annie proulx Tagged Articles at Cinematical

• Bee Season - Richard Gere as a rough-boy sailor in An Officer and a Gentleman? OK. Richard Gere as a singing and dancing attorney in Chicago? Convincing enough. Richard Gere as a Jewish husband (of Juliette Binoche) and father exploring the mysteries of God through the flawless spelling of his daughter? Oy. Many parts of this existential drama about the ways in which a brilliant 11-year-old (Flora Cross) affects her family are sketchy, as no one of the characters is well-drawn enough for us to care about them too much. Genius was captured far better in films like Little Man Tate and Searching For Bobby Fischer.
 

• Some Brokeback Mountain fans are so outraged that Crash won for Best Picture that they've spent $24,000 (I saw another piece that said it was as much as $26,000) on a full page ad.
• Speaking of Brokeback: can you see it in China?
• A Hollywood private eye tale that reads like something out of a movie.
• Who is going to take over the reins of Universal Pictures?
• Alan Moore isn't happy with V for Vendetta. Nope, not at all.
• Check out the last edition (this year, anyway) of David Carr's special Red Carpet video reports from Times Square (scroll down). It's his "end of the awards season" report. My favorite line involves William Shatner and a horse.

James posted earlier today about Annie Proulx's scathing bitch-slapping of the Academy Awards. Say what you will about whether old Annie is full of sour grapes; she's always been full of what my grandmother would have admiringly called "piss and vinegar", and she is one of my personal heroes as a writer. James called her piece "scathing, coarse and wrathful" and I suppose it is all those things; more than that, however, Proulx is unflinchingly honest in revealing a side of the glittery, sparkling, Oscars that you won't see depicted on E! or anywhere else. She totally de-glamorizes Hollywood's most gratuitous event, rather like someone revealing that the elaborately decorated cake you can't wait to have a taste of is display-window dressing - nothing more than a cardboard box underneath.

The most revealing bit in Proulx's piece, however, was not her vitriolic attacks on Crash and the merit of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's acting skill - it was her description of protesters at the Oscars, "hordes of the righteous, some leaning forward like wind-bent grasses, the better to deliver their imprecations against gays and fags to the open windows of the limos". I read that line and my initial reaction was - huh?!? There were protesters at the Oscars - people yelling about "gays and fags", waving signs about? I watched every single moment of the Oscars, from red carpet to the E! after party coverage. The picture accompanying this piece is from the protests at the 2003 Oscars; I couldn't find any pictures of the protests this year. Nobody - nobody - reported on the presence of people protesting Brokeback Mountain.Which begs the question, why?

 

You know how, once upon a time, you were mad and wanted to write a letter? And someone who liked you said you should, like, not mail it for 24 hours? Well, it seems nobody ever told that to Annie Proulx. In a piece for The Guardian, Proulx -- the author of the short story "Brokeback Mountain" -- shares her recollections of Oscar night in a piece that's scathing, coarse and wrathful, not the usual 'honor to be nominated' platitudes.

Proulx's honesty is refreshing, and a little scary -- and at the same time, it's worth noting that the piece didn't run in a U.S. paper. Already stirring up discussion over at The Hot Button, Proulx's rant may -- just may -- be the worst case of sour grapes captured in ink (and she admits as such). I can't think of the last time a person associated with a film lashed out like this -- but, with academic and financial acclaim, I also can't think of what, if anything, Proulx has to lose. (And read The Rocchi Report for more on the Crash-vs-Brokeback fight ... and how it's bad news for everyone involved.)