5 hours ago
2
It’s the calm before the storm of the 97th Academy Awards and the announcer, Nick Offerman, is rehearsing his lines on the auditorium’s PA system. He introduces the nominees and trails the potential stories. He says: “Conclave won six awards tonight, including best picture,” and then pauses a moment to allow this momentous result to sink in. Upstairs at the Dolby theatre in Hollywood, the early arrivals have barely had time to get a drink in their hands. Now, all at once, they look stricken and cast nervous glances back and forth. Is Offerman joking, or has he just emitted white smoke by electing Edward Berger’s papal thriller? The Oscars don’t even start for another two hours and they worry they might already know how it ends.
Los Angeles has burned and the planet is in uproar, but the Oscars show must go on, for better or worse. For years, I reported on this event from afar, simultaneously loving it and hating it from my desk in London. But this felt like the right moment to view the gaudy circus up close, when its very existence hung in the balance briefly and at times the awards race threatened to veer into the ditch. Do the Oscars still matter? Should they have even happened at all? Where supporters see a beacon of hope, critics observe an unseemly bonfire of vanities.
“There have been some interesting pivots along the way,” admits Bill Kramer, the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in what surely counts as a contender for this year’s “no shit, Sherlock” award. The contest delivered extended Squid Game carnage, with the early favourites hobbled or scuppered by self-inflicted controversies.
The most conspicuous casualty was Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s acclaimed crime-cartel musical, which sped off in pole position only to be totalled by a stash of inflammatory tweets by its star Karla Sofía Gascón, the first out transgender performer to be nominated for the best actress award. Gascón was yanked from promotional duties in the furore, airbrushed from the posters and effectively declared persona non grata.
But credit where it’s due: she hasn’t gone down without a fight. She rocks up at the Dolby like Sleeping Beauty’s bad fairy, smiling and defiant, here to gatecrash the christening. The applause she receives suggests that she is only partly forgiven.
Outside the Oscars bubble, the situation has been more perilous. January’s wildfires destroyed 18,000 homes, torched 23,000 hectares (57,000 acres) and prompted calls for this year’s event to be cancelled. It feels like “fiddling while Rome burns”, wrote the bestselling author Stephen King. You can see his point, except that fiddling – frivolity – is part of LA’s DNA. This is an industry town, its economy sustained by film production and tourism, with Oscars night serving as its centrepiece and barometer. The organisers, therefore, are keen to frame the event as a show of fortitude and resistance. Ideally, its presence proves healing, too.
“Just for a second, after the actual fires, people were thinking: ‘Oh my God, can we even think about something like this, something joyous?’” says the Academy’s president, Janet Yang. “But over time, talking to our members, the message was clear: ‘No, we need this.’ We’ve had several [Academy] governors who’ve lost their homes and they told us: ‘Please do it.’ One, because it preserves the tradition of the Oscars. Secondly, because it brings joy and empowerment and a sense of normalcy to those who desperately need it. LA has been hurting. So people have been looking forward to the Oscars as a way to feel that life goes on.”
In Hollywood, it seems, hope springs eternal. The fires have been doused, but their effects are there for all to see. “There is a sense of trauma here,” the Australian animator Adam Elliot says. “But people are saying hello to one another on the street, which is something I’ve never noticed before. One of the cab drivers was telling me: ‘Everyone is a little bit kinder to each other at the moment.’”
Officially speaking, Elliot is one of the night’s main players, Oscar-nominated for his spiky stop-motion feature Memoir of a Snail, but the man remains low-profile enough to wander the Dolby theatre unhindered. Instead, the big splash is caused by the arrival of Jeff Goldblum. He cuts through the crowds like a benign, smiling shark.
Viewed at close quarters, the Oscars is simultaneously more glamorous and more humdrum than it appears on TV, rather like an annual works do with prettier faces and better dresses. As with most works dos, it’s a gently hierarchical affair, with the stars steered in one direction and the hoi polloi in another. The staff are helpful and welcoming; the event feels inclusive. But the mechanics exist to remind everyone of their place in the great scheme of things. In my case, it’s up on mezzanine two.
Below, on the stage, Conan O’Brien hosts the event with a loose, easy swing. Nodding out to the wider community, he salutes the unsung foot soldiers of the local film industry and the firefighters who battled the blazes. He also finds time for a veiled dig at Donald Trump and celebrates cinema as an inherently progressive medium: dogged, decent and a force for good in the world. “Even in the face of terrible wildfires and divisive politics, the work continues,” he says, before turning back to the business of handing out shiny prizes.
I ask Yang and Kramer where the organisation stands on political speeches. Does the Academy have a policy of policing its speakers, or does it give them the stage and allow them to say what they like? “We give them the stage,” Yang says. “But briefly.” Kramer elaborates. “Our show is a celebration of global cinema and the people who create movies,” he says. “So we want everybody, regardless of their political persuasion, to enjoy the show and participate. But we definitely advise our nominees on keeping their speeches short and relevant. And they almost always do.”
It’s no secret that the film industry skews left. Jon Stewart once joked that the Oscars was the only place where you could mingle with famous stars without first making a donation to the Democratic party. This year’s awards, crucially, take place against the wider metaphorical bonfire of American politics. It’s only days since Trump’s and JD Vance’s mugging of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. The western world may have fractured. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is running amok. The conditions are perfect for a full-throated protest Oscars, a fiery demonstration of artistic resistance. All O’Brien has to do is light the touch paper.
In the event, politics doesn’t quite make it on stage. Perhaps it has been steered upstairs instead, forced to sit tight on mezzanine two or three. Daryl Hannah briefly voices support for Ukraine; Zoe Saldaña does the same for the US’s immigrant communities. The makers of No Other Land, which wins best documentary feature, describe the US’s foreign policy as blocking the path to a political solution in the Middle East. “I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world,” says Adrien Brody, who wins the best actor prize for his turn as a Hungarian postwar architect in The Brutalist. “If the past can teach us anything, it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.” All of these speeches are impassioned and convincing. All, though, seem at pains not to mention Trump by name.
Mezzanine two turns out to be a good vantage point. By peering over the parapet, it is possible to see which nominees are seated in the aisle seats below: a sure sign that they are about to be called for a prize. I try to keep track of the awards that Conclave has picked up, mindful of Offerman’s earlier dry-run announcement, but suspect that it may be lagging. The Brutalist and Anora lead the field.
Meanwhile, the audience has split into silos, warring camps; I become aware of breakaway dramas within the wider Oscars-night production. Few of these guests are simply spectators. Almost everyone has a dog in this fight. Up in row D, I twig belatedly that I am sitting next to the French production team behind Emilia Pérez. The crew members erupt like sports fans when the film’s name is read out. They slap their knees in frustration each time it falls short and shout “Allez!” ecstatically when it finally picks up some gongs. I am not convinced by the film, as it goes, but their enthusiasm is infectious; I catch myself joining in.
On stage, O’Brien reminds us that we need to pick up the pace. There are 23 awards to dole out, plus a number of sidebars to plough through. We are whisked in a blur through a medley of James Bond themes to an extended in memoriam section that bids farewell to Gene Hackman and David Lynch, Maggie Smith and Gena Rowlands. The woman in the row behind appears to have somehow missed the news that Donald Sutherland died in June. The sight of his face on the screen goes through her like a knife.
Even in death, it is clear that the Hollywood hierarchy holds fast. While some stars merit not much more than a brief wave goodbye, others are lavished with stand-alone spectaculars. I am particularly taken by the Quincy Jones tribute, in which Queen Latifah corrals about two dozen dancers through a fevered rendition of Ease on Down the Road, a song from the 1974 musical The Wiz. The stage isn’t huge, so the dancers have to be choreographed to perfection. A studio director might have been able to cover a mistake with canny cuts and closeups. But this is a performance best appreciated from higher up, where you can view the ensemble expertise from a distance. One misstep or rogue elbow and the entire acrobat’s circus would come crashing down.
Offerman, of course, was only punking us. Peter Straughan picks up the award for best adapted screenplay, but otherwise Conclave is left in the dust. Anora, Sean Baker’s screwball Cinderella tale about a combative New York sex worker, breaks away during the final stretch. It takes best film, best director, best editing and best original screenplay. Demi Moore had been tipped to win this year’s best actress Oscar, for her turn as a fading middle-aged celebrity in the body-horror The Substance. Instead, she winds up losing out to Anora’s 25-year-old Mikey Madison, just as her character in the film is usurped by an ambitious younger model. Life imitates art and is often just as brutal.
As for the show, it has been convivial, smooth-running and not at all brutal. In an average year, that might almost count as a black mark against it. But the stakes were too high, the noises-off too alarming and the organisers determined not to spin any more drama out of crises. The Academy bosses longed for a safe, friendly Oscars: a reassuring hat-tip to LA and to those who live and work in the city. I suspect that it played out exactly as they wished.
Immediately after the ceremony wraps, the guests are herded upstairs to the Governors Ball. I am informed that this is a highly exclusive affair, for the creme de la creme – and no doubt it is, but the place is thronged and you have to move edgewise. I pause for a few minutes to chat with the producers of No Other Land and say a fly-by hello to the Brutalist’s director, Brady Corbet. By this point of the night, everyone seems to be in the grip of hunger and exhaustion; the food trays are emptied the instant they appear. In pursuing an elusive platter of vol-au-vents across the dancefloor, I almost mow down Cynthia Erivo, the star of Wicked. Fortunately, she is perfectly gracious about it.
From outside the ballroom comes the faint sound of machinery. On the red carpet, the construction crews are already at work, manoeuvring cranes and forklifts to dismantle the lighting rigs. This is probably how the circus wraps up every year, with its behind-the-scenes workers putting everything back in boxes; as much a part of Oscars tradition as the victory speeches and the dance routines. The party is over and the work continues. It’s time to make like Quincy Jones and ease on down the road.
