Oscars - Just What I Needed
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In my house, a bottle of Prosecco and two coats of bright red nail polish can disappear before Brad Pitt is even a whisper on the red carpet. That has been my Oscar ritual for many years - painting my toenails and sipping bubbles while Hollywood’s greatest celebrities and artists meander down the carpet, like pretty lambs to the media slaughter. Adoring fans and unstable looky-loo’s scream from the stands while I gawk from home, my limbs tingling with excitement and alcohol at the spectacle of it all. I love it. Too much perhaps. I’ve shushed people, yelled my disagreements at the screen, jumped out of my seat in celebration and forgotten to breathe while an envelope was clumsily opened. I still believe that all my campaigning among colleagues and friends was partially responsible for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck winning Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting in 1998. No way they would have won without me. All the local publicity I worked tirelessly to stir up made them a shoo-in. Irrefutable.
My Oscar tradition has suffered in the years since Matt and Ben took home the gold, all fresh faced and innocent. Back then, nothing seemed more important to me than celebrating the Oscars. As long as I can remember, I have wanted one. Just one golden Oscar please. I’ve practiced speeches in the bathroom mirror, the car, the shower, everywhere, both awake and in my dreams. Every year I watched other people - writers, actors, directors, make their acceptance speeches, thanking God, mom, their agent, and sometimes, the Academy. On some level, being awarded for making a movie seems ludicrous to me. It’s like being given cake for having baked a cake. How sweet does life have to be for some people? Isn’t being involved in baking a beautiful cake reward enough? While a cake is a series of ingredients that are carefully blended to produce a tasty dessert, so to is a film a magical combination of ingredients; pictures, sound, and a masterful script, painstakingly layered together to produce something that feeds the soul - a different kind of treat altogether. Circumstances, lack of courage and a series of choices led me further and further from this world with every passing day. But the Oscars - I’ve always had the Oscars. I can watch the ones who made it. The ones who replaced the mirror with an actual audience.
The night of the 93rd Academy Awards, 2021, I sat on my couch in my pajama bottoms, that have no less than two holes in them, in unsavory places admittedly, and frayed ties at the waist. My U-neck t-shirt was rumpled but soft and I had painted my toenails earlier in the day, not bothering to save the task for the red carpet. They were pale pink, having lost my verve for bright red. Instead of Prosecco, I had a vodka cooler that I managed to pour into a nice glass. I’m not an animal. Maybe there was more than one vodka. I’m not a nun. My love of the spectacle has ebbed and surged over the decades for different reasons. There have been years where sneaking in a grown-up movie while raising three kids was not always possible. I could easily have run through episodes of The Power Rangers, line by line, more so than tell you anything about the best picture nominees of 2010 - unless images from The Hurt Locker or Inglourious Basterds appeared on little boys pajamas, or came in Lego sets. How cool would a Christophe Waltz Lego man be? Those years, I didn’t have the presence of mind or body to rise to the occasion. I was most likely up at night with a Tide stick and stained sweats, pulling Cheerios out of my hair, not lounging with champagne and glittering toes in a fresh coat of Opi’s best red, “I’m Really An Actress” (an actual colour).
There have been other years when I have not been able to emotionally connect with the nominated films - like Birdman, in 2015. I couldn’t get there. I just...you lost me on that one. Michael Keaton, hallucinating while running amuck in his underpants in New York wearing giant pair of feathered wings. That’s a lot for me to get behind.
But 1998 and Good Will Hunting - what a year! Two first time writers with a story dripping in humour, deep friendship, drama, love, and an ensemble of broken people, sorry - characters, that split open on screen, creating a slurry of pain and disappointment until their only option left is to rebuild - each other, and move forward. No wings or grimy underpants. How do you like them apples? (my favourite line).
Television and movies imprinted on me long before Ben and Matt came onto the scene. When I was still in diapers, I stepped in front of the TV to get my parents attention at bedtime. As usual, they asked me for a goodnight kiss. I leaned in to kiss my mom, dramatically twisting my head side to side, my diaper crinkling as I wiggled. Without a beat, I said - ‘it’s a Hollywood kiss’. From then on, I was regularly asked for a ‘Hollywood kiss’, which I happily gave, each time rolling my head around like the tarty little starlet I thought I was. I’ve looked to movies to show me what to do, what to wear, what to hope for, what I could be, and how to get myself out of, or into, a tricky situation. I still can’t put lipstick on the way Molly Ringwald did in The Breakfast Club, but boy I’ve been tempted to make some vengeful poo pie like Octavia Spencer in The Help. I’ve dreamed of banging out a hit play at my seaside home like Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give and I’ve wondered what would happen if I ever ran away to Italy, India and Indonesia to truly find myself. The Oscars is the night when I get to see filmmakers rewarded for guiding me through the year. Films that stole my thoughts, disrupted my emotions, comforted me, inspired me, and surprised me, have me rooting for them like a face-painted sports fan. When Danny Boyle filmed a small boy from the slums of India plunging into the bottom of an outhouse, I was shocked and transported. Slumdog Millionaire is an epic story of classism and survival; a narrative I felt at every turn. And with a catchy Bollywood number at the end? I was team Boyle all the way that year.
Slumdog Millionaire - winner Best Picture, 2009
This year started out feeling like one of those years when there were more important things going on then red carpets, cocktails, and celebrities patting each other on the back. The movies for the most part had not even been released and the show was put off for months. Cinema’s are closed, studio movies have been held back and parties are a no-no. So, the U-neck shirt and a canned cooler seemed fitting. A couple of weeks before the Oscars, against all odds, we searched and committed to watching some of these films regardless of our lack of enthusiasm or the presence of blockbusters. Once again, movies freed me like a butterfly from an unwanted cocoon.
We watched Anthony Hopkins (The Father) from a first person perspective, spiral into the terrifying world of dementia. I felt sad and sentimental. I thought of things I didn’t want to think about. Then came Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) as a man utterly driven by a mission to empower African Americans before the ultimate betrayal by an insider informant cost him his life, at only 21 yrs old. A true story. I felt shocked and enraged. But mostly grateful for people that are far more amazing than I could ever be. After watching Nomadland, which plodded along and left me wanting to take a shower, I felt nothing. Then I talked about it more. I let memories of working at Provincial Parks as a teenager in Northwestern Ontario, a mere 30 hour wilderness train ride from Toronto, creep in. I met many a nomad in these secluded parks, either hiding from something, seeking something, or discovering something; all committed to a life on the road and under the stars. The rumblings of my own wanderlust began to surface as I reminisced about simpler times; my youth, backpacking, and having no fixed address. We talked about nomads as a family. One of my son’s said, “I could totally see you doing that mom.”
To which my husband promptly responded, “She doesn’t want to live in a van and shit in a bucket from Home Depot, trust me.” And I was reminded how much I like a nice hotel and freshly squeezed juice. But still, I felt alive again thinking about freedom.
Nomadland - winner, Best Picture 2021 (starring Frances McDormand)
Minari drops a young Korean family in the middle of Arkansas - none of which should resonate with me. It’s a delicate look at a marriage that struggles to find its feet, dreams of independence, growing old, growing up, finding a voice, healing from trauma and learning to love each other despite hardship and generational divide - it was impossible not to connect with it. Watching the quirky grandmother gain the children’s love and seeing the ‘new’ family on the fringes of a small town church group took me back to my childhood. I remembered church picnics I went to as a kid and the Vietnamese refugees that had come to our community - the hat passed around for ‘boat people’. I thought about the spicy ginger candy my Australian nana used to give us and how I spit it out the second heads were turned. I thought about all the clumsy but beautiful lessons I have learned from my family. Minari was delicious.
Of course living in a house full of people who think they’re funny, I also watched Borat Subsequent Movie Film and am in awe of Maria Bakalova, the best supporting actress nominee. That’s all I can say.
Then, Sound of Metal exploded onto the scene with its profound lesson. My husband and I watched Riz Ahmed literally become deaf. As a heavy metal drummer, and former addict, he damages his hearing beyond repair and fights to get his life back, ignoring the life he has been given. No pun intended but it’s a quiet film, except at the beginning, that takes you to a place you are normally not invited. You are brought into a community that is often on the fringes and ignored. I was reminded of my brother, the drummer and high school principal, who is experiencing tinnitus in one ear. Ironically, or not, I remember him teaching sign language and being the Director of the Ontario Camp for the Deaf when he was younger. I remember the phone we had in our house that would convert speech to text so we could communicate with deaf students. I still know some signs and remember the young man who gave me my sign name. The performances in this film I will never forget. I felt scared. I felt opened up. I have warned my brother. I felt what I was supposed to; an appreciation for sound and at times, the absence of it.
Watching the Oscars, for me, is like eating a bucket of ice cream after a good cry. It’s not the awards I want to devour. It’s the stories I want to relive. The laughs. The humanity. I need to see the people that gave me the gift of feeling and seeing worlds I never imagined until seconds into a movie. I like their dresses and speeches, it’s true. I critique the presenter banter, and question the set design. I balk at the results sometimes and text friends my opinions that no one asked for. I envy the work of all the participants. But mostly, I am grateful for their talent. I am a winner year after year because I joined in the most human of activities - the sharing of stories. The Academy Awards have steadily lost viewers over the past five years, at less than half their normal numbers. It’s okay. We can ignore the awards, but we must never forget the movies. My ugly pajamas and vodka coolers will never win best costume. My tears, my memories revisited, and my enthusiasm for movies have never really needed a statue or red toe nails. Every year, the Oscars give me a reason to pause and look back, not just at the year in cinema, but at my life in general, and remember that I am human.
And for that, I’d like to thank the Academy.
By Carol Sloan
Note: Books have had a similar effect on me but this…this was all about the movies.
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