Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang have reported that the people behind Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born, currently regarded as a potential Best Picture contender, said no to an invitation to premiere in Cannes next week. Cooper, Lady Gaga and the film itself, which various actors (Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Lawrence) have said is extraordinary, would’ve gotten a huge promotional bounce out of a Cannes premiere.
So why the ixnay? Probably because A Star Is Born is a little too commercial (i.e., too nakedly emotional, too Access) for this critic-driven festival, and award consultants calculated that a certain percentage of Cannes critics would trash it simply because of the emotional current, and so they figured why risk it?
Variety says Cannes also invited Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria to attend, but Amazon said no. My guess is that they were slightly concerned about the fact that Suspiria, however scarily effective, is anything but a typical Guadagnino film and represents, in fact, a sharp departure from the sensual splendors of I Am Love, A Bigger Splash and Call me By Your Name. They knew that a certain portion of Cannes critics might feel distanced by this on some level, and so they got scared and decided to restrict themselves to the fall circuit.
Award-season consultants have been advising their clients to avoid Cannes for years. Add to this the calamitous Netflix withdrawal (no Roma, Norway or The Other Side of the Wind) and a general feeling, reflected by the Variety headline “Will Cannes Remain Influential?”, that the sun may in fact be setting on this much-beloved gathering, and you’re left with guys like me thinking I should probably save my travel dough for Telluride and Toronto, etc. Winds are shifting, wheels are turning.
“The truth is that Cannes’ influence and effervescent mixture of celebrity and cinephilia have been fading for several years,” Setoodeh and Lang write. “It costs tens of millions for studios to fly directors and stars to the Mediterranean town, an expense that shrinking indie players can’t afford.”
I’ve noted before that the only apparent bright lights are Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War, David Robert Mitchell‘s Under The Silver Lake (which I’ve heard good but mixed things about), Matteo Garrone‘s Dogman, Jafar Panahi‘s Three Faces, Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman and Lars Von Trier‘s out-of-competition The House That Jack Built.
Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria is “the most brilliantly scary film I have ever seen,” actress Jessica Harper wrote on her private Facebook page last weekend. “Luca’s Call Me By Your Name does not prepare you for it, but throws into relief the director’s brilliance and versatility,” she added. Harper has a small role in Suspiria, of course, so she’s not processing the forthcoming Amazon release from an impartial perspective.
In a 5.2 N.Y. Times article called “Dear Movie Industry, We Have Thoughts’, critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis riff on this and that. A diverting enough thing until I came upon Scott’s startling suggestion that anyone offering a historical analogy about today’s near-tyrannical climate of politically correct admonishing is up to no good.
“Please read some history,” he implored. “About the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the martyrdom of early Christians, Joseph McCarthy, Joseph Stalin, the Gestapo, Pol Pot and any of the other historical monsters and catastrophes you like to invoke when talking about whatever is bothering you in contemporary culture. Also please refrain from hyperbolically throwing around words like ‘silencing,’ ‘thought police’ and ‘censorship’ in reference to criticism on social media or elsewhere. People who indulge in this kind of rhetorical inflation are like rats spreading bubonic plague.”
Really? So I can’t use the term “p.c. brownshirts” any longer? And the HE meme about zealous sentiments within the #MeToo and #TimesUp community recalling the mindset of Maximilien Robespierre…that’s no good either?
There’s a slight but horrifying possibility that Donald Trump could actually be re-elected in 2020. One factor that could bring about this nightmare scenario, it seems, is a generally held suspicion among rural bumblefucks that the left has devolved into a culture of p.c. scolding. But there’s nothing to this, right?
A Twitter guy named “32 across” called this piece “the latest installment in the DSCU — the Dargis Scott Critical Universe. Please refer to it that way from now on.”
I for one began to have doubts about the DSCU last June when they posted a “Best Films of the 21st Century” piece and stated that Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen‘s Inside Out ranked seventh.
In a century that has celebrated Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty, Manchester By The Sea, Leviathan, The Wolf of Wall Street, A Separation, The Social Network, No Country For Old Men, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, The Lives of Others, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Love & Mercy, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, In the Bedroom, Call Me By Your Name, Loveless, Personal Shopper, The Square and The Big Sick, the seventh-best is fucking Inside Out?
Greg Berlanti‘s Love, Simon (20th Century Fox, 3.16) is definitely half-decent — an antiseptic, intensely suburban gay teen romance that’s also about coming out. It’s the first big-screen adaptation of a YA novel (Becky Albertalli‘s “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”) that I’ve actually half-liked, and it is kind of a big cultural deal that Fox is releasing a gentle, emotionally pliant, same-sex love story in 2400 theatres.**
Love, Simon is smartly written (the screenplay authors are This Is Us showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger) and straight-friendly, but — here come the caveats — it feels like a professional sell-job. Like an advertisement for the way things ought to be in Young Gay Utopia. It feels too tidy, too TV-realm, too “produced” and not, you know, laid-back enough. (Like Call Me By Your Name, say — a totally settled, unforced vibe flick from start to finish.)
Amiable, mild-mannered Simon (Nick Robinson) is a closeted high school senior living with his parents (Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner) and younger sister (Talitha Bateman) in a well-tended Atlanta suburb. But the realm is essentially a blend of Disney World and a 21st Century update of John Hughes Land — an affluent, multi-cultural, progressive-minded hamlet where almost everyone (except for one appalling sociopath, played by Logan Miller, who causes all the trouble) is cool about everything.
Although his parents and friends are fair-minded and accepting of whatever, Simon has decided to wait until college to announce that he’s gay. But then he falls into this anonymous online chat with another gay guy — a local kid who calls himself Blue. The movie is partly about guessing who Blue might be. It’s also about Miller’s batshit-insane character, Martin, who discovers Simon’s flirtation with Blue and uses this knowledge to blackmail him into helping him get together with one of Simon’s close friends (i.e., a girl). I was saying to myself “if this was Goodfellas Martin would get an ice pick in the back of the neck.”
Simon suspects (and we are led to presume) that Blue might be one of three guys — all good looking, one of a POC persuasion and the other two Caucasian, one dark-haired and one semi-blonde. They all seem like good candidates, but I was a bit disappointed when the real Blue was revealed. (Not my choice.) Simon, however, is ready to roll with all of these guys.
Want a better, less conventional ending? Simon is really attracted to A, vaguely attracted to B and not that attracted to C, and then Blue turns out to be C. And Simon says, “Aaah…okay…life is unfair. But it’s nice to know ya, brah. I like what you have to say.” And they become good friends.
My first profoundly negative response to the physical and spiritual being known as Joaquin Phoenix happened three and a half years ago, during a New York Film Festival screening of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice (’14). I decided right away that his (or more precisely author ThomasPynchon‘s) Larry “Doc” Sportello, a mutton-chopped, sandal-wearing private detective, was mostly a lazy collection of slumbering mannerisms — slurry speech, lackadaisical manner, etc.
Then came Phoenix’s pot-bellied New England professor in Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man (’15) and again I said to myself, “I don’t like this guy…this is another Phoenix-playing-Phoenix performance…do I really have to hang with him?”
And then in Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene, Pheonix played the first graybeard, seen-better-days Jesus in motion picture history — a Nazarene who looks at least 47 or 48 years old, or roughly 15 years older than the Real McCoy was when he died on Calvary — and again I went “Oh, Jesus effing Christ…here we go again.”
So it really means something when I say that Phoenix’s sullen, barely verbal performance as a graybeard dadbod in Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here (Amazon, 4.6) didn’t bother me that much. Because the film is so good.
You Were Never Really Here wasn’t just the strongest film I saw in Park City — half narrative, half fever-dream — but the first intensely distinctive, high-style art film to open in 2018.
8:38 pm: Three hours and 38 minutes, and the presenting of the Best Picture Oscar is the last item on the list. Warren and Faye take the stage. The clips are running, and the suspense is killing me. Please please please. The Shape of Water wins? Okay…if you say so. At least my nightmare didn’t happen, and thank God for that. Guillermo del Toro to future filmmakers: “You can do it. Kick in the door and come in.” The show is over, and it’s 8:49 pm.
8:21 pm: Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren announcing the winner of the Best Actor Oscar, which of course will go to Darkest Hour‘s Gary Oldman. And of course it is. We all love it when the Academy does exactly what everyone has predicted. Oldman goes on for too long. Best Actress Oscar presented by a towering Amazonian Jennifer lawrence or a shrimp-sized Jodie Foster…you choose. I would be happy if Sally Hawkins were to win. McDormand, of course, who, hyper and trembling, requests that someone pick her up if she falls over, etc. Everyone stands up with her. We all shine on. “Inclusion rider”?
8:13 pm: Three hours and 13 minutes, and four Oscars to go. Emma Stone announcing the best Director Oscar winner. Guillermo del Toro is the expected winner, of course, and he is, of course. “Erase the lines in the sand…we should continue doing that.” I loved his emotional last words (borrowed from James Cagney in Yankee Doddle Dandy): “My father thanks you, my mother thanks you, my brother and sister thank you, and I thank you.”
8:05 pm: Jill Messick makes the Death Reel…good. Sam Shepard, Martin Landau, Jeanne Moreau, Roger Moore, George Romero, Rance Howard, Don Rickles, Bernie Casey, Brad Grey, Jerry Lewis…still here, never leaving.
7:52 pm: “This Is Me” performance was a knockout — my favorite of all the songs. The Shape of Water‘s Alexandre Desplat wins for Best Musical Score. I wasn’t knocked out by it…sorry. And the Best Original Song goes to “Remember Me,” from Coco. Totally predicted.
7:46 pm: Sandra Bullock presenting the Best Cinematography, which will go to Roger Deakins, I presume. HE votes for Dunkirk‘s Hoyte von Hoytema. Deakins’ work on Blade Runner 2049 was fine, but he’s won tonight because of “give the poor guy an Oscar already!” sentiment. Because he’s been nominated so often. No worries.
7:44 pm: What’s with the tribute to military movies? A sop to the red states? Nothing against the military, mind — I’m just wondering why.
7:32 pm: Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar win by James Ivory…expected. Dignified acceptance speech. Best Original Screenplay pending…Get Out, right? And the Oscar goes to Jordan Peele. “I stopped writing this movie about 20 times…I didn’t think it was gonna work. To the cast and crew, I love you. And to everyone who went and saw the movie…who told friends to buy a ticket. I love you all, thanks so much, good night.” Please let this be it for Get Out…seriously. Give the Best Picture Oscar to Dunkirk. Yeah, I know.
7:22 pm: I wasn’t paying attention to the latest song, the one rapped by Common and sung by Andra Day.
7:17 pm: So Dunkirk is going to win the Best Picture Oscar because it’s won three Oscars already and winning for Best Editing is a strong indicator? Not buying it. If it happens, great, but I doubt it.
7:05 pm: That visit to the crowd watching a film at the next-door Chinese was fun but noisy. I felt lost. Chaos overcame the feeling. The bearded fat guy stumbled on the copy he was asked to read. Tiffany Haddish announces that Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, a portrait of Mindy Alpert‘s battle with mental illness, has won the Best Documentary Short Oscar. The Best Live-Action Short Oscar goes to The Silent Child.
6:55 pm: HE to Matthew McConaughey — movies are not “an illusion” — they’re more real than life, because it’s a constantly moving and transitional train and movies are forever. And Dunkirk wins the Best Editing Oscar. Three for that film so far.
6:52 pm: And Best Visual Effects Oscar goes to Blade Runner 2049.
6:43 pm: Daniela Vega introducing Call Me By Your Name song composter Sufjan Stevens, singing “Mystery of Love.” And his accompanists St. Vincent (totally in the background), Chris Thile, Casey Foubert, James McAllister.
6:35 pm: Nominees for Best Short Film, which Kobe Bryant‘s Dear Basketball won’t win because of the thing, right? No…it wins anyway! And there’s Bryant right on the stage. I thought #MeToo would take this one down. Second surprise of the night after the Icarus win. Best Animated Feature Oscar goes to Coco, of course.
6:27 pm: And here comes Allison Janney‘s Best Supporting Actress Oscar! HE would prefer a win by Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf…nope! Janney takes it. “I did it all by myself.” Funny! Heartfelt and eloquent thanks to a long list of people, but delivered with speed and style. Three from the cast of The Last Jedi (Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, BB8, whatsername) awaiting their turn.
6:22 pm: Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Rita Moreno…what an entrance! Announcing the nominees for Best Foreign Language Feature, and the Oscar goes to A Fantastic Woman. Expected, no? Congrats to the Sony Classics guys, Daniela Vega…everyone.
6:14 pm: I loved this Rolex ad. Jack Morrissey called it “tacky”. I loved the paycheck appearances by Scorsese, Bigelow, Inarritu, Cameron + the cinematography, production values.
6:07 pm: The Shape of Water wins for Best Production Design. I respectfully disagree — Dennis Gassmer‘s production design for Blade Runner 2049 ruled a bit more. Who’s the guy with (a) the velvet tuxedo sleeves that don’t cover his arms and (b) who’s wearing those stunning white sneakers?? Imagine someone actually choosing to look like this on the Oscar stage.
6:07 pm: Kimmel to Steven Spielberg: “Do you have any pot?” Huh? “Do you have any pot?”
5:58 pm: Two Dunkirk guys win for Best Sound Editing. Deserved! Now the Best Sound Mixing Oscar — Dunkirk again! Deserved! This doesn’t portend anything. Okay, it portends that voters respect Chris Nolan’s film, and they want to give it what they can, knowing it won’t win for Best Picture. One of the winners waves to his family way, way up there. (Sitting next to Sasha Stone? Actually, she’s in the second mezzanine this year.)
5:53 pm: That montage-y dreamscapey essay about Hollywood emotionality and high conveyance…excellent. I’d like to see it again, post it on Hollywood Elsewhere, whatever. Who was the editor?
5:44 pm: Taraji P. Henson‘s dress is…uhm, nightgowny. Mary J. Blige, Best Supporting Actress nominee for Mudbound, singing “Mighty River”…nice delivery! Hats off to the choreograher, lighting designer…everyone. The chorus behind her really killed it.
5:39 pm: Greta Gerwig and Laura Dern announcing winners of Best Documentary Feature. Hollywood Elsewhere is rooting for either Icarus or Faces Places. And Icarus wins! A surprise! Hooray for director Bryan Fogel and Oscar strategist Lisa Taback! Most people were predicting Faces Places, no? Kimmel: “At least we know Putin didn’t rig this competition, right?”
5:37 pm: “You know what else Superman has always been besides white? Not real.”
5:17 pm: What is that burgundy blood tux Armie Hammer is wearing…red velvet? What is that sparkly chiselled stalagnite design above the stage? The Darkest Hour makeup guys have won, fine, but they’re going on for too long. Play ’em off! Eva Marie Saint, who looks great at age 93, talking about losing her husband, Jeffrey Hayden…sad. Announcing the Best Costume Design Oscar, which will presumably be won by Phantom Thread‘s Mark Bridges. Correct!
5:17 pm: A lot of classy build-up (excellent clips from the past and present) for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, which of course will go to Sam Rockwell. And it has! Rockwell’s “it’s grandma” story…excellent. “Everyone who’s ever looked at a billboard”…Rockwell went on just a wee bit too long, but he didn’t get played off because the show just started.
5:05 pm: Who advised Timothee Chalamet to wear that Good Humor man tuxedo? I love that Jimmy Kimmel raised the Mark Wahlberg vs. Michelle Williams payment-disparity episode…”if we can’t trust agents.” Black Panther‘s success was great for African Americans and Bob Iger.Kimmel: The world is watching us, and we need to set an example…and if we can stop sexual harassment, women will only have to deal with harassment in every other realm.” Or something like that. Guillermo del Toro and Nightmare Alley collaborator Kim Morgan sitting together. Helen Mirren caressing a brand-new lime-green Jetski.
I’m already feeling miserable over the apparent likelihood that the weather may be chilly and wet during tomorrow’s Spirit Awards ceremony in Santa Monica. I’m also feeling glum over the distinct possibility that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out will beat Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name for the Best Feature prize. (I’m clinging to the fact that Guadagnino’s film won big-time at last November’s Gotham Awards, which may be a harbinger of Spirit thinking.) I’m presuming either Peele or Guadagnino will take the Best Director trophy. CMBYN‘s Timothee Chalamet and Lady Bird‘s Saoirse Ronan will presumably win the Best Actor and Best Actress award, but what do I know? Here’s hoping Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf wins for Best Supporting Actress, and that Geremy Jasper‘s Patti Cake$, a Sundance breakout that made almost no money, takes the Best First Feature award. I’m playing the rest by ear.
We both saw Three Billboards as a likely nominee (although I mainly saw it as an acting vehicle) but we were both wrong on the Best Picture chances of Get Out. And neither of us foresaw that The Post would be shut down by the Academy’s newer, younger voting bloc (representation, identity-politics, “let’s give somebody else a chance”) because it seemed too boomerish and traditionally Oscar-baity.
Poland asserted that Aaron Sorkin‘s Molly’s Game had a “legit” Best Picture shot, but I said no way. He also said that Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water had a “good chance” of being Best Picture-nominated. I said I loved the Sally HawkinsJohnny Belinda factor (i.e., giving a silent performance) but noted that others have called it under-written with too many plot holes. And I was much more enthusiastic about Lady Bird.
Just re-read this (Poland’s spitball picks vs. my reactions) and consider the perception gaps:
Poland claims that “only two movies came out of North American premieres at TIFF with legit Best Picture hopes” — Aaron Sorkin‘s Molly’s Game and Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. HE response: It would be great if Three Billboards makes the grade but Poland knows it’s primarily an acting nomination platform for Frances McDormand (Best Actress) and Sam Rockwell (Best Supporting Actor). The chilly, hyper-aggressive Molly’s Game has its moments (i.e., Idris Elba‘s climactic rebuttal to prosecutors, Jessica Chastain and Kevin Costner on the park bench) but it hasn’t a prayer of being BP nominated…forget it.
Poland’s biggest wrongo is declaring that Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name has a “punching chance” of being a Best Picture contender. This rapturously received, Eric Rohmer-esque love story has a good to excellent chance — trust me. Everyone I talked to in Toronto called it a triple or a home run. Okay, it might fall short if the guilds and the Academy membership decide to vote against that sun-dappled, lullingly sensual, Rohmer-ish aesthetic or if they don’t want to go gay two years in a row or if it’s regarded as too Italian or some other chickenshit beef.
Two Poland-approved locks: Darkest Hour, Dunkirk. HE response: Dunkirk, absolutely. Darkest Hour is a stirring historical drama and nicely composed as far it goes (HE is a longtime Joe Wright fan), but it could have been released in 1987. It’s a Best Picture contender for 50-and-over squares and sentimentalists. Which doesn’t mean it won’t be nominated — it’s just a mezzo-mezzo contender.
Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, Stacey Wilson Hunt and Chris Lee have posted a piece about the views and attitudes of the Academy’s new voters, all of whom were invited to join the Academy over the last two years and who constitute roughly 17% or 18% of the present membership. Of the 14 members interviewed, more than half were women and more than a third were people of color.
By all means read the piece, but I for one found it surprising if not shocking that the biggest concerns of the New Academy Kidz appear to be representation, representation and….uhhm, oh, yes…representation.
In other words, after reading the article I wasn’t persuaded that these guys are greatly concerned with the idea of honoring great cinema according to standards that have been accepted for many decades. Tastes have changed but regard for cinema art never faltered. Until now, that is.
If these 14 Academy members were to sit down for a round-table discussion with the ghosts of James Agee, Ernst Lubitsch, Katharine Hepburn, Pauline Kael, Samuel Fuller, Ida Lupino, Irving Thalberg, Luis Bunuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Marlon Brando, F. W. Murnau, Andrew Sarris and Marlene Dietrich, I don’t think there’d be any kind of meeting of the minds. Or not much of one.
I mainly got the idea that the New Academy Kidz are heavily invested in (a) inter-industry politics, (b) a mission of bringing about long-overdue change and the necessity of advancing diverse representation as well as the concerns of women in all branches of the film industry, and (c) hoping to weaken or otherwise diminish the power of the old white fuddy-dud boomers.
“The bulk of the new voters we surveyed were generally pleased with this year’s Oscar nominations,” the Vulture guys have written, “and many detected a clear delineation between traditional Academy picks and the sort of fare their freshman class was more inclined to go for.
“’With Get Out, Lady Bird and even Call Me by Your Name, you’re feeling the younger demographic,” said a new member of the directors branch. “Then you have The Post and Darkest Hour, which definitely represents the older half of the Academy.”
HE insertion: Wait…”even” Call Me By Your Name? Fuck does that mean? That Luca Guadagnino’s film isn’t outsiderish or P.O.C. enough? Or that it feels a bit too mainstream or something?
What he means is that Get Out, a half creepy, half satiric, racially-stamped Stepford Wives, will slipslide into a win because a huge number of Academy members have it down as their #2 or #3 choice, and that the “kooky” preferential ballot will do the rest.
Hollywood Elsewhere says no way. I’m not even sure that Get Out will win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, which will most likely be won by Three Billboards‘ Martin McDonagh. It might win in this category, but forget Best Picture — the apparent momentum of the last week has all been with Three Billboards with everyone assuming that The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro will take Best Director.
I’ll say this much: One thing favoring Get Out is that the people who love it really love it, while the Three Billboards and Shape of Water crowd is more composed of likers and accomodationists.
“That would be great but I doubt it” — Alex Conn. HE: “What exactly would be ‘great’ about Get Out winning Best Picture? Great in what way? And how likely is this? A clever, financially successful genre film that says upscale liberal whites are just as odious as Charlottesville racists — who in AcademyLand really believes that?”
“It’s a good movie but not Oscar-worthy. The academy will give it the old ‘good effort, good try’ treatment come Oscar time. My money is on Three Billboards.” — Trexis Griffin. HE to Griffin: “But that’s the new thing — a significant portion of the new membership does consider genre fare like Get Out to be Oscar-worthy.”
“Nah. Too genre for Oscar. This one screams Best Original Screenplay.” — Tim Fuglei. HE comment: And possibly not even that.
“Jordan, will you eat a bug if wrong?” — Jay Smith. HE to Ruimy: Seriously — what act of contrition will you actually perform if you’re wrong?
“It’s Get Out or Three Billboards. There are good and bad reasons for both. Three Billboards is actor-driven and actors dominate [in the voting]. Get Out could win, but you have to wonder how the BAFTAs had the option of choosing it to win Best Picture but went with Three Billboards for both Best Picture and Best British film? Between that and having no SAG ensemble nom is why I am not predicting Get Out to win, but it is one of three that could. I have no idea what will win.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.
Late yesterday afternoon the Academy announced that scuttlebutt to the contrary, Sufjan Stevenswill perform “Mystery of Love” on the March 4th Oscar telecast.
Hollywood Elsewhere has a notion that the Call Me By Your Name guys were just as surprised and elated as I was by this decision. Direct quote from director Luca Guadagnino from his home in Crema, received at 8:28 am Pacific: “FANTASTIC!”
It was pure coincidence that producers Mike DeLuca and Suzanne Todd announced this hours after yesterday’s HE rant about rumors (which were first aired by Gold Derby‘s Chris Beacham) that Stevens might be eliminated from the show. And the announcement was not a reversal of an earlier indicated position when DeLuca and Todd didn’t ask Stevens to perform when they first invited him to attend the show. (In a 2.3.18 interview with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Michael O’Connell, Stevens said that he might not perform “Mystery of Love” during the ceremony since “they’ve only asked if I’m going to attend.”)
No, seriously — I think the Academy did respond to pressure from some quarter. Maybe the Sony Classics guys called up and said “Yo, what da fock?”
I don’t know which nominee for 2017’s Best Original Song is most likely to win an Oscar on March 4th, but Sufjan Stevens‘ “Mystery of Love“, from Call Me By Your Name, is easily (a) the catchiest, (b) the most transporting, and (c) the song that should obviously win. The 90th Academy Awards Wikipage lists Stevens as one of the performers so I’ve naturally been looking forward to the big moment when he strums and sings on the Dolby stage.
Except last week Gold Derby‘s Chris Beachum wrote that “we are hearing rumors that only three songs will be performed: ‘This Is Me’ from The Greatest Showman, ‘Remember Me’ from Coco and ‘Mighty River’ from Mudbound.”
The next day Beachum added: “This is confirmed by someone we know involved in booking the show. Producers have blocked out the entire ceremony and say there is only time for three [songs] to be performed.” Beachum later clarified that “the person telling us this information has ties to the show but isn’t working directly on it…I haven’t heard anything so far to counter what is being rumored.”
My response to this heresay was, of course, “whoa, whoa, WHAT?” Call Me By Your Name is Best Picture-nominated, and the Academy is going to (a) ignore a totally hummable tune that everyone associates with Luca Guadagnino’s love story and (b) tell the great Sufjan Stevens that there’s no room at the inn? A lot of people are listening to that soundtrack album now…c’mon!
Last night I wrote Oscar telecast producer Mike DeLuca about this…David Lynch silencio. This morning I wrote Academy publicist Natalie Kojen, who referred me to Oscar telecast publicist Steve Rohr. More silencio.
Apparently there’s some rule that Oscar telecast producers are “obligated by the music branch to either perform zero, three or five songs for each ceremony.”