Oscar to the Grouch
Feb. 26th, 2008 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Films and life are like clay, waiting for us to mold it. And when you trust your own insides and that becomes achievement, it's a kind of principle that seems to me is at work with everyone. God bless that principle. God bless that potential that we all have for making anything possible if we think we deserve it."
- Shirley MacLaine (American actress reincarnate), 1983 Academy Awards
The movies were a pretty big part of my childhood. I'm not sure if my mother even realizes it, but she obviously always wanted to be a movie star, and she passed along a fascination not just with the art form but with the spectacle of show business. So I grew up with more knowledge about Hollywood directors and production credits than most pre-adolescents between Manhattan and Beverly Hills.
I remember a moment sometime in the late '80s when I was hamming it up in front of relatives, and my mother asked if I was going to be an actor when I grew up. I precociously replied, "what I really want to do is direct." By the time I was in fifth grade, I was contemplating my feature debut, picking out theme music, casting the roles with my favorite sitcom actors and sketching the promotional poster on the back of a spiral notebook.
My entertainment career took me as far as a lead role in the Webster High School production of "Guys and Dolls," a pinnacle after which I abandoned the idea of having my name in lights. (I was homesick enough to attend one Drama House meeting in college -- or the first part of a meeting, anyway, until I fled in a cloud of patchouli oil, glitter and Star Trek references.)
I still like movies, though not as much as I used to. I think what I like about my favorite movies are ideas, and Hollywood doesn't really produce much of those anymore. And I still watch the Oscars, for two reasons that have nothing to do with the Oscar Awards:
- It has become like watching a sport, as if I am tuning into a college basketball game where I have no loyalties toward one team or the other and I find flimsy reasons to root for one of them (such as: "I like that actor/player." "I like that title/mascot." "I like their uniforms/Check out that cleavage.") Back in 1994, I was cheering for Forrest Gump to win Best Picture because (a) the director was my friend's cousin and (b) it was the only one of the nominees I had actually seen. In retrospect, the Best Picture Oscar obviously should have gone to Pulp Fiction (for pure artistry) or The Shawshank Redemption (for pure narrative). But that night, my team won.
- More sentimentally, watching the Oscars makes me feel like I'm still sitting in the dark with my mom, eating popcorn and listening to her openly question Cher's fashion sensibilities. That was a fun time -- for me and the movies.
- Shirley MacLaine (American actress reincarnate), 1983 Academy Awards
The movies were a pretty big part of my childhood. I'm not sure if my mother even realizes it, but she obviously always wanted to be a movie star, and she passed along a fascination not just with the art form but with the spectacle of show business. So I grew up with more knowledge about Hollywood directors and production credits than most pre-adolescents between Manhattan and Beverly Hills.
I remember a moment sometime in the late '80s when I was hamming it up in front of relatives, and my mother asked if I was going to be an actor when I grew up. I precociously replied, "what I really want to do is direct." By the time I was in fifth grade, I was contemplating my feature debut, picking out theme music, casting the roles with my favorite sitcom actors and sketching the promotional poster on the back of a spiral notebook.
My entertainment career took me as far as a lead role in the Webster High School production of "Guys and Dolls," a pinnacle after which I abandoned the idea of having my name in lights. (I was homesick enough to attend one Drama House meeting in college -- or the first part of a meeting, anyway, until I fled in a cloud of patchouli oil, glitter and Star Trek references.)
I still like movies, though not as much as I used to. I think what I like about my favorite movies are ideas, and Hollywood doesn't really produce much of those anymore. And I still watch the Oscars, for two reasons that have nothing to do with the Oscar Awards:
- It has become like watching a sport, as if I am tuning into a college basketball game where I have no loyalties toward one team or the other and I find flimsy reasons to root for one of them (such as: "I like that actor/player." "I like that title/mascot." "I like their uniforms/Check out that cleavage.") Back in 1994, I was cheering for Forrest Gump to win Best Picture because (a) the director was my friend's cousin and (b) it was the only one of the nominees I had actually seen. In retrospect, the Best Picture Oscar obviously should have gone to Pulp Fiction (for pure artistry) or The Shawshank Redemption (for pure narrative). But that night, my team won.
- More sentimentally, watching the Oscars makes me feel like I'm still sitting in the dark with my mom, eating popcorn and listening to her openly question Cher's fashion sensibilities. That was a fun time -- for me and the movies.
