It's March and the mind turns to Oscars, an awards extravaganza I've been to twice in person. If you want to skip the trip down Memory Lane, you can go to the bottom of this post to see who I think the winner for Best Picture will be.
Back in 2002 and 2003, I was chairman of the TV Academy and we had a reciprocal invite system going on between all the Academys. It was a lot of shows and parties and memories.
Both of the shows I attended then took place under the cloud of war. In 2002, the War on Terrorism was just getting under way. That was the year that host Whoopie Goldberg wore about a dozen insane costume changes, Ron Howard cleaned up with A Beautiful Mind, and Halle Berry and Denzel Washington showed that race wasn't the issue it used to be.
A year later, the Oscars took place in the shadow of the Iraq invasion. I remember showing up on Hollywood Blvd., driving past war protestors, and listening to Michael Moore go into his on-air diatribe. But I also remember that Steve Martin was a very good host and that Chicago, whose producer Craig Zadan is a great guy I know pretty well, cleaned up and it was a big celebration of the musical.
Back in 2002, during the TV Academy gig, we offered the job of hosting the Emmys to Jon Stewart and we offered it again in 2003. He turned the Academy and the respective networks (NBC, FBC) down both times, always with a good reason, but I'll bet the real reason was he just didn't want to settle for the Emmy gig. He wanted to hold out for the Oscars. Now it looks like his strategy paid off.
Bryce: "Jon, if you won't host the Emmys for us, the next offer's going
to that man behind your shoulder."
Jon: "He's a very funny gaffer. You could do worse."
This photo was taken in May 2003 when I moderated a panel in New York with Stewart and all his "Daily Show" writers and producers. It was a great time and a funny panel. Shortly after this, we did manage to get Jon to host the Emmys, sort of. He was one of our eight hosts in the 2003 Emmys on Fox. He didn't mind being part of a group of hosts, he just didn't want the main job.
Because Jon is, well, a, you know, "liberal" -- there's been some controversy about his selection to host the Academy Awards. Slate has a great article on the three basic reactions people have: 1. Yay; 2. Jon Stewart Has Sold Out; and 3. The Choice of Stewart is Proof That Hollywood is a Seething Vortex of Bush-Bashing Liberals (read: Jews). Here's how it starts.
"What's most striking about the reaction to the academy's choice of Stewart as host is how intense, and how immediately political, it's become. It's hard to imagine such a sustained and feverish discussion of most other likely choices for the gig: Whoopi Goldberg? Ellen DeGeneres? Jay Leno? But apparently, to be a red-blooded American, you must have a strong opinion on Jon Stewart as Oscar host 2005."
Bryce: "If you can take a little criticism, Jon, sometimes I think your coverage isn't quite as strong as CNN or the network shows. And sometimes you don't seem to take things seriously enough."
Jon: "You do know that we're not a real news show, don't you?"
Bryce: "I am so freaking embarrassed!"
Tom O'Neil, who is a walking encyclopedia of awards show history, thinks that Jon Stewart has the chance to be a colossal failure as a host -- ranking up there with David Letterman's debacle ("Oprah, Uma. Uma, Oprah"). He makes a strong case and you can read that by clicking here.
I don't actually share Tom's fear that Jon will self-destruct on stage. Stewart's charming, naturally funny and a genuinely nice guy. But he's also whip-smart and he knows that the tone for "The Daily Show" is not the same as for the "Academy Awards."
I think he'll be funny, edgy and he'll nail it. Anyway, he's got all my best wishes for a great show on Oscar night. Break a leg, Jon!
Meantime, over at our companion blog Movie Smackdown!, three of the five Oscars contenders were put in Smackdown-mode this year. Check them out if you want:
- Crash (2005) -vs- Grand Canyon (1991)
- Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) -vs- All The President's Men (1976)
- Munich (2005) -vs- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
And now it's time for the prediction... the envelope please... this year's award for Best Picture goes to...
I saw this film first at the Newport Beach Film Festival last May and even got a chance to schmooze with writer/director Paul Haggis afterward.
I'm not saying that Crash has the lock on the award. A huge chunk of Hollywood desperately wants to give the award to Brokeback Mountain because a) they think it's a good film and b) they think America should see it. This strikes me as amusing somewhat because it was Samuel Goldwyn, I think, who said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." But modern Hollywood disagrees. They think some films are good for you, like medicine, and must be seen. So Brokeback Mountain strikes a blow for gay rights; Good Night and Good Luck strikes an indirect blow against the man Hollywood hates the most, George Bush; Munich is another indirect blow against Bush because it challenges his assumptions about how to fight the War on Terror. On the other hand, Crash strikes a blow against racism, so I still think it will win.
Salon wrote a pretty perceptive article about all this called "Introducing the Guilties" that's worth checking out.
"These are the LGAs -- you know, the Liberal Guilt Awards, otherwise known as the Guilties, in which Hollywood congratulates itself for its general condition of progressive enlightenment and lectures the rest of us from its newfound position of half-baked moral seriousness. Now, strange to tell, this year's nominated films are exactly the same for both the Academy Awards and the LGAs. You could argue, in fact, that as Hollywood has pulled a long face in the last year and cranked out one feel-bad soapbox flick after another, the Oscars have pretty much become a liberal-guilt-apalooza."
Well, who knows about that? The point still is, this is Hollywood baby, and the Academy Awards are the Big Dog, liberal or otherwise. All I can tell you is that walking down the red carpet to go to one of those shows, that's a rush I'll never forget.
Our companion blogs are also celebrating Oscar weekend with their own posts:
Movie Smackdown! reviews those Academy Award nominated films that have already been in Smackdowns and tells you who's already won or lost...
Instant History reaches back to 1934 when Frank Capra won for It Happened One Night and Hitler's filmmaker was on the cover of Newsweek...
