About Last Night

Oscar host Jon Stewart at the 78th Academy Awards telecast. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

If there is one humble word that summarizes the 78th annual Academy Awards, it is this: humble. Oh, sure, it might be the winners’ names on those statuettes but they did not come to congratulate themselves. Several winners — including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Reese Witherspoon, best actor and best actress respectively — paid tribute to their parents in touchingly heartfelt fashion. Best supporting actress winner Rachel Weisz would rather celebrate those people “who risk their own lives to fight injustice — they’re greater men and women than I.” Memoirs of a Geisha’s technical winners gushed about the courage of Sony, the studio that was, in the words of best costume design winner Colleen Atwood, “brave enough to make a movie about a woman.” Crash producer Cathy Schulman genuflected on the movies she just beat in the evening’s big upset, saying, “You have made this year one of the most breathtaking, stunning and maverick years in American cinema.” 

If humility was champagne, we’d all be plastered. Hell, even one of the dudes in Three 6 Mafia — the second-biggest surprise winners, this time for Hustle & Flow’s It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp as best song — devoted his sole shout out to Jesus. All that caring and selflessness was so much work, no wonder the audience seemed grateful when Dustin Hoffman told them to give themselves a hand.

Yet no one thought to applaud you, the viewers at home, for selflessly devoting three-and-a-half hours of your lives to the telecast, not including time viewing the red-carpet action or those hours you spent pondering the enigma that is Ben Mulroney. Thankfully, there were many moments that rewarded your tireless devotion to Hollywood’s annual exercise in back-patting, as well as individuals who rose above (or sank beneath) the solemnity of the occasion. We salute these things that made the Oscars so memorable, even though we know they’re much too humble to accept our gratitude.

1. JON STEWART COMES THROUGH THE FIRE
Wow, tough room. Most of an opening monologue that would’ve slayed the baked NYU students who fill the stands at The Daily Show’s tapings went down in flames before an industry audience that prefers the chummy insider comedy of Billy Crystal to jokes that actually sting. When Stewart described the evening as “the first time many of you have ever voted for a winner,” the collective wince was audible. At that point, we all would’ve forgiven him for pulling the rip cord. But no, Stewart ventured forward, bravely recounting a litany of Fox News-worthy accusations condemning Hollywood as “an atheistic pleasure dome.” By the end of his intro, Stewart looked three seconds away from a bad case of flop-sweat but he had successfully weathered all the awkward silences and one very aggrieved look from Charlize Theron. He breezed through the rest of the show like the pro that he is. Even the Bjork joke seemed fresh.

2. SAY IT WITH A MONTAGE
After Stewart’s monologue came the evening’s wittiest poke at Brokeback Mountain, a compilation of not-at-all-gay moments in famous westerns. Surely John Wayne intended only the manliest of connotations in Rio Grande when he uttered the line: “I’ll have you spread-eagled on a wagon wheel.” Unfortunately, this amusing gambit was followed by several montage sequences that paid exhaustive tribute to the biopic, the film noir, the liberal-message picture and the epic. The first made the most impact by including Faye Dunaway’s immortal cry of “No wire hangers ever!” from Mommie Dearest. Meanwhile, the list of “epics” was generous enough to include The Fifth Element. Claiming that “we’re literally out of film clips,” Stewart implored the public to replenish the supply. “I don’t care if they’re in Beta, just send them.”

3. REESE AND RYAN AND HEATH AND MICHELLE
Sunday night was a battle for supremacy between Hollywood’s most fertile young thespian couples. Though Ledger and Williams were both strong contenders for their roles as unhappy married folk in Brokeback Mountain, Witherspoon and Phillippe won two to nil. The missus deserved her award for enlivening the lugubrious Walk the Line, and while sticklers might point out that Phillippe wasn’t actually nominated, he and the rest of the cast won by proxy when Crash stole best picture. Heath and Michelle can take solace in the fact that, unlike Witherspoon and Phillippe’s kids, their baby, Matilda, already has a waltz named after her.

4. ATTACK ADS HERALD TRIUMPH OF TRUTHINESS
Ben Stiller’s green-man-group routine and Will Ferrell and Steve Carell’s makeup malfunctions scored big laughs but the most inspired stand-alone gags were the mock Oscar attack ads, voiced in inimitable fashion by Steve Colbert. One ad lambasted Charlize Theron for “hagging it up” in her quest for Oscar glory while Keira Knightley bravely acts “with cheekbones so improbable, they may well be flecked with God dust.” Best of all was the attack on the eldest nominee’s un-Dame-like behaviour. “Judi Dench took my eye out in a bar fight,” said Dame Prunella von Chadwickton. We are shocked and aghast.

5. GEORGE CLOONEY, THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Clooney proved once and for all that weight gain is the surest route to Oscar glory when he won the best supporting actor award for Syriana. After accepting the statuette from Nicole Kidman, the hunk quipped, “So I’m not winning best director….” Wow, he’s handsome and prescient. Every inch the evening’s Big Man on Campus, he loomed large in the thoughts of even those few people who didn’t know him. Best makeup co-winner Howard Berger thanked Clooney for not competing in his category and therefore allowing him to win. Best documentary short subject co-director Corinne Marrinan closed her speech by thanking the Academy “for seating me next to George Clooney at the nominees luncheon.” Jon Stewart spoke for all men when he cried: “How much more can he have?!”

Academy Award winners for Best Original Song, Three 6 Mafia. (Photo Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

6. THREE 6 MAFIA, FOR BEING SO CRUNK
In a year so weak for movie theme songs that only three were nominated, one song was bound to bust through. As charming as Dolly Parton was last night, it wasn’t going to be her gentle paean to transgenderism, Transamerica’s Travelin’ Thru. As for the wispy song from Crash, see below. No, the night belonged to the Oscars’ first embrace of hip-hop thugness. (Eminem’s Lose Yourself didn’t count because it sounded like Eye of the Tiger.) On a stage set dominated by couches and dancers in electric-blue hot pants, the Memphis rappers performed It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp from Hustle & Flow. It was the show’s most exciting moment, maybe its only exciting moment — pimps and hos had every reason to be proud.

7. THE RETURN OF INTERPRETIVE DANCE
As Kathleen “Bird” York serenely sang In the Deep from Crash, did she have any idea what was going on behind her? Near a blazing car at centre stage, svelte dancers dramatized key moments from the best picture winner with all the grace we’ve come to expect from Academy Award production numbers. Especially memorable was the lyrical restaging of the violation of Thandie Newton’s character, complete with a hand thrust between the knees. It was hard to tell who the other dancers were supposed to be due to all the dry ice — or was it real smoke? “If you are trying to escape a burning car,” said Stewart, “my advice would be not to move in slow motion.” And if this is supposed to be tasteful, then I want Debbie Allen back.

8. ROBERT ALTMAN, FOR NOT BEING DONE
What with him directing Resurrection Blues onstage in London and his film adaptation of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion out this summer, the honorary Oscar winner is not ready to die. After a rambling, seemingly improvised introduction in which Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin talked over each other in patented Altman fashion, the maker of M*A*S*H and Nashville made surprisingly gracious remarks to Academy members who — the last time he was nominated for best director — asserted that Ron Howard was the better filmmaker. The 81-year-old closed by mentioning how his decade-old heart transplant ensured him another 40 years among the living. “And I intend to use them,” he said.

Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman accepts the Oscar for Best Actor for his work in Capote. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

9. PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, FOR LOVING VAN MORRISON AND HIS MOM
The sweetest tribute was by Hoffman after his Capote win. His friends and collaborators Bennett Miller and Dan Futterman earned a whole bunch of “I love”s, triggering an endearing bit of free association. “You know that Van Morrison song when he says, ‘I love, I love,’ and it keeps repeating?” asked Hoffman. He didn’t let anyone answer but I think he means Madame George. In any case, he was equally effusive when he thanked his single-parent mom for taking him to his first play and sharing his passions. On a night filled with congratulations, Hoffman said it best.

10. AND WHO COULD FORGET THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF…
Andy Serkis, cited several times by the winners of King Kong’s technical awards as the one who really brought the ape to life; enviably cool Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who made an auspicious beginning to his film career when Six Shooter won best live action short; Donatella Versace, who made Salma Hayek’s slate blue dress, a dazzling exercise in wave dynamics and God dust; Aardman Animations masters Nick Park and Steve Box, who brought bow ties for their Wallace and Gromit statuettes; and Lauren Bacall, whose painfully flubbed introduction to the film-noir montage will no doubt attract speculations about her well-being but whose toughness is beyond dispute — after all, the woman just made two films with Lars von Trier. That would humble even George Clooney.

Jason Anderson is a Toronto writer.