Hat-tip to 50 Books, whence comes this link to Annie Proulx’s scathing rant at the Academy for daring to choose Crash over Brokeback Mountain.
And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash – excuse me – Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver.
Last line:
For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays.
Oh, and second Doppelganger’s suggestion:
If you’ve got a hankering for more Proulx, you should check out her official site, which contains, among other thing, her CV, a handful of her essays, and FAQs about “Brokeback,” including, in answer to the question “How long did it take to write this story?” the following statement: “Roughly six months, about twice as long as it takes to write a novel.” Ha!
Annie Get Your Rant On: More On Brokeback
Annie Proulx breaks the happy facade of Hollywood and dishes up some steaming invective. Who doesn’t love it when an insider shreds the curtain and speaks some honest, angry words? Read the whole piece if you’re feeling it.Roughly 6,000 film
—Annie Proulx breaks the happy facade of Hollywood and dishes up some steaming invective. Who doesn’t love it when an insider shreds the curtain and speaks some honest, angry words? —
Geez I thought it was kind of whiney and extremely self-serving. Only three oscars? She’s lucky they made another movie out of her work after “Shipping news”
—Annie Proulx breaks the happy facade of Hollywood and dishes up some steaming invective. Who doesn’t love it when an insider shreds the curtain and speaks some honest, angry words? —
Geez I thought it was kind of whiney and extremely self-serving. Only three oscars? She’s lucky they made another movie out of her work after “Shipping news”
I’m with badteeth. I read the rant a few days ago, and I thought it was childish, bitter, and mean. I didn’t see Crash, so I can’t comment on its merits. But to call Hoffman’s performance in Capote mere “mimickry,” as Proulx does, is ridiculous. What person whose age is in the double-digits thinks it’s ok to be such a sore loser? She lashes out at anyone who beat Brokeback. This petty outburst certainly made me lose a lot of respect for her.
Yes, very true. She’s close to 70! Yet she’s acting like a 7 year old sent to bed without dessert, after a large meal.
…She’s saying the same things a lot of people in the blogosphere have been saying for the past couple of weeks. Crash sucked, Brokeback was way better, the Academy are a bunch of pretentious hidebound assberets. Sure, you’re not supposed to self-aggrandize, but it’s a little different from, say, Peter Jackson ranting about how King Kong should have won Best Picture.
She called Hoffman’s performance “brilliant.” She didn’t say it was undeserved, just that Hollywood’s criteria are off. I’m not sure I disagree with her; the Academy loves a biopic, and successful mimicry–in acting as in every other kind of art–is the easiest register on which to evaluate any given work.
I love people behaving breaking the politeness contrivance of the MSM. Sure she’s emotional and has sour grapes – that’s real. Doesn’t make her comments less valid that she said them in a satisfyingly emotion way.
But which takes more skill, acting a person who strolled the boulevard a few decades ago and who left behind tapes, film, photographs, voice recordings and friends with strong memories, or the construction of characters from imagination and a few cold words on the page?
I’m sorry, Annie, but the Oscars are like the Olympics. The medal goes to the fastest runner, not the one who had to overcome the most adversity. Maybe it is as you say, and fictional characters are harder to play–but so what? This is about judging the finished product, not the process.
Those aren’t bloodstains on the carpet, Annie.
It’s whine.
—Doesn’t make her comments less valid that she said them in a satisfyingly emotion way.—
Its more like watching a parent freak out and make a spectacle of themself at their kid’s little league game. Even if they were right and the umpire made a bad call, they’re still acting like a jackass.
“Ordinary People” beat out “Raging Bull” for best picture in 1980. But how many people own the DVD to “Ordinary People” compared to “Raging Bull”? How many people even remember “Ordinary People” at all? The Oscars are a nice little free publicity and maybe a little added box office, but as for movies being remembered or not….Hell, Brokeback won two more Oscars than “Citizen Kane” did.
I haven’t heard anyone arguing that any member of the cast of Brokeback Mountain turned in anything but a stellar performance. And, no, acting is not like the Olympics. There’s no checklist for a superlative, earth-shattering performances; a lot of those judgments are subjective. Her argument is a good one: on one level, it’s much easier to evaluate Hoffman’s performance as right on: he looks, talks, walks, and gestures just like Truman Capote. Since Heath Ledger performed a fictional character, there’s no way to say whether he really was just like Ennis Del Mar. On another level, in terms of the choices each actor made to evoke his character in his character’s story, it’s not as simple. She’s not arguing that Hoffman’s performance was lacking on the latter score, merely that the Academy may not have considered very deeply. And, dude, Gladiator. That’s not such a stretch.
Having grown up in towns distressingly similar to the one in Brokeback, I can assure you that Heath Ledger was just like the real Ennis Del Mar.
And no matter how reasonable her complaints may be, c’mon. It’s the Oscars. Mainstream Sunday Evening Extravaganza awards are bullshit.
Crash sucks, Brokeback was, well, a disappointment (especially compared to Proulx’s story), and Capote was really good.
wow, Lauren- that’s the first tepid voice I’ve heard on Brokeback in months… it’s become such a sacred cow. I agree that Capote was better. I find it difficult to believe anyone honestly thought Crash was better than the others.
Nuh uh! Jake Gyllenhaal was way hotter than Bruce Greenwood!
And thus Piny sums up the argument of 12,482 homo blogs in one line.
Did anyone else find this sentence puzzling? Is she saying that racial problems are a thing of the past? If so, why did she also call LA “segregated”?
I think she meant that Crash was not really a challenging film, not that racism is either obsolete or uncontroversial.
Crash didn’t provide any insight into the mechanism of race and class – just kind of acknowledged them, and said “that’s bad.” I know it’s asking a lot, but I want a “issue” film to be a bit more profound than just stating the obvious. Kenneth Turan said:
As someone who has never seen film footage of Truman Capote nor heard his voice, I still think PSH deserved best actor. It’s a close race between him and Ledger, but PSH has the edge.
Annie’s rant was entertaining, if nothing else. But everyone knows that the Oscars are bullshit, whether it’s due to homophobia or just plain bad taste.
I liked Crash because that person who lives in a bubble and would ordinarily not have a clue that racism/sexism is still a big thing just got it shoved in their face in a very real, very updated format.
For me, it was nothing new, but I was very happy to see someone took the time to make it for a broader audience. So I’d say it was profound in that sense.
And fer realz, I cried when the little girl ran out to help her dad because he had given her his magic cape the night before.
I haven’t seen Capote yet and Brokeback was good, but I’m not sure Michelle’s part warranted a nomination, though I do believe she definitely proved her actress worthiness. I know why Heath Ledger got nominated, because he seems to live that true cowboy machoness in real life so Ennis was definitely outside his norm and expanding on his acting skills.
I was very glad to see Terrance Howard get nominated for Hustle and Flow because he was wonderul in it I thought. The movie itself was doing good ’til the end…but oh well. They can’t all be perfect.
(and this took so long to post bc my IP’s server went down while composing it.)
I thought it was quite entertaining. I enjoy her writing immensely and this was no exception. She’s disappointed, let her have her rant. I would complain too if I thought something I had a part in was better and it lost. Good on her for speaking her mind.
Can we have a little graciousness, please?
Look, it’s the Oscars, it’s not a speed-skating race at the Olympics where there’s an actual fastest time which determines who wins. It’s more like….ice-dancing. Is it possible that BBM deserved the Best Picture Oscar more than Crash? Yes, quite possible, but your film was nominated for a bunch of awards, it won Best Director (which is a fairly prestigious gong) as well as two others, and it got lots of free publicity. So quit whining in public about the unfairness of it all when everybody knows the Oscars aren’t always about fairness. I mean, come on, the boat movie won Best Picture one year, for crying out loud! Does Proulx thinks it deserved Best Picture just because it won?
This kind of rant is for the late-night long-distance call to your significant other, where you cry in private and eat room service chocolate. It’s not for throwing all over a major newspaper. There is such a thing as dignity.