2008 Academy Awards Diary
Welcome to my 1st (Tentatively) Annual Oscar Night Running Diary. If we make it to Year 2 with this, and I feel like doing it again, I’ll take the ‘tentatively’ out then. Think of it as kind of like a live blog of the Oscars, except without the liveness or the blogging.
Ok, a few quick ground rules before the spectacle begins. First, from what I can tell, Oscar preview shows began on some channels about six hours ago and red carpet arrival specials began about two hours ago. I wanted no part of this, so this running diary is ABC Oscar coverage only. Joey Fatone and that painted jackal he yammers with skate this time. Second, in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t seen most of these movies. In the interest of fuller disclosure, I am (and have been since before it was released) completely in the There Will Be Blood camp tonight. However, in the last 24 hours I had a minor attack of consciousness about my Scientologist-like blind devotion to this one film without even attempting to consider the merits of any of the other competing nominees. As such, I did squeeze in an eleventh hour screening of No Country for Old Men yesterday. I’ll be back with my full review on that one next week, but for now I’ll just say that, in my now semi-informed decision, I’m still wholly on the Blood bandwagon.
As far as the other nominees, I tried to catch myself up here and there on a few of the ones with nominees in major categories, but still haven’t seen them all. I did try to go on YouTube to watch clips of Johnny Depp from Sweeney Todd but all I could find were a bunch of tracks of him singing taken from the soundtrack and played over a montage of stills from the movie. Sometimes I just wish there were places on the internet you could go to watch actual DVD quality footage of movies still in theatrical release, with subtitles in Japanese and crazy looking ads for miniature Hello Kitty mp3 player necklaces in all the sidebars. But there aren’t. As far as I know. So I guess I’ll just have to reserve judgment on some of these other major nominees throughout the night, or just offer my best guesses occasionally. I would guess Depp’s performance was excellent.
7:59pm: Tune in just as the closing credits of the Barbara Walters Special begin rolling over Miley Cyrus concert footage. I’m putting the over/under line for the Hannah Montana sex tape at four years. You can try to stay respectable with your friends by telling them you’d take the over, but take the under.
8:02pm: Live from the Red Carpet, it’s … Regis! Somewhere nearby, Ryan Seacrest is stomping around his room and tearing the heads off of all the stuffed animals on his bed as he watches this.
8:03pm: First interview, George Clooney. Call me crazy, but I think this guy’s got “it”. You’ll see. And congratulations to you, possibly-part-Asian, redheaded, eleven on his arm. I’m sure you’ll be the one he settles down with.
8:05pm: Some woman named Shaun interviewing some woman named Marion Cotillard. I have no idea who either one of them are or why they’re there.
8:07pm: John Travolta stops by, rocking the Curious George haircut. Maybe a live-action remake in the works?
8:09pm: Javier Bardem is standing by, waiting to be interviewed by this Shaun woman. (Please tell her to pick ‘heads or tails’ … please tell her to pick ‘heads or tails’ … please tell her to pick ‘heads or tails’ …)
8:10pm: Regis interviews Miley Cyrus. I’m pretty sure he’s heard of her but I’m positive that if you pressed him on it, he has no idea what she actually does. I would put him squarely in the “people who still think Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus are two different people” camps. As well he should be.
8:14pm: Wait – Jennifer Garner is retarded? Why didn’t I know about this?
8:16pm: First Daniel Day-Lewis sighting of the night. Couldn’t come across more gracious and unassuming in his interview. If you don’t like this guy, you just don’t like yourself.
8:17pm: Cameron Diaz has Joker-mouth.
8:18pm: So far, everyone’s dress is “beautiful”. Regis interviews an 82 year-old Oscar fan who blows up his bit by telling him she’s been coming to the red carpet every year since all the way back in … 1986. Wow, you mean you actually saw stars like Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver when they were alive? Did they pull up to the red carpet on brontosauruses?
8:25pm: Since the 82 year-old bit wrecker, Regis has interviewed two overeager contest winners from Nebraska (or someplace like it), a handful of backstage extras, and is now heading off to find the orchestra conductor. Nice gets.
8:26pm: Regis throws it to some other co-host named Samantha, who says two words and throws it right back to Regis for his next one-question interview. As of 2006, the CDC estimated that there are approximately 4.5 million children between the ages of 3 and 17 who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, nationwide. The exact causes of ADD, they report, remain unclear.
8:28pm: Regis throws it to split-screen shots of Shaun and Samantha, who giggle a few more nonsensical syllables about nothing, and throw it right back to Regis again. Regis is forced to work the A-listers in the front row of the audience for the cameras. He must feel like the guy who takes a part-time job with a catering company to make ends meet and ends up serving drinks at a party for a bunch of people from his day job. Just embarrassing.
8:29pm: Regis calls Javier Bardem, “Xavier Barden”. This was worth the wait.
8:34pm: Let’s go Jon Stewart, we need someone who can finally stick in this job for a few years. I don’t want to have to watch Joy Behar trying her hand at this next year.
8:37pm: Tommy Lee Jones is listening to Jon Stewart’s monologue like he’s watching David McCullough discuss John Adams at the Washington Press Club. Eyebrows furrowed, head nodding, “Yes, yes. Hmm, interesting. And these are all jokes, you say? Fascinating.”
8:40pm: Stewart starts going to his bread-and-butter political humor, finally gets Jones to laugh with a joke about Iraq war movies. Fish in a barrel, Jonny.
8:41pm: Spike Lee and Wesley Snipes get a kick out of a joke about black presidents in movies. Stewart’s got them eating out of the pa– wait, Wesley Snipes?!?
8:42pm: I wonder if Billy Crystal even watches the Oscars anymore, or if he just spends the night burning ants under a magnifying glass and pretending they’re all little Jon Stewarts.
8:43pm: Good for you Jennifer Garner, you get up there and just read those words the best you can. What a brave, brave little girl.
8:44pm: And the first award goes to Elizabeth: The Golden Age! For Best Costume Design! Yeaah! WOO! Oh man, did you see that? She started saying “Al-”, and for a second there I was like, “No way, Albert Wolsky for Across the Universe!”, but then she came out and dropped “-exandra Byrne”at the last second I was like, “Ohhhh! Face!” Ironically (or perhaps fittingly) Byrne accepts the award wearing a dress that looks like it’s made out of tree bark.
8:45pm: Barbara Streisand reflects on her own Oscar acceptance speech and reminds us all that it was “great.” Great.
8:47pm: I wonder how much Oscar commercials are running for these days. I’m guessing somewhere below the Super Bowl and just above One Tree Hill reruns.
8:49pm: Clooney is playing the crowd like a yo-yo, drawing them in and turning them out at will. He introduces a montage of Oscar moments that raises two immediate questions: When was P-Diddy ever at the Oscar podium, and when is network television going to apologize for ruining what Ellen DeGeneres could have been?
8:51pm: Is that …? Nooooooo! Make it stop, it’s not too late! Aaaaaaaahhhhhh! Celine Dion’s Titanic song starts rising up behind the montage. Can her heart please stop going on.
8:52pm: Ok, I’ll admit, clip of 82 year old Charlie Chaplin returning from McCarthyism forced exile to receive Honorary Oscar gives me slight goosebumps.
8:53pm: I wonder if Jon Stewart got paid by Apple to do that iPhone joke. They did famously debut the first iPhone commercials during last year’s Oscars. And I can’t imagine he did it because it was funny.
8:54pm: Steve Carell drops the s-bomb in a joke. Somewhere an ABC executive watching with his feet up on his desk just spit out his drink and fell backwards out of a leather chair. Somewhere else an FCC lawyer just became sexually aroused. He tried to save it, and ABC will either pretend it never happened or argue that he said “shoot”, but there is no way he didn’t just say that. I predict the FCC will come down with a three million dollar fine for this sometime around of August 2010. And I will cry once again for the state of my country.
8:56pm: Some guy accepting an award for Ratatouille does an uncomfortably long routine impersonating a conversation between his junior high school guidance counselor and his twelve-year old self. (Crickets.) I wonder if, when he was rehearsing his guidance counselor’s voice in front of the mirror all week, he was imagining Jack falling over laughing in the front row and yelling, “That is how he sounds!” As the orchestra starts playing him off, he tries to keep talking over them and become this year’s “that guy”, who can’t contain his emotion and gratitude and becomes immortalized in Oscar history for saying, “To hell with the rules – this is my time!” He loses. The orchestra, and everyone watching, wins.
8:58pm: Off-the-shoulder dresses are in this year.
9:00pm: Orchestra forces the winners for “Achievement in Make-up” off next. Those bastards are all business down there. The Oscars should kill two birds with one stone (low ratings and long acceptance speeches making the show run long) by bringing back the giant stage hook to pull long-winded recipients off stage. Either that or bring in that crazy guy in the clown suit and wings who chases bad comedians off the stage at the Apollo. Is this kind of thing really so hard to think of, Oscar directors?
9:01pm: Amy Adams is scaring the crap out of me. I bet she’s a cutter.
9:04pm: Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones reminisce about their own Oscar moments. Let’s just say the footage from his is a little “grainier” than hers.
9:05pm: I’ve seen it a bunch of times before, but the breakdancing kid McDonalds commercial never gets old and might be better than almost every film nominated for an award tonight.
9:07pm: My local weatherman does a quick break that has him standing in front of green screened spotlights in a tuxedo, reminding me to tune into the local news tomorrow morning for a “forecast worthy of your applause.” Really.
9:08pm: Jon Stewart introduces The Rock and promptly scurries off stage to avoid being caught in the same frame and looking like a shoe elf by comparison. Probably a good idea. Come to think of it, I don’t think Stewart has let himself get caught standing next to anyone all night. Those elves are tricky little people, aren’t they.
9:09pm: The Rock delivers a joking anecdote in which he deadpans about being traumatized as an eight-year old because the pretend violence in the first Indiana Jones movie looked so real that he thought it was. The former WWE superstar apparently detects no irony in this situation.
9:11pm: There’s nothing I find hotter than a woman with British accent, and yet Cate Blanchett does nothing for me. I have honestly felt more attracted to Helen Mirren than Blanchett tonight, and I still can’t quite put my finger on why this is.
9:14pm: The orchestra’s getting aggressive. They don’t even give the Art Direction award recipients the courtesy of a rising string melody, they just come out blasting with the horns this time.
9:15pm: Clip montage makes me realize that I had forgotten Dianne Wiest ever did anything besides Law and Order.
9:16pm: Look, Oscars, you can’t be trying to crack down on the length of acceptance speeches and still keep glorifying the Cuba Gooding Jr. acceptance speech (which is becoming a pretty annoying clip, by the way) in your montages at the same time. People might begin to suspect the presence of potential hypocrites among members of the Academy.
9:17pm: Oscar winner and former American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson comes on to present the award for Best Supporting Actor. Somewhere Ryan Seacrest kicks a hole in the side of his Barbie Dream House.
9:20pm: Fifty minutes into the show and Javier Bardem wins the first award anyone cares about. I’m down with this choice. Though Tom Wilkinson and his, uh, daughter (???????????) … er, granddaughter (?????????????????????) must be disappointed.
9:24pm: Jon Stewart informs us that Bardem’s acceptance speech was “a moment”. I’m retroactively cherishing it.
9:26pm: That girl who played Felicity is talking in an artistically pretentious way about the transcendent spirit of the energy of the people’s heart in the dance of the children, or some ridiculous thing like that. I wish I was watching a TiVoed version of this right now.
9:27pm: A guy on a piano and a little girl are singing an inspirational hymnal with an all black gospel choir. I am praying for the cameras to cut to the audience just one time so I can just get a glimpse at the sea of rich, white celebrities dropping their chins to their chests and swaying their heads back and forth with their eyes closed, all trying to out feel-the-spirit-of-their-pain each other. My prayers go unanswered.
9:30pm: Jon Stewart tries to follow up the gospel choir with a joke about doing the “cabin patch”.
9:30:01pm: Narc schools everywhere are shredding Stewart’s application.
9:31pm: Owen Wilson walks up to the podium with the 800 pound gorilla that no one wants to talk about right behind him. Awkward. Can’t help but wonder if things might be different for Heath Ledger if the result had been unfortunately different for Wilson. Not that that would be in any way different or better, but it’s just hard not to wonder speculatively about these things while seeing Wilson for the first time again in public, at an event still so engulfed by Ledger’s shadow.
9:32pm: Jerry Seinfeld lands the requisite “animated presenter” bit with his Bee Movie character this year. Looks like Travolta’s still got some juice! Less than an hour and a half after he’s rocking it on the red carpet, now Barry B. Benson has shaved off his wavy locks to go with the Curious George, too. Where did I put those clippers …
9:35pm: Aren’t the writers supposed to be back? Why is this still 75% clip show? Seems like the announcement of every award has to be preceded by a montage of all the winners in that category from the beginning of time. But it’s those pesky acceptance speeches that keep making the show run long …
9:38pm: Ruby Dee finds her own performance to be jaw-dropping.
9:39pm: Amy Ryan gets nahminated foh doin’ a wicked Bawsten accent. (biting my knuckles hard)
9:40pm: Tilda Swinton wins Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton. I haven’t seen the whole movie, so I won’t say if I agree with this or not yet. What I do know, though, is that her “unscripted” acceptance speech right now is absolutely hilarious to watch if you’ve seen the first twenty minutes of that movie.
9:48pm: Josh Brolin and the guy from Atonement stammer through the worst vaudeville act in history before finally having to bail themselves out by going to the playing the “pander to Nicholson” card – the second time a presenter has gone to this lifeline in the last five minutes, by the way.
9:49pm: In the first head to head showdown of tonight’s tyrants, Best Adapted Screenplay goes to No Country for Old Men. As it stands, the score is now No Country: 2, TWBB, 0. But remember, final categories are worth more points, so it’s not panic time yet.
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