Benjamin Affleck, we didn’t see your boobs. But now we can safely say that the members of the motion picture academy’s directors branch are in fact boobs for not nominating you– or Kathryn Bigelow. So the 85th Annual Academy Awards will go down in history as one of the few times that the winner of the best picture trophy was passed over for directing the film.
Or as host Seth McFarlane put it, the story of “Argo” was so top secret that the director was unknown to the Academy. The sheer force of the acclaim garnered throughout the six weeks since the infamous snub was hard to ignore, and so there was no real astonishment that “Argo” did take the top prize, only pleasure.
In fact, there were very few surprises in the contests for the top trophies. Daniel Day-Lewis as lead actor and Anne Hathaway as supporting actress were practical guarantees. Ang Lee’s win was rather unexpected over Steven Spielberg. The lead actress race had come down to the battle of Jessica Chastain versus Jennifer Lawrence.
And just as “Argo,” an historical drama in which Hollywood saves the day, seemed blessed, “Zero Dark Thirty” seemed cursed after influential senators Dianne Feinstein and John McCain questioned its authenticity and seeming conclusion that torture led to the intel that eventually caused bin Laden to sleep with the fishes.
After all, if you’re going to listen to any lawmaker talk about torture, it’s going to be John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for eight years.
Perhaps the ZDT filmmakers sealed their fate when they were widely quoted as saying theirs had been journalistic exploration of the hunt for bin Laden, which created unrealistic expectations as to its accuracy. Folks, this was a feature film, not a documentary, one in which many viewers thought the torture scenes were exploitative and went on for far too long.
Prior to that congressional contretemps, Bigelow and screenwriter (and former journalist) Mark Boal had been accused of getting special treatment from the Obama administration and from the CIA. All of this controversy apparently sent AMPAS voters scurrying to the safe harbors of other films—despite Amy Poehler’s famous quip at the Golden Globes, “When it comes to torture, I’m gonna trust the lady who was married to James Cameron for four years.”
Much as we wanted to like Seth MacFarlane’s hosting job, just about everything about it felt stilted and awkward, not to mention sexist, racist and anti-Semitic. The Captain Kirk thing at the top—hmm. Maybe for the Emmys? Oh, that’s right, there’s a “Star Trek” movie coming up. The song “We’ve Seen Your Boobs?” Just silly and juvenile and not befitting of the occasion.
The edgy jokes about “Django Unchained’s” screenplay being based on Mel Gibson’s voice mails and its violence against women being a date night movie for Chris Brown and Rihanna? Those were actually some of the funnier bits, although they fell into the category of trying too hard to be edgy and appeal to a younger audience.
Still, we say bring back Billy Crystal, or Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, or Jon Stewart. Just not David Letterman. Ever again.
