Say cheese!
Camille does the Oscars
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WELL, WHADJA EXPECT? THE TRIUMPH OF art?
- - - - - - - - - - - - Last night's suck-up-to-the-bucks monstrosity proved once again that the Oscars are the Grammies of film. BY CINTRA WILSON | After an Oscar night devoted to unapologetic commercialism and the complete abnegation of all artistic craft for the sake of box-office heavyweight gloating, all one could really ask was, "Where was El DiCaprio?" Was he off learning to become a Scientologist in order to cure himself of tabloid homosexuality? Cowering with Michael Jackson in the petting zoo? Grinding up a sandwich bag of Peruvian Flake in the strobelit VIP womb of the Viper Room and jabbering about real estate? Crying on the couch with a team of Jungian therapists who massaged his hands and read him Joseph Campbell? ("Yes, Leo -- Fame hurts. Look what it did to Perseus. Do you think you should take another Xanax?") Where was the shiny boy who is now in the terrifying jockey position of being the Ubiquitous Person of the Moment Who Shall be Loved Into Pulpy Matter by Blindly Devouring Fans? He has something like four photo albums of himself on the New York Times Bestseller list, his little childish jawline fixed on "manly" setting, his eyes staring earnestly off into middle-distance. No wonder Kate Winslet is so seethingly pissed off. All that crucial nationwide masturbation happening and nobody hanging posters of her. "Amistad," and its not-so mysterious absence, really set the tone for the whole night. I had a feeling it would be totally ignored -- all those expensive Ralph Lauren shots of naked black athletes writhing for survival in a cruel and ignorant early America. "You watch," I said, months ago. "They'll trot the beautiful African guy onstage at the ceremony to present best sound editing in a foreign short film and that will be all you see of 'Amistad.' This won't be one of what the Academy must refer to as their 'Noble Cripple & Spade' years. They paid too much PC and indie attention last year; it frightened the big pants off the cash kings. They won't feel secure in Hollywood again until they have Mike Leigh directing Pepsi commercials and Emily Watson guest-drowning on 'Baywatch.'" All the oppressed minority propers of last night went to documentaries on the Holocaust, Hollywood's favorite genocide. I had a feeling the Academy was getting tired and cranky viewing the black plight. And nobody seriously thought they'd rally behind the Branch Davidians and give the documentary Oscar to "Waco: Rules of Engagement." Why recognize a new villain like the ATF when you can trot those useful Nazis out, year after year? Why ever recognize Spike Lee for anything, when his mean little films so hate Whitey? Let's all laugh again watching old footage of that Indian babe accepting the award for Brando. What a kook he was, trying to get all political with those weird brown people. He must have been drunk that day, or too darn fat. I guess you can tell the couples in Hollywood now by the fact that they look like they're on the same drug: Matt Dillon and Cameron Diaz, for example, both featuring that red-rimmed, sanpaku (a Japanese term for the condition when the whites of the eyes are visible under the eyeballs -- they think it means you're half dead) look, and speaking really slowly as if from far, far away. The scruffily pert Meg Ryan seemed to be waggling with drink like notorious degenerate husband Dennis Quaid, and had mascara smeared on her cheeks. There were others who might have been humming with stimulants but were probably just aggressively face-lifted into a constant look of surprise, like Cher. Helen Hunt? I remember a day when TV acting was considered too coarse and obvious for the big screen. Ben Affleck? Matt Damon? I don't know anybody who liked that film. Is this some kind of Velvet Mafia coup? Jack Nicholson? Jesus, could that dessicated old vampire really have churned out a Nicholson performance so starkly different from all the other Nicholson performances that he merited a whole new trophy? Robin Williams? OK, why? Kim Basinger? Why, why, why? What are the RULES to this game? There must have been a time when the Oscar winners reflected the votes of the outside world too, and were not just the vanity parade of some elite group of fame-community power faces and their super-agents. It was interesting, though; it basically showed us that Hollywood is an organism that's totally out of control, governed only by the weird preferential swells of box-office economics. It was the "Titanic" show from front to back -- the whole set of the Oscars LOOKED like the Titanic. "Titanic" made a billion dollars. Little gold statues for everyone involved. Here you go. It proved once and for all that the Oscars are the Grammies of film. N E X T+P A G E: Celine sings for her supper - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PHOTO BY REED SAXON/AP/WIDE WORLD |
