PRE-PUBLICITY for this year’s Richard and Lili Zanuck-produced Oscar ceremony promised a “trimmer, hipper” affair. After sitting through every minute of the four-hour parade of tears, jeers, and queers, we can report that “hipper” translated into meaner jokes and the incorporation of a Hole song into the opening montage, while “trimmer” meant the excising of Debbie Allen’s notorious interpretive dance routines, and a new corset for Jack Nicholson (whose continuing public appearances with Gen-X girlfriend Lara Flynn Boyle remain the best appetite suppressant this side of Dexatrim).
Things started off with a bang, as returning host Billy Crystal and montage artist Chuck Workman conspired to create some of the funniest, most disturbing shit seen on an Oscar broadcast since those two Holocaust survivors were rushed off the stage to make room for the singing-and-dancing Gene Kelly tribute in 1998. (Special kudos for Crystal’s Deliverance parody; more male anal rape jokes, please.) Things ended with a shrug as American Beauty — the perfectly fine but lamentably overrated faux art-house flick that is to indie film what Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill was to indie rock — won Best Actor, Director, and Film. Along the way, viewers were offered an array of treats both thrilling and mortifying. Here’s our biased guide.
Stupid Winner/Good Speech #1: Best Supporting Actress Angelina Jolie, whose emotional acceptance speech — an impassioned love letter to her family — almost made up for her undeserved win and hideous Morticia Addams makeover.
Stupid Winner/Good Speech #2: Best Supporting Actor Michael Caine, whose emotional acceptance speech — an impassioned love letter to his fellow nominees — almost made up for his undeserved win and hideous attempt at a New England accent in Cider House Rules.
Good Winner/Stupid Speech: Best Foreign Film director Pedro Almodovar, whose All about My Mother was entirely deserving, and whose impenetrable acceptance speech may as well have been in Esperanto.
Stupid Winner/Stupid Speech: Best Song winner Phil Collins, whose bloodless Disney ditty “You’ll Be in My Heart” made one long for “Sussudio,” and whose rambling ode to himself made one long for a sniper.
Best Tourette’s Syndrome Moment: Runway host Meredith Viera‘s incisive, comprehensive response to the shameless Kevin Spacey, after he weaseled his way out of yet another direct question: “Okay, you little liar.”
Worst Tourette’s Syndrome Moment: American Beauty‘s award-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall admitting that he agreed to shoot the film because he lusts after 15-year-old girls.
Best Dressed: Hilary Swank (who still looks better as a boy).
Worst Dressed: Erykah Badu, who wisely swapped her hideous entrance dress for a slightly less hideous ceremony gown.
Best Winner: Best Short Documentary subject Dan Keplinger, who gleefully flopped himself out of his wheelchair (top that, Judi Dench!) and thus inadvertently filled the interpretive dance slot left vacant by the cutting of Debbie Allen’s dance routines.
Worst Loser: Best Actor nominee Denzel Washington, who arrived pissed off and got only more so as he was denied yet another statuette by The Man.
Poutiest Loser’s Spouse: Fiona Apple, for her mournful consolation of loser boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson.
Best Presenter: Jane Fonda (sporting the first successful hairdo of her three-decade career), who not only memorized her speech, but managed to walk and talk at the same time.
Worst Presenter: A tie between Keanu Reeves and Tobey Maguire, henceforth known as the Pinocchio brothers (both cute as buttons, both made entirely of wood).
Most Graceful Political Moment: Best Adapted Screenplay winner John Irving dedicating his Cider House Rules award to Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights League (and becoming the only person of the night to admit that this “feel-good family hit” presents abortion as the solution to all of life’s problems).
The “Boys Do Cry” Award: To Chad Lowe, whose unabashed boo-hooing was either happiness for his Best Actress wife, or mourning of his shift from “Rob Lowe’s brother” to “Mr. Hilary Swank.”
The “Two Most Beautiful People to Ever Stand Next to Each Other at a Podium” Award: To All About My Mother‘s Penelope Cruz and Melanie Griffith’s Antonio Banderas, who made our eyes sweat, and who should be forced to reproduce incessantly for the rest of their lives.
The “Almost Enough to Make You Forgive Patch Adams” Award: To the traditionally loathsome Robin Williams, for his inspired performance of South Park‘s “Blame Canada.”
Best Performance by a Closeted Fag: Ricky Martin‘s relatively graceful, self-respecting dodging of Barbara Walters’ pointed queries on the post-Oscars Barbara Walters Special.
Worst Performance by a Closeted Fag: Kevin Spacey, weasel extraordinaire.
Best Commercial: Sally Field‘s self-effacing whoring for Charles Schwab. (Runner-up: the West Side Story Gap ads.)
Worst Commercial: Those Pepsi ads featuring that formerly adorable little girl who now should just die.
Best Plot Synopsis Gloss Job: American Beauty, which inspired us to look closer “at the great big dysfunctional family — the human race” and “the unexpected magic of our lives” (like when we get shot in the face by a closeted homosexual marine?).
Thing That Pissed Steve Off the Most: Kevin Spacey; Dave’s joke about the crippled guy.
Thing That Pissed Dave Off the Most: Election losing Best Adapted Screenplay to Cider House Rules; no one tripping and falling.
