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Phillip Lopate and Geoffrey O'Brien

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from: Geoffrey O'Brien

The Oscars' Glorious Past

Posted Monday, March 19, 2001, at 12:33 PM ET

Dear Phillip,

Am I excited yet? The question I have to ask myself is whether, or how much, I ever was excited. Oscar night is something I generally anticipate with pleasure since whenever possible it's been the occasion for an amusing, occasionally boisterous evening with friends, an evening in which audience participation is usually part of the entertainment. Yet for as long as I can remember there was always a murmuring of "It used to be better ..." When exactly was it better? I can dimly remember the Oscar nights of childhood, when it seemed like the ultimate adult party, the kind that a child sneaks downstairs to catch a glimpse of when he's supposed to be in bed. In the '50s and '60s the thrill of the Oscars resided in the fact that the parade of stars consisted of (say) Lana Turner, Cary Grant, Kim Novak, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, and on and on. Actual stars, that is to say, elected by a mysterious process and not spoiled by overexposure; you didn't see them night after night hyping their new movie or their book or their pet political cause. To catch them unawares, so to speak, at the Oscars was a singular pleasure, accentuated by their air of relaxation (not to say inebriation), almost of indifference: These were gods in their element, nearly oblivious, it seemed, to the invisible audience peering in at them. Today's celebrities work so much harder and so much more visibly at being stars, yet they seem to be playing a role out of some manual called How To Manage Your Hollywood Career.

It never seemed to have all that much to do with movies, especially since the winners tended to be either well-meaning social message films or very expensive blockbusters. What I couldn't have anticipated was that perception of the Oscars would change so much: From being a pop event more on the order of the Miss America contest, it has become a cultural event more akin to the Nobel Prize. (Not that the Nobel Prize doesn't have its problems ... but that's another story.) Of course it's a cultural event that is nothing more than a vast advertisement, but what else is new? The ponderousness of the buildup does get more unavoidable each year. (I suppose the same could be said about Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day, and every other major marketing opportunity.) The Oscars have gotten so big that they needed another one to catch some of the spillover, so now we have the Golden Globe Awards, a tacky, ersatz Oscars that to my astonishment the New York Times reported on this year at length in the arts section. The weird thing is that in some sense the Oscars now seem like a bigger deal in the culture than movies themselves, as if the movies only exist to provide the occasion for the awards.

As for movies, I'm always hopeful, even when the rewards do (I confess) seem slimmer than they used to: Or, at least, my movie-going year was not quite as rich in astonishments as I would have liked. Maybe I saw the wrong ones. Still, even the worst movies have their peculiar jolts; I'm still haunted by a single shot from The Perfect Storm (the disappearance of the last crew member into the oceanic void), a kind of high-tech remake of the last shot of Murnau's Tabu that by itself almost justified the dull stretches in the rest of the movie. I think what I miss most about movie-going is the disappearance of that disreputable lower tier of genre movies that have gone the way of Times Square, movies that would never have been candidates for Oscars but that could be relied on for moments of surprise and weird beauty. As you suggest, today there is the commercial circuit and the festival circuit, but where are all those nameless oddities that used to slip under the radar, the oddball quickies, the dreamlike near-amateur horror movies, the deliriously unreal fantasies? (I suppose Polanski's The Ninth Gate qualifies as genuinely tacky and unreal ... I wish it had been a little more overwhelmingly dreamlike. Still, Johnny Depp lingers in mind as the unlikeliest of rare book dealers.)

But I digress into the past, as is my wont. Video, with its opportunity to explore lost eras at will, has fed that tendency, so that I would have to cite among the supreme cinematic delights of 2000 such slightly antiquated items as Douglas Sirk's A Scandal in Paris (1946) or Roy Del Ruth's Employees' Entrance (1933), curious bits of Hollywood product which seemed to find their way directly into my subconscious, there to become the stuff of dreams.

I look forward to hearing about your favorite films.

Best,
Geoffrey

the breakfast table
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from: Geoffrey O'Brien

The Oscars' Glorious Past

Posted Monday, March 19, 2001, at 12:33 PM ET
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Phillip Lopate is an essayist, novelist, and film buff whose last book was a collection of movie criticism, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically. Geoffrey O'Brien is the editor in chief of the Library of America and the author of numerous books, including The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the Twentieth Century.
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[Thursday Notes from the Fray Editor: So Phillip Lopate came into the Fray too, to answer the A.O.Scott post below, and Mr Scott answered him, and then David Edelstein thought it was all getting too friendly, and really we recommend you read the whole thread (starts here), no actually we are imploring you to read it, because it is one of the great Fray feuding threads, with posts titled "A.O. Wimps Out" and "By God Mr Edelstein" and a mention of effete drivel. There are special extra insults from star posters and others, plus this unmissable summary of the action from Fray favorite Joseph Britt ("What are these people arguing about? [Is it]... that anyway House of Mirth was supposed to be grim, a bummer and/or a downer but is nonetheless worthy for other reasons, so the Times' critics' criticism is wrong. Have I got it?"). Neill Hamilton--a trouble-maker if ever we saw one--tried to help Mr Britt out, below.]


While the posts appear to be trading blows about the movie The House of Mirth, it appears that they are arguing about certain hidden issues. A.O.Scott is arguing that the New York Times is not as fun as a frat party, and never will be if he can help it. Edelstein is arguing that he prefers Gillian Anderson in the X-Files, altho' he misses Mulder. Zeit for some reason wanted to talk about the only Art movie he has ever seen, and Lopate's point is only known to him. I hope this helps.

--Neill Hamilton

(To reply, click here.)



[Wednesday Notes from the Fray Editor: Some rumbling in the film critics' ranks here. Did the New York Times diss House of Mirth like frat boys? A.O.Scott says no, below. And Slate's movie critic David Edelstein is in The Fray arguing too. There are comments on individual films throughout. To take random examples, a defense of Manhattan, and the excellent question "Where was Wonder Boys?". (If there was a post agreeing that The Leopard is one of the best films ever made, we would feature it too.) Microcinemas are discussed here. And (we are filing under the heading "good to know if true") how posting on The Fray can protect you from Alzheimer's, here.]


Mr. Lopate writes:

House of Mirth got lambasted by the New York Times critics for being a downer, as if they were reviewing for their college frat paper.

What is his source for this ridiculous contention? There are three film critics at the Times: Elvis Mitchell, Stephen Holden, and me. To my knowledge (and his), Mitchell has never written about House of Mirth, and my only published remarks about the film came in a Slate "Movie Club," in which I said that while I admired Davies's visual technique, I found the movie emotionally inert. So perhaps Mr. Lopate is referring to Stephen Holden's review, which ran when House of Mirth was shown at the New York Film Festival. But while Holden did describe the movie's depiction of New York society as "grim" and "bleak," he did not fault (much less "lambaste" or "despise") House of Mirth for its somber mood. Rather, he thought Gillian Anderson was miscast as Lily Bart, and found most of the secondary characters one-dimensional.

The implication that "the Times critics" favor shallow, feel-good pictures will be laughable to anyone who bothers to read the paper, and will certainly come as news to the makers of Erin Brockovitch, Gladiator, Finding Forrester and Chocolat, all of which we treated pretty roughly. Perhaps the only articles in the Times Mr. Lopate reads are the ones he writes himself, or perhaps he fell asleep over the paper and dreamed up a team of shallow critics to serve as "Breakfast Table" straw men. In any case it's too bad that, in his desperate need to preserve a sense of intellectual superiority, he has so egregiously smeared and misrepresented the work of other critics. I guess I'd rather be middlebrow and literary than highbrow and illiterate.

--A.O.Scott

(To reply, click here.)


Timesaver: Oscar night in a nutshell.

Armey Archer, Joan Rivers and Spawn, scores of "stars", 30% ridiculously over-dressed, 30% under-dressed in designer slobbery, 30% appropriately dressed but ill-coiffed, indoctrination through a summary of historical significance, popular clips from this year's movies, witty, left-leaning banter from an officious host, audience shots of actors (22% of all shots include Jack Nicholson), more witty banter including rolling blackout jokes, irrelevant awards for tech-geeks, makeup people and unknown music industry wonks, more witty banter including Dubya jokes, slow tease with clips from best movie nominees, slightly more "important" awards, tacky musical and dance numbers, more witty banter probably including J-Lo dress references, more shots of Jack, building suspense, complete overuse of the words "vision, brilliance and genius," sappy "thank yous", lifetime achievement award to somebody who's more talented than all the nominees put together but just never had the right PR people, annoying, hand-wringing, impassioned political statements by "stars" with furrowed brows, salutes to the independents (who are the only people doing anything new, anymore), building suspense, more witty banter about events that occurred earlier in the night, best film award, a little more irrelevant bullshit and two weeks worth of water cooler talk

--Johnny Hotpants

(To reply, click here.)



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