ME & OSCAR

I have my own personal history with Oscar and the Academy Awards.  I always watched the Oscars when I was a kid and I always loved it.  Every year it reinforced my desire to live in Los Angeles and work in the entertainment industry.

I will never forget the first time I ever saw an Oscar up close.  It was my first day working at Universal Studios and I went to lunch at the commissary.  There, as you walked into the commissary, was Universal Studios Wall of Oscars.  In addition to the producer(s) who win Best Picture, the studio who made Best Picture that year also gets an Oscar.  Warner Bros. uses Oscars in its museum on the studio lot.  But at Universal, it was pretty impressive going to lunch and seeing a display case holding over 30 Oscars for all of Universal's wins.

The first time I ever saw an Academy Award up close was at Chris Mcquarrie's loft in downtown Miami.  I was dating a screenwriter at the time, and he was friends' with Chris.  One evening when we were over there early for movie night, we asked to see it.  Chris showed it to us, but neither my boyfriend at the time, nor myself, would touch it.  Hollywood is notoriously superstitious, and the legend goes, if you touched an Oscar and it wasn't yours, you were cursed and would never receive your own Oscar.  Stephen Spielberg said in interviews in 1994 (when he won for Schindler's List) that the first time he ever touched an Oscar was when it was his for Best Director.  It was definitely cool to see one up close.

However, in the 20 plus year's that I have watched the Academy Awards, this year was the best Academy Awards show I have ever seen.  And it wasn't the actors, dresses, outfits, interviews, the host, the revamped set, gaffes, or anything like that....this year was the year of my 2 favorite acceptance speeches.  Dustin Lance Black gave the most powerful acceptance speech I have ever seen given at the Academy Awards.  Not only was it personal and moving, it's the only Academy Awards speech I know that will literally save lives:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mv35SN3ctU

Sean Penn's acceptance speech for his second win for Best Actor was a great political statement, not as powerful as Lance's, but Mr Penn definitely got more attention because, well, he's Sean Penn:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dnM8v9aaR0

This year was also special because I do know Lance, and also another nominee who didn't win this year for Film Editing, Elliot Graham.  Elliot got run over by the Slumdog winners train, but his editting job intercutting the real life 70's footage realistically into MILK was incredible work all on it's own.  Elliot is in his early 30's and already with 1 AA nomination.  An astonishing achievement for a young film editor even if you do not win.

It is not every day that I personally know 2 people nominated for Academy Awards, and even rare to know a winner.  But that's what makes Hollywood the Cool Town for Show Business.

HOW TO WIN YOUR OFFICE OSCAR POOL

It's time for that annual ritual, the time honored tradition of winning your office Oscar pool.  Who doesn't need a little extra cash at the end of every February?

First, you need to tilt the scales in your favor.  It's more difficult to win an Oscar pool on the major categories.  Just voting on the major categories increases the possibility that you will have to split the winning with someone else.   The major categories are where you can make your mistakes.  If you have any pull in your office, use the full Oscar ballot with every category.  The average person has no idea who's going to win Best Costume, but you will.  I have always won in all the minor categories, and therein lies the secret.

As a reference, here are 2 interesting articles on Oscar voting, which makes sense of how all these relatively unknown people end up in the major nominations:  http://www.variety.com/VR1117998897.html

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978689.html

Suffice to say that each branch of the Academy gets to vote only in their branch, Actors vote for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress.  Actors do not vote on Best Cinematographer, the cinematographers do.  And so it goes for each branch.  Everyone in the Academy gets to vote on Best Picture, which explains why there are so many "surprise" Best Picture winners.  What almost no one outside of Hollywood knows is that each of the Academy branches are part of a larger union inside of Hollywood.  In the busy time between when the nominations are announced and the Oscar telecast, each of these branches hold their own private, non-televised award show for the recipient of, for example "Best Costume" according to the Costumers Guild.  Also within these union award shows (they are really more like dinners held in hotel ballrooms with 1 celebrity presenter for the winner of the evening. Can you imagine the pressure of showing up at the Costumers Award show in a bad outfit?  You might never work again in Hollywood, and that's a lot of pressure if you're a costumer just starting out in the business, I digress).

So 2 days before the Academy Awards, go to either:  http://www.variety.com/  or http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/index.jsp and using their search tools, search for the DGA winner (Director's Guild), PGA (Producers Guild - usually picks the Best Picture winner), WGA (Writer's Guild) for the Best Adapted and Best Original Screenplay award, etc.  Costume, Make Up, Set Designer, etc.  You can also try Googling the winners.  But use those winners to populate the minor categories so you can focus on the majors.  It will take you some time and effort, but the pay off is worth it.  How else are you going to correctly pick Best Special Effects other than sheer guesswork?  The SAG Awards, which are televised, usually correctly pick all the Best Acting category winners.

A couple of notes.  There is usually 1 surprise in the major categories.  Ususally one of the Best Supporting Actor winners is a complete unknown.  So make at least 1 wild guess that upends the conventional wisdom you're reading in the newspapers for major categories.  And this system is be no means foolproof.  The winner of Best Director for the Academy Awards may not have won Best Director from the Directors Guild.  Why?  Well, the Directors Guild is a much larger guild with many more voting members, as opposed to the Academy Directors branch with a much smaller voting membership.  

Good luck and while I do not endorse gambling, I do endorse an opportunity to look smart in front of your co-workers while make a little scratch on the side.  And do what I do when I win, use some of the money to buy donuts or bagels  for your co-workers, so everybody feels like a winner.