Arts & Entertainment
Oscars so safe
Fraser wins for playing gay in ‘Whale,’ but night belonged to ‘Everything’
It must be said that the 95th Annual Academy Awards were doomed to be a letdown before they ever started. After all, last year’s ceremony included a physical assault on a presenter by an A-lister – who then proceeded to win the Best Actor award! Even by rewarding an indie underdog for becoming a populist hit by giving it a record-setting sweep of the major categories, how could this year’s Oscar broadcast hope to top that?
Snarky digs aside, the Academy had already squandered a lot of its good will by announcing a slate of nominees that seemed a step backward in its recent efforts toward diversity. While 2022’s honors included overdue recognition for Asian American talent, the notable shortage of people of color or LGBTQ individuals among the nominees had already led many observers to write off this year’s Oscars as just another backsliding return to the all-too-familiar status quo; and when the broadcast itself finally happened, the Jimmy Kimmel-led ceremony played it so safe that the proceedings seemed dull even in comparison to other Oscar shows – and as anyone who’s ever watched one will certainly attest, that’s saying a lot. It’s almost as if, after a few years of pushing the boundaries, controversy, and conservative backlash over a perceived capitulation to “woke” sensibilities had pressured the Academy into a return to business as usual.
In fairness, that assessment feels a little unreasonable, considering that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – a movie in which the survival of multiple universes hinges in no small part on a mother’s acknowledgment and acceptance of her child’s queer sexuality – had enough critical and popular momentum going into the ceremony to make its claiming of the top prize all but inevitable. The popular surprise indie sci-fi hit claimed that prize and more – including Best Actress for cinema icon Michelle Yeoh and supporting honors for co-stars Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis, as well as wins in the Direction and Original Screenplay categories for filmmakers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan – to take home an impressive seven of the 11 awards for which it was nominated; child-actress-turned-celebrated-filmmaker Sarah Polley, while shut out of the Best Director category for “Women Talking” in favor of an all-male roster of nominees, took the prize for Best Adapted Screenplay nevertheless; Best Actor winner Brendan Fraser, while himself not gay, earned his victory for a deeply humanizing portrayal of a gay man and is a very public survivor of alleged same-gender sexual harassment in the workplace – a reminder that #MeToo is not just a “women’s issue” but a cause encompassing even those in positions most seemingly insulated from such abuses.
All these winning films – as well as numerous others among their fellow winners and nominees –are queer-inclusive, if not directly queer-focused. Though other queer nominees – like Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s “Close” for Best International Feature and Laura Poitras’ Nan Goldin profile “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” for Best Documentary Feature – failed to take their respective categories, the overall queer presence represented in this year’s nominated films is too widespread and deeply integrated to be ignored.
Still, in today’s very divided cultural atmosphere, such equivocating overtures toward a more equitable Oscar playing field can undeniably feel like hollow, insincere tokens, convenient to bestow on their non-LGBTQ recipients thanks to the more universal appeal of the movies that earned them a place at the table; and while the wins for Yeoh and nostalgic Gen X fan favorite Quan represented historic firsts for Asian American inclusion, nominations for Viola Davis in “The Woman King” and “Till” star Danielle Deadwyler as Best Actress, or for Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union of “The Inspection” as Best Actor and Supporting Actress, respectively, would have gone a lot further toward proving the Academy’s commitment to true diversity than its loading of the stage with an ostentatiously multi-ethnic roster of presenters – an overcompensation tactic that becomes increasingly obvious every time they deploy it.
As for the ceremony itself, there were some highlights, such as Lady Gaga, with a face freshly scrubbed of her red carpet makeup, passionately delivering a performance of nominated song “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick,” or fellow pop diva Rihanna’s rendition of “Lift Me Up” from “Wakanda Forever” – not to mention the wildly entertaining production number staged to the eventual Best Song winner, “Naatu Naatu” from the Indian blockbuster “RRR.” So, too, were there memorable moments from among the presentations, like the infectious wave of authentic joy that met Quan’s and Curtis’ early wins or Fraser’s genuinely choked-up, self-effacing acceptance speech, as well as a few polite-but-pointed barbs and zingers aimed at various low-hanging political targets – and, of course, at Will Smith – along the way. Even so, the atmosphere of the evening was decidedly contained, marked by a frankly uncharacteristic effort from Hollywood’s elite to remain on their best behavior and avoid ruffling too many feathers – and while that may have made for an evening relatively free of controversy, it also resulted in an Academy Awards show arguably far less entertaining than some of the notoriously embarrassing debacles they’ve produced in past years.
With all that in mind, it’s easy to see Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony as just another validation for people who loathe the Oscars. Yet while the Academy might seem to be some monolithic organization handing out decrees, its awards are bestowed by a voting body made up of individual film professionals, each with their own opinions about who the winners should be, and many of whom likely feel no obligation toward following whatever cultural or political agendas the organization itself may be hoping to advance. That means that whatever good intentions it proclaims itself to have, the Academy will always be little more than a barometer – and, perhaps, a convenient scapegoat – for an industry that perpetually drags its feet. After all, can we really blame the Academy for failing to recognize queer-centric and queer-friendly content – or content centered on any demographic that isn’t white, male, and heterosexual – when there is still so little of it to choose from among the award-worthy movies the mainstream continues to offer us?
There’s no right answer to that question, perhaps, only food for thought as we continue to press Hollywood to do better; that’s the only way we’ll ever see wider inclusion on the big screen. In the meantime, it’s important to remember that deciding the “best” of anything is always an entirely subjective exercise, which means that the Oscars are ultimately less about gauging quality than they are about measuring cultural attitudes toward the content – and the way that content is presented – that the movie industry produces. That makes awards like the Oscars an invaluable tool, perhaps, but does that mean it’s worth putting up with all the shallow, facile, tribalistic conversation that inevitably happens around them?
In a year like this one, when the Academy honors films that uplift and celebrate outsiders, underdogs, and ordinary people, that emphasize kindness and compassion, that allow for resolution and redemption without destructive conflict or violence, then it feels like the answer is yes.
The complete list of winners is below:
Best Picture: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”
Best Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert,“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Actress in a Supporting Role: Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Actor in a Supporting Role: Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Animated Feature Film: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
Best Original Song: M.M. Keeravani and Chandrabose,“Naatu Naatu,” “RRR”
Best Original Screenplay: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert,“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley, “Women Talking”
Best International Feature Film: “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Documentary Feature Film: “Navalny”
Best Cinematography: James Friend, “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Visual Effects: “Avatar: The Way of Water”
Best Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Adrian Morot, Judy Chin, and Annemarie Bradley, “The Whale”
Best Production Design: Christian M. Goldbeck and Ernestine Hipper,“All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Film Editing: Paul Rogers, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Original Score: Volker Bertelmann,“All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Live Action Short: “An Irish Goodbye”
Best Animated Short: “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
Best Documentary Short: “The Elephant Whisperers”
Best Sound: “Top Gun: Maverick”
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch was held at Salamander Washington DC on Sunday, April 19. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) was presented with the Allyship Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The umbrella LGBTQ sports organization Team D.C. held its annual Night of Champions Gala at the Georgetown Marriott on Saturday, April 18. Team D.C. presented scholarships to local student athletes and presented awards to Adam Peck, Manuel Montelongo (a.k.a. Mari Con Carne), Dr. Sara Varghai and the Centaur Motorcycle Club. Sean Bartel was posthumously honored with the Most Valuable Person Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Television
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
In the years since “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped up its six season Emmy-winning run, nostalgia for it has grown deep – especially since the still painfully recent loss of its iconic leading lady, Catherine O’Hara, whose sudden passing prompted a social media wave of clips and tributes featuring her fan-favorite performance as the deliciously daft Moira Rose. Revisiting so many favorite scenes and funny moments from the show naturally reminded us of just how much we loved it, even needed it during the time it was on the air; it also reminded us of how much we miss it, and how much it feels now like something we need more than ever.
That, perhaps more than anything else, is why the arrival of “Big Mistakes” – the new Netflix series starring, co-created and co-written by Dan Levy – felt so welcome. We knew it wouldn’t be the Roses, but it seemed cut from the same cloth, and it had David Rose (or at least someone who seemed a lot like him) in the middle of a comically dysfunctional family dynamic, complete with a mother who gets involved in town politics and a catty sibling rivalry with his sister, and still nebbish-ly uncomfortable in his own gay shoes. Only this time, instead of running a charmingly pretentious boutique, he’s the pastor of the local church, and instead of a collection of kooky small town neighbors to contend with, there are gangsters.
As it turns out, it really does feel cut from the same cloth, but the design is distinctly different. Set in a fictional New Jersey suburb, it centers on Nicky (Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) – he openly gay with an adoring boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez), yet still obsessive about keeping it all invisible to his congregation, and she drudging aimlessly through life as an underpaid schoolteacher after failing to achieve her New York dreams of show biz success – who inadvertently become enmeshed in a shady underworld when a gesture for their dead grandmother’s funeral goes horribly awry.
They’re surrounded by a crew of equally compromised characters. There’s their mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf), whose campaign to become the town’s mayor only intensifies her tendency to micromanage her children’s lives; Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the Turkish-American mini-mart operator who pulls them into the criminal conspiracy yet is himself a victim of it; Max (Jack Innanen), Morgan’s live-in boyfriend, who pushes her for a deeper commitment and is willing to go to couples’ therapy to prove it; Annette, his mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who lends her society standing toward helping Linda’s campaign against a misogynistic opponent (Darren Goldstein); and Ivan (Mark Ivanir), the seemingly ruthless crime boss who enslaves the siblings into his network but may really be just another slave himself. It’s a well-fleshed out assortment of characters that helps our own loyalties shift and adapt, generating at least a degree of empathy – if not always sympathy – that keeps everyone from coming off as a merely “black-and-white” caricature of expectations and typecasting.
To be sure, it’s an entertaining binge-watch, full of distinctive characters – all inhabiting familiar, even stereotypical roles in the narrative – who are each given a degree of validation, both in writing and performance, as the show unspools its narrative. At the same time, it makes for a fairly bleak overall view of humanity, in which it’s difficult to place our loyalties with anyone without also embracing a kind of “dog eat dog” morality in which nobody is truly innocent – but nobody is completely to blame for their sins, anyway.
In this way, it’s a show that lets us off the hook in the sense that it places the idea of ethical guilt within a framework of relative evils, as it permits us to forgive our own trespasses by accepting its “lovably” amoral characters, each of whom has their own reasons and justifications for what they do. We relate, but we can’t quite shake the notion that, if all these people hadn’t been so caught up in their own personal dramas, none of them would have ended up in the compromised morality that they’re in.
However, it’s not some bleak morality play that Levy and crew undertake; rather, it’s more an egalitarian fantasy in which even “bad” choices feel justified by inevitability. Everybody’s motivations make enough sense to us that it’s hard to judge any of the characters for making the choices – however unwise – that they do. In a system where everyone is forced to compromise themselves in order to achieve whatever dream of self-fulfillment they may have, how can anybody really blame themselves for doing what they have to do to survive?
Of course, all things considered, this is more a relatable comedy than it is a morality play. As a comedy of errors, it all works well enough on its own without imposing an ideology on it, no matter how much we may be tempted to do so. Indeed, what is ultimately more to the point is how well this pseudo-cynical exercise in the normalization of corruption – for that is what it really about, in the end – succeeds in letting us all off the hook for our compromises.
In the end, of course, maybe all that analysis is too deep a dive for a show that feels, in the end, like it’s meant to be mostly for fun. Indeed, despite its focus on being dragged into the shady side of life, the arc of its messaging seems to be less about a moralistic urge toward making the “right” choice than it is a candid recognition that all of us are compromised from the outset, often by choices we only force upon ourselves, and that’s a refreshing enough bit of honesty that we can easily get on board.
It helps that the performances are on point, especially the loony and wide-eyed fanaticism of Metcalf – surely the MVP of any project in which she is involved – and the directly focused moral malleability of Ortega; Levy, of course, is Levy – a now-familiar persona that can exist within any milieu without further justification than its own queer relatability – and, in this case, at least, that’s both the icing on the cake and substance that defines it. That’s enough to make it an essential view for fans, queer or otherwise, of his distinctive “brand,” even if he – or the show itself – doesn’t quite satisfy in the way that “Schitt’s Creek” was able to do.
Seriously, though, how could it?
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‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
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