Some folk have asked after the article. Here it is:
Analyzing Oscar
Stephen King rates the Academy Awards ceremony -- and explains how he
knew all along that ''Crash'' would score the top prize by Stephen
King
http://www.StephenKing.com/
BUCKLE UP FOR SAFETY Unfortunately for ''Brokeback,'' ''Crash'' is
the sort of movie Academy members eat up, says King
I know what you're thinking: You need another column on this year's
Oscars, especially at this late date, about as much as Dick Cheney
needs a few more jokes about hunting quail in Texas. But bear with
me; this is, after all, the only Oscar postmortem you'll read from a
guy who put The Devil's Rejects on his 2005 Ten Best List. Besides,
this year I actually picked most of the big winners, although I admit
there were some surprises - a rap crew wins for Best Song? Slap my
tail and call me stinky. I don't know if Academy voters were trying
to show their kids (make that grandkids) that they're still hep (make
that hip), but Three 6 Mafia's performance - and exuberant
acceptance - lit up the evening. And the ''clean'' version went over
pretty well; my elderly ears detected only a single ABC bleep.
I thought Jon Stewart was fine. The negative reviews of his
performance suggested to me that there have been so many hosting
changes in the last 10 or 15 years that it's hard to get comfortable
with any new face. More to the point, hosting the Academy Awards is a
pretty damned thankless job. It's almost like being a janitor in a
tuxedo - you bring on the talent with a joke and a wave, then
sweep 'em out again after they've made their little speeches and torn
open their little envelopes. I thought Stewart was sweeter-natured
than Chris Rock, and let's face it: The gay-cowboy montage was a hoot.
What I liked best about this year's show was that the cumbersome,
usually unfunny repartee between presenters was almost completely
gone. Good! Good! As for the hosting part, it may be that the job is
as dispensable as those tiresome jokes between presenters. If the
Academy can't settle Jon Stewart in for a nice long cozy run - and
certainly he's smart enough and talented enough to grow into the job
and make it his own - I'd love to see the show's producers test-drive
the No-Host Option. If it did nothing else, it might cut the still-
too-long show down to three hours.
But back to why I did so well with my picks this year: I had
Brokeback Mountain shut out of every major category except for the
screenplay adaptation, which I figured they had to give to Larry
McMurtry (they did - and he was ballsy enough to show up in jeans).
There's been a fair amount of talk about Brokeback being a
breakthrough, but that's nonsense. A check of Brokeback parodies on
Google should convince anyone with half a brain that the American pop
culture is intent on passing this passionate, well-meant, and well-
made movie like a kidney stone. And how does the American pop culture
pass what it cannot stand? Easy. It laughs that s--- right out of its
system.
You can say Hollywood has been here before, awarding gold to Midnight
Cowboy in 1970, but that's also bull - Midnight Cowboy is a movie
about a make-believe cowpoke (Jon Voight) who hustles to keep himself
and his ailing buddy (Dustin Hoffman) from starving. The movie's
major moment of catharsis comes when Joe Buck (Voight) beats a
harmless homosexual half to death. Cowboy is a well-made male weepie
about friendship. As such, it was rewarded with a Best Picture Oscar.
Brokeback is about enduring love and fierce sexual attraction between
two men. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at bottom
as conservative as the current U.S. House of Representatives, gave
Ang Lee one Oscar (which surprised me), the writing team of McMurtry
and Diana Ossana another...and with those bones thrown, felt free to
move on.
To Crash, of course.
Crash was the perfect alternative, and - ahem - I had it picked for
Best Picture the whole way. It's the sort of flick the Hollywood
establishment loves best and will always embrace, if given the
chance, one where the complexities are all on the surface; its issues
should come stamped GOOD FOR 2 SLICES OF PIZZA AFTER THE MOVIE (OR) 1
COCKTAIL PARTY. Crash says we have problems. Crash says we have
troubles. It says this modern life of ours is certainly a pain in the
***, especially this modern urban life. People keep ''crashing'' into
each other (heavy symbolism at work, better wear a hard hat). But in
the end - this is the part Academy voters like best - we can all get
along if we rilly, rilly TRY!!! You almost expect to hear ''Why Can't
We Be Friends?'' over the closing credits.
And you know, until I read that last paragraph over, I didn't realize
how bitter I've become about this process. Because I liked Crash. I
did. I happen to believe we can get along if we really try, that
coincidences do happen from time to time in the great Manhattan
Transfer of city life, and people sometimes do change. It's a valid
point of view, a decent theme, and Paul Haggis made the most of it.
But was it the best film of the year? Good God, no. Brokeback was
better. So were Capote and The Squid and the Whale, for that matter.
But let's let it go, okay? The lights are off in the Kodak Theatre
for another year. The set has been struck. The Academy sent the same
soothing message it almost always sends: Everything's all right,
everything's okay, the right movie won - the good movie, not the gay
movie. Go to sleep, and sleep tight. Next year we'll do it all again.