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| Michael Keaton and Co. accept the Oscar for Best Picture at the 2015 Academy Awards ceremony. |
The 87th Academy Awards
Ceremony date: February 22, 2015
Best Picture: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of
Ignorance)
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu
for Birdman
Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of
Everything
Best Actress: Julianne Moore for Still Alice
It is fascinating to me how we use events to mark time in
our lives. Intellectually, I know this ceremony was the #OscarsSoWhite
ceremony. This was the year that particular criticism of the Academy really
took off, and it has not let up since, nor should it. The criticism is fair and
the discussion is vital to the long-term health of the Academy specifically and
the industry in general. That can all be true, and yet that is not what I think
of when I think of this ceremony.
By the time of the 2015 Oscars ceremony, we had been in New
York a little more than a year. I had a steady job. We had a home. We had movie
theaters and restaurants and parks and streets that we loved. New York had
become more than a city. It was a way of living, and we did our best to soak up
every second of life.
Part of that meant going to the movies, frequently and
joyfully. I can tell you every theater I saw every Best Picture nominee in, and
I can recount the experience in full. Eight movies in four different theaters,
each one special. My wife and I were talking about it the other day, and she
could not believe that we visited 34 different theaters in five years in New
York. Every single one of them was unique, a reflection of its place in the
city, an integral stitch in the cultural fabric.
We saw Richard Linklater’s Boyhood at the Lincoln Plaza
(RIP) for my 26th birthday, apropos as there may not be a better birthday film
than Linklater’s chronicle of lives lived. We saw Birdman in a packed
house at the AMC Lincoln Square and knew instantly it was a special feat of
filmmaking. The Imitation Game played a sold-out screening at The Paris,
where the acoustics can be spotty in the cavernous hall, except when it is
filled with people as it was that night. Damien Chazelle announced himself to
us (and at least part of the world) in one of the small side theaters at the
Regal Union Square.
These are all beautiful memories of a place and time, drifting
further into the past but remaining clear as ever in my mind’s eye. This is how
I mark time, and the Oscars are the great signposts of my life. I know where I
was, whom I was with, and what I was doing for all of them.
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| The Daily Racing Form office. I used to work here. |
On this particular occasion, Jen and I huddled together in the
Daily Racing Form office on the 12th floor of the building at 44th and 3rd
Avenue. I was working on the copy desk at the Form, and the TVs were usually on
for racing during the day. On a Sunday night, though, we were all alone. We grabbed
takeout from Davio’s just around the corner. As I said last time, Italian food
in the city: almost always good. This was spectacular.
While the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and the ludicrous lack
of recognition for Ava DuVernay’s masterful Selma dominated the
conversation in the lead up to the show, the ceremony itself was about one
thing: Boyhood vs. Birdman. It is remarkable how many years
recently have come down to two films – usually one a more grounded human tale
and the other a technical marvel. But perhaps that is just me, applying a loose
narrative to events ruled more by the heart than the head.
I have always felt Boyhood, though good, is
overpraised, while Birdman has been wrongly maligned. Unfortunately, the
way this ceremony played out only reinforced those views. The Academy fell hard
for Birdman, giving it four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Meanwhile, critical darling Boyhood came away with a single award for
Supporting Actress for Patricia Arquette, an award I would have given to Birdman’s
Emma Stone.
Though at the time I predicted Boyhood for the top
awards, it seems now it was always likely to go this way. Birdman is a
perfect Academy movie, a tribute to true artists, toiling away, struggling to
make art that matters. It strikes out at focus-group-tested tentpole movies and
attacks critics who may have their knives out in search of the blood of
inauthenticity. There is pretension in Birman, but insomuch as there is,
that pretension is earnest. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Co. believe they
are making great art and that that is a worthwhile endeavor. How could the
Academy disagree?
Neil Patrick Harris hosted – Doogie Houser to me, the guy on
How I Met Your Mother (a show I have never seen) to many – and failed to
live up to the high bar set by his own Tony Awards gigs. That said, I found him
energetic and entertaining. The Oscars ceremony is a different beast from the Tonys,
and while Harris did the best he could, the musical theater schtick will only
go so far in a roomful of cinema people.
After Birdman won the top prize, we headed home on
the train. It was a long journey from my office in Midtown East up to our
studio in West Harlem. At least, it felt long at the time. By the 90th Oscars
ceremony, I would know better all the ways of getting around, the trains you
could rely on and the ones best avoided. I would grow and learn and change, but
every year, the Academy Awards would come back around to mark that growth and
that change. To mark time.
Quick notes: Common and John Legend performing “Glory”
from Selma remains one of the all-time great musical performances in
Oscars history. … It was impossible to beat Foreign Language frontrunner Ida,
by Pawel Pawlikowsi, but Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan is a masterpiece
and one of the best films of the decade. Do seek it out. … I am also here to
stump for Animated Feature nominee The Boxtrolls, which is a sneaky
great animated film.
Next time: We go to New Jersey to see how far a dollar
can stretch and Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins an Oscar.
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