Jason Anderson
Movie Entertainment
March 2010
Regular viewers of the Academy Awards will recognize the scene straightaway, even though it’s not part of some network telecast but something else entirely. We’re presented with a familiar image of Oscar-night splendour: a red carpet flanked by oversized replicas of those gold statuettes. A white limo pulls up in front of a gaggle of excited fans. The announcer heralds the arrival of “two of their favourite celebrities! Yes, that’s right, it’s … Weird Al Yankovic and Vanna White!”
At this point, you may realize that this never occurred at any Academy Awards telecast you’ve ever seen. No, it’s a scene from Naked Gun 33¹/³: The Final Insult. Released in 1994, the third entry in Leslie Nielsen’s cop-spoof series hinges on the still-unsettling possibility of a terrorist bombing at the Oscar ceremony. As Nielsen’s intrepid detective says, “It’ll be a tragedy … unless of course it happens during a dance number.” Now, say what you will about Naked Gun 33¹/³, but it is notable as one of the few movies brave or reckless enough to either depict the Academy Awards event on screen or satirize the efforts of the film community to win Oscars.
This scarcity is surprising when you consider how obsessed the industry has always been with its annual orgy of self congratulation. The lust for Oscars causes no shortage of chicanery behind the scenes, yet filmmakers are usually careful not to let their anxieties bleed over into the movies themselves.
Of the handful that have turned a mirror on the industry’s big night, the 1978 screen version of Neil Simon’s California Suite includes the most cynical depiction. Part of an impressive ensemble cast, Maggie Smith plays Diana Barrie, a British actress who’s a first-time Academy Award nominee. As the ceremony approaches, she becomes a bundle of nerves, carping at her husband Sidney (Michael Caine) and fretting about her appearance. “Why do they have these things so early?” she asks. “No one can look good at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, except possibly Tatum O’Neal.”
Barrie’s defeat at the ceremony is followed by a boozy breakdown. Yet Smith’s own story has a happier outcome: nominated for Best Supporting Actress in
1979, Smith became the only honoree to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar loser.
Using this twisted reasoning, an actor playing an actor who won an Oscar should have it in the bag. Heck, it worked for Cate Blanchett – she snagged her only Oscar to date for playing four-time winner Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator. Even so, the same feat was not achieved when Robert Downey Jr. was nominated for the title role in Chaplin.
Perhaps he’d have been better off using strategies outlined elsewhere. In Bowfinger – starring and written by Steve Martin, who’s been nominated for several Golden Globes but never an Oscar – movie star Kit Ramsey (played by Eddie Murphy) claims that he’s always passed over at awards time because he’s never done any of “these slave roles where I get my ass whipped.” But even that is only good for a nomination. To win, Ramsey says, you’ve got to be a “white boy (who) plays an idiot.” “Bring me a script where I play a retarded slave,” he tells his agent.
Chances are he would’ve faced stiff competition for the role from Downey’s character in Tropic Thunder, Kirk Lazarus. That said, in the movie’s most notorious exchange, Lazarus warns action hero Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) of the dangers of going “full retard.” Going blackface must be a safer bet, seeing as the part earned Downey a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 2009.
Yet the greatest irony of all occurred at last year’s Oscars when Kate Winslet won Best Actress for The Reader, thereby proving the truth of what she previously had said in an episode of Ricky Gervais’s series Extras. “I’ve noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, (you’re) guaranteed an Oscar.”
Harsh words, but the Academy seems surprisingly willing to forgive such slights. On the other hand, there are few warm feelings for the only movie that dared call itself The Oscar. Released in 1966, it was the story of a fictional Best Actor nominee named Frank Fane (Stephen Boyd) and his ruthless efforts to nab the prize, which included conducting a smear campaign against himself to gain voters’ sympathies.
Though stacked with celebrities (including Bob Hope as the emcee of the faux ceremony), the movie was a notorious flop that promptly sank the acting career of Tony Bennett, who is terrible as Fane’s self-loathing lackey.
Yet for all its sleaziness, The Oscar displays a weirdly sanctimonious attitude toward the awards themselves. That’s no truer than when the despicable Fane is denied the prize he craves so much – instead, a smiling Frank Sinatra collects the statue. Then again, who could possibly believe that an Oscar would ever be won by someone who didn’t deserve it?