If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Oscar acceptance speech is the opportunity for recipients to be remembered not just for the work they did, but also for what they graciously said about winning.
After the Oscar winners accept their awards and deal with the TV people, they come to the Press Room and answer questions from the written press, radio and international media. Here are my five favorite backstage comments of the night.
Seth MacFarlane's Oscars performance failed less because of racism, sexism, and homophobia than because he forgot what satire is and how it works. The satiric genius of late-night icons like Johnny Carson and beloved fictional curmudgeons like Archie Bunker has been lost in a sea of mindless snark.
Even in the harshest environments it is possible to create opportunity. The most successful creatives have always had an entrepreneurial streak.
Here's to the Academy Awards, or as I like to call it, a Sunday night in February where for once, I didn't regret eating all those carbs.
February proved to be the busiest month for gifting suites. First the Grammys had their slew of swag lounges. Then the week leading up to the Academy ...
It's a challenge to maintain a consistent level of confidence when you know you are only as good as your last performance, when even the brightest stars fade quickly, and where success requires that you prove yourself over and over again in ways few others must.
Quvenzhané Wallis is a lot of things. She is smart. She is sassy. She is talented. She is beautiful. And she is a child.
In my heart-of-hearts, I wanted to boycott this year's Oscar ceremony, but even if I had -- even if we all had -- that would have been too little, too late.
It's a bit absurd to hire Seth MacFarlane, watch Seth MacFarlane, and then be offended because he's, well, being Seth MacFarlane.
The orchestra hit some of the most recognizable notes in film history, the opening theme from Goldfinger, shafts of gold light spread across the stage and a shadow rose from the floor that turned out to be Dame Shirley Bassey, the song's originator and, forever, its owner.
Sunday evening was a fantastic night if you're a fan of Argo, Seth MacFarlane, James Bond or movie musicals. But it was an equally great night if you're a fan of movie math.
The Onion's joke only works because Quvenzhané Wallis is 100 percent blameless; she is the embodiment of innocence. She's the very last person you'd ever call that, and that's what powers the joke.
The ones who were less outraged -- and, in some cases, thought the tweet funny -- became driven to not only defend The Onion and the general thesis of satire and parody , but to turn tables to attack, sometimes quite viciously, those who were offended by it.
This is the movie season to consider the CIA as a benign force, occasionally stumbling but in the end, driven by good intentions. The example of Iran, where the Argo caper is set, is instructive of the absurdity of that view.
The Oscars may have been tasteless, but the twits who reviewed the Oscars were almost uniformly without taste. The proper response to Seth MacFarlane -- and this may be the professional response we in fact encountered -- is envy.
The 84th Academy Awards aired on ABC Feb. 26.
