The Academy Awards are on us again. It’s possible there has been a year with a greater chasm between the films nominated for the big Oscars and the year’s box office successes, but it doesn’t seem likely. In this sense, 2008’s nominees* bring back memories of the indie explosion of 1996 where Jerry Maguire was the only true studio film making waves with Academy voters. This year there’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Underlining how peculiar the choices are this year, the most accessible, big-budget, studio friendly fare up for any major awards is a period piece adapted from a work of famed American author F. Scott Fitzgerald.
* Though it is presently 2009, these are considered the 2008 Academy Awards because they honor the films that were released in 2008.
The races are supposedly still up in the air in a few categories, but this is debatable. Stats guru Nate Silver has stated that there is a better than 99% chance that Slumdog Millionaire wins Best Picture. The only two major awards that I could see going in a different direction that the seeming consensus at this point are the Best Picture to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (because it is the year’s most accessible, big-budget, studio friendly fare) and Best Actor going to Sean Penn.
People keep telling me that Mickey Rourke was fantastic in The Wrestler and I keep telling them that he also co-starred opposite Dennis Rodman and Jean Claude Van Damme in Double Team. Hollywood doesn’t forget things like that. For what it’s worth, I am genuinely hoping that Rourke does win the Best Actor award for the following two reasons:
1) It will completely devalue the Academy Award. Members of the Hollywood elite tend to look at the Oscars as a validation of one’s career, self and ability. It’s why the subject is changed whenever Eric Roberts’ nomination and Marisa Tomei’s win are mentioned. For some reason, Cuba Gooding Jr. has not fallen into this category. Maybe the Academy voters like Hanes. Who knows. If Rourke were to win Best Actor, it would instantly validate the career of one of the worst decision making actors in history. We can joke about him being in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Double Team, but what you don’t know is that there are literally dozens of films that Rourke appeared in during the nineties that were significantly worse that those two. You just haven’t heard of them because they went straight to video. If that.
2) It will seal the deal in my arguments with people that a role is far more important that an actor’s in generating critical appeal. The conversation would go like this.
PERSON: Did you see The Wrestler? Mickey Rourke is amazing. He is a fantastic actor. He is so talented. I can’t believe he’s so amazing and I never saw it before.
ME: Anyone would have earned raves for their work in that script.
PERSON: No. Rourke was the only one who could have done it. He’s one of the best actors I’ve ever seen.
ME: Hmmm. Did you see Cousin Joey? Shergar? Out in Fifty? Shades?
PERSON: I don’t know what those movies are.
ME: Those are the films Rourke did in 1999 alone.
PERSON: Oh…
ME: What about Exit in Red or Bullet?
: Well…
ME: Thicker than Blood? The Last Outlaw?
PERSON: No, I haven’t seen those.
ME: Yeah, because they’re made-for-TV movies. Remember Tom Hanks’ made-for-TV period?
PERSON: Uh, no.
ME: Because he didn’t have one. He’s a good actor. Patricia Heaton makes movies for television. Not Hanks.**
** Yes, I just called Mickey Rourke the Patricia Heaton of actors… which is now making me wonder what Heaton would have done with Melissa Leo’s role in Frozen River.
Naturally, because it would be awesome and help me a great deal personally, I don’t expect Rourke to win. We’ll see.
The evening begins with E!s red carpet show hosted by Ryan Seacrest. The participants in this year’s Oscar viewing are myself, my brother Pete and Pete’s roommate Brian. Since there are no women present, the over/under on fashion related comments is at 1.5. The fourth annual Stumped? Running Oscar Diary begins.
6:26 Mickey Rourke shows up on the red carpet. “Man, that guy looks terrible,” Brian says. Rourke apparently feels terrible too. He tells Seacrest he can’t even remember what he did for breakfast that morning. More impressive is that Rourke looks to be about two inches shorter than Seacrest… who is 5’7” and change.***
*** Seacrest’s height is determined by taking his officially reported height—5’9”—and subtracting an inch and a half.
6:30 Jessica Biel is talking on her cellphone while on the red carpet. E!’s reporters are ooohing over the fact that Biel’s iPhone matches her dress.
6:31 Holy God! How short is Ron Howard? Seacrest is towering over him by a good four inches.
6:32 Seacrest is actually asking the people on the red carpet good questions. I have to give him his due. He asks Howard why he prefers shooting with lots of takes. Howard doesn’t really answer the question, but it’s a good question nonetheless.
6:39 Pete states that he’s never seen a Hugh Jackman movie without falling asleep.
6:40 Philip Seymour Hoffman shows up wearing a ski cap. “Maybe it’s cold,” Pete says slowly. “Maybe he’s planning a burglary,” Brian suggests. Hoffman is pictured below.
6:41 Brian wonders whether anyone has ever brought a high-class escort to the Oscars. “Someone has to have,” he says. I wonder whether anyone has ever brought a first-date to the Oscars. Tell me that wouldn’t leave a lasting impression on your date.
6:46 We flip to the Barbara Walters’ Special during a commercial break. Walters mentions that Hugh Jackman has adopted two mixed race children. She then asks whether this was planned. I am hoping like hell that Jackman says, “Nope, big fuck up at the adoption agency. We’re still trying to get it sorted out.” Jackman takes the high road and informs Walters that everything was planned for.
6:55 Jackman is giving Walters a lapdance. Yes, Walters’ objectivity has been just thrown out the door, but I’m willing to give her a break. If I could get Monica Bellucci to give me a lap dance, I’d heave my journalistic ethics out the door in nanoseconds.
6:56 Seacrest is interviewing Brad Pitt on the red carpet. Pitt never actually stops walking while talking to Seacrest. You use this technique to avoid homeless people asking for money. Pitt uses this technique to avoid Seacrest. The math is not pretty.
6:57 Robert Downey Jr. is a dead ringer for Rick Pitino.
6:58 Why is Alicia Keys at the Oscars?
6:59 The questions Seacrest was asking just got a lot better as we shift to watching ABC’s red carpet show. Tim Gunn tracks down Kate Winslet and asks her, “What’s on your mind more? Winning or not tripping?” And he’s serious.
7:00 Josh Brolin and Diane Lane are being interviewed. Brian announces that Diane Lane is looking good for being 50. Heads slowly turn toward him. “She’s not 50,” Pete and I say simultaneously. Brian bets us $4 that she’s older than 50.
7:01 Brian loses $4.
7:03 “If I was nominated for an Oscar, I’d drink beforehand,” Brian states. “It’d be like New Year’s Eve.”
7:03 (again) These ABC red carpet interviewers are horrible. Jay Manuel*** intros his conversation with Frank Langella by stating, “Richard Nixon couldn’t be here, but Frank Langella is.”
*** whom I steadfastly refuse to call “Mister”.
7:08 Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle is being interviewed and has brought the entire cast of the film with him. I feel certain that this is more Indians than have ever been to the Oscars before. Combined.
7:10 Mickey Rourke was planning on bringing his dog as his guest. However, unfortunately, the dog passed away six days ago. Rourke brought the tuxedo he had made for it anyway. “Something’s not right with that guy,” Brian says.
7:11 Brian wonders whether ABC personality Robin Roberts ever called a WNBA game. Pete wonders whether Cheryl Miller has ever done red carpet work.
7:13 Miley Cyrus is on the red carpet. “I don’t think they should give sixteen year olds this much attention,” Brian says as the camera pans down Cyrus’ dress. “Unless it’s an underage tennis tournament.” It’s then agreed upon that sixteen year olds can be given attention so long as Dick Enberg is somehow involved. This debate almost makes me miss Cyrus’ statement that Angelina Jolie is her favorite person “in all of history”.
7:15 Brian guarantees that Roberts used to play in the WNBA. Another $1 is bet.
7:17 “Is there any way to figure out whether Roberts played in the WNBA without doing anything?” Brian asks.
7:21 Gunn needs to work on his interviewing technique a little. He’s talking to Marisa Tomei and he says, “Mickey Rourke said he liked seeing you with your clothes off. I like seeing you with your clothes on.” Tomei doesn’t know what to say. I’m not sure how this works, but it’s worse both ways.
7:31 Hugh Jackman is announced.
7:31 (again) “Oh boy, we’re not starting strong,” Brian says as Hugh croons about Slumdog Millionaire in front of cardboard props.
7:32 As Jackman sticks his head through the prop associated with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a friend calls up to weigh in on exactly how much this sucks. “This is up there with the Rob Lowe/Snow White moment,” my friend observantly says.
7:33 Brian’s down another $1. My friend looks up Roberts’ bio online and learns that she has not played in the WNBA.
7:35 Jackman is orange. After some discussion, it’s settled that he’s not darker than Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder… but he’s close.
7:36 “The Oscars look really low budget,” Brian says. “I’ll give them that.”
7:36 (again) Despite the fact that neither The Wrestler nor The Dark Knight were nominated for Best Picture (or really anything else), both movies are mentioned in the opening song. As evidenced by the picture at the right.
7:37 Jackman goes into the audience and climbs on Langella’s lap. “And this guy’s NOT gay?” Brian asks, succinctly putting into words what all three of us are thinking.
7:37 (again) Rourke has a silver tooth.
7:38 Jackman is talking fast. Super, super fast. Way too fast. He screws up the joke with Brad Pitt being the Sexiest Man Alive because of it. Who would have guessed if your MC was running around for six minutes straight singing that he might be out of breath at the end of it and not on his game for delivering jokes?
7:40 Instead of having last year’s Best Supporting Actor winner announce this year’s Best Supporting Actress winner, as has been customary, the producers have decided to have five previous category winners deliver speeches/messages to the nominees this year. It’s a nice change of pace.
UPDATE: Marion Cotillard who presented Penelope Cruz actually won Best Actress last year, so there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the people presenting.
7:43 Angelica Huston is actually shaking and wiggling while talking.
7:44 Whoopi Goldberg’s tattoo seems to be spreading. I wonder whether it’s contagious.
7:45 While I like the familial and friendly atmosphere of the previous winners speaking to the nominees, Brian is not a big fan. He throws up his hands and says, “This is terrible! They couldn’t come up with anything else to fill time so they came up with this.” He sighs again and finishes off his diatribe by stating, “This is like writing a paper double-spaced and in 16 point.” He has a point.
7:46 Penelope Cruz wins Best Supporting Actress. She first announces that her speech will not be 45 seconds. She then thanks people “who know who they are”. I’m pretty sure this is the closest I will come to getting thanked in an acceptance speech.
7:51 While presenting the writing awards, the Oscar’s copy writers came up with this gem of a sentence: Writers not only write screenplays, they write movies. Pete grimaces in disgust.
7:53 One of my favorite bits of the Oscar telecast is the prelude to the Best Screenplay Awards. Usually, clips from the nominated movies are shown prior to the announcement of the category’s winner. In the case of Best Screenplay, the producers often highlight a small bit of dialogue from the scripts in question. This is the part I love.
This section is always entertaining because the producers inevitably manage to pull bits from the nominated scripts that are simply horrible or, more quizzically yet, intensely poorly written. This year is no different. One of the highlighted sections of Mike Leigh’s script for Happy-Go-Lucky is the following: “Poppy, for that is her name, enters the book shop.”
Best Screenplay? That’s absolutely awful. If a writer of mine tried to sneak that sentence into an article, I’d laugh at them, cut it out immediately, laugh at them again and make a note to continue making fun of him for years to come. Think about it, “Poppy, for that is her name, enters the bookshop.”
7:54 One of the lines of dialogue highlighted in Martin McDonaugh’s very tightly written script for In Bruges is, “Yeah.”
7:54 (again) Wall•E is nominated for Best Screenplay. It doesn’t have dialogue for 45 minutes and its two leads don’t/can’t really talk. This is an impressive feat in itself.
7:55 Dustin Lance Black wins Best Original Screenplay for Milk. “He’s like 20!” Brian exclaims. According to imdb, Black is 35. According to Wikipedia, he’s 30. The mystery continues. Black is pictured above.
7:55 (again) Black delivers one of the night’s most eloquent acceptance speeches promoting gay rights and concludes by telling teenagers who are questioning their own sexuality that they are beautiful. This is how acceptance speeches should be given. I could not do this well if I won an Academy Award.
7:56 I’m starting to get angry at Black for being so good.
7:57 More quotes the producers feel should be highlighted from Best Adapted Screenplay nominees. “Sleep with me,” from Benjamin Button, “Straight. Up,” from Doubt and “Latika! Latika!” from Slumdog Millionaire. Yup, what constitutes good writing is yelling a person’s name twice. Someone has to get in there and fix the presentation of this category.
7:59 Slumdog Millionaire’s screenwriter Simon Beaufoy wins. He is reading off of a ripped sheet of paper and thanks one of his fictional characters. This is up there with Forest Whitaker thanking people who hadn’t yet been born.
8:01 Jack Black explains to Jennifer Aniston that his strategy for making money is the following: “Each year I do one Dreamworks project and I take all the money to the Oscars and bet it on Pixar.” This is very, very funny because it’s very, very true.
