FILM
Oscar Goes Green: The 2007 Academy Awards
/ Kevin Killian
02.26.07
“And the winner is—"
Glumly approached I this year the Oscars, pretty much with the same resignation as one gets ready for the tax man. It’s inevitable, even though there’s no sparkle in it. I would be a man and be prepared. Unfortunately in the press of new business the time came and I had completely forgotten to see half the pictures on my checklist - those nominated for the Academy Awards.
Oh, I did get a few crossed off. It’s not like last year where I saw none of the “best picture” nominees. But tell me, isn’t there a lack of enthusiasm on your part, when you know Helen Mirren is going to win? Excuse me, “Dame” Helen Mirren. She’s great and all, but if there’s no horse race, how much suspense can you possibly work up for the event? And in 2007 it looked for sure as though Mirren had it sewn up for months, almost literally, like one of those English puddings Thomas Pynchon wrote about in Gravity’s Rainbow when Tyrone Slothrop visits with those English people and their disgusting candy (pp. 114-120). Mirren’s been clutching the bag in her lap since the summer, and all she had to do was untie the string and the Oscar would be hers—even more hers than it had been—and frankly, enough is enough. I was almost ready to feel sympathy for Judi Dench. I mean “Dame” Judi Dench. Pynchon: “Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubed berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust.” That’s how I’ve been feeling about the Oscars, and then to know, literally to know, the way I know I’m a man, that Forest Whitaker was to take the Best Actor Oscar, compounded my feeling of doom, that I’d been a bad boy and now it was time for me to take my punishment. I had had too much fun over the years gasping at the Oscars on the one hand, giggling at the other, and this was to be the year that every last smidgen of fun was to be taken away from me for good.
Glumly approached I this year the Oscars, pretty much with the same resignation as one gets ready for the tax man. It’s inevitable, even though there’s no sparkle in it. I would be a man and be prepared. Unfortunately in the press of new business the time came and I had completely forgotten to see half the pictures on my checklist - those nominated for the Academy Awards.
Oh, I did get a few crossed off. It’s not like last year where I saw none of the “best picture” nominees. But tell me, isn’t there a lack of enthusiasm on your part, when you know Helen Mirren is going to win? Excuse me, “Dame” Helen Mirren. She’s great and all, but if there’s no horse race, how much suspense can you possibly work up for the event? And in 2007 it looked for sure as though Mirren had it sewn up for months, almost literally, like one of those English puddings Thomas Pynchon wrote about in Gravity’s Rainbow when Tyrone Slothrop visits with those English people and their disgusting candy (pp. 114-120). Mirren’s been clutching the bag in her lap since the summer, and all she had to do was untie the string and the Oscar would be hers—even more hers than it had been—and frankly, enough is enough. I was almost ready to feel sympathy for Judi Dench. I mean “Dame” Judi Dench. Pynchon: “Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubed berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust.” That’s how I’ve been feeling about the Oscars, and then to know, literally to know, the way I know I’m a man, that Forest Whitaker was to take the Best Actor Oscar, compounded my feeling of doom, that I’d been a bad boy and now it was time for me to take my punishment. I had had too much fun over the years gasping at the Oscars on the one hand, giggling at the other, and this was to be the year that every last smidgen of fun was to be taken away from me for good.