Monday, March 06, 2006

The Gay Man's Super Bowl

This paragraph from a New York Times article about the Oscars had me dying:
Oscar night is no longer about movie stars feting each other in front of an awed audience. It's about viewers deconstructing celebrity — abetted by a cottage industry of stylists, dermatologists, surgeons and trainers who reveal the fakery behind even the most seemingly natural beauties: celebrity with a dehumanized face. And TV commentators fawn and probe on pre-Oscar shows and red-carpet interviews with little to no curiosity about filmmaking or news events but insatiable appetite for details about clothes and personal grooming. (There is something delicious and embarrassingly decadent about the national obsession with the Oscars — an entire country caught eating raw cookie dough while reading "in Touch.")

2 comments:

Mike said...

What did you guys think of Stewart's performace? I actually was expecting to hear more from him, which is too bad, but I guess I forgot what a bloated awards show the Oscars is. My favorite line of the night from Stewart, though, was the one about the Oscars doing a tribute to montages. Awesome.

Walker said...

My fave line:

"...with films like Good Night and Good Luck, and Capote, about honest journalistic professionals striving for truth in the face of corruption...obviously those are period pieces."

also "...just for those of you keeping score at home, ahh, Martin Scorcese - 0 Oscars. 36 Mafia - 1 Oscar."

Definitely agree that he could have stuck it to them a little more, but yes, there actually are some very powerful people there whose names we don't even know. Not that he would have been committing career suicide had he ratcheted it up a tick or two, but i'm sure everything he said (just about) was cleared beforehand, and for the seemingly off the cuff stuff he probably had some strict boundaries to adhere to. He was also on a 5 second delay. I wish he would have used it.

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