I’m still mad about the Oscars. You’re from a show-biz background so I’ll ask you: is the Oscars just a popularity contest? Is it just like Congress, where you have to make deals in order to get something you want (an oscar?). I mean – I saw “Silver LInings Playbook”. It was okay. I bought the dvd from a bootlegger and at $3 I was glad I hadn’t invested any more $ (Had I spent $30 at the movie theatre I would have been disgruntled.) And another question: are the results leaked beforehand?
Thanks!
Rosie
Hi, Rosie. The short answer to your question is yes.
Film studios spend millions of dollars on Awards Campaigns. They take out ads in magazines, newspapers, and on radio and television. They pay PR firms to promote the film via social media. The stars are contractually obligated to do press for the film, going on talk shows and landing in the gossip columns (that latter part is “unofficial” publicity, where the agents and managers do some nudge-nudge-wink-winking). A conversation might go something like this. “Remember when Britney Spears got photographed without underwear on? Wow, that must have been the number one story on every outlet for a week! Have a great workout, Anne!”
Have you seen the Netflix Original series “House of Cards”? In one episode, the puppet master, Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey), orchestrates it so a bunch of news commentators start wondering if the president will nominate So-and-So for Secretary of State because Underwood planted the story with a reporter he’s banging. Within hours, the reporters’ musings become so ubiquitous, the president actually has to consider the question he never even thought to ask until it was asked on TV.
So, when everyone from Letterman to Chelsea Handler starts asking Anne Hathaway, “What would it be like to win an Oscar?”, you already know what happens. Future actors are going to have to up their games, though. When Hathaway went on a diet of her own shorn hair and the open hostility of her new husband to method-act the shit out of “Les Mis,” everyone knew she was gunning for Oscar. She upped the ante for future Oscar grubbers. Jodie Foster wore a WIG for “The Accused”, and Nicole Kidman put on a prosthetic nose. Amateurs. The way this competition is going, future actors will have disfiguring plastic surgery to put themselves in the running for those gold (plated) statues.
Many believe that the negative publicity surrounding the torture depicted in “Zero Dark Thirty” cost Bigelow’s film the top nod, and made Jessica Chastain’s Oscar go to Jennifer Lawrence.
As for the latter, JLaw has this certain “I would totally have sex with an overweight fifty-seven year-old man if he made me laugh” thing going on that makes Academy Members vote for her. The studio knew what it was doing. Did you notice all the pre-Oscar TV ads for the film featured her instead of Bradley Cooper or DeNiro? Watching her on the red carpet, I see she has perfected that “contractual smoldering peek over her shoulder at Harvey Weinstein during the act” look. She’s a talented actress, and they were going to give her an Oscar no matter what, just like Julia Roberts (back in my day) was going to get one for the same reason. Jennifer Lawrence’s win mirrors Roberts’ in many ways. Julia played a sexy bad girl in “Mystic Pizza” and became famous for it. The second she was in a movie with Sally Field (“Steel Magnolias” 1989), the Academy knew it could nominate her for an Oscar. Brenda Fricker beat her that year, but the next year she was in the top spot for reminding old men that hookers LOVE sex with billionaires decades older than themselves. They all wheezed a collective sigh of relief when she finally did a film for which they could give her the damn Oscar.
I didn’t see “Silver Linings” but didn’t JLaw have a relationship with a man old enough to be her dad? Hmmmm. I’d say that if you’re a juicy young actress and you don’t want to shave your head, pluck out your eyebrows, or drink egg whites to put on 11 pounds of pure muscle, play a nymphomaniac in a semi-serious film where your character is tickling the nutsack of a much older man who in real life would never get a chick that hot. “And the award goes to…” could very well be in your future.
As to your question about leaking the results, I know that there are Vegas odds on the results. Gamblers place bets and money changes hands. I am sure the information is available ahead of time to the right person for the right price. Whether or not that actually transpires, I have no idea.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of “Ask Mrs. Odie” (and reading her wild speculations about shit)! Keep the questions coming!
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
I thought Silver Linings Playbook was a beautiful movie, honestly. I thought they did a good job of showing a snippet of the havoc that mental illness wreaks on a family. I loved Jennifer Lawrence in her role. She really wasn’t a nymphomaniac; she was acting out sexually in response to grief. I am interested to see what you think of the movie when you see it. The ending was a bit too tidy, but I appreciated this movie a lot. Bradley Cooper was also excellent. He deserved the Oscar nod.
Someday, JLaw will play BCoops’s wife, mother, and if she lives long enough, grandma.
I just found your website, and not with a search for KH. I read the whole thing over the last two days. I appreciate your humor, your honesty, your faults, and your strengths. I can identify (in some respects) with you; I personally want to keep reading your writing.
Thank you! I can’t imagine reading the whole blog in a binge like that. Would it make a good book winky-face?
I loved silver linings playbook AND I think Jennifer Lawrence did a wonderful acting job. However, I think several of the other women nominated were more deserving of the award. That’s not to say JLaw wasn’t amazing, but some of the others were amazing-er. I recently saw amour and kept thinking the whole time that the lady in that should have won. It’s hard to play someone “crazy”, but its much harder to portray someone who has been paralyzed on one side of their body and rapidly declines.
Anyway. The point of this comment was to say that I don’t think Jennifer Lawrence’s character was ever supposed to be having a relationship with someone old enough to be her dad. Her character was (presumably) older than she is in real life and Bradley Cooper isn’t that old? Or at least I don’t think his character was supposed to be. It seemed to me like she was mid 20s and he was mid 30s.
She’s 22 and he’s 38, so 16 year age difference. I can only glean from the preview that their relationship is romantic. Do you think the story would have suffered if she had been 32 instead of 22?
Thanks, Mrs. O! A great answer – most informative!
I forgot to ask this: Do the publicist, etc for the nominees call and ask members of the Academy for their votes?
I’m pretty sure they do. Wouldn’t you?
Taking off on this thought a bit. I never understood why Halle Berry got the first African American oscar when Angela Basset so smoked Tina Turner’s roll. I can think of a few other movies and roles featuring African American actresses that were so much better. Monster’s Ball was just so terrible so I believe every word you just said.
I’m still haunted by that scene in Monster’s Ball where she freaks out on her son for hiding candy. I wanted her dead and in Hell. If I think about it too much, I’ll have one of my postpartum depression panic attacks triggered by people mistreating children.
I do not remember this!
Yes, their relationship was romantic. But not even at first. It was platonic until the end when they realized they had fallen in love. I was talking about their characters when I said mid 20s and mid 30s. I don’t think the story would have suffered if she were 32, but I don’t see why someone shouldn’t get a part playing a character a few years older than they really are if they are capable of playing that part well.
And yet, aren’t there plenty of talented actresses in the 32-42 age range? Don’t they always complain that there aren’t enough parts for actresses over 30? Here is a prime part for an actress in her thirties, and it goes to a woman barely in her twenties who’s playing “older.” I’m 41, so I guess I’m projecting, but it irks me. I’m sure Lawrence was amazing. She definitely has a “quality.” But so much of that quality is her clear-skinned, juicy-faced youth.
Odie I’m pretty sure it’s spring break woman!
It’s time for a new post. Come on.
I know, I know.