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My Oscar Party

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from: David Edelstein
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Posted Wednesday, March 25, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

The morning after:
The crust on the dishes is hardening; the open wine bottles exude a scent both floral and sour; the stereo rumbles with requiems by Mozart, Verdi, Brahms, and Dvorák. I am in mourning: Robert Duvall didn't win. Finally, it all came down to that.
We knew Titanic would sail off with the Oscars. And what the hell: a fat, square, crudely written, breast-beating blockbuster worshipped by millions of teen-age girls and teen-age-girls-at-heart--its Oscars were earned. I only bridle when people describe it as an "epic." My definition of an epic is a story in which characters undergo prodigious trials and evolve. James Cameron's characters remain as noble or rotten at the end as they were at the beginning, although they're considerably wetter.
This Academy Awards made for a tedious evening by any standard. The show seemed to have already taken place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away; what reached us was the light of faded stars. For many years, the ceremony would drag on into the wee hours and actors would do weird, spontaneous, drug-addled, exhibitionistic things. Now, it still drags on into the wee hours but actors glance anxiously into the wings to make sure that they're not pissing off Gil Cates, the producer whose whip-cracking has resulted in nights no less interminable but considerably less freewheeling.
I was adding the seafood to my hopeful entree, "Robert Duvall's Apostolic Gumbo," when the Barbara Walters special began, so I missed Will Smith. I poked my head into the living room to see Walters, eyes moist with sympathy, say, "Let's talk about happy times" and Kim Basinger nod gratefully. When I taught journalism, I'd counsel students to watch Walters carefully, to learn precisely how not to conduct an interview. Clutching a pad of notes written by other people, sucking up to the powerful and sternly tsk-tsking the helpless, constitutionally incapable of asking a follow-up question, Walters remains the most Godawful television phenomenon of my lifetime. Everything she touches turns to schmaltz.
"Dreams really do come true, Barbara, they really do," said Basinger, who did a variation of the same line when she won an Oscar for the weakest scenes in L.A. Confidential. Her elation was touching, but a 10-second clip of Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights was enough to remind anyone of the difference between acting and soulful posing.
Billy Crystal emceed once more. I liked him best in his silly Borscht Belt mode; he had me choking when he said that the only time he'd seen water retention like Titanic was when his aunt ate shellfish. But something peculiar happened to Crystal last night. His buddy Robin Williams won an Oscar, and it rattled him. He tried to turn his envy into a joke, but it wouldn't quite take wing; there was too much ugly truth in the fact that Whoopi had an Oscar and Robin had an Oscar and Jack Palance had an Oscar and Meg Ryan and Rob Reiner had nominations, while most of Crystal's movies had ingloriously tanked. Crystal wasn't the same after Williams scampered on and off, looking like a chimp cleric out of Planet of the Apes. (Williams had a brilliant description of the director Gus Van Sant in the flesh--"so subtle you're almost subliminal.") Meanwhile, Crystal's mind was elsewhere: There must be a role that would get him an Oscar ...
During commercials, my guests kept pressing me to flip to Bravo for highlights of the Independent Spirit awards, timed to unspool during Oscar breaks. But every time I switched over, all I saw was Roger Ebert.
Many of the women wore '40s-style gowns and affixed flowers to their heads. Ashley Judd's dress was slit up to her eyeballs. Announcing the award for makeup, the normally luscious Drew Barrymore was made up to resemble something that washed ashore from the Titanic. As she talked, we got to see "hundreds of formerly festive [Titanic] passengers" transformed into bobbing blue torsos with gelid contact lenses. Sigourney Weaver barely made it to the lectern in stiletto heels that looked to be leaving holes in the stage. Madonna was the most scarifying figure of the night, with her ropy, bicep-laden arms and Brunhilde tresses; she looked ready to punch out some paparazzi and fling herself operatically on the grave of Gianni Versace.
The men were more easygoing. Introduced as a "versatile actor," Antonio Banderas demonstrated his versatility by appearing as a staggeringly handsome Spaniard. As Samuel L. Jackson strode onto the stage, the director treated us to shots of Spike Lee, Louis Gossett Jr., and other black males. ("That's a brother up there! Yo, Sam!") "We're two young guys ..." began Ben Affleck when he and Matt Damon received their Oscar for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting, and they suddenly looked like the two older-than-their-years hustlers they probably are. James Horner won for his megaplatinum Titanic soundtrack. "One wants this to happen, of course," he stammered. Actually, one wanted Jerry Goldsmith to win for L.A. Confidential, but one was disappointed.
The Titanic encomiums had a certain consistency. "Thank you for being in a good mood that day," said Horner to James Cameron, of the moment he presented the notoriously disagreeable director with the movie's love song. "Although the seas were rough at times ..." began another winner. "The success of Titanic will give you the self-confidence you need to succeed in this business," joked yet another, eliciting not even a smile from his former taskmaster. Awarded the Best Director prize, Cameron crowed a line from his movie--"I'm the king of the world!"--in a way that came off eerily unironic. Then he capped the night by asking for a moment of silence to remember the victims of the Titanic. A simple, heartfelt reference to the tragedy would have been sufficient, but the newly crowned king of the world was showing off his might by bringing the telecast seen by an estimated billion people to a halt.
I liked Stanley Donen's tap dance. And even though the end-of-the-evening presentation of Oscar winners of the past seemed like a visit to Madame Tussaud's, it was great to see the likes of Luise Rainer, Harold Russell, and Teresa Wright among the dummies. But it all came down to Robert Duvall, who gave the most powerful performance of the decade and was passed over for another of Jack Nicholson's Jack Nicholson impersonations. Go with me on this, OK? I want to ask for a moment of silence for a great, unjustly denied actor:

Good night, everybody. Drive safely.

dispatches
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from: David Edelstein
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Posted Wednesday, March 25, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET
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David Edelstein is Slate's film critic.
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