“You are not entitled,” Bill Condon tells N.Y. Times reporter Laura Holson about winning an Oscar, “an honor he won in 1999 for writing Gods and Monsters and for which his Chicago script was nominated,” she writes. Winning the fabled gold statuette “is a gift,” he adds. “That sense that you deserve it is wacky.”
“We were never going to win [the Best Picture Oscar], even if we were nominated,” Condon says, laughing. “The money we would have spent on the campaign, the insane amount of money we saved…people spend like drunken sailors, you know.” In Patton, George C. Scott says to an audience of soldiers, “I’d never give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.” I would. Condon’s attitude about the Dreamgirls shortfall is extremely classy and attractive. He’s one of the best people in this town; he’s coming from a very serene and confident place.