Day: June 19, 2024

It’s generally agreed upon that come Oscar season, Emilia Perez costar Karla Sofía Gascón, a transgender actress who plays the titular character, is in an excellent position to compete for an acting Oscar.

The question is what category she’ll run in — Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress.

The smart play for Netflix, I wrote yesterday, will be to campaign Gascón in the supporting actress category. Because while she’s playing a vivid figure whose name is the title of the film, Gascon is in fact playing a supporting character.

As a Mexican drug mafioso, named Juan “Small Hands” Del Monte, who wants to disappear from the cartel world by becoming a woman, she instigates the plot and pops into the narrative from time to time, but she’s not really the lead.

The actual lead character in Emilia Perez is Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldana), a Mexico City attorney whom Del Monte hires to facilitate his transition.

Castro is unquestionably the main protagonist, the central figure, a woman upon whose shoulders the story is carried. Del Monte and his female manifestation, Emilia Perez, are vivid supporting characters who arrest your attention, but they don’t engage your allegiance.

Practically speaking it makes sense to run Gascon in supporting because nobody knows her, for one thing, and we all know the chances for a win are much greater when an outsider or an ingenue (like Hawaii‘s Jocelyne LaGarde or Sayonara‘s Miyoshi Umeki) doesn’t try for a Best Actress Oscar.

Just ask Lily “I may not have played a lead character but you should vote for my identity” Gladstone.

Plus if Gascon runs for Best Actress some voters will surely have an issue about handing a Best Actress Oscar to a biomale competing against natural biological female actresses whose performances may or may not be deemed worthy of an Oscar.

Here’s a discussion I had this morning with a guy who saw Emilia Perez in Cannes and is a huge Gascon fan.

Cannes guy to HE: “How in the world could you credibly say Karla is playing a supporting role? The movie is called Emilia Perez. She plays both halves of the character, remarkably. It is her story soup to nuts (sorry). Can you name anyone whose character is the title of the film who won in supporting actress?”

HE to Cannes guy: “How about Vanessa Redgrave in Fred Zinnemann‘s Julia (’77)? Then again Jane Fonda was clearly the lead character (Lillian Helman) as she drove the story. Just as Zoe Saldana drives the story in Emilia Perez. You saw it — the film starts with her perspective and stays with her all through. She’s clearly the lead.”

Cannes guy: “I would say Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofía Gascón are co-leads. Selena Gomez (who plays Jessi Del Monte, the drug dealer’s wife) and Adriana Paz are supporting.”

HE: “Nope — Karla’s character is a strong supporting. Plus there’s NO WAY IN HELL Karla wins a Best Actress Oscar. Nobody is going to believe the film anyway — a macho cartel leader wants to become a woman so she can escape the crime realm? I didn’t believe it for a second.

“Okay, Karla could try to ‘game the system’ by running as a lead while discussing trans stuff, the same way Lily gamed the system in order to draw attention to the plight of Native Americans. “

Cannes guy: “But the amazing thing is that Karla plays both roles. I couldn’t believe this was the same performer when I saw the movie. I just kept looking for the credit of who played the male role. Plus Linda Hunt won a Best Supporting Actress for playing a man. What’s the difference? In this case you have to recognize the performer as a (trans) woman playing a man, in part at least. It would be historic.”

HE: “Yes, it would be historic. But for political reasons, not artistic ones. My advice is for you to take the woke needle out of your arm. You mentioned Linda Hunt, who was great in The Year of Living Dangerously. But did she get nominated for Best Supporting Actor?”

Cannes guy: “No, she won for Best Supporting Actress. She is a woman. It doesn’t matter what the gender of character is. What matters is how good is the person playing the character.”

HE: “They’ll be able to pull it off if they campaign Karla in supporting. Karla could get away with that. You may not like hearing this, but there are bumblefucks in the Academy who aren’t quite as progressive about trans issues as you might expect or prefer. If Netflix wants to win, they should go supporting.”

Josh Margolin‘s Thelma, a low-key dramedy starring June Squibb and the late Richard Roundtree, is opening Friday, 6.21.

It’s basically about an old woman who’s scammed out of $10K, and is determined to find the scammers and get her dough back. Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Fred Hechinger and Malcolm McDowell costar. Magnolia is distributing.

My Sundance review (“Thelma Isn’t Half Bad”) ran on 1.20.24.

“Thelma is a mostly mild situation dramedy about the pitfalls, sadnesses and surprising turn-arounds of a chubby old biddy (the 94 year-old June Squibb, in her first starring role) when the going gets tough.

“It makes for a reasonably decent sit, although I didn’t like it at first because of the hugely annoying Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus), who plays Squibb’s flaky-loser grandson.

“Squibbs’ titular character is also 90something and, as you might presume, suffering from the usual intellectual and physical diminishments. Sissies need not apply.

“Thelma is about the white-haired Squibb getting scammed out of $10K (which actually happened to Margolin’s real-life grandmother), and how she refuses to take this humiliation lying down and soon after becomes a dogged investigator and push-backer on her own steam and tenacity.

“The reason I didn’t like Hechinger, whose dipshit Zoomer character has been told by his mom and dad (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) to look after Squibb and keep her out of trouble, is because his performance had me half-convinced that he was in on the scam. (I hate guys like Hechinger…I really do.)

“After going to the cops and getting no help, Squibb locates the post office box address that she sent the $10K to by envelope. (A voice on the phone told her to do so or Hechinger would be in deep shit, and she bought it.)

“She makes her way to a nearby assisted living facility to seek the assistance of old buddy Ben (Richard Roundtree), which boils down to Thelma borrowing his mobility scooter, except Ben won’t let her drive alone.

“They visit the home of an old out-to-lunch friend, and during this stopover Thelma discovers and pockets a loaded pistol. (Not worth explaining.) They get back on the scooter and wind up at a gas station, but then Thelma forgets to engage the parking brake…

“With Posey, Gregg and Hechinger in hot pursuit…Jesus, I can’t do this. What am I gonna do, spill the whole story?

“Eventually Thelma and Ben get to the bottom of things, and I was quite amused to discover that the principal scammer is none other than the white-haired 70something Alexander DeLarge.

“The situation is resolved a little too easily but by that time I had decided that Thelma is an above-average thing, not quite on the level of Little Miss Sunshine but occasionally so.

“Thelma is not a comedy — it’s a half-and-halfer. It certainly declines to go goofy or silly. There are elements of real pain and stress and sadness woven in. Now and then it’s actually touching, which surprised me. I’m giving it a B-plus.”

Here’s an interesting rant from a recent “The Rest is Entertainment” podcast (dated 6.17.24). It specifically addresses the recent Fossil Free Book vs. Baillie Gifford contretemps, which led to BG boycotting all book festivals. The rant also alludes to wokesters and Polanski pitchforkers in particular and their particular brand of insanity.

The Guardian‘s Marina Hyde went off on protestors and explained the quaqmire of art, politics and “the contraction of the mind” that occurs when everything is placed within the bucket of activism.

Hyde’s speech starts at 4:11:

“One of the things I particularly don’t admire is the suggestion that everything is politics, and that art is the same as politics. Now some art is political, and much art is born of its time and therefore can have that sort of relationship to politics. But art and politics are not the same.

“And if you insist that all art must be politicized and that all artists must make statements all the time, then what you are essentially wishing for is a contraction of the human experience. A contraction of human possibility. Because you’re saying that art and politics essentially and semantically map onto each other. And this is absolute nonsense, okay?

“Art can exist just for its own sake. The pleasure of these things, just for their own sake, must be allowed to exist.” [HE interjection — Like Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy.]

“When I think of these people, I think these are the sort of people who would have confronted William Shakespeare and said ‘Do you, William Shakespeare, condemn Elizabeth the 1st’s brutal suppression of the uprisings in Ireland (1593 to 1603)? And if you do, why haven’t you said anything? Why haven’t you signed a letter protesting this? Because if you don’t sign it, William Shakespeare, then this new play of yours, The Taming of the Shrew, we’re going to protest this.’

“Throughout the whole of human history awful things have been happening, but art must be allowed to exist, in and of itself. And it doesn’t have to answer qny questions.”

Here’s a link to Hyde’s rant.

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A few of us were playing a summer softball game. I was in center field and a guy at the plate really tagged one, and I was running farther and farther back and figuring I’d miss it, and at the last second I reached out with my mitt and somehow caught it, and everyone was impressed. I distinctly recall feeling quite proud, especially when a guy from the other team called me “Mayonnaise” — talk about major respect. It was like being compared to Babe Ruth or Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle.