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Oscars 2000: 'American Beauty' looks good winning five
Monday, March 27, 2000 By Ron Weiskind and Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
LOS ANGELES -- The theatrical axiom is that satire is what closes on Saturday night. This year, it is also what wins an Oscar for Best Picture.
Last night's Academy Awards ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium paid tribute to an unusual year at the movies by anointing an unorthodox film, "American Beauty," a knife-edged portrait of a dysfunctional suburban family going over the edge. Yet the win wasn't a surprise at all -- "American Beauty" was the favorite in the race and had scored the most nominations -- eight -- of any film in the competition.
In all, it won five, including Best Actor for Kevin Spacey, Director for Sam Mendes, Original Screenplay for Alan Ball and Cinematography for Conrad Hall.
It was not an obvious choice by Oscar standards, which lean toward historical epics and films with important themes. But this was a year largely bereft of such films, lacking the usual one or two blockbusters that are marked as Oscar contenders from the time of their release.
But "American Beauty" won plaudits from most reviewers and appeared on more than 50 year-end lists of the best films. The eight nominations, including five in the major categories, showed that Hollywood also thought highly of the movie from Mendes, who had been most comfortable on the British stage until now.
"This is the highlight of my day. I hope it is not all downhill from here," said Spacey, who dedicated the Oscar to fellow actor and father figure Jack Lemmon. "To my friends, for pointing out my worst qualities, I know you do it because you love me and that's why I love playing Lester. We got to see all his worst qualities and we still grew to love him."
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For a complete list of winners, visit PG Online's Associated Press report.
He said the cast found real beauty in Ball's Oscar-winning script. "I'm very proud to be an actor. ...I'm stunned and a bit speechless," he said. Spacey won an Oscar as supporting actor in 1995 for "The Usual Suspects." This year, he won for playing Lester Burnham, patriarch of a family falling apart at the seams.
Best Actress Hilary Swank was honored for her gender-bending and heartbreaking role in "Boys Don't Cry." She played Teena Brandon, a woman who masqueraded -- quite successfully for a while -- as a man named Brandon Teena. But when the rural Nebraskan's identity and gender were unmasked, Brandon was raped and murdered.
Although many critics thought Swank gave the performance of the year (and possibly a lifetime), they also predicted that Annette Bening would win. But Swank was remarkable in convincing moviegoers they were watching a man -- down to the way the actress swaggered, held her cigarette and then blew the smoke through her nostrils.
Swank had been chosen after filmmaker Kimberly Peirce spent 2
The actress, dressed in a very feminine bronze, strapless gown accented with a scoop diamond necklace, read her thank-you list as her husband cried in the audience. "And last but certainly not least, I want to thank Brandon Teena for being such an inspiration to us all. His legacy lives on through our movie, to remind us to always be ourselves, to not conform," she said.
Popular actor Michael Caine got two O's -- an Oscar and a standing ovation -- at the 72nd annual Academy Awards. He was crowned Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dr. Wilbur Larch, kindly doctor and father figure at St. Cloud's orphanage in "The Cider House Rules."
Larch is addicted to ether and performs abortions (to save women from botched back-alley procedures) but he also gives his sleepy charges this send-off: "Good night you princes of Maine, you kings of New England." Novelist John Irving, who adapted his book for the screen, also took home an Oscar.
Although it's the Hollywood way to be gracious in the face of defeat, the British veteran was courtly in the face of victory. Noting that the winner's name is now preceded by "and the Oscar goes to" instead of "the winner is," Caine took pains to celebrate his fellow nominees.
He nodded to once-unknown Michael Clarke Duncan from "The Green Mile," predicted Jude Law was "going to be a big star, no matter what," joked with Tom Cruise that his asking price and perks would have plummeted had he won as a supporting actor and called 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment "astonishing." The boy's face brightened at the recognition, which included a healthy round of applause from the bejeweled crowd in the Shrine Auditorium.
Caine offered this wish for the quartet: That they achieve his status as survivor.
The always busy actor, who has 80-plus films to his credit, once described his selection process this way: "First of all I choose the great ones, and if none of those come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come -- I choose the ones that are going to pay the rent."
It was one of those rent checks, "Jaws: The Revenge," that stranded him in the Bahamas when he was named Best Supporting Actor for "Hannah and Her Sisters." Backstage, the 67-year-old Caine told reporters, "It's very different when you're here. It is very, very nerve-wracking out there."
He also explained why he saluted his fellow nominees in his acceptance speech. "Every single person in this category could have won, and was brilliant. I was there to collect it for all of us. I'm a survivor -- that's what they gave it to me. I'm still here after all these years.
"Everyone was just as good as me, and we were all as good as each other. Why should one of us win?"
He was composed until he realized he was getting a standing ovation. "It threw me. It's not something you expect. I'm very difficult to throw. That did it. To be held in such a regard in a town so full of talent is an incredible compliment."
As it had last year when it honored Gwyneth Paltrow, Hollywood anointed a second-generation star by naming Angelina Jolie the Best Supporting Actress for "Girl, Interrupted." Clad all in black -- including her sometimes golden hair -- Jolie announced from the stage, "I'm surprised nobody's ever fainted up here."
Jolie thanked a number of people, including her date and brother, James (whom she calls Jamie) Haven, and her parents. "You're a great actor, but you're a better father," she said of her dad, Jon Voight. Jolie called her brother "the strongest, most amazing man I've ever known."
Backstage, the 24-year-old Jolie said this was the first time she had held an Oscar, even though her father won for 1978's "Coming Home." They are only the second father and daughter to win acting Academy Awards -- the others are Henry and Jane Fonda.
"My dad's mother had his in a goldfish bowl or something, on top of her mantle in New York. I never held it. Growing up, I thought it was a strange thing in grandma's house."
Her parents visited her before the Oscar show. "My dad said he was so proud of me and that he thought I was a good actress. When you hear that from your father ... that's quite a big deal."
The actress's father and mother, Marcheline Bertrand, divorced before her second birthday, and she grew up with her mother and younger brother, bouncing between Los Angeles and New York City. Jolie is her middle name; she dropped Voight when she began acting.
"I don't know if it's divorced families -- he and I were each other's everything, always," she told reporters about her brother. "He's given me so much love and taken care of me. He makes my life great. He's my friend."
Jolie thought her co-star in "Girl, Interrupted," Winona Ryder, in some ways had the scarier role to play. "I had a personality [in the movie] that was full of force. She had a personality who was scared. I'm sure I was not lovely to her in the morning."
In the film, based on the Susanna Kaysen memoir of the same name, Jolie plays a charming sociopath named Lisa. She's among the troubled girls locked away in an exclusive psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s.
Jolie, has developed an enviable ability to convert nominations (Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and now Oscar) into wins. Off camera, she is something of a wild child with tattoos and a knife collection, definitely at odds with her name which means "pretty little angel." She was married to actor Jonny Lee Miller in black leather pants and a white shirt on which she had painted his name in blood. They later divorced.
Another Hollywood wild child, Robin Williams, was temporarily silenced with a strip of black tape across his mouth. He removed it to warble the naughty nominated song "Blame Canada" from "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut." In a year when many of the cinematic contenders, such as "Sweet and Lowdown," had limited distribution, it was a bid for populist participation.
The tried-and-true "Tarzan" song titled "You'll Be in My Heart," won the Oscar for singer and songwriter Phil Collins. Backstage, first-time winner Collins said he was very emotional about winning. "I'm only a drummer really. I hoped but didn't expect," said the pop star.
A former Grammy winner, Collins was asked to compare that to winning an Oscar. "This is outside my field in a way. It's writing music, but it's something different. It's such a big deal for me. Disney gave me chance. ... This I hope is going to give me some opportunities to do score writing, which is what I want to do."
It was a movie about a celebrated musical instrument, "The Red Violin," that took the award for score. "Sleepy Hollow" won for art direction.
"One Day in September," an examination of the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, beat the early favorite, "Buena Vista Social Club" for the Documentary Feature Oscar. It took two years and four months to make and only was finished in October; it has yet to be released anywhere in the world, but should be destined to theaters with the all-important Oscar stamp.
Pedro Almodovar dedicated his Best Foreign Language Oscar, for "All About My Mother" to his native Spain and the Academy Award watchers who had sacrificed sleep to wait for his category. Actor Antonio Banderas, who had announced the winner and who rose to fame in Almodovar's movies, gently tugged at the director as his time elapsed.
"He makes [Roberto] Benigni look like an English teacher," host Billy Crystal cracked, of the director who doesn't count English as his first language.
The Gilbert and Sullivan drama, "Topsy-Turvy" took the first award of the night -- 25 minutes into the slow-moving show, which ran for 4 hours and 5 minutes. "Topsy-Turvy" also picked up a second honor for makeup, an award that most critics thought would go to the "Austin Powers" sequel that added layers -- and layers -- of fat to one of Mike Myers' characters.
The awards for sound, sound effects editing, visual effects and editing went to "The Matrix," the successful sci-fi fantasy that has spawned plans for not one, but two, sequels starring Keanu Reeves.
A live-action short with the unlikely name of "My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples in New York" merited a thank-you for the bikers who helped the filmmakers, plus an Oscar. Another unusually titled project, "King Gimp," took the Oscar for documentary short subject. The computer-generated characters from "Toy Story" doubled as presenters for Best Animated Short Film, given to favorite "The Old Man and the Sea."
The winners of two awards were not announced in sealed envelopes; their identities had been known for weeks. Warren Beatty, husband of Bening, was named winner of the Irving Thalberg Award.
Pal and perpetual bad boy Jack Nicholson took off the dark glasses and made the short journey from audience to center stage to introduce Beatty. Out of deference to Bening's condition (she will deliver her fourth child any minute now), the dignity of the occasion and the "age of the recipient," Nicholson said there would be no sex jokes.
Beatty said he didn't want to talk politics or the direction of movies, but paid tribute to his parents and mentors and "to all the people who nurtured me and taught me." He offered thanks for freedom, access, encouraging his voice in public affairs, his friends from his days as a single man and his wife and the mother of his children.
"Please forgive me for making her unavailable for your movies four times," he quipped, of his wife's pregnancies. Bening, sitting with her hands folded over her expansive belly, had helped to create an evening no screenwriter would believe. Beatty getting the Thalberg, Bening in contention for Best Actress and extremely pregnant, to boot.
Beatty is the only person to be nominated for producer, director, writer and actor on a film -- and to do it twice. He received those nominations for "Heaven Can Wait" in 1978 and again in 1981 for "Reds."
The Thalberg Award was established in 1937 and was awarded that year to Darryl F. Zanuck. It is given to "creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production."
Andrzej Wajda, premier director of Poland, won an honorary award "for showing both the loftiest heights and the darkest depths of the European soul." His films include "Landscape After Battle," "Man of Marble" and "Man of Steel."
The 73-year-old accepted the award "as a tribute to all of Polish cinema." He said, "My fervent hope is that the only flames people will encounter will be the great passions of the heart -- love, gratitude and solidarity," he said.
Crystal, who had ceded the high-pressure hosting duties to Whoopi Goldberg in 1999, was back for a seventh stint. He blended the new and old by appearing alongside Charlie Chaplin -- "I see dead people," the caption read -- and then stepped into Robert De Niro's apartment in "Taxi Driver," became a cross-dressing Mr. Robinson in "The Graduate" opposite Dustin Hoffman and eventually sought the counsel of Marlon Brando in "The Godfather."
Repeating ABC's favorite catch phrase "Is that your final answer?" Crystal was spewed with pea soup by Linda Blair and then was interrupted in the shower by Spacey's Lester Burnham from "American Beauty." He later dropped into "The French Connection," "E.T.," and "West Side Story."
Crystal, deposited on stage by an LAPD officer, reprised his singing monologue from previous years. He paid tribute to various nominees, including Richard Farnsworth, Swank, Osment and even gave salvage man Willie Fulgear another 15 minutes or seconds of fame. Fulgear had stumbled across 52 stolen Oscars while rummaging through a trash container and won himself a Shrine seat (and a good one, too) and a reward of $50,000.
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