The story of the Oscars is normally an upset, an across-the-board winner, a teary actress, a pre-Gaga era adventurous choice of outfit or someone (Marlon or Woody) doesn’t show.
Gwyneth Paltrow not singing might be more of a news event these days.
For last night’s 2011 Oscars, however, the biggest story might actually be the men who wrote the two main stories.
James Franco and Anne Hathaway’s presentation, after the audacity of
Ricky Gervais to appeal to the 200 million watching rather than the 50 in the room, was always going to err on Politesville heading towards Rue de Tedium. In its favour, one aspect can at least be said to be modern – Franco live-tweeted from the ceremony.
Plenty of “The Brits are coming” headlines will be written. It was a slight surprise, and probably unfair, that Tom Hooper edged out favourite David Fincher and the not-even-nominated Christopher Nolan for for Best Director.
Nonetheless, brash New Yorker Harvey Weinstein has shown he often has his hand on the tiller behind our big winners from My Left Foot to The English Patient. Modern Academy Award-winning Brit flicks without Harvey are like the rabbit without Jimmy Stewart.
Colin Firth (Best Actor), Natalie Portman (Best Actress) and Christian Bale (Best Supporting Actor) always looked like being honoured, with Melissa Leo (Best Supporting Actress) another deserving winner. She dropped the F-bomb but, by standards of our ceremonies where bands douse Cabinet minister with buckets of water, that seems tame.
For most movie fans, what propelled the talk leading up to the awards was the two-horse race between the king of the new medium radio against the punk king of the other new medium, the internet. The swan coming up on the outside was unlikely to best them.
There was so much talk of The Social Network and The King’s Speech, mainly centred around historical accuracy and stammering – or that’s possibly the other way round – and glossy profiles of the Facebook movie director.
First rule of Oscar voting. If you’re losing ground to a classy British flick, you do talk about yourself. Well, you do if you’re David Fincher.
What really made those films stand out were the scripts. What was fortuitous about the 2011 Oscars is that 73 year-old David Seidler and Aaron Sorkin were each able to win a wee gold man after being nominated in different screenplay categories.
Both are deserving winners. Like many of the great writers – and unlike many of the modern mediocre ones – both started with a love for theatre, both have interesting back-stories and both have now won an Academy Award years after either might have expected it.
It was Alfred Hitchcock who famously said that the three most vital elements of a film are “the script, the script, the script”. Which is why he was ripped off by so many directors – and the occasional politician.
Seidler, as already reported, underwent quite an arduous slog from growing up with a stammer and hearing that the King of England did as well, to contacting first the Queen Mum, who asked to wait until her husband died, and then contacting Geoffrey Rush who helped take the idea from the page to the stage and then the screen – where it won Best Original Screenplay.
Sorkin’s win (for Best Adapted Screenplay) was equally deserved. He took a story of computer nerds and, along with Fincher, turned it into a tale of loyalty, betrayal, power and social alienation, with some insightful points about Facebook and its own relationship with the concept of friendship.
The fact this is only the latest chapter in a life that includes adapted plays, crack cocaine, what many regard as one of the greatest TV dramas of all time, The West Wing, another of the most underrated, Sports Night, and now Facebook.
And the best part – if he’s writing the other chapters, they’ll be elegantly phrased, have a smattering of decent jokes and be delivered by some classy actors reading out the words.
This year’s Oscars may in some small part have been about the emphasis shifting back away from the actors and toward the words again.
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