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| The Broadway 8 in Eureka, Calif., where I saw The Departed (twice) and about 200 other movies during my college career. |
The 79th Academy Awards
Ceremony date: February 25, 2007
Best Picture: The Departed
Best Director: Martin Scorsese for The Departed
Best Actor: Forrest Whitaker for The Last King of
Scotland
Best Actress: Helen Mirren for The Queen
People think I am joking when I say I chose my college based
on the weather. Yes, Humboldt State University (go Lumberjacks!) did seem to
have the best, most diverse, most all-encompassing journalism program of any
school in the California State University system. But, foggy, cloudy, and 60
year-round certainly did not hurt in my estimation. By drive time, it was about
as far from home as I could get while still attending a state school. The
distance was neither an issue nor a factor, just a geographical fact.
All of this is important because it meant I did not see my
family too often during those years at school, at least not during the school
year. For the 79th Academy Awards, my dad and his then-girlfriend, now-wife
came up for their second visit to Humboldt County, closing a 2006 Oscars loop
that began nearly five months prior.
For their first visit to the school, we planned the date
around the release of Martin Scorsese’s latest crime opus, The Departed.
My dad is a big fan of Goodfellas, and this was a clear return to that
territory. We saw it the second weekend of its release, Oct. 14, 2006. We would
repeat the ritual two years later with another Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle,
Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies. That second film was a much less memorable
experience.
Of course, the Scorsese flick went over like gangbusters.
What’s not to love? DiCaprio is rounding into form as the greatest movie star
of his generation. Jack Nicholson is tearing down the scenery left and right.
The world truly got to meet Vera Farmiga. And Scorsese was back in
cops-and-robbers land like he had never left. That ending remains shocking and
visceral, and I will even go on record as liking the rat.
A brief aside: There was an online movement – no, movement is
too strong a word. There was an online hissy fit a couple years back when some
film fan tried to raise money to edit the rat out of the ending. This person is
an idiot. Anyone who donated real money to that cause, also an idiot. Let us
never speak of these people and their dimwitted nonsense again.
Over the next four months, I saw The Departed in
theaters twice more. Once, I went with my friend who needed a pick-me-up,
giving her the choice between The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine,
which I had also already seen. The third time, I rounded up a group of about 10
people from the dorms to see it in a huge group. It kills every time.
I can count on one hand the number of first-run movies I
have seen in theaters three times: The Departed, There Will Be Blood,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (we can talk about
that some other time), Drive, and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.
If you want to throw in revivals and reparatory screenings, you can add Rachel
Getting Married to the list. And, that is it. I have seen plenty of movies
twice, but it takes a lot to earn my money three times.
Fast forward to February 25, 2007. My dad and his wife rent
a hotel room from which to watch the broadcast together. There was a scary
moment when, for whatever reason, the local ABC affiliate was blacked out and I
was briefly afraid we would be unable to watch the show. The national broadcast,
however, was fine. We ordered pizza in and hunkered down for what turned out to
be a nearly four-hour show. I believe this to be the last time my dad watched
the complete show, and it is also probably the last Best Picture winner he
truly enjoyed.
As far as the show itself, of course I remember Scorsese
winning, as well as longtime friends (his, not mine) Francis Ford Coppola,
Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas presenting the Best Director Oscar to him.
That was a lovely touch by producer Laura Ziskin, who had clearly read the tea
leaves. Eddie Murphy’s anger at losing Best Supporting Actor to Alan Arkin also
sticks out.
This was also Guillermo del Toro’s first bite at the Academy
apple, a dry run for what was to come a decade later. Pan’s Labyrinth
picked up three well deserved awards, all basically surprises to me, then
somehow lost the Best Foreign Language category. Voters can be strange. I
caught up with winner The Lives of Others when it was released to
American theaters later on, and it is quite good. It is not, however, Pan’s
Labyrinth.
Eventually, the whole class of Mexican filmmakers who broke
out at this year’s Oscars would win Academy Awards for directing, and we will
get to them all in this series. There was del Toro, of course, as well as
Alfonso Cuaró n, who this year had Children
of Men, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, who had Golden Globes champ Babel.
But, in the end, this was Scorsese’s night, and it was well deserved.
Quick notes: There are two films I have yet to
mention. First, Little Miss Sunshine took home two awards and was really
the beginning of the Sundance-hit-as-Oscar-player trend that continues to
today. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ film holds up remarkably well and
remains on the top tier of that group. … Second, Little Children,
directed by Todd Field and starring Kate Winslet, lost all three of its
nominations and rarely comes up in conversation these days. That is a shame. It
is a brilliant piece of work and one of my absolute favorite films of all time.
See it if you have not.
Next time: It is the year of the Coen Brothers, and I
have a Tilda Swinton story.
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