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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

What Broke The Mountain's Back?

From The Hot Button

Really, it’s quite sad that Brokeback Mountain could do the business it’s done, win the awards and accolades its won, and Diana Ossana still looked like somebody kicked her dog to death in post-show interviews. Brokeback Mountain is a huge success story

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40 Responses to “What Broke The Mountain's Back?”

  1. palmtree says:

    First off, Mr. Poland, I have to give you props for calling it like you saw it.
    That sucks about Diana…she was probably more upset that she couldn’t deliver her acceptance speech that she had been practicing. The film will be remembered though and that’s way more important than winning an award people will forget about.
    But Ang Lee winning is still huge.

  2. Terence D says:

    I think they will all be forgettable because 2006 will be a great year. At least I hope so.
    But what about the precursors? Are they highly overrated as an Oscar predictor? Should we stop looking at them?

  3. Bruce says:

    Give the “I told you so” speech. If this isn’t the perfect time for it, I don’t know when it would be.
    Really, just for the Best Editing stat you threw out there that no one wanted to believe. It was spot on and turned out to be 100% right. That is analysis.

  4. Paul Hackett says:

    “Give the “I told you so” speech. If this isn’t the perfect time for it, I don’t know when it would be.”
    Actually, Dave seemed to be one of the few backing away from a “Crash” win at the end just as others were starting to jump on the bandwagon that he helped start, so in a way he was both very right and very wrong (especially when you throw in how long he continued to support “Munich”).

  5. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    Can I just point out that I had been saying for a long time that Crash was going to be nominated for either Best Picture or Best Film. I believe I said something along the lines of “I just have a feeling that Crash is going to get a BIG award, not just Screenplay. Like Picture or Director”
    I said it. So, ya know… i was really the first one. šŸ™‚
    lol.
    Nice article. I freely admit to being wrong about Capote. But, and I am tooting my own horn, I am proud of myself for seeing Crash, Terrance Howard for Hustle & Flow and Amy Adams for Junebug before quite a lot of people. It’s simply cause I rock.
    However, i do think there is some homophobia involved in BBM losing. They awarded the straight man who made it but not the actual film. Nobody can use the “not enough people saw it” because they obviously did. While homophobia is OBVIOUSLY not the main reason, there is definitely some. However, well done to the Oscar show producer who actually didn’t shy away from clips that showed the two men hugging and whatever.
    Diana has a very valid reason to be upset. The film won the DGA, PGA, WGA, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Venice, and swept most of the critix.
    This will go down as one of the darkest days for AMPAS. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say it feels really insulting. Not as a gay person, but as a film lover.
    And to add insult to injury – Brokeback Mountain won as many awards as Memoirs of a freakin’ Geisha!
    meh, anyway.

  6. Me says:

    As I said, one thread over:
    It’s funny how it’s homophobia that kept the academy from giving best picture to a film with two straight men playing gays, but gave the best actor Oscar to a straight man playing a gay man. And are you really saying that the most progressive area in the country suffers from homophobia?
    I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. Crash was loved by its supporters more than BBM was by the people who simply admired it.

  7. tfresca says:

    I don’t know where all this hate comes from but bottom line, for the average person Crash is the movie that they’ll be discussing after they saw it. I had all kinds of people come up to me tell me how much they liked it, I suspect becaus they felt it showed some part of themselves. I know a lot of people weren’t going to bother with BBM because they didn’t want to see two guys make out, period. As for Three 6 Mafia, what song related BETTER to the movie than theirs. Only problem was that unlike the movie only 1 person rapped the song in the movie on stage it was several guys and you couldn’t hear/understand them well. That’s why I don’t go to rap concerts.

  8. bicycle bob says:

    homophobia in hollywood? that cant be serious. but ur gonna see that played up a ton in the next few days because u have a lot of angry people out there who thought their movie should win. and now need a reason why it didn’t.

  9. Harley says:

    I dunno, it seems obvious to me: this is nothing more than a little ticket-splitting by the Academy voters. They tossed screenplay to both. They gave the director nod to Ang Lee (the worthier career). They gave best movie to Crash (all the better to assuage their liberal guilt). In the end, neither movie was loved enuf by Academy members to take both.
    And IMO, neither deserved it anyhoo.

  10. Josh says:

    The premature ejaculation line will have them all howling at the moon. Funny stuff.

  11. jesse says:

    Isn’t calling the editing thing meaningful kind of specious reasoning? Can you actually correlate the two? Yes, the Best Picture winner is usually nominated for editing. But the editing nominees are chosen by editors, not the entire Academy… so does that mean the editors are just particularly intuitive or powerful or indicative of the rest of the voting body?!
    I don’t think the Crash win has anything to do with that — or rather, I don’t think that the Brokeback editing snub was a “sign” any more than Crash winning the ENSEMBLE ACTING award was a “sign.”

  12. Josh says:

    But the ensemble acting award isn’t a precursor like the Best Editing obviously appears to be. It has a fairly long track record of success.

  13. jesse says:

    But I haven’t heard any kind of explanation of how they are correlated, especially since the editors nominate for editing, and everyone votes on Best Picture. I won’t go as far as to call it coincidental; I just don’t think there’s actual reasoning behind it. It’s just something that usually happens.
    I mean, do you know what has a pretty great record for predicting a BP winner? Winning Best Director. Especially before 1999 or so. And suddenly over the past decade or so, it’s happened more and more — this is the fourth time in less than ten years!

  14. palmtree says:

    The editors thing was overplayed but it has some truth. If you can’t even get the editors to vote for you movie, especially after one of them died, then it perhaps signals a change in the tide. That BM felt long to some wasn’t going to help the editors or the picture either.
    But I think the overall lesson here is that we do not know anything. Mr. Poland got it right, the precursors are not the Academy.

  15. Blackcloud says:

    And now SCOTUS has upheld the Solomon Amendment. Looks like the forces of homophobia are rampant in the land this morning. Or not. Personally, I lean toward the latter.

  16. Geoff says:

    I just saw Munich, last weekend, and was completely blown away. IMO, Spielberg’s first true masterpiece since Schinder’s List. That said, I had not expectations for it to win anything.
    Have not seen Brokeback, yet, but have seen Crash. It was alright, but once again, the Academy has chosen a film that was “good,” but not great for the big prize.
    This is nothing new. Chicago, MIllion Dollary Baby, A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, etc. This is really nothing new, it’s mostly about which film they feel will prevent them in the best light, at that particular time. Crash was that movie, this year. In a year where there were many politically-oriented films to choose from, they found this one to be the safest choice. It certainly had the broadest scope.
    Same thing happened in ’99. Film lovers were being blown away from unconventional dramas and satires with unconventional narratiaves like Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, and Magnolia, Of the group, that year, American Beauty seemed the most palatable. Was it a good movie? Sure, but a masterpiece? No way.
    TRUE masterpieces will rarely win the big awards, because they will usually take chances and alienate huge segments of the academy.

  17. BluStealer says:

    The Academy likes choosing the safe pictures. I am dismayed that “Crash” won only because I think it was a subpar effort. But they obviously needed or wanted an alternative to “Brokeback Mountain”.

  18. Cadavra says:

    Diana has already given plenty of acceptances sppeches, and they were all colossal bores. At least Schulman was genuinely excited.

  19. grrbear says:

    “And I still believe that in the folds of time, Munich will be the best remembered of this quintet.”
    If any of them are remembered at all… Consider the top twenty movies of the last ten years (you pick ’em) and ask yourself if any of this year’s nominees would even make the twentieth spot. Since the end of the 80’s, we’ve been blessed with an amazing number of great movies, and so the last couple of years have been somewhat disappointing. Even the best hitters go into a slump every now and then, but there’s always hope that Hollywood is ready to go back on a hot streak. After all, this summer’s got ‘Snakes On A Plane’…
    The 90’s were kickstarted by the masterpiece ‘Goodfellas’, and the industry proceeded to rock the house for over a decade. Is there a movie this year that can do the same? Is there another ‘Goodfellas’ waiting to kick ass and take names? Once again, I say… ‘Snakes On A Plane’?

  20. Mark Ziegler says:

    The problem with the 1999 comparison and American Beauty is that those 3 great films you mentioned weren’t even nominated for best Picture.

  21. Josh says:

    Crash is taking it on the short end of the stick today. Even a day after it won it can’t get any respect. I think we’ll remember ’05 as the year Brokeback was denied/lost than Crash winning.

  22. Chucky in Jersey says:

    “Brokeback” would not have gone mainstream had a Mormon-owned theater chain in Utah not banned the movie. AMPAS could have stuck it to the Christian right — which also didn’t like “Brokeback”. Naturally AMPAS did not.
    Incidentally, the theater chain that banned “Brokeback” also banned “Transamerica”.
    For those wondering about the Solomon Amendment: The US Supreme Court ruled today that US universities that accept US gov’t money cannot ban military recruiters.

  23. Charly Baltimore says:

    It’s always fun seeing a favorite go down to defeat. Whether it is in sports, award shows or reality shows.
    The underdogs are a better story.
    After all this Oscar season give me some SNAKES ON A PLANE too!

  24. groovysnickers says:

    What is wrong with you PEOPLE. I couldn’t wait to see BBM and after I saw it my only comment was: hmmm. I felt nothing, I didn’t care for anyone, and the film had nothing to say. Nor can ANYONE relate to it and I don’t care if I ever watch it again (even on cable). I have seen Crash 3 Xs and I like it better every time I see it. I think it plays very much to the “L.A.” audience (my NYC friends couldn’t relate to it at all and I bet most other major cities would agree), but born and raised in LA, I identified with every character and the fact I could watch it a 4th time (and I will) signals to me signs of a great film.” AND lastly, the whole movie was about editing … so what’s up with arguments that CONSTANT GARDENER Shoulda won … I thought the worst part of the film was the editing. You shouldn’t have to watch a movie 3/4 of the way through to figure out what’s going on. So STOP with the Homophobia remarks!

  25. Fades To Black says:

    CRASH is certainly an LA movie but what does that mean and should it matter?
    Woody Allen does NY movies. Does that hurt him at the awards time? Same with Martin Scorcese and Spike Lee. They have NY themes running thru their movies.
    I don’t think a movie should be penalized for representing an area. Luckily for them they picked an area where the voters live.

  26. jeffmcm says:

    Actually yes, for many years it was considered that one of the reasons Scorsese was getting snubbed was because he wasn’t ‘L.A. enough’.

  27. Yodas Right Nut Sac says:

    You got to kiss LA ass to win.
    But BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN kissed enough LA ass to win. It was the movie with the best director, best writing and best score. Three acting nominations in all major categories.
    They kissed enough tushy wushy.
    How that doesn’t add up to Best Picture I don’t really know.

  28. Joe Leydon says:

    Dave writes: “What ever happened to having a civil disagreement?” Talk radio killed it. Blogs buried it. Next question.

  29. David Poland says:

    Sac – You can make the same argument for Crash… if you add up screenplay and editing, how can it be such a shocking win?
    The air started coming out of the tires when Heath Ledger fell from “legend” to also ran. And I mean that in a respectful way. When BBM hit in Toronto, Ledger was a sure bet, above all. Capote was there too. And Ledger was sure to win. And then, he wasn’t. That was the first major chink in the armor.

  30. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    “But the ensemble acting award isn’t a precursor like the Best Editing obviously appears to be. It has a fairly long track record of success.”
    But the same could be said for the fact that Crash wasn’t nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes, which always seems like a good precursor.
    “and the film had nothing to say. Nor can ANYONE relate to it”
    Well, that’s your prerogative if you think it had nothing to say, but you’re being downright foolish if you think nobody can relate to it. In fact, that’s just plain ol’ stupid.
    Dave, don’t you worry. Brando lost for Streetcar, and he recovered. I’m sure Heath will continue on his way and this performance will go down as one of the greatest.

  31. Tcolors says:

    I wonder what the rest of the world (that praised BBM)is thinking of the American based Oscar awards and it’s members? The ampas should be ashamed. After Oscar night I really have no interest in them at all. I mean not only did Crash take the Oscar from BBM, but Munich and GNGL where better movies than Crash!

  32. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    1. Brokeback
    2. GN&GL
    3. Capote
    4. Crash
    5. Munich
    that’s how I saw it. I think the only reason America is so up about it is because there are ways for people to vent their frustration at places like this. People who don’t know about places such as this and the many others like it are probably all “oh, okay” and are moving on.

  33. Josh says:

    Ledger didn’t really help the Brokeback case at all. He wasn’t good on the party schmooze circuit. His embarrassing appearance on stage at the BAFTA’s. You see him on Sun night? He looked like he was going to punch someone if they made a cowboy joke. I don’t think he liked the spotlight.
    Also, Michelle Williams was the favorite in Dec for Best Supporting Actress and she fell away.

  34. Yodas Right Nut Sac says:

    You’re exactlyright David Poland. CRASH did win Best Editing and Writing so that does equal Directing and Writing.
    I got seduced by all the pre show hype and the favorite steam roller talk with it.
    I bet the voting was extremely close. Why don’t they post that?
    Even though I do like the mystery.

  35. LesterFreed says:

    Spielberg and his team have to be kicking themselves in the ass after this. They should be the ones celebrating but they dropped the ball and let others pass them by.

  36. brandosgenius says:

    As for the snide comments reference Ossana…her son passed away not long before BBM became an awards phenomenon. I’d venture to say that she was probably exhausted and grieving for the loss of her child. I saw her speak recently at a charity benefit, and hers and McMurtry’s publicist revealed this before she spoke. A little compassion might be in order for the woman.

  37. denny1700 says:

    In retrospect, the Academy HAS embarrassed itself (again).
    Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis were only TWO of the members who ADMITTED to not having been willing to see “Brokeback Mountain”–the tip of the iceberg, as, at least, they had the “balls” to state it in public. How many other Academy members (e.g., Clint Eastwood, that Hollywood icon) refused to see the film?
    It is a fact that Academy members ARE members for life and that many of them are living in NURSING HOMES…
    A film that rattled as many of the “old guard” (including but not excluded to Tony Curtis and Borgnine) as an affront to one of Hollywood’s most cherished genres, the Western, and that “discreetly” but most definitely also hit two other nerves of the collective American unconscious–the family (think of “Ozzie & Harriet”) and masculinity–CANNOT have pleased too many of them.
    And still when people like Tom Haggard the Christian evangelist and former Governor James McGreevy are forced out of lives spent “living lies” (both family men, as well), the Beverly Hills/Hollywood enclave chooses to GO DOWN THE LINE in every category and anoints the clear favorite except the final, most important award, Best Picture of the Year…that says something important about the organization itself.
    It is stuck.
    When winning depends on campaigning of the sort that has always stained this academy, and the number of “misses” starts to be as conspicuous as it has become in the past decades, one HAS TO wonder about the CREDENTIALS of these people.
    For instance, who gets to become an Academy member-for-life?
    If some of the older members cannot even get out of their wheelchairs, are they allowed to “give” them to a relative or friend??
    Why not simply call these awards “the Beverly Hills Community Club Awards” instead of the high-falutin’ “Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences”?
    …which would not call attention to the fact that this academy depends and has always depended on sponsors and the Hollywood studios–without the annual telecast, the academy could obviously not exist as it does.
    There have definitely been better films about both Los Angeles (“L.A. Confidential,” “The Player,” “Chinatown,” to name just a few) AND racism.
    It appears that the Academy is still stuck in 1967, when “In the Heat of the Night” made a statement about race in America. That was almost 40 years ago. It is old-fashioned (“conservative”) despite the veneer of glamor, prestige, money, hipness…
    The notion that Hollywood is “liberal” is ridiculous. Remember all the booing and heckling that Michael Moore got back in 2003 when “Bowling for Columbine” won and Moore made his anti-Bush statement?
    The editing angle, I think, on the awards is somewhat off. Remember when “The Matrix” won best editing over “American Beauty” several years ago? The Editors’ Guild nominated both “Crash” and “BBM” in the drama category…
    The editing/screenplay does NOT compare with the direction/screenplay combos that “Crash” and “BBM” respectively had prior to the final award of the night.
    The ensemble cast SASG award has gone to many a non-Best Picture Oscar winner: “Full Monty,” Gosford Park,” “Apollo 13,” “Traffic,” “The Birdcage,” about 50% of the time.
    “BBM”, I understand, is “slow” or “ponderous” for some, insofar as, being more of an “art film” than mainstream Hollywood fare, it depends on subtlety more than car-wrecks or things being blown up (as an action film or spectacle like “King Kong” would be). Those who make these criticisms would probably NOT even be able to sit through “La Strada,” “Bicycle Thief,” “Gosford Park,” or even “Lost in Translation.”
    As for homophobia NOT being a factor at all in the voting since Hollywood is “perfectly at ease and open” to homosexuality, why is that Tom Cruise, Kevin Spacey, etc. have to run around every few months and quell the rumors? Why is there NO major Hollywood male star (or female for that matter)?
    It seems fitting, ironically, that the SAME Hollywood that made Rock Hudson and countless others live in closets should, in the end, deny the most compassionate film, the one that holds up a mirror not just for America, but for Hollywood itself to see (itself).
    Kenneth Turan was not being sour-grapes. He was being honest and upfront about the hypocrisy and chicanery in these way over-rated awards.
    Why hasn’t someone ever written an in-depth book or an investigative report on the Academy and its practices(probably a rhetorical question, because the Academy is probably as open to this sort of thing as Skulls and Bone at Yale would be). The jockeying and voting might make the 2000 U.S. presidential election look positively respectable!
    At least the N.Y. Film Critics Circle and others don’t pretend to be some all-encompassing groups whose members’ names must be held in secret in perpetuity.
    Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
    What about, as I mentioned above, “the Beverly Hills & Hollywood Community Club Awards”? It would be more honest.

  38. denny1700 says:

    In retrospect, the Academy HAS embarrassed itself (again).
    Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis were only TWO of the members who ADMITTED to not having been willing to see “Brokeback Mountain”–the tip of the iceberg, as, at least, they had the “balls” to state it in public. How many other Academy members (e.g., Clint Eastwood, that Hollywood icon) refused to see the film?
    It is a fact that Academy members ARE members for life and that many of them are living in NURSING HOMES…
    A film that rattled as many of the “old guard” (including but not excluded to Tony Curtis and Borgnine) as an affront to one of Hollywood’s most cherished genres, the Western, and that “discreetly” but most definitely also hit two other nerves of the collective American unconscious–the family (think of “Ozzie & Harriet”) and masculinity–CANNOT have pleased too many of them.
    And still when people like Tom Haggard the Christian evangelist and former Governor James McGreevy are forced out of lives spent “living lies” (both family men, as well), the Beverly Hills/Hollywood enclave chooses to GO DOWN THE LINE in every category and anoints the clear favorite except the final, most important award, Best Picture of the Year…that says something important about the organization itself.
    It is stuck.
    When winning depends on campaigning of the sort that has always stained this academy, and the number of “misses” starts to be as conspicuous as it has become in the past decades, one HAS TO wonder about the CREDENTIALS of these people.
    For instance, who gets to become an Academy member-for-life?
    If some of the older members cannot even get out of their wheelchairs, are they allowed to “give” them to a relative or friend??
    Why not simply call these awards “the Beverly Hills Community Club Awards” instead of the high-falutin’ “Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences”?
    …which would not call attention to the fact that this academy depends and has always depended on sponsors and the Hollywood studios–without the annual telecast, the academy could obviously not exist as it does.
    There have definitely been better films about both Los Angeles (“L.A. Confidential,” “The Player,” “Chinatown,” to name just a few) AND racism.
    It appears that the Academy is still stuck in 1967, when “In the Heat of the Night” made a statement about race in America. That was almost 40 years ago. It is old-fashioned (“conservative”) despite the veneer of glamor, prestige, money, hipness…
    The notion that Hollywood is “liberal” is ridiculous. Remember all the booing and heckling that Michael Moore got back in 2003 when “Bowling for Columbine” won and Moore made his anti-Bush statement?
    The editing angle, I think, on the awards is somewhat off. Remember when “The Matrix” won best editing over “American Beauty” several years ago? The Editors’ Guild nominated both “Crash” and “BBM” in the drama category…
    The editing/screenplay does NOT compare with the direction/screenplay combos that “Crash” and “BBM” respectively had prior to the final award of the night.
    The ensemble cast SASG award has gone to many a non-Best Picture Oscar winner: “Full Monty,” Gosford Park,” “Apollo 13,” “Traffic,” “The Birdcage,” about 50% of the time.
    “BBM”, I understand, is “slow” or “ponderous” for some, insofar as, being more of an “art film” than mainstream Hollywood fare, it depends on subtlety more than car-wrecks or things being blown up (as an action film or spectacle like “King Kong” would be). Those who make these criticisms would probably NOT even be able to sit through “La Strada,” “Bicycle Thief,” “Gosford Park,” or even “Lost in Translation.”
    As for homophobia NOT being a factor at all in the voting since Hollywood is “perfectly at ease and open” to homosexuality, why is that Tom Cruise, Kevin Spacey, etc. have to run around every few months and quell the rumors? Why is there NO major Hollywood male star (or female for that matter)?
    It seems fitting, ironically, that the SAME Hollywood that made Rock Hudson and countless others live in closets should, in the end, deny the most compassionate film, the one that holds up a mirror not just for America, but for Hollywood itself to see (itself).
    Kenneth Turan was not being sour-grapes. He was being honest and upfront about the hypocrisy and chicanery in these way over-rated awards.
    Why hasn’t someone ever written an in-depth book or an investigative report on the Academy and its practices(probably a rhetorical question, because the Academy is probably as open to this sort of thing as Skulls and Bone at Yale would be). The jockeying and voting might make the 2000 U.S. presidential election look positively respectable!
    At least the N.Y. Film Critics Circle and others don’t pretend to be some all-encompassing groups whose members’ names must be held in secret in perpetuity.
    Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
    What about, as I mentioned above, “the Beverly Hills & Hollywood Community Club Awards”? It would be more honest.

  39. denny1700 says:

    In retrospect, the Academy HAS embarrassed itself (again).
    Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis were only TWO of the members who ADMITTED to not having been willing to see “Brokeback Mountain”–the tip of the iceberg, as, at least, they had the “balls” to state it in public. How many other Academy members (e.g., Clint Eastwood, that Hollywood icon) refused to see the film?
    It is a fact that Academy members ARE members for life and that many of them are living in NURSING HOMES…
    A film that rattled as many of the “old guard” (including but not excluded to Tony Curtis and Borgnine) as an affront to one of Hollywood’s most cherished genres, the Western, and that “discreetly” but most definitely also hit two other nerves of the collective American unconscious–the family (think of “Ozzie & Harriet”) and masculinity–CANNOT have pleased too many of them.
    And still when people like Tom Haggard the Christian evangelist and former Governor James McGreevy are forced out of lives spent “living lies” (both family men, as well), the Beverly Hills/Hollywood enclave chooses to GO DOWN THE LINE in every category and anoints the clear favorite except the final, most important award, Best Picture of the Year…that says something important about the organization itself.
    It is stuck.
    When winning depends on campaigning of the sort that has always stained this academy, and the number of “misses” starts to be as conspicuous as it has become in the past decades, one HAS TO wonder about the CREDENTIALS of these people.
    For instance, who gets to become an Academy member-for-life?
    If some of the older members cannot even get out of their wheelchairs, are they allowed to “give” them to a relative or friend??
    Why not simply call these awards “the Beverly Hills Community Club Awards” instead of the high-falutin’ “Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences”?
    …which would not call attention to the fact that this academy depends and has always depended on sponsors and the Hollywood studios–without the annual telecast, the academy could obviously not exist as it does.
    There have definitely been better films about both Los Angeles (“L.A. Confidential,” “The Player,” “Chinatown,” to name just a few) AND racism.
    It appears that the Academy is still stuck in 1967, when “In the Heat of the Night” made a statement about race in America. That was almost 40 years ago. It is old-fashioned (“conservative”) despite the veneer of glamor, prestige, money, hipness…
    The notion that Hollywood is “liberal” is ridiculous. Remember all the booing and heckling that Michael Moore got back in 2003 when “Bowling for Columbine” won and Moore made his anti-Bush statement?
    The editing angle, I think, on the awards is somewhat off. Remember when “The Matrix” won best editing over “American Beauty” several years ago? The Editors’ Guild nominated both “Crash” and “BBM” in the drama category…
    The editing/screenplay does NOT compare with the direction/screenplay combos that “Crash” and “BBM” respectively had prior to the final award of the night.
    The ensemble cast SASG award has gone to many a non-Best Picture Oscar winner: “Full Monty,” Gosford Park,” “Apollo 13,” “Traffic,” “The Birdcage,” about 50% of the time.
    “BBM”, I understand, is “slow” or “ponderous” for some, insofar as, being more of an “art film” than mainstream Hollywood fare, it depends on subtlety more than car-wrecks or things being blown up (as an action film or spectacle like “King Kong” would be). Those who make these criticisms would probably NOT even be able to sit through “La Strada,” “Bicycle Thief,” “Gosford Park,” or even “Lost in Translation.”
    As for homophobia NOT being a factor at all in the voting since Hollywood is “perfectly at ease and open” to homosexuality, why is that Tom Cruise, Kevin Spacey, etc. have to run around every few months and quell the rumors? Why is there NO major Hollywood male star (or female for that matter)?
    It seems fitting, ironically, that the SAME Hollywood that made Rock Hudson and countless others live in closets should, in the end, deny the most compassionate film, the one that holds up a mirror not just for America, but for Hollywood itself to see (itself).
    Kenneth Turan was not being sour-grapes. He was being honest and upfront about the hypocrisy and chicanery in these way over-rated awards.
    Why hasn’t someone ever written an in-depth book or an investigative report on the Academy and its practices(probably a rhetorical question, because the Academy is probably as open to this sort of thing as Skulls and Bone at Yale would be). The jockeying and voting might make the 2000 U.S. presidential election look positively respectable!
    At least the N.Y. Film Critics Circle and others don’t pretend to be some all-encompassing groups whose members’ names must be held in secret in perpetuity.
    Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
    What about, as I mentioned above, “the Beverly Hills & Hollywood Community Club Awards”? It would be more honest.

  40. Oliver says:

    I just read the comments above regarding the Brokeback Mountain loss at the 2006 Oscars. I watched a subsequent interview with McMurtry a few months after the awards season was over. Sometime before the Oscars themselves and during the height of the 2005-2006 awards season, Diana Ossana lost her son–he was a paraplegic and died of complications resulting from a skin infection–and though under tremendous pressure from her grief, was doing her best to remain calm and composed for her daughter and for the rest of the BBM cast and crew. She’s nearly sixty years old, and according to McMurtry, she is a writer first and foremost and a very private person, not at all comfortable in a spotlight situation. From what I witnessed throughout the entire BBM frenzy, she demonstrated strength and commitment during what must have been for her a completely foreign environment. And never once did I hear her complain.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” ā€” some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it ā€” I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury ā€” he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā€” and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā€” I was with her at that moment ā€” she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedā€”” “Yeah, sure ā€” you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iā€™m on the phone with you now, after all thatā€™s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnā€™t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereā€™s not a case of that. He wasnā€™t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā€” if that were what the accusation involved ā€” the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iā€™m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, ā€œYou know, itā€™s not this, itā€™s thatā€? Because ā€” let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatā€™s what it lacked. Thatā€™s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon