It turns out many were robbed last night. Scarlett Johannson had
been robbed earlier, by failing to be nominated for a single Oscar
despite giving the most mature performances by a young actress in
Hollywood history. And not in just one movie but two, very
different films. When’s the last time a 17 year old, her age when
Lost in Translation was filmed, could pass for a lost,
intelligent 24 year old? As it was, as if in recognition of her
being slighted, she received significant air time, both as a
presenter and as a frequent target of ABC’s cameras. But she needs
to stay away from Entertainment Tonight, where she was
heard using the formulation “… between Bill Murray and I.”
Now that Murray lost out in the best actor category to
Hollywood’s favorite bad-boy boy-toy, the injustice done to
Johannson also appears diminished. As it is, the third Lord of
the Rings movie, The Return of the King, cleaned out
the joint, leaving next to nothing for any other film or nominee.
It’s staggering when you think about it. Even Steven Spielberg was
impressed. Cynics might say this was Hollywood’s attempt to put all
is money on the one movie that’s still a few hundred million
dollars ahead of Mel Gibson’s Passion in box office
earnings.
But something else was going on. Early in the telecast, it was
easy to mistake Rings’ unkempt director Peter Jackson for
last year’s Oscar show slob Michael Moore. But first impressions
can be misleading. By the time Jackson accepted the best director
prize it was clear he saw himself as just one part of a larger
project. He underscored the “collaboration” that made his movie
possible. By the time he accepted the best movie Oscar, he did so
in the presence of a score or more of the producers, actors,
editors and others from the film. I don’t recall that ever
happening at such a moment, where invariably the winning film’s top
dog prefers to have the spotlight entirely on himself.
Moreover, take a look at that collective: other than Liv Tyler
or Ian McKellen they all appeared like average, shlubby folk.
There’s the secret formula: it takes an ensemble to make a
theatrical production work. An epic requires epic commitment, and
lord knows how many years of single-minded effort from this troupe
(the source of the word “trouper”) has gone into the Rings
trilogy. Clearly the public has
responded to it as to no other recent production, all because
it’s not a typical Hollywood product at all. Rather than a
counterpoint to Gibson’s film it probably has more in common with
it than Hollywood will ever know.
Hollywood beauty, in other words, was overlooked last night,
perhaps unfairly. There was more elegance than usual; most
presenters watched their tongues, even the manic Robin Williams.
Hellcat Susan Sarandon was one of the few women still sporting a
Clinton-era loose-breast dress. Her youngish mate, Tim Robbins, who
won best supporting actor, did none of his usual Bush bashing in
his acceptance remarks, preferring to see his performance in
therapeutic terms. Rather meekly he expressed hope that his playing
“a victim of abuse and violence” might inspire real victims of such
to seek “counseling.” At that moment it was easy to regret Alec
Baldwin’s not winning the prize.
Politics and raunch seemed to have a future when Billy Crystal
did his opening, but it wasn’t to last. Bush got bashed a bit, yes,
but Michael Moore got smashed, literally. Meanest of all was
Crystal’s reminding Clint Eastwood of Sondra Locke, the woman who
sued Clint for palimony and much else. There was some gay marriage
talk, later briefly expanded with Robin Williams, a reference to
Bush’s National Guard service, and, and — nothing really until a
weird Errol Morris accepted an Oscar for his anti-Vietnam
documentary and expressed concern that in Iraq we’re also going
down “a rabbit hole.” But the audience didn’t much take to Morris,
probably because he came across as a loser when he began by
expressing pique that his genius hadn’t been recognized earlier.
Crystal later mocked Morris’s “rabbit hole” reference.
For a moment it seemed there might be trouble when best actor
Sean Penn began his thank-yous with a crack about there being no
WMD’s in Iraq, but it was no more than an aside, punctuated by the
guffawing laugh that he made famous in his greatest role, as
Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Who could dislike
him after that?
Now let’s see if anyone “mainstream” notices a more interesting
political moment that came to naught. Andrew Sacks, a winner for
best short film, “Two Soldiers,” based on a 1942 Faulkner story,
ran long in his thanks, though not before noting that his film is
about two brothers who enlist after an earlier unprovoked attack on
the U.S. He was about to pay tribute to America’s fighting men
today when the orchestra drowned him out. No one much cared.
Perhaps cutting to the broadcast’s Super Bowl like commercials
was more important. Besides, Hollywood always prefers to mourn its
own dead, beginning with Katharine Hepburn and Gregory Peck, among
those that died in the last year. For some strange reason the
survey included Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s finest documentary
maker. Perhaps even sadder for Hollywood, nothing quite matched the
remarks delivered by aging old pro Blake Edwards, a special
honoree, unless it was the clips of Peter Sellers from his old
movies. When’s the last time Hollywood caused anyone to laugh out
loud?
