Another highlight: Jim Carrey accepted the award for best male performance in full long-haired hippie drag ("Would it kill you to play Foghat once in a while?") while smoking a cigarette and punctuating his speech with the chorus from "Let It Flow." He thanked his new biker friends, and "all the young ladies for dressing up so fine. There's a lot of fine-looking pussy in here tonight!" Neither Carrey nor Sandler made it to the tent, though, so that's all we got.

But Courtney did, and, still aglow from her recent proximity to the Head, continued her paean to Dawson. "I'm getting written into 'Dawson's Creek!'" she chirped, "I'll be the hot drama teacher!" Later, Van Der Beek laughed at the suggestion. "I've always said Dawson needs an older woman." I've always said Dawson needs an enema.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz, winners of best kiss and best female performance, respectively, were unable to attend and sent their thanks via video. I'm not sure if it was because they were both nominated for both awards and Cameron walked away with the juicier one, but the award for most gracious acceptance speech definitely did not go to Gwynnie, who nasally claimed to be "quite pleased with her big bucket of popcorn." She neglected to thank her daddy, sit up straight or weep. Maybe she'd already seen Cameron's giddy acceptance tape and taken it personally. "This is my first, and I got it not for the best hand job, or best kiss, but for best performance!" We like her better.

Rose McGowan, nominated for best villain, was a Gothic princess in a red vintage dress. Unlike many of her coevals, she was the picture of snide-free aplomb, and seemed not at all baffled by all these huddled people asking her questions. Asked by a weary reporter how she felt about her award, she deadpanned, "I didn't win, but I'm glad because a victory over Chucky would have been hollow, for me."

And so on. Talent trotted in, reporters asked about their clothes, their hair products, their movie influences. (The latter really stumped Van Der Beek, who managed to mumble "Well ... 'Star Wars,' of course ... and ... uh ..." -- long silence during which you could almost hear the gears grinding to a halt somewhere deep inside his extraordinarily large -- "The Shawshank Redemption!") Someone asked Rachel Leigh Cook about all the films being made about young people. "Oh, that's changing," she said. "You're going to see a lot of films next year about older people -- people going to college, getting their first apartments, stuff like that." Older person Jon Stewart made a funny about his outfit ("I'm wearing relaxed fit jeans from the Gap. Is that still in?") then mercilessly toyed with the sincere queries of an ABC News reporter. ("What was that about? He says he's working on a news show, I ask about the news show. Then he says it's a comedy show. Jon Stewart being flippy, what am I supposed to do with that?" she asked me later. I didn't know.)

I was vaguely aware of host Lisa Kudrow doing Lisa Kudrow all night, and I'm not sure I get it. Is she angry? Sick of it all? Fed up with humanity and its foibles? She certainly was scornful of a reporter who asked that she say hello to the fans back in Argentina. After a long, blank, nostrilly stare: "Oh. Hello. To the fans. In Argen-tin-a."

Later, as the haggard reporters piled into the shuttle van and began taking out their many frustrations on the poor little nose-ringed driver girl, I tried to make some sense of the tragedy. It wasn't that the show, as far as I as could tell, was boring -- the film spoofs alone were probably worth the time. It's just that a lot of these kids winning awards today, they're so cautious, they're so grown up, they're so blissfully unaware of their built-in obsolescence. And some of them have very large, very square heads.
salon.com | June 10, 1999

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