Did I Almost Forget about the Oscars?

I’ve been excited for the announcement of the Oscar nominations every year for more than half a century. I’m not sure exactly when and why it started but my earliest memory is being a really, really happy little boy when I heard Mary Poppins got a ton of nominations AND several months later literally jumping up and down screaming when Julie Andrews walked up to the stage to accept the trophy as best actress.

Thinking about it now I wonder:

How did they not know I was gay?

Well okay, that’s not the only thought I have in my head.

I am also recalling years when I rehearsed my own Oscar speech (in anticipation of a win even though I had yet to ever work on a movie); others when I was a reporter and actually had to get up at 5 in the morning to cover the damn thing live at the Academy (Note: Be careful what you wish for); and still others where I voluntarily woke up at 5 in the morning at home to watch it on TV and not miss a moment of elation or outrage.

And I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit that I was still doing that last one as a recently as, well, ahem, not that long ago.

Why?

I don’t know. Why do you care about the Super Bowl or the World Series; the NBA Playoffs, Wimbledon or Monday Night Football; Paris Fashion Week, the Cannes Film Festival, the Grammys or the winner of Eurovision?

Maybe you don’t or maybe you do but in life it’s nice to look forward to something.

Well, that ended this year. It’s not that I wasn’t tracking potential nominees but on the twice-postponed Oscar nomination announcement day I woke up, did my morning routine (Note: Use your imagination), hung out and, right before leaving the house at 11 suddenly thought, ‘oh right, the Oscars. I better…check?’

It was kind of surreal.

Perhaps it’s age or the movies, but I don’t think so. Maybe it’s the fact that parts of L.A. were on fire several weeks ago hastening the delay (Note: During which I did have to evacuate my house) so I got that and a lot of dates confused. Not likely.

Mostly it was because I was keeping my mind on a bunch of other announcements that didn’t involve a svelte golden statuette but an engorged orange (and profoundly non-statuesque) one.

But these announcements were actually orders for actions that were not democratically voted on. Things like:

Releasing more than 1500 violent criminals from jail who severely beat up cops and broke into and entered the Capitol building, where they hunted down members of Congress (Note: And occasionally stopped to smear feces on the walls and destroy offices) all in order to subvert the peaceful transfer of power to a new president they didn’t vote for four years ago.
Revoking President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 order that guaranteed people of color and women equal opportunity to be hired, trained and employed by any agency in the federal government or any company or person who has a contract with said government, and
A termination to birthright U.S. citizenship even though it is literally written into the 14^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that anyone born in the U.S. IS a citizen of the U.S.

For further elucidation and analysis of said announcements and their implications you can also check out these articles in Axios and the NY Times. Or simply use the google with the key words: recent executive orders for the source of your choice.

As for the Oscar nominations, anyone who follows these things or longs for a little competitive glamour or excellence in their lives courtesy of the movies, or is simply slightly film obsessed, has their favorites and their inexcusables. For me, it’s Timothée Chalamet’s performance in A Complete Unknown because I’m not sure how anyone can sound and act exactly like Bob Dylan, pretend they’re a young guy in the sixties, croon a tune to a pretend Woody Guthrie and go on to sing with and make love to a fake Joan Baez without making it a complete parody. (Note: Also because his best actor Oscar for Call Me By Your Name got stolen by Gary Oldman seven years ago. And no, I don’t forget).

Was this the most important cinematic moment of the year? Certainly not. But for me it was the most impressive and, anyway, as we all should know by now, that’s not what the Oscars are all about.

Nor should it be.

Also… sorry Timmy but better luck next time

The importance monicker is usually most omni-present in the best picture category, which pretty consistently reserves slots for movies that say something about social issues (Note: Forgetting the fact that ALL movies are social comments on our world), as well as advance the best of technology, execution or contemporary messages to be had from movies during that year.

Personally, I think expanding the best picture category from a limit of five nominations to these days as many as TEN nominations (Note: It works through a weighted scale the Academy concocted that is too cumbersome to explain in anything less than a term paper) is somewhat equivalent to being awarded a yearly participation award in a small, local day camp.

“And you get an Oscar… and you… and you!”

Okay, perhaps that’s a bit much but AMPAS voting to expand the list of possible nominees in 2009 seemed more like a marketing tool for studios due to lagging box-office than anything else.

But in an age where our new 78-year-old POTUS just announced that Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight are to serve as his special ambassadors to Hollywood (Note: News to them, since it was relayed only in a tweet, but fitting since they all reached stardom in those regrettable, greed is good eighties), it’s a welcome relief.

See, unlike MAGA voters the vast majority of all 10 best picture nominees this year focused on stories about diversity, equity and inclusion in regards to immigration, race, trans/LGBT representation, ageism, economic inequality and/or religious persecution. And if you look back in history that tends to happen when political leaders spend their time taking away rights or lashing out at specific communities for power, or profit or simply because they can.

As I tell my students, movies are not life but, on the whole, they tend to absolutely reflect real life and the issues we, as a society are concerned about in that moment.

This is why this year I am thrilled to have as many as TEN, if not more, best picture nominees vying for the Oscar. I might be selling out my long-held views for political gain, but hey, at least it’s not to stay in office.

As for the list of this year’s films, they are: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Perez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked.

I’d be happy with any of them winning. And not only because Gibson, Stallone, Voight had absolutely nothing to do with any of them, and they address rights and issues they and the guy they will be ambassador-ing for want to roll back and, preferably, erase.

Though, that helps.

A lot.

Jonathan Bailey – “Dancing Through Life” (from Wicked)

11.12.17

by notesfromachair

The Way We Are

When you love someone, from Roosevelt to me, you go deaf, dumb and blind.

That’s a line from one of the great Hollywood love stories – the 1973 Barbra Streisand-Robert Redford film, The Way We Were.

It is said by the very blonde, flawed and handsome Hollywood screenwriter Hubbell Gardner to his much more passionate and intelligent wife, the unabashedly ethnic Katie Morofsky, as a roundabout admission that he’s cheated on her.

The reveal of his sexual antics was bad enough after years of her unwavering belief in him. But what made it worse was what it represented – the latest of a long string of lies that undeniably proved the person she knew all these years was not a person at all. He was merely a mirage she created for herself.

A mirage… with insanely good hair

The real guy, in fact, was someone much harsher and uglier – someone indifferent to all sorts of immorality in not only others but in himself. Someone she did not really know at all.

In light of that —

Here’s a partial list of recently exposed, accused and extreme sexual predators in the entertainment industry with multiple victims and/or accusers:

Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, James Toback, Brett Ratner, Jeremy Piven, Ed Westwick, Steven Seagal, Louis C.K. and producer-writer Gary Goddard.

Yes, I’ve limited the group to the most RECENT and the most FAMOUS. Certainly, there are more. A lot more. And a lot more to come.

I need a drink… or 12

Here’s a similar list in politics:

Electoral College POTUS Donald J. Trump, Alabama Senate nominee Roy Moore, Fox’s recently deposed Bill O’Reilly and Fox’s recently deceased leader Roger Ailes, journalist and former MSNBC commentator Mark (Game Change) Halperin, famed New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier and former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner.

Note: I’ve also left out former POTUS George H.W. Bush from the list because he’s 93, wheelchair bound and his accusers have so far limited his violations to recent ass-grabbing and sexual innuendo from his wheelchair.

Uh, yeah, this IS where we ARE at the moment.

#SAD

The Way We Were screenwriter Arthur Laurents was writing about Hollywood and the glittery protective wall that shields many of its most lauded inhabitants all those many years ago. This was long before I got here. As did people who came before him like F. Scott Fitzgerald. And so on and as far back as the industry existed.

Yet here I sit, a writer with nowhere near their credits, about to say what they and others described, a lot more directly.

Be careful about whom you admire and be careful before you agree to meet them. If they are in the handful of the top three or five you most admire they can’t help but disappoint you – and sometimes most grandly. Because what any of us admire in a public figure in any field is not about WHO they are but what they’ve ACHIEVED in their individual fields.

https://twitter.com/lpbradley/status/928718999222972416

Many of us, including myself at times, like to say one’s achievements are a part of them – like kindness, a great sense of humor or looks. Sadly, that’s a lie.

Talent, a mastery of a subject and glaringly high-level success, is a marker of work not personality traits. Most certainly, they are not markers of a great person, a bad person or even, in the end, a mere average person. They are outward achievements that vault an individual into the public eye and provide those old-fashioned values like fame and fortune.

But they say little to NOTHING about who that INDIVIDUAL really is at his or her core – or whether they are even a guy or gal you’d choose to hang out with, much less call a friend, role model or even object of adoration.

What they only are is produce – from that person.

Living in the ruins

Certainly, this is confusing and downright un-American. Not to mention, it’s disheartening as far as popular culture is concerned. This is why I don’t tell my students about the evening I spent in the eighties with one of THE greatest and most famous artists of the 20^th century. Or a work experience I had years later with one of THE great music stars of the last five decades. Or the several months in which I was paired with that renowned and supposedly sensitive writer-director-producer some time after that on some other project that will go unmentioned.

Disasters, all of them, and not because I wasn’t trying. Yet each was horribly disappointing (if not horrifying) in their own way and to this day I still can’t understand how three so brilliantly talented individuals whose work I admired that much could be so downright……ugh…well, I’ll let you fill in the blank.

Remember this formula! #keepexpectationslow

Which then left me with a small but personal dilemma I suspect many of us are going through at the moment with the above names and those I left out. How do we look at their work now? Do we boycott them for political and/or personal reasons? What is the line for boycott – accusations, convictions, suspicion, personal opinion or just a general mass zeitgeist feeling?

Well this was a bad idea from the start…

If you eschew one of them do you eschew them all?

How long do they have to be in the doghouse? For life? Maybe so. Especially for the most egregious.

But is there any room for reparations among the lesser crimes? Or can any of these crimes even be lesser? And how much do apologies really mean?

Certain apologies are enough to get you that Iron Man money

Also – Do we get special dispensation for the ONE artist whose work has helped us through hard times or served as a creative guide for our entire professional lives??? Why not? Or…why???

This is easy for me given the present list of all of the newest offenders mentioned above. I can easily live without their work. And for that matter, I still don’t understand why Hollywood has forgiven the sexual abuse and anti-Semitic rantings of Mel Gibson not that many years ago — so much so that they cast him in the current Paramount mainstream comedy Daddy’s Home 2??? Though perhaps that’s punishment in itself.

What she said. #flopflopflop

On the other hand, I still watch Woody Allen movies and have gone to see numerous films Roman Polanski has directed. One of these guys has been accused by his daughter of childhood sexual abuse and the other fled this country in the 1970s for giving drugs and alcohol to a 13 year old and having sex with her.

So yeah, there’s all of that for me to NOT be proud of. In fact, the complicity feels even worse when I write it and read it over. Though I fear if I only watched the work of people in the industry who I knew and morally approved of, it’d either be a very short list or I’d keel over in boredom. Maybe both.

I swear if there is a Tom Hanks scandal I will scream #teamRita

This is not to say there are not all kinds of cool, moral, wonderful and faaaabulously talented artists I’ve both met personally and have yet to meet that are at the top of their games creatively and who never cease to bore you – or me. And plenty enough of the opposite to bypass.

It’s only to admit that we now live in an age where the behavior of artists will be inexorably linked to their art – which will in turn determine how, where and by how many people it will be consumed.

Well, that should be interesting. Or not.

Soft Cell – “Tainted Love”

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Mel Gibson

Did I Almost Forget about the Oscars?

The Way We Are