- - - - - - - - - -

T A B L E__T A L K

Is the cyberporn issue just another case of yellow journalism? Take a stand in the Media area of Table Talk

- - - - - - - - - -

R E C E N T L Y

Let my people go -- to the movies
By Joyce Millman
A new cable documentary profiles the Jewish immigrants who founded Hollywood
(03/19/98)

Under the Covers
By James Poniewozik
The Magazine kicks sand in the swimsuit issue's face
(03/18/98)

Old age and treachery defeat youth and beauty, again
By Liesl Schillinger
How Leonardo's Oscar was stolen by senile old sea-lions protecting their unhappy harems
(03/17/98)

Como se dice "doh!"?
By Sam Quinones
How "The Simpsons" has changed the way Mexicans view the U.S.
(03/16/98)

This year's girl
By D.T. Max
She's hot! She's now! She's You!
(03/13/98)

- - - - - - - - - -

BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVES

WHO IS ROD LURIE, AND WHY IS HE INCESSANTLY BEING THANKED ON OSCAR NIGHT?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BY CATHERINE SEIPP | Maybe for most people the big question about "Titanic" Monday night is: Will it (as expected) sweep the Oscars -- or will we see, as rumored, a "Titanic" backlash? But what I'm wondering is: Will director James Cameron keep his promise to thank Rod Lurie in his acceptance speech? Because if he does, what has been a weird Oscars quirk these past few years will move even closer to becoming a weird Oscars tradition.

Your question at this point is probably: Who is Rod Lurie? Well, exactly. Rod Lurie is a ferociously ambitious former journalist and current screenwriter-director (as yet unproduced, but with a writing deal at MGM) who hosts a weekly Los Angeles radio show about the movies. Rod Lurie is also someone who's managed to get himself mentioned in Oscars acceptance speeches two out of the past three years.

It all began when Martin Landau won best supporting actor for "Ed Wood" in 1995 and announced his thanks to Rod, who was then an out-to-shock movie reviewer banned from Warner Brothers press screenings for describing Danny DeVito as "a testicle with arms."

The acknowledgment from Landau was surprising but not terribly so: Lurie had, after all, championed the character actor -- who was something of a dark horse -- both on his highly rated radio show and in a column he used to write for Los Angeles magazine, which contained the infamous "testicle with arms" remark.

But when Mel Gibson won best director for "Braveheart" a year later, grasped that golden statuette and thanked -- Rod Lurie (Rod Lurie?) -- I sat up and took notice. What was a major movie star doing talking about my old pal Rod in front of a billion people? And what could Mel Gibson possibly have to thank Rod Lurie about anyway?

"The deal is this," Rod explained to me later. "All these guys come on my radio show, and I can smell the nominations months before they actually happen. I tell them they're going to win; they insist, out of modesty, they won't." So, right there on the radio, he makes a bet: If the nominee doesn't win, Rod will devote an hour of his post-Oscars radio show ("The Rod Lurie Show" airs on KABC-AM Saturday afternoons from 4 to 7) to, for example, "The James Cameron Got Screwed Hour." But if the nominee does win, he has to thank Rod in the acceptance speech. Besides Cameron, Rod also has a bet this year with composer Danny Elfman, nominated for best score for "Men In Black."

Last year, however, the Oscars were sadly Lurieless. Did Lurie miscalculate? "No," he explained, "I got screwed." Lurie had bets on the table with Anthony Minghella and Billy Bob Thornton, both of whom, of course, did win, respectively, for "The English Patient" (best director) and "Sling Blade" (best original screenplay). Alas, they forgot to pay up. A bad sign was when neither winner took a list out of his pocket at the podium; Landau and Gibson had both carried lists.

I met Lurie eight years ago, about three days after he arrived in town. He was then 27 years old, fresh out of his post-West Point five-year stint in the Army, newly married and hellbent on becoming an entertainment journalist. This is how Lurie arrived in Hollywood: Returning to the East Coast from a Hawaiian honeymoon, he turned to his bride when the plane stopped at LAX and said, "Let's just get off here!"

Los Angeles, Orson Welles once observed, is a place where you sit down at age 25, and when you stand up again you find you're 62 years old. Lurie, however, contrasted startlingly with our local culture of lethargy. "It's an honor to be in the same room as writers like you guys," he announced eagerly at a gathering I'd invited him to just after we met.

People rolled their eyes and dismissed him as a goofy greenhorn. But a little while later, one of the honorable writers in attendance found that he'd lost one of his regular magazine gigs. It had been reassigned to Lurie.

In short order, Lurie: wrote a bunch of investigative magazine pieces on the tabloids, celebrity stalkers and other phenomena of Hollywood's seedy side; began a monthly movie review column; started his radio show; spun the show off into a weekly class on film appreciation he teaches Monday nights at the AMC in Burbank; and did a true crime book for Knopf called "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."

After a few years, however, he stopped writing about Hollywood in order to make more money actually being in it. Besides that screenwriting deal with MGM, he plans to direct his first feature film this summer. A short he made called "Four Second Delay" just took top honors at the Atlanta Film Festival. He still plays poker weekly with his former fellows, a bunch of entertainment journalists who wonder how he can be so abrasive about films he doesn't like on the radio and still get his calls returned.

"I think most journalists in Los Angeles are real lemmings," Lurie said, shrugging this off. His poker friends, presumably, are excepted. Or maybe not. With Lurie, the arrogance is part of the charm, and after a while it grows on you. "I offered to appear at one of his film classes, and he was so insulting it was funny," a filmmaker I know said the other day, still chuckling at the memory. "He basically said, 'Right, gotta go,' and hung up. The implication was, 'Hey, Mel Gibson comes to my class -- who needs you?'"

I hope Cameron and Elfman both thank Lurie if they win Oscars Monday night. And if they forget, well, maybe Lurie will turn it into yet another opportunity. Last year Thornton called after the Academy Awards to apologize, explaining that he got swept up in the moment.

"Maybe," Lurie mused, "I'll get him to be in my movie."
SALON | March 20, 1998

Catherine Seipp's Hollywoodland column appears every other week in Media Circus.