O Oscar, Where Art Thou?

The Super Bowl of All Award Shows has come and gone and the season has come to a close. For better or for worse, the Academy Awards stumbled and bumbled its way to the Big Night with all the grace and subtlety of a Rudy Guiliani interview on CNN.

In the run-up to the Oscarcast, the host debacle threatened to sabotage the whole megillah when Kevin Hart was announced as MC until to be lambasted for some of his older material, perceived by many as insensitive and  homophobic, though it hasn't hurt his career at all. And it never will...as long he keeps making money. A big box office forgives all sins, except as host of the modern day Academy Awards. So the search for a replacement was on. Apparently, no one volunteered for this thankless job especially since the vetting process is worse than a new Supreme Court Justice. I myself threw my hat in the ring to no avail and I'm now without a hat. The decision came down go host-less, something that had been done in the past but now seems like a "bold and daring move". There are no new ideas in Hollywood, only short term memory losses.

In order to streamline the long haul broadcast, this year's producers thought it would be a swell idea to cut the number of performances of nominated songs to two and hand out such unimportant awards such as cinematography and film editing during commercial breaks. That went over like R. Kelly's GoFundMe campaign. Lady Gaga said she'd only perform if all 5 were allowed, so there, suckas. (It turned to be only 4 anyway since Kendrick Lamarr and SZA weren't available to sing the Black Panther song and nobody asked Weezer to fill in with their rockin' rendition of "Africa".) Martin Scorsese and a band of goodfellas went up in arms about the non-broadcast award presentations so again, all or nothing. They went with all.

With the trade papers predicting a major disaster must go on and most certainly did. The end result was a damn decent Oscarcast that relied more on what the evening was supposed to be about-the Awards, stupid. A lot less speechifyin', cutting the rhetoric down to at least half and the dreaded T word wasn't uttered once, unless I missed it. If I did, I didn't.

The show began with a cold open, a performance by the remaining members of Queen with American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert filling in for Freddy Mercury because no one asked Rami Malek like they did Bradley Cooper. Still in all, a decent substitute for an opening monologue to get this thing off with a bang. The awards were all over the place, mostly predictable in the early going with technical wins for BLACK PANTHER and BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY.  Mahershala Ali and Regina King picked up statues for GREEN BOOK and IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK respectively.  Are these two on career trajectories or what? While I'm particularly taken with my girl Regina, both are becoming major players, a testament to their fortitude. Some presenters were better (Melissa McCarthy) than others (John Mulaney and Awkwafina) though nobody embarrassed themselves as they did on the last Golden Globes or Emmys. Then the ROMA train started charging through. Alfonso Cuaron should have just stayed on stage. That would have saved some time. Jennifer Hudson and the Divine Miss M were in fine voice for their nominated song performances. But then came Gaga. She and the Coop's rendition of "Shallow" had to be one of the finest moments in recent Oscar history. This is the second time she's given a solid golden moment on this show and I hope there are many more to come. All hail Gaga! Getting down to the finish line, GREEN BOOK won for original screenplay. I guess you can go back to your seat, Alfonso. BLACK KKKLANSMAN was up next for adaptation, Spike Lee hitting the stage in record time and straight into Sam Jackson's arms. Though three others won the award with him, Spike dug out his manifesto and rambled on like there was no tomorrow, hogging the microphone from the other guys. Hey, his first trip to the winner's circle and maybe, just maybe he thought he wouldn't be back? Moving on. Rami Malek comes up with Best Actor. Does he thank the director? Did anyone from BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY thank the director? In case you don't know, the director's name is Bryan Singer. He wasn't nominated nor was at the ceremony, though I heard he attended an Oscar night viewing party at Kevin Spacey's. Next up, Best Actress, supposedly a lock for Glenn Close in THE WIFE in which she is superb...and BAM! Olivia Coleman for THE FAVOURITE. Holy moley! No worries, mate. Liv's been on a tear for the last few years, mostly TV, but certainly a force to reckon with. And Glenn becomes Oscar's Susan Lucci. Director...oh, hola, Alfonso! You're back! Now we're in the stretch...it looks like ROMA at the wire, but no! It's GREEN BOOK. GREEN BOOK? Okay... Well, Spike tossed a lil' ol' hissy fit cuz he lost out to this film, ala DRIVING MISS DAISY winning the year of DO THE RIGHT THING which didn't get a nom. Them's the breaks, tough guy. Would you be so pissed if ROMA beat your ass? I didn't think so. Sorry, Brother Lee. Your film not taking home the big prize had more to do with you being a New York guy and not LA royalty. Tough'ns. GREEN BOOK's win is curious. Is it the prestige picture the Academy loves so dang much? I would have gone with BLACK PANTHER, though I consider its cultural status overrides its actual viability as a solid, albeit familiar superhero tale. The fact that these movies are driving the industry should have made it a slam dunk for that alone, coupled with the fact that it's a freakin' phenomenon that made history. Nope. (And SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE winning Best Animated Film...no mention of Stan Lee. Boo.) Actually, GREEN BOOK 's Best Picture nod (So prestigious for the Oscars! We made a good SAFE choice!) was more of a big "FUCK YOU" to Netflix. They somehow believe they can stop this juggernaut by snubbing them at the last second. Amazon plays the Hollywood game, but not the Netflix so their bragging rights have just been tempered. And then they raised their rates. Thanks, Academy!

So all in all, the show went better than planned, but anything could the way they handled it at the outset. It could have all been just a happy accident. one they'll try to duplicate next year. Naturally.

Until then, see you at the movies! They're right there on the menu between "Hard Hitting British Dramas" and "Because You Watched Poophead". Oh, you have Hulu.... 

Tales from the Ville: Bohemian Rap City

The recent release of the Queen biopic BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY reminded me that once upon a

time, we at the Palace Showboat damn near beat them to the punch. Well, sort of.

Being that we had some many creative folks in and around the Ville at any given time, we had certain side projects that utilized not only members of our artistic community but the magical little play land we found ourselves in. many a video had been shot there in one form or another such as Bob Gossett's CITIZEN KANE parody CITIZEN PLAIN and several more by Tom Amo such as BACKSTAGE PASS, both projects that I not only collaborated on but appeared in as well.

But it was Bill Humphreys and Grant-Lee Phillips who joined forces to come up a short film based upon Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Music videos were in the infant stage and I don't think MTV debuted yet, so they were ahead of the curve in the USA by a smidge. (Queen filmed their own video of the song that aired on Britain's "Top of the Pops" TV show)  Even better, the project was to be actually shot on 16mm film, borrowing a camera of Neil Pollard's that hadn't seen the sight of day in many a moon. (Yes, you read that right.)

As I recall the basic premise, Grant was to play a young soldier getting sent off to war. It was all bits and pieces, much like a regular video scenario that we're all familiar with now, but back then it seemed innovative as hell. Script-wise I was able to put my two cents in, which was about what my contribution was worth. During the Galileo (Galileo) section, I thought several shots of  the famous astronomer should be included, finishing with a single shot of Figaro the cat from PINOCCHIO. Like I said, two cents worth. Other than this and a too-complicated 360 degree shot (summarily shot down), that was about it for my input. Mostly it was a Humphreys/Phillips joint.

A fantasy sequence was created featuring soldiers from different eras and since we had access to costumes from the theater, it looked quite promising. We found  a perfect location way in the back of the Ghost Town, an area we called the Back 40. There had been a crane on the property that Neil had been using for one thing or another. That Pollard guy was always up to something. Since it had a basket, Bill thought he could utilize this for the video...with Neil's permission, of course. So during a night shoot, we had what John Candy's legendary Johnny LaRue character from SCTV always dreamed of...a crane shot! When Bill went up in the crane basket with the camera, I could see why Jphnny coveted this. The rest of the shoot went well into the night without incident with the exception of John Himle, dressed as a Revolutionary War solider, simultaneously splitting and losing his pants.

Another scene filmed on stage at Stagg High School auditorium featured Goldie Pollard as Grant's anguished mother, sending her boy into battle. I wasn't present for that shoot, but according to Bill filled me in. He set up an extreme close-up of Goldie staring straight into the camera with a solitary tear falling down her cheek,  a heart-breaking image that positively nailed.

That was a wrap and unfortunately, that was that. We had no budget with the exception of what was spent on film, a totally rookie mistake for a bunch of broke-ass artists that didn't realize that someone had to pay to not only develop the raw footage we shot but also to put the bloody thing together in an editing room. While it was a sweet novelty for this to be shot on film, this wouldn't have been an issue had we used video. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the Pollardville production of BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY was in limbo. The last I heard, Grant ended up with the footage when he moved to Los Angeles and somehow was misplaced over time

So this became a lost project of ours. It would have terrific if it had been completed. Now it would a real piece of nostalgia, a time capsule from that period of time. It didn't, but so what? The fact that a group of us wanted to stretch our artistic muscles and try something different was everything that we were all about back then. The effort itself, even if it came to naught, proved our mettle  and the memories remain even if the film does not.

Like the song says, "Any way the wind blows..."

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