Redemption, it turns out, is one elusive motherfucker.
See, last year was supposed to be my big comeback. The year before, at the 2005 Oscars (also known as The Oscars of Ignominy), the infantile Crash won Best Picture, against not only my staunchest (if utterly irrelevant) objections but also my most confident predictions. The Oscars of Ignominy left me in a state of disrepute, physically hobbled, with a tarnished spiritual core. For months I had that look on my face like Mel Gibson in Braveheart after he realized Robert the Bruce betrayed him at Falkirk – I was glassy-eyed, incapable of comprehending the world around me. I was like one of the Pod People from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, merely going through the motions of existence, never feeling, never thinking, never living.
But eventually, I snapped out of it. I’m not sure what it was precisely. It could have been receiving confirmation that Emma Watson was returning for the last two Harry Potter films, or watching old DVDs of “The Office” and learning the true meaning of love from Jim and Pam, or maybe just going to see Borat in the theatre and finding myself sitting next to an Asian supermodel who looked like a cross between Kristy Yamaguchi and Kobe Tai. Whatever it was, whatever restorative I drank, I began to follow the same path as that of Gandalf the Grey in The Two Towers: “It was not the end. I felt life in me again. I’ve been sent back until my task is done.”
Damn right I was back, and when the 2006 Oscar nominations were announced, my task was simple: to prove, for once in my shameful excuse for a life, that I knew what the fuck I was talking about.
It was a shaky proposition. Not only had Crash unhinged me in 2005, but in the Best Picture race the year before I’d backed The Aviator over Million Dollar Baby, even though at the time the Eastwood movie was hotter than Craig Hodges in the ’91 three-point shootout. Even worse, the field was incredibly difficult to handicap; not only was there no clear frontrunner, but there were not two but three legitimate contenders – Babel, The Departed, and Little Miss Sunshine. In the words of Han Solo, I had a bad feeling about this.
But I couldn’t turn back, because honestly, absent the Manifesto, what meaning does my life really possess? So I buckled down. I geared up. I weighed options, concocted scenarios, performed statistical analyses, prayed to various deities, and employed very expensive and possibly even illegal techniques to peer into the mind of the average voter of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. And then I scrapped everything and went with my gut, even though, to quote John Cusack in High Fidelity, my guts have shit for brains. I picked The Departed, not because I was convinced it would win but because I knew it should win; it was the best of the nominees, and they call the category Best Fucking Picture, do they not? So, calculating though I may often be, in an impulse of self-righteous fury I had pinned the hopes for my salvation on an emotional whim, a calling of the heart, a desperate plea for cinematic justice.
And then I waited. For my vindication or my disgrace, I did not know, but I waited. Like those poor saps in Casablanca looking for exit visas, I waited.
And oh, how the Academy taunted me, yes it did. You see, during the Oscars of Ignominy, it was Jack Nicholson who announced Crash as the Best Picture winner, Jack who cruelly ripped my life to shreds, Jack who spoke the fateful words and then just stood there smiling that demented smile and thinking to himself, “I am going to crush some of the young talent in here tonight,” unaware of the pain and humiliation he had just dispensed. So last year, to close the ceremony that would either revalidate my existence or forever incinerate my soul, the Academy had Jack make the announcement again, even though he was a lead in one of the movies in contention. Read More
