It’s Oscar time and guess what’s going down? We’re going to (in the immortal words of one Lionel Richie) party, karamu, fiesta, forever, come on and sing along! All night long (all night, all night). Okay, someone just threw therapeutic water on me and I’m back. One love. Before we roll this diary out at ya I want to examine a few of the themes that might make an appearance:
Scenario 1: The Brokeback Mountain Coronation: Brokeback is cruising towards 5 Oscars… BUT if they pick up steam in the individual actor categories they could pull six or seven. If this happens we’ll all be forced to become gay, with the upside being combovers will be against the law.
Scenario 2: The Brokeback Doomsday: The flick is facing some trouble from Crash on the Best Picture front and some of the smaller categories are too close to call. Say BM only rolls out of there with Best Director and something like Best Score? What happens then? I’ll tell you what happens, all hell breaks loose on the front pages of every entertainment periodical in all 45 states (yeah 45, I know there are 50 take a hint) while the American public yawns and then gets ready for work. Chaos!
Scenario 3: The rambling awkward acceptance speech: Some real pros are favored, Reese, Hoffman, Weisz and Giamatti. I think the most potential for calamity for the big awards is on the best supporting actor front if Matt Dillon or Jake Gyllenhaal sneaks in. Theoretically Dillon could thank Liv Tyler for washing a car in front of him, we can only silently pray and hope. Besides that the only real fun will be in the lesser categories where folks rail your boy Bush or say they owe it all to their cat.
Scenario 4: Jon Stewart goes too political for Charlton Heston‘s taste OR the rap song kills one of the oldsters. Either way we’ll get some boos which are the highlight of any Oscar show.
See, y’all thought we were playing with you on the SAG and Golden Globes running diaries, y’all thought it was some kind of joke. But now we’ve scratched out the name of whatever punk diary you used to read and put our name up on top, dropping diaries on you non stop from here to eternity! (ed note: taser used, 20k volts)
My boy B-love is in the heezy, we’ve got Za for days, and the wife is working on some type of strudel concoction. If you think we aren’t loaded for bear you are sadly mistaken. Anyone coming anywhere near the wolf pack at this point probably won’t make it out alive. The fact is if you get too close I’m liable to blow a big Oscar-y load everywhere.
It’s almost time for the LIVE DIARY, which is very much like a LIVE DAIRY without the cows.
Now, if you’d like to join me let’s please blow the roof off this mother.
The live diary starts right here around 4-ish or something.
4:49pm: Right about now… it’s time… for Oscar Sunday. I haven’t been this excited since Bob Barker told me to spay or neuter my pet.
4:53pm: Oscar President Sid Ganis tells us he thinks it will be a good night. I’ve never trusted a guy named Sid before but I think I’m willing to start now.
4:57pm: I’ve got to clean the pee off my couch before this thing starts.
5:03pm: Tremendous intro from the Oscar folks. This could be a rough night for me if things don’t get weird soon.
5:06pm: Jon Stewart rolls up. He’s playing it a little safe. Yeah, fire up the RIP-O-METER!
5:11pm: Crowd shot of Matt Dillon who is praying the usher doesn’t ask him to leave.
5:18pm: The Oscar for supporting actor goes to George Clooney for Syrianna. Hey Oscar, maybe lube up Paul Giamatti next time? I love the rationale that Clooney gets it to make up for Good Night and Good Luck future snubs. Who thinks like this? You ever buy a girl flowers to make up for leaving her out in the desert for dead?
5:26pm: Ben Stiller shows up in green suit to give King Kong the Oscar for visual effects. The big ape had to win something after it was deemed far too commericially viable to nominate for serious categories. Four nerds get up to accept as everyone counts down the 20 or seconds the Academy is going to give them. Later dudes!
5:30pm: Wallace and Gromit wins for best animation, another film that way too many people liked. Hey look pal, The Academy doesn’t care what you are your little friends like, go get us our BMW. Make it snappy. The dudes have enormous bowties. I can’t hate, they are animation freaks.
5:35pm: Dolly Parton sings Travelin’ Thru from Transamerica. She’s a trillion years old at this point. I don’t know, I hate making fun of Dolly because it’s like going after Grandma. Not sexually of course.
5:43pm: The Wilson Bros (AKA bros I’d most like to smoke dope with) come out to present Live Action Short to Six Shooter. I had it ranked third among five so it makes perfect sense that everyone else loved it. The galactic screwjob continues.
5:46pm: Animated short goes to The Moon and the Son. Um yeah, just like I thought. That one was really good with the shortness and the animation and whatnot.
5:48pm Jennifer Aniston gives the Costume Design Oscar to Memoirs or a Geisha. I have no problem with hooking up with some Asian appreciation, we’ve got to keep it in the global community. The gal thanks Sony for having the courage to make a movie about a woman. Um.. I’m not sure that’s tons of bravery over there.
5:58pm: Makeup art goes to The Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It was an average movie but, yeah, the makeup was on point. I think they should award an Oscar to worst makeup just so we could see what a screw-up looks like. Howard Berger has a handle bar moustache you could ride a bike with. Hey man, the 70’s aren’t over just because the man says so.
6:01pm: My favorite part of the evening, when they give the Oscars away to the schlubs who aren’t actually invited to the show. It’s always some sad little dinner party where they just happen to have a podium. This year Rachel McAdams was at the show and you could barely see the electric fence keeping her on stage.
6:03pm: Okay, time to give out some supporting actress hardware. Rachel Weisz wins it and the night continues as planned. Somewhere up in the Oscar deathstar a maniacal laugh can be heard for miles and miles. Well, at least there is one nice thing about being pregnant (ahem ahem).
6:13pm: Lauren Bacall has a MELTDOWN. It’s actually pretty sick to put the oldsters up there and ask them to dance, monkey, dance.
6:17pm: Nice group of skits for the ladies, funny stuff which played like a political ad and included calling Kiera Knightley CRAZY HOT. We can only agree.
6:20pm: Somebody wins for a short documentary.
6:22pm: Charlize comes on looking like a man eater, not in a good way either. She hands out the hardware to March of the Penguins which is a real shock. I figured they were going to give it to the film about a fish that a few dozen people saw. Any upset at this point would be nice.
6:25pm: THE STAGE IS ON FIRE!!! OH MY GOD, THE HUMANITY, SOMEONE TELL THE WOMAN TO STOP SINGING THE STAGE IS ON GOD DAMN FIRE. What’s that? The are doing the last scene from Crash? Huh. Okay, whatever. Everyone stand down.
6:32pm: We are back after a commercial break, I hope you took the chance to grab some white horse. Sandra and Keanu give the Oscar for Art Direction to Memoirs of a Geisha. Geisha is the early leader on the Oscar board with the deuce.
6:40pm: The montages are a huge waste of time. Make them stop.
6:43pm: Man, not ONE of the major award shows has a president that could score in a club environment. Sid is not just a tool, he’s the full shed. He throws a shout-out to watching a film in the dark, pants around his ankles. I can respect that. He may have been talking about the movie going experience, occasionally I’ve been known to misquote.
6:49pm: Salma gives best score to Brokeback Mountain, the first of the night for the little gayla that could. Can it get another? It’s getting more tense in here than when I told the wife about my girlfriend’s kid (who was also my kid too).
6:58pm: Man, the big screen is getting such a knob job this year. Okay, okay, I get it, I’ll head to the theater going experience with Aunt Stinky pants and Uncle talks to the screen. I’m all over it. Quit bullying me Jake Gyllenhaal.
7:00pm: Jon Stewart announces a montage to montages is in the works. I love Stewart, he always hates the same crap I do, even at his own peril.
7:03pm: King Kong wins a second award for all the playa’s out there. And THEN they give a Robert Altman award where Streep and Tomlin ramble on incoherently for 5 minutes. I know it was part of the script, I know it was all funny ha-ha, but how the hell do they have the nerve to cut off acceptance speeches while writing an intro like that? I’ll tell you how, they are THE ACADEMY and you will eat your cake and like it pal. Hold up.. just got a phone call. Ah. Yeah. I’ve been directed to only say nice things about THE ACADEMY from here on out or they will kill that baby I had with the mistress. Fair game ACADEMY, I’ll play by your little rules for now. I want little Tyson to grow up.
7:14pm: Altman let’s us know he’s got a whole different heart. Sadly Oscar had to take the heart of a healthy woman to give to him but there are always casualties in our quest for better box office numbers. Long live Robert Altman. Bring him the lungs of a small child!
7:18pm: It’s PIMP time! How can this be the first rap song ever performed at the Oscars? It’s not even the first rap performed in my house this weekend. You know how we do, my boy Troy Neal throws it down with a purpose when he’s all schnockered on Red Bull and Vodka.
7:23pm: Pimp wins the award. I guess old Uncle Oscar isn’t such a racist bastard. They made them walk to the wrong microphone to give their speech though.. not nice ACADEMY! The speech was actually pretty erudite, they kind of talked about what’s ailing the socio-economic fabric juxtaposed with some type of Zen theory.
7:31pm: King Kong wins for sound editing. That’s Kong’s third of the night. Not too shabby for a film with a shoestring budget, an unknown director, and a tiny unproven cast. It shows what’s out there for you if you aren’t married to the idea of doing a gay flick.
7:40pm: Tsotsi wins which is a feel good moment for me. I met the guy and he was a real sweetheart. It just proves if you meet with me you’ve got a shot at an Oscar. Zooey, Scarlett, you listening out there?
7:42pm: Crash wins the first of the night for film editing. Brokeback should have half a dozen wins coming up real quicklike or it might get nasty up in there.
7:47pm: Hoffman wins and continues the long march of “I called it”. I want some upsets around here!! And I’m not talking about the gal they took Altman’s heart from.
7:55pm: Memoirs of a Geisha pulls down a third one. A very fragmented field thusfar.
8:00pm: Walk the Line finally breaks through with Reese Witherspoon. She deserves it, I really liked her performance. She does talk far too long and has a tiny tiny breakdown.
8:09pm: Brokeback gets it for adapted screenplay. This has been a death march so far.
8:14pm: Crash scores for original screenplay. Everyone who wins tends to get up and tell us what art is. Well, I tell you what art isn’t, it’s not a bunch of old white people blabbering incoherently. That’s what art isn’t. Let’s build from there.
8:19pm: Ang Lee wins and if it rains you get wet.
8:21pm: I am running out of steam over here. Four hour award shows are a cruel, cruel deal. My catheter just broke all over the good leather.
8:22pm: They wheel out Jack Nicholson to give Best Picture… you know it’s Brokeback Mountain.. WAIT NO, WHOSE MUSIC IS THAT?? GOOD GOD! It’s CRASH! The Shocker of the night came 200 minutes in. Crash is the lowest grossing Best Picture in 20 years at 53.4m. I just don’t see it, this one feels like a film that’s destined to be forgotten. If that’s me being a jerk-off I’m sorry in advance. I’m just keeping it real.
Mercifully it’s all over and it ended with a bang too. My Doomsday scenario for Brokeback Mountain pretty much came through with it only capturing three all day. The big buzz will now be how THE ACADEMY hates gays but loves racial tension. I can live with that. It should stir the old geezers up a bit.
Let’s hope next year we get some real drama and a few non arthouse flicks thrown in for good measure. If you want Gene Shallot’s take as I sign off then suck on this “IT ALL CAME CRASHING DOWN FOR BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.” Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go change my pantalones.
Won’t you be my friend? I surely need some.
