Never Won An Oscar Pool

Hollywood's biggest night, which is why they snubbed Brigitte Bardot in death, I suppose

“Come on, pilgrim…” The Duke waxes skeptical as producer Mike Deeley, auteur Michael Cimino, and other producer Barry Spikings collect their statues.

In 1979 I watched the 51st Oscars with a buddy of mine, along with his older brother and sister-in-law, who kept shushing us and telling us to stop being so sarcastic. We were movie lovers, yes, but we were also snotty post-teenagers (actually I wasn’t quite 20 yet) and we thought it was pretty funny when Jon Voight reacted to Olivier’s “the nobility of acting” speech as if the brown acid was just kicking in. And we were right, it was pretty funny, as we were reminded in an SCTV sketch a few months later in which Dave Thomas exclaimed “Olivier! Genius!” from a wheelchair. I almost felt bad when The Green Berets directors John Wayne was obliged to watch The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino get a Best Picture award. There was a certain “those days are over,” changing-of-the-guard feel to the whole proceeding, but mostly it the ceremony felt cloaked by a sour irrelevance.

That feeling has never ENTIRELY gone away, and some years it got worse. But I had no idea in 1979 that I could not actually forswear the Oscars — it wouldn’t be too long before Raging Bull and all. And not too long after that, finding myself employed in various capacities by a few showbiz focused publications, from Video Review to Entertainment Weekly to Premiere, I’d have to keep watching out of professional obligation. Which remains the case, as I am a Professional Film Reviewer and/or Critic. It’s fine. But I still don’t get all that worked up about it. The one time I found myself in Los Angeles with an actual ticket to the ceremony I decided to give it to a Premiere colleague because I’d brought Claire out to Hollywood with me and didn’t want her to have to cool her heels in the hotel, and we watched it together on the tube. Which is, I found the best way to watch awards shows. I once got to go to an early 1990s MTV Video Music Awards, back when when it was held at Radio City Music Hall, and between the endless commercial break lulls and whatnot it was a stupendous bore — the most exciting thing I saw there was the schmucks from Urge Overkill doing blow in the men’s room. (The al fresco Bryant Park afterparty was great, though. My date introduced me to photographer Stefan Sednouai and HIS date, a wee beauty in an iridescent green minidress who I doted on. “Can I get you a drink, Kelly? Would you like to sit down, Kelly?” My date eventually pulled me aside and whispered “It’s Kylie.”)

And I never once won the Premiere Oscar pool, or came close.

Anyway, I was happy to see Paul Thomas Anderson and company make out so well last night, and it honestly dispelled any feeling of sour irrelevance for me. MY admiration for Anderson goes back a long way, and is not entirely impersonal. Back when I had just come on to Premiere, my boss told me that we’d set up a photo shoot with the cast of this film, a film that nobody really knew what to make of, and that the photo shoot — a fashion feature — needed some accompanying text, and that I should therefore go out to California, and drive to The Valley and interview this young director Paul Thomas Anderson and these relatively obscure actors — except the lead actor, who was lunkhead rapper Mark Wahlberg — to provide said text. So I said “Okay.” These were the days when you’d stay at the Chateau Marmont, rent a convertible with a CD player, and drive around Melrose blasting Deep Purple’s “Highway Star.” Fun.

Once in The Valley I got along with Anderson and his editor Dylan Tichenor like the proverbial house on fire. In his office he had a framed poster for The Long Goodbye — the hilarious MAD style Jack Davis one — and on a monitor I saw the Boogie Nights shot of the bikini-clad woman going into the pool and the camera following her under water. “Hey, you lifted that from I Am Cuba,” I said to Paul, and he happily recognized a kindred spirit.

Anderson, like his idols Robert Altman and Jonathan Demme, is not an awards chaser as such, but like them he does not at all disdain the idea of getting Oscars, as I think you could ascertain last night. Seeing him get his due was what made the ceremony so pleasant for me. I also liked seeing Joachim Trier get awarded for Sentimental Value. Paul actually introduced me to Trier a few years back. I’d been trying to enlist Paul in a book project, and I took him to lunch in Soho around the time of the 2022 National Board of Whatever awards, so he was in town. I met him at the Crosby Street Hotel, and he was beset by autograph hunters — professional autograph hunters, not fans. This peeved him a bit — “They don’t even really want my autograph, they’re all here for Will Smith.” Anyway, we got lunch, chatted a great deal, I pitched him my vision for the book, showing him Tom Milne’s Losey on Losey, which was a model, as well as my own Made Men, etc. Then I walked him back to Crosby Street; it was post-Covid, and restaurants still had that outdoor dining thing going, and we passed this small young family, the patriarch of which was Joachim Trier. His wife and their adorable little baby were part of the party. Paul stopped, greeted Trier warmly, introduced us; Joachim was impressed to see one of us carrying a copy of Losey on Losey. I had not yet seen The Worst Person in the World, and Paul was appalled to hear this; I must drop everything I was doing and watch it immediately. I did, and he was right. Leaving Paul back at the Crosby Street Hotel, I brought him in for the bro hug and said, “I’ll talk to you after the Oscars.” And that was the year Will Smith did The Thing, and everybody was so sick and appalled that nobody talked after the Oscars, and that was that.

Anyway, last night I said to Claire as Trier was striding down the aisle to get his Oscar, “Paul is gonna give him a hug,” and so he did. We like when good artists get awards, and it’s even better when they’re good people. (And I do know that Anderson had his wilderness years, and it was irritating when, rather than attend a director’s roundtable for Premiere during the Magnolia era, he sent comedian Carrot Top in his stead [one supposes Paul the Pynchon fan recollected “Professor” Irwin Corey accepting the National Book Award for Gravity’s Rainbow], but he came out of them just fine.)

And that, in short, is what I liked about last night’s Oscars. And the In Memoriam segment, despite snubbing Bardot, was rather moving, I thought.