And La La Land Wins 7, No, 6, No, Wait....

By Steve Evans

So I predicted La La Land would take nine out of 14 Oscars and it won seven. Then dropped to six. Do whut now?

It was the most bizarre event I’ve seen in a lifelong love affair with the cinema. If it had happened in a movie, I would have shouted in disbelief. I’m certainly glad that Moonlight was the rightful winner – it’s a beautiful and worthy film – though La La Land is more my style.

Last night’s climactic events were surreal. As it all unraveled, Warren Beatty, who turns 80 next month, had an expression like he’d just farted loudly in church. Faye Dunaway, almost unrecognizable from her indulgence in plastic surgery, refused to discuss the matter with entertainment media during the Governor’s Ball afterparty. The accounting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper, which has been handling the voting results for 83 of Oscar’s 89 years, issued an apology and accepted responsibility, though it remains unclear how this happened. You don’t hand the presenting talent the wrong envelope as they’re headed to the podium. You just don’t. You verify what the hell you’re doing.

There wouldn’t be all this secret envelope stuff in the first place if the LA Times hadn’t violated a 1940 embargo by publishing the winners in an early edition of the paper before the ceremony had begun. Now, this was an Oscars ceremony for films released in 1939, widely considered the greatest year for motion pictures during the Golden Age of Hollywood. The stars (and anyone with a telephone or radio) already knew who won before the first award was announced. Some suspense.

But back to last night. Host Jimmy Kimmel looked like he was ready to die. Half a dozen production and accounting people with headsets scrambling around the stage like cockroaches with the lights coming on. And how awful I feel for everyone involved with La La Land and Moonlight. Imagine going onstage thinking you’ve won the most significant film award in the world only to be told, no, whoopsie, there’s been a mistake. An epic fuckup, as it turns out. Imagine thinking you haven’t won, then you have – and feeling that whipsaw of emotion that cuts into what should fairly be one of the greatest moments of your life.

We live in strange times.

In watching the 11th hour fiasco unfold early this morning, it struck me that Americans have now won a dubious Triple Crown of weirdness. Until last night, not in my lifetime has the presidency, a Super Bowl and the Academy Awards all in the same year been decided by sudden-death overtime with disappointing results.

Those Goofy Golden Globes

By Steve Evans

Let's not Monday morning quarterback last night's Golden Globes, beyond the observation that the awards remain the biggest con job in Hollywood. Most everyone knows the Hollywood Foreign Press Association controls the outcome of this lesser event (Oscar is still the gold standard, naturally). Fewer may realize that the Globes are chosen on the votes of less-than-100 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press. They are hardly arbiters of taste or quality in the cinematic and television arts. Yes, but the Globes deliver something the Oscars do not: a looser atmosphere fueled by an open bar. Through the years I've seen celebs stoned as monkeys during this show. Liz Taylor was trashed at the 2001 awards. Jack Nicholson stuck his ass out at the audience three years later during his acceptance speech for About Schmidt.

This is all a jolly lark, of course, and makes for good television (you can still check out Liz and Jack on YouTube), but the idiosyncratic nature of  the HFPA makes the Globes a lousy bellweather for the Academy Awards.

Although La La Land took a record 7 Globes last night, Moonlight will win the Oscar for Best Picture on Feb. 26. This is a political reality as certain as Meryl Streep dissing some asshole who was elected president by a bunch of -- yep -- gullible assholes.

Trump is an easy, though deserving, target. Whether Moonlight deserves to win Best Picture next month is a separate issue from the fact that it's going to win -- because Hollywood will have to deal with the banshee screaming that will result if it doesn't.

Let me be clear: I absolutely agree that Hollywood can do a better job of inclusion by employing people of all creeds, races and persuasions both in front of and behind the camera. I reject the notion that entertainment awards should have a quota system so that X number of minorities or other underrepresented groups are sure to get an Oscar. If films and talent cannot win on merit, then let's abolish awards.

And yet a boorish buffoon has won the presidency in the absence of merit, talent, appeal or even basic human decency. Is it obscene to compare silly awards to the Democratic process? Perhaps not if we drill down to a common motivation between the HFPA and the president-elect. It is this:

The Hollywood Foreign Press, ever-slick as weasel shit, manages to avoid hot-button issues of racism, sexism and quota-based awards by maintaining a ludicrous number of award categories, though especially the top two. They gave Best Drama to Moonlight and Best Comedy or Musical to La La Land. Equal, safe and predictable. Everybody goes home happy after the Globes. By eschewing controversy while allowing celebrities an open mic to blabber drunkenly about whatever comes to mind, the people behind the Globes last night not only solidified their reputation for irrelevance but managed to underline it at least three times, all for the sake of ratings and their own unquenchable thirst for self-aggrandizement. What irks me today is how they reveal themselves to be similar to the scary clown soon to take the oath of office. Whether you're the purveyor of a hokey awards show or a billionaire con artist, it's all about money and attention. Always has been. Dare I say, always will be.