it had a slot sown up before the Globes and didn’t create any problems for itself.
The other four Globers - About Schmidt, Adaptation, The Hours and Gangs of New York – are about equally likely to garner Best Picture nods as the four that won no Globes - Antwone Fisher, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist and Far From Heaven.
Want a shorter list? It’s some tough love, but dump Far From Heaven and Gangs of New York.
That leaves seven films fighting for five slots.
There is already a sense in some quarters that the knives are out. Is Miramax campaigning to get Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers knocked out? Harvey Weinstein actually has a producing credit on the film, but the Rings slot would serve him better as a Gangs of New York slot, adding a few dollars to a box office haul that is coming up short of profitable. For that matter, will the feud between Scott Rudin and Weinstein - which resulted in Rudin being the only Miramax-associated person to win a statue on Sunday night who did not then thank Harvey - cause Weinstein to turn his back on the Paramount-domestic-distributed film or even campaign against it? We shall see.
You’ll notice that everything here is attached to Miramax. Why? Besides a checkered history, Miramax has by far the most titles still in play. Rings and Hours aren’t as hands on, but still bear the mark of Weinstein, Chicago is a favorite and the Marty ride on Gangs continues.
The companies that have to step up now are Focus Features, Columbia, Fox Searchlight and New Line. Focus needs to focus on The Pianist, their real shot at Best Picture. Columbia needs to greenlight another quick $2 million in awards advertising if they want to assure an Adaptation nomination. The moment is now for Fox Searchlight to take Antwone Fisher to the next level… the ambiguity of the Globes, for which Fisher wasn’t even nominated (suddenly a good marketing angle) leaves the door open to another film and Fisher could be it. New Line has two serious contenders with About Schmidt and Rings and now is not the time to fall asleep at the wheel… both should be nominated.
I haven’t mentioned the BFCA awards, which also took place this weekend. There isn’t much to say. Chicago won, and if that remains as true a predictor of Oscar gold as it has been the last three years, Chicago wins the Best Picture Oscar. But outside of that, Chris Cooper’s wins at both award shows for Best Supporting Actor, combined with the Academy buzz that has long said that he was older voters’ favorite thing in Adaptation, should make him a prohibitive favorite for the Oscar win. Charlie Kaufman won for writing Adaptation, which combined with the Cooper wins and the Streep Globe win legitimizes the film as a Best Picture contender. And New Line could use the Gollum win as Best Digital Performance as a stepping stone to continue the effort to get Andy Serkis a Oscar nomination for his work in Rings.
That’s about it… keep fighting. More awards arrive this week. We’re just nine weeks from The Big Show now. And my Thursday Oscar column at MCN will have all my current rankings.
Until then, happy MLK Day. And remember, we didn’t land on Harvey Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein landed on us.
READER OF THE DAY: TEAM STEVIE writes: “What ever happened to the fun factor at the Golden Globes, Hollywood's self-proclaimed "biggest party?" Have you noticed how rapidly it's diminishing the more 'respectable' it gets? Where are those great impromptu moments like Ving Rhames with Jack Lemmon or Christine Lahti's sprint to the stage after hearing she won while in the bathroom? Now it's turning into laundry list after fucking laundry list. BORING!!! We've already got the Oscars for that! Hey Dick, either have the balls to play the stars off the stage when they take out the goddamn list, or have Merv open the bar earlier. That ought to loosen everyone up! (Thank God for Jack Nicholson and Larry David. At least they know how speak on their feet.)”
