All right, here we go. Quiet. Roll up. And the Oscar goes to...
You like me right now. You like me. Here's the mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture.
That's probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life by stripping off and showing his shortcomings. And the Oscar goes to... Jack Palance. It's a clean sweep.
The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. How is Freebogot here? Welcome back to Hollywood's Greatest Night here at Film Buff headquarters. We are editor-in-chief Rich Drees, and I am Natasha Bukatsky, a contributing editor.
And we're here to talk about the 97th Academy Awards. That's right. This is a tradition here on The Big Picture Podcast. So much so that we break format, I guess.
Well, we've been talking about doing it for a while. I just did it off the cuff. That's fine. That's fine.
Literally, we just shut off the TV. I hit publish on the results article that's up on filmbuffonline. And there's no way this show could be any fresher in our minds as we talk about it. I still have some notes here that I want to hit.
So, first of all, overall, I'm super stoked, excited. Sean Baker won. I've been a fan of this guy's work since Tangerine. And I couldn't be happier for him.
And he freeloaded all the freaking awards. Yes. Well, when you are your editor, when you are the producer, when you are the writer, when you are the director, you're going to take home four out of those five awards. You do the work, you get the award.
And boy, was he making up for lost time. He was also the credited casting director on this movie. And when the casting director awards were some of the more professional casting people were like, Really? How's he taking this home?
He did the work, like you said. So, I'm super stoked for that. Mikey Madison, she had something written down, but I really don't think she ever thought she was ever gonna read it to anybody besides, I don't know, her pet cat or whatever when she was rehearsing it. Because she was shocked.
There was a couple of moments where people were just like super shocked and excited. Thank God Sean Baker knew enough to maybe... I wouldn't call it hubris or anything to say, Yeah, okay, I'm nominated in five categories. I'm going loaded for bear with five speeches.
But he had something different to say every time. Something of worth in those things. I loved when he accepted his director statue where he talked about the theatrical experience in making movies for the big screen. Very important.
Yes, and that was just one of two shots that were fired at Netflix and streaming movies in general. So I was there for that. But overall, what did you think of the show? Best speech goes to Kieran Culkin.
Well, you're a big fan, I know. I'm a big fan, but that speech killed. No, you're right. It was a great way to open the show.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I will say, I think you do have a bias because you're a huge Succession fan. Honey, two Succession alums took home acting awards tonight. I may be a bias, but at the exact same time, I know talent when I see it. Your bias is well-informed.
Is that what you're saying? Yes, it fucking is. My bias isn't just well-informed, it's well-educated. That's fair.
And is very analytical. Mr. Iowa got seven right tonight. I told you, I'm never good at these.
How is it the critic cannot critique an award show? I am doing that now. I'm critiquing the award show. I'm not critiquing the winners.
Because it gets to a point where I'm just like, you know what? I don't like ranking art after a certain point. You can look at something and say, oh, this is really good. This is really bad.
And it's hard to go, these are all really good performances. You know we've been talking about these movies for four months and you're telling me you did not know which ones it was going to be? Well, I knew it was going to be Anora. But some of the other things, I mean, yeah, absolutely I thought Demi Moore over Mikey Madison, with apologies to Ms.
Madison. No, I figured that one as well. I thought that was a shoo-in. But I knew that there was a little bit of split.
I think it was at the BAFTAs when Mikey took home that one. But then the SAGS swung it back towards Demi and my brain went, okay, this one can either, it could go either way, but I was looking at it in terms of a career award here. Maybe not a career award, but at least a, oh my gosh, I forgot about her and she does great work and she did phenomenal work here award. And yeah, I think one year I should probably sit down and just do like a complete analytic look at all the winners of the various guild awards.
Because those are the ones that I think are the most impactful on the Academy Awards, on the Oscars. The Golden Globes are fine and sometimes they line up and sometimes they don't. Most times they don't. But it's a different group of voters.
It's a different group of voters. It can kind of give you maybe an idea of cultural zeitgeist groupthink. But I don't see it as like, definitely, you know, it's a correlation on causation kind of argument, if you follow what I'm saying. But yeah, so I'd like to do that at some point.
Just kind of sit down and do the thing. I mean, as I was doing our coverage here, I did note that, you know, Sean Baker winning the best original screenplay keeps intact a streak that goes all the way back to 2011's The King's Speech, where the writer-director of the film won best original screenplay, which is crazy. And I love that for that, though. As a writer, you know.
As a writer, I can understand you liking it, but at the exact same time, it makes it really hard for actual writers whose whole they do is just write. You don't know how to win an award. I agree with you. I'm not saying, like, it's a condition that people will look at, oh, okay, he wrote and directed, so, well, obviously, I need to vote for him.
It's just working out that way, which, over such a long time, it's crazy, though. 14 years. The streak that I would like to know, and if anyone out there wants to do the legwork and let us know here at Film Buff Online, I would be very grateful because I am exhausted after 11 o'clock and I got work in seven hours. You had a bridal shower to go to this afternoon.
That I'm still exhausted from, from what I understand. Yes. But the streak is, when was the last time that a Palme d'Or winner at Cannes also went to Criterion and took home best picture in the same freaking year? Usually, films don't go to Criterion so fast, which is nice to see that with the fall-off of physical media coming from the major studios and the major outlets, that, you know, boutique outlets like Criterion or Arrow or whomever, Vinegar Syndrome, Kino, thank you.
That's the old photocopy place, you silly. It's nice to see that they're picking up stuff. Actually, Criterion, good move, because the Inara Criterion Blu-ray comes out next month, I think it is. It's an April release.
And they're also releasing some of Sean Baker's earlier stuff from before Tangerine, which I haven't gotten to see. So I'm excited, and those are probably going to be, I'm not even waiting for the 50% off sale to grab them. But it was, I thought Conan O'Brien. I thought he was great.
Did a phenomenal job. I think we weren't through his monologue at the beginning, and I'm on social, you know, tweeting out, would somebody please give Conan O'Brien a new talk show? I've forgotten how much I miss his monologues, his energy, his silliness. Hey, Conan, if you're listening in, if you need a friend, I'll be it.
Yes, he does have his podcast, which is really good. There's a couple of interviews that he has done that I found fantastic. But I thought his monologue was good. I still can't believe that Paul Rudd went on the podcast and still did that clip.
Oh, God, yeah, that's right. The Mac and me. He's like, how? It's a podcast!
No one can see me! That is one of the greatest running jokes of all time. He thought he was safe, but he was wrong. True.
Okay, but here, I don't think O'Brien had a clunker of a joke. There was some awkwardness right at the beginning, just a small amount, where he was trying to find his footing. But then he just kind of took off. Yeah, but, I mean, it's kind of like, I don't know if it's supposed to be a roast, but he was, I think, maybe a hair edgier than past hosts with some of the jokes.
News reports said he was going around Los Angeles, like, over the last couple of weeks, to comedy clubs, sneaking in and workshopping some of that material, which, man, what would I have given to be in the comedy store and go, oh, by the way, here's Conan O'Brien. He's going to run some Oscar jokes by you folks. Oh, that sounds amazing to me. It was great.
He had a couple of very pointed political jokes scattered throughout the evening Just the other day, because Valerie and Mark Hamill are the last ones from Star Wars. Anthony Daniels also. Okay, so C-3PO is still around. Yeah, Kenny Baker's gone.
Peter Mayhew. Peter Mayhew, yeah. A couple of the, you know, I met Peter Mayhew very briefly at a con once, you know, he, you know, signed something or something. Very nice guy.
So it's, it's always nice in those, at those kind of shows to be able to say, hey, thank you. You know, I really like this or, you know, and I think it's kind of important, maybe putting out good karma into the world that you're, you're appreciating them. And sometimes... Motherfucker.
Excuse my language, listeners. I found a missed one. Which one? Who?
How do you forget about King Theoden? Bernard Hill? Yes. Oh, son of a gun.
You're right. How did we miss that? Titanic, freaking Lord of the Rings. Like, what the fuck?
You know, I really wonder, do people have to like put, you know, request the Academy, say, hey, in the In Memoriam this year, can you make sure my granddad or whomever is included? Or does somebody at the Academy just sit there and has a word document that they open up every time they see an Hollywood reporter that, you know, so-and-so has passed. So they open that up, add it. And then about two months before the Oscars, they go, okay, now we got to unfortunately cross some names out.
That's probably what they have to do. I've always, I guess I kind of have wondered about it, that process, but never thought enough to investigate it. When you have big names, it doesn't make sense that a family would reach out and say, hey, can you include them? I feel like that's more of a case of the Academy needing to choose.
The Academy needing to choose. Yeah. And I don't know why then, why he got overlooked. I mean, he was kind of supporting in both of those films, to be honest.
Maybe that's why. Still, I mean... Even though King Theoden is... Yeah, it's still, though, I would say they're iconic roles and in some of the biggest movies of all time.
So, you know, everybody from Star Wars, you know, got a mention the year they passed. It's not like they decided to, you know, well, Kenny Baker, he was just the guy in the R2 suit, you know. But he created a very, extremely main character iconic. The action figures are going to be still selling long after you and I are both gone.
True. And yes, and Conan made that joke. Unfortunately, the captain on the Titanic doesn't make for a great action figure when all you have to do is drown him in the bathtub. Jesus, girl.
Actually, I was going to call him an in-action figure based on what, what he did and should have been doing. Yeah, anyway, that's enough of the In Memoriam. Back to the main show. Either way, it still got us right in the feels.
Yes, it did. Where were you on surprises? What did you think was a big surprise versus things you were expecting? The wow wow.
The wow wow. The what? Flo. Oh, Flo.
Flo winning. I was happy about that. I really like that. I think when we did our nominations episode, we kind of, I kind of pointed out that it was kind of weird that Flo was also the international feature.
And I should have been paying attention to that a little bit more and I wasn't. It's so rare to see a film that isn't from a major studio in the animation sector win. And this was the first win for the country of Latvia. First nomination and first win ever.
So good on them. As Conan said twice tonight and he didn't fulfill it with the comedy rule of threes. So I will. Your move, Estonia.
Yes. Yeah, you're right. I'm usually the one who points out comedy rules of three. In fact, I pointed out where a comedy rule of three in that opening song thing.
He also only uses and warm twice as well. Yeah, yeah. Where that would have been nice to have that third callback. What's crazy about Flo is the production budget on that was $20 million.
Inside Out 2 cost $200 million. Yeah. So that makes me happy that those $20 million is not a small budget to you or I. If we were making a film, we'd be very happy to have $20 million.
Well, that. But for an animated film to kind of have that small budget, go all this way. And, you know, kind of it's a David and Goliath story. Well, for the last several years, and one of the beauties of the Oscars that I love is that it showcases movies that are made for very tight budgets, which means it allows your imagination to try to work around certain constraints.
And oftentimes you create better art because of it. When you're given the brutalist was $10 million, for goodness sakes. Anora was only six. Yeah.
When you are given all the money in the world, I'm looking at you, Dune, and I'm looking at you, Wicked. Don't get me wrong. Both beautiful, fantastic films. But when you're given all the money in the world to create anything that your imagination can conjure up, oftentimes I find that.
You go for the first thing in your head instead of going, what is the most stylistically interesting choice to make? And oftentimes you'll find that a little bit cheaper to do. And it's a little more eye catching. It's easy to throw money on a problem.
Yeah. And you know, It's not easy to try to fix it without it. True. Yeah.
We know that without saying anything else. But so, yeah. So it's great when you see a $6 million film like Anora walk away with five awards. Why?
Because they, you know, developed the story with, you know, Sean Baker developed that story with Mikey Madison. You know, everything was on the page. You know, they say you write a film three times on the page, on the stage and in the edit. And Sean Baker controlled all of that.
You know, he was the editor of the film. He was the director. He was the writer. So it's kind of like this.
I really, I mean, and you remember when he joked about when he won his editing award about, oh, the director was terrible. You should see the footage he gave me, which was, I thought, very funny. Oh, no, no, no. He's just like, Yeah, I saved this film in the edit.
Yes, yes. And I gave him a lot of credit for having that sense of humor. But I think it's interesting that, you know, since he controlled that, I think that's what ultimately gave us and resulted in that incredibly, you know, very specific story about, you know, you know, they repeatedly said she's a sex. The character is a sex worker.
Yes, she's a, you know, a stripper. And, you know, it's a story we generally don't see much of, ironically. There are actually pretty woman reference in it and it's hilarious. Yeah.
Ironically, though, Demi Moore starred in striptease. She didn't get an award nomination for it. But, you know, she also did, you know, a story about a sex worker, which wasn't a bad movie. It just wasn't, you know, up to whatever else was going on with the Academy Awards that year.
So she'll have a great respect for what Mikey has done here. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. I thought, I just watched Anora two nights ago for the first time.
I thought it was a genius film. The ending alone for me was worth that award. Great performances pulled from these actors, which outside of Mikey, I had never seen before because they are, most of them are Russian. It is stylized, organized chaos, a cacophony of it that could have easily turned into melodrama.
But for somehow, some reason walks a very balanced line and manages to do it consistently throughout the entire film, which is not an easy feat. I mean, it's, it's easy to, to take things into the realm of Amelia Perez. It's not easy to keep it balanced without tipping over. And he steered that shit to perfection.
Let's see. Also, what did you think of the Bond tribute? I mean, they cut it's music wise. This was a weird thing because they cut original song performances.
I don't want to talk about it. But we get the Wizard of Oz slash Wicked medley, you know, at the beginning that opens the show. I thought that was better. We get the Bond tribute.
We get Quincy Jones thing, you know, with Queen Latifah performing Ease on Down the Road, which Quincy Jones wrote from the musical and movie The Wiz, which also, you know, yet another Wizard of Oz thing. It's like the Academy. It feels like the producers of the show were kind of leaning into, well, let's do a lot of Wizard of Oz related stuff because Wicked might have a really good run here. But there's a lot of symbolism that you could pull from Wicked and from The Wiz and how it connected to each other, either through Quincy Jones or through its subject matter or linking it.
The whole beginning monologue and also seat dropped in throughout the show were nods to LA, to the fire. Yes. That was another nice thing. To the idea of this is the city of, its name means city of angels, but in truth, it's the city of dreams for everyone in that room.
That is what they come there for, She hasn't done a whole lot here in the States. She's a British singer, still sort of up and coming. You could tell she was nervous. She was very nervous.
Her hands were all over the place. Um, she hit a killer note at the end, though, that was like, okay, if you had had that throughout all of this, be a little bit better. A little more. She got the confidence right at the end because she had to nail that final note of the tribute.
But you could tell the huge difference in Cynthia and Ariana and how they held that stage compared to the Bond tribute. Yeah. With a little scattered, a little all over the place. That's fair.
That's fine. Um, we start at seven or 4 p.m. in the afternoon. As Conan made a joke about that, too.
We never really think about that. We're like, Oh, it's starting at seven. So, of course, it's gonna be like midnight by the time. No, no, no, because there's time zones.
Yeah, there's yeah. It was a three hour, 45 minute show, which is not the shortest Oscars we've ever had. Not the longest. But it feels like it ended quickly.
And I don't know if that's a artifact of it starting at seven or if it's because, you know, it was just well paced this time this year. You know, Conan kept things moving along or what? I'm just happy they brought hosts back. There was a couple of years there.
We had no hosts. Those were brutal. Those were absolutely brutal. Then again, I was like, Well, you tried it in the 90s.
Did you not learn? I'm going to be intrigued over the next couple of years to see what they're going to be doing with the Academy Awards as we are heading for its centennial. Yeah, that has me very intrigued as well. I've been thinking about actually submitting a book proposal about the hundred years of Oscar, but who knows?
Anyways. Yeah, it should be interesting. I almost love to see like part of the ceremony kind of like date back or, you know, be somehow involving with some of the early locations in just like the old hotel ballrooms that they held the Academy Awards in those first several years. You just want to see the freaking, what was it, the Biltmore?
Yeah, the Biltmore. Yeah. Besides the Biltmore, like the Roosevelt's and a couple of other places. Unfortunately, the Ambassador no longer exists.
That was torn down, which is a shame because that that looked every photo I've ever seen of the Ambassador looks fantastic and cool. And I'm like, shit, I really would have loved to have like gone to the Ambassador and just to seen it as a really cool 50s, 60s architecture piece. Unfortunately, it's gone. Nerd.
I love it. I love it. I'm just teasing. The Ambassador was used in That Thing You Do as a hotel that the band stays at when they're in Los Angeles.
But unfortunately, it's also the site of where Robert Kennedy Senior was assassinated. So yeah, so it has a weird history about it. So just because of that, I was kind of interested. But anyways, but yeah, so three more years till that, though.
Yeah. But in the meantime, any final thoughts as we wrap up our quickie on the spot, instant hot takes episode about this year's Academy Awards? Let me look at my sheet and I'll decide if there is. Okay, what else do you have?
What else do I have? Yeah, I know you, like you said, you did better at the the predictions than I do. I'm terrible at these again. And it's like I said, I let my heart get in the way of my head on these.
I know. Bad critic. It's not, it's not wait, Oscar predicting is an entirely different set of skills than critiquing a film. So don't even try that.
Oh, for me, they're one in the same. Oh, well, you're not doing it right. I only focus on how, if I am in award season, my main focus is, is this worthy of an Oscar? That is it.
Well, then you're... It's how I break it down based off of the categories and how well it does in that category. This is a longer conversation that we will have at some point because I know it's getting a little late and you wanted to wrap this up soon. But again, any, anything in there that we missed that you wanted to hit on really quick?
No, no, I'm good. Okay, so then I guess that just about wraps it up for this episode. Yeah. Remember, you can find us online at bigpicturepod.com and we are available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play.
See, I'm sticking to the format this time. So head directly there, search and hit subscribe. Leave a positive review if you like what you're hearing. Haha, you took my lines.
Yes, I did. Because we always need new listeners. Yes, indeed. It always helps us.
So we'll be back next time. I'm not sure what we're going to be doing next time. I have two ideas. I think one of them we've talked about before.
The other one is related to something we're going to see tomorrow. So, so it will be a surprise for you and for us. And we'll catch you next time right here on the Big Picture Podcast.