When I got the invitation to spend OSCAR® Day at the red carpet, my husband and daughter immediately asked if they could come, too. Unfortunately, Kodak did not have enough tickets to hand out to guests of invited bloggers. They did, however, allow us to submit a guest to meet us at the after Academy Award viewing party that will commence immediately after the red carpet arrivals. So my husband will be joining me.
The only hitch was that I needed to drive down to Academy headquarters TODAY to pick up a wristband that will allow him to get past the checkpoint on Hollywood Boulevard Sunday.
As you can imagine, security is tight. I could not even park in the Academy's garage without showing them ID. I'd brought my camera with me in the hope that I could get a good picture, but the guards made it clear I needed to get in and get OUT as quickly as possible. But I did manage to use my phone to take a furtive little shot of this icon in the 5th floor reception area:
The nameplate on the award reads Billy Wilder. Unfortunately, I could not make out the actual category or picture - but it could be for any of these:
The Apartment (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writer, Story & Screenplay)
Sunset Blvd (Best Writing, Story & Screenplay - but also nominated for Best Director)
The Lost Weekend (Best Director, Best Writing, Story & Screenplay)
That's quite a number of Oscars for one man to win, especially since he functioned as both director and writer. But look at the films where he was merely honored to be nominated:
- The Fortune Cookie
- Some Like It Hot
- Witness for the Prosecution
- Sabrina
- Stalag 17
- Ace in the Hole
- A Foreign Affair
- Double Indemnity
- Ball of Fire
- Hold Back the Dawn
- Ninotchka
I'm surprised that I've seen so many of these titles (nine) but more surprised that I've never seen the rest. I will have to get those on my Netflix queue.
You see, Billy Wilder is one of my screenwriting idols. I love his wicked sense of humor, which is apparent in even dark movies like Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd (still the best movie ever made about Hollywood)... and downright subversive in fluffy romantic comedies like Sabrina and Ninotchka. And I can't get over the fact that English was his second language. (Yes, he worked with talented collaborators like Charles Brackett and I.A.L. Diamond - but the Wilder POV can be seen in all of his films).
Anyway... I was kind of thrilled to see Billy Wilder's Oscar®.
I suppose it's ironic that I can wax rhapsodic about movies that were made before I was born... but have only seen ONE of the films nominated for Best Picture this year. The truth is - I love cinema enough to have majored in Radio-TV-Film at CSUN decades ago, and as a WGA member, used to go to the movies a couple of times a week.
Then I married someone who loves film a lot less than I do.
And then I had a kid.
When Megan was little, I dragged her to every kids' movie on the day of its release, and then wrote self-syndicated reviews for the family content site I was operating at the time. Those reviews are still out there (I get Google Alerts on them all the time) - but even that movie habit ended when she became so involved in competitive gymnastics. Our movie-viewing migrated to whatever was on television, and I may have subjected Megan to a DIY course in movie history...
Last year, she had a teacher who liked to talk about old movies, and he would ask the class if they had seen "Gone With the Wind"... or "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"... or
Megan was the only person in the class who had seen every film he mentioned.
But I may have done something right: a few weeks, ago, my daughter and her cousin started their own blog... and they're reviewing movies.
I'm so proud.
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