Oscar® 2006

March 6th, 2006 by Scott Marks

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The 78th Annual Academy Awards ®

The opening bit which showed previous hosts declining this year’s duties was amazing; much funnier than any of Billy Crystal’s song parodies.

Jon Stewart got off a few zingers, but it took forever for the audience to fork over some applause. The funniest moment came when a series of Western clips were brilliantly edited out of context to give the appearance that Brokeback was far from Hollywood’s first gay cowboy picture. The shots of cavalrymen staring at a bedded and bruised Claude Jarman, Jr. in Ford’s Rio Grande drew the evening’s biggest laugh in my house. Attempts at political humor soon gave way to a Johnny Carson-like patter.

I love George Clooney, although Three Kings made a much stronger political statement than both of his 2005 offerings, and was a bit put-off by his sanctimonious acceptance speech. Patting the Academy for giving Hattie McDaniel an Oscar ® at a time when “most blacks were sitting in the back of the theater.” Remember that Hattie won her statue for playing a slave in a Civil War drama. Her acceptance speech, where she hopes that she is a “credit to her race” was written for her by white men. How many years after Hattie did another black win, and then how many years after that? (After his speech, they quickly cut to Jamie Foxx for a politically correct reaction shot.)

This year’s most violently insane wrinkle: Normally they give a winner 60 seconds to speak before Bill Conti begins playing them off. This year, the music started the second the winners did. Bad form! How much more disrespectful can the Academy get? You’re worthy of an award, but not a minute-and-a-half to accept it. F Gil Cates!

The two guys with the matching funny bow ties who accepted for “Wallace and Gromit” were jag**fs.

Stewart’s Scientology crack was as gutsy as it was well-placed.

Great to see animation scholar John Canemaker pick up an award.

That foreign piece of crap Rachel Weisz ignored Oscar ® winning American Mickey Rooney’s attempts to offer congratulations.

I don’t know what was more pathetic: Lauren Bacall’s fumbling with the cue cards or Chuck Workman’s reminder-to-buy-the-DVD film noir clip compilation. (I didn’t mind the window-boxing, but the added screen text (“Sweeping you at breakneck pace!”) was nonsensical. Do your homework and find authentic clips. Stewart’s lampooning of Government commercials was much sharper. As for Ms. Bacall, either the cue card guy wasn’t up to speed or she pulled a Sinatra and refused to wear her glasses. Either way, it provided a great douch-chill. Workman has long since lost any sense of relevance and should be put out to pasture. I would bet that he had nothing to do with the gay cowboy gag reel.

The guys with the stuffed penguins made the bow-tied cartoon jagoffs look cutting edge.

Let’s pause and take a moment for Sam Jackson to pick up the self-aggrandizing right where George Clooney left off. “Hollywood has never been afraid to challenge our beliefs.” Little Richard could stand in the same frame with blonde sex-pot Jayne Mansfield only because everybody knew that Richard liked boys and posed no threat. Hollywood allowed Sidney Poitier to act, but you can only put him near the white women if they are blind or nuns. What was the last Hollywood film that really challenged you? Of the 25 “best” pictures I saw last year, only The Upside of Anger and Batman Begins qualify as Hollywood films; everything else was either independently financed or foreign. Crash is as challenging as an eighth grave civics class.

Too Effing Funny #1: The cutaway of Mickey Rooney nodding along with the Academy president’s speech. To be used out of context forever.

Salma Hayek looked absolutely stunning!

Kudos to the beautifully designed wrap-around CinemaScope screen behind Yitzak Perlman, and thanks to Mr. Perlman for mercifully condensing this year’s best scores nominees.

Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep gave an over-lapping, uniquely Altmanesque introduction to the director who picked up a giveaway award. Best kept secret in Hollywood – Ten years ago Robert Altman had a heart transplant. Whoever thought that Clint Eastwood would eventually look exactly like Robert Altman?

The It’s Hard out Here to be a Pimp number could be the most embarrassing musical Oscar moment since Rob Lowe met Snow White. Oscar decided to give it an urban feel by having whores, gang-bangers and other assorted ghetto types interpretatively parade past 36 Mafia. You can’t blame them. After all, Shaft is the closest the Academy came to honoring, let alone seeing, any films in the blazploitation genre.

Streep & Tomlin’s overlapping satire was quickly outdone by the 36 Mafia’s acceptance speech.

Breasts attached to a dim-bulb, Jennifer Garner almost hit the deck.

Too Effing Funny #2: Tsotsi in a tux.

Jon Stewart’s crowning line of the evening: “Martin Scorsese, Zero Oscars. 36 Mafia, One.” After that quip, he is welcome back any time.

Ang Lee looks as constipated as he directs. One facial expression. Sara Silverman noted at the Independent Spirit awards, “when my boyfriend (Jimmy Kimmel) smiles really big he looks like Ang Lee.”

Remember the kids toy where you’d use a magnet to move metal shavings across a piece of clear plastic and give the cartoon bald guy hair? John Travolta went to the same barber.

sh*tberg claps like he’s Emperor Hirahito watching Empire of the Sun.

Hilary Swank has two Oscars and now Reese Witherspoon. What the hell were they thinking?

Best thought of the night came from Dustin Hoffman. Using the old showbiz adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he pointed out that that’s the only way to adapt a book: break it and fix it for the screen.

Larry McMurtry, looking like Orville Reddenbacker with a fresh weave, came dressed like a Polack at the Farmer’s Market. To his credit, he was the only male to allow his female co-acceptor first crack at the mike.

Dudley Nichols, Steve Shagan, Abby Mann, Steve Tesich and now Paul Haggis.

Looking more like an Asian businessman who should be accepting a gold watch for years of loyal service, Ang Lee’s speech was a fractured as his film’s narrative. He looked down at the Oscar he so hotly anticipated and trampled his well-rehearsed: “Ah! I wish I know how to quit you. Ha! Ha! Ha!” He later observed that the film taught us about, “not just all the gay mens and women whose love is denied by society.” Right!
Judging by the look on his face, nobody was more surprised than Jack Nicholson (doing his best John Huston impersonation) that Crash won best picture.

The good news, it was a clean sweep against Munich. Honestly, I’d have preferred it over Crash. Sentimental, coincidental, haphazard, obvious, and downright sick-making, after I saw it I knew that it was going to be prime Oscar® bait. The Academy had no choice but to champion a film that represented all repressed minorities, not just one.

After the show, Ang Lee and particularly screenwriter/producer Karen Osanna both seemed indignant that their film lost.

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