An 'American' tale

There is speculation, and then there are foregone conclusions.

The reporting team at the Wall Street Journal that cold-called 1,400 members of the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (and got 356 to discuss their votes in the six major categories) projected that "American Beauty" would win the Oscar for best picture at the 72nd annual Academy Awards.

Lo and behold it won best picture - and four more of its eight categories, including best actor, Kevin Spacey. Before Clint Eastwood opened the best-picture envelope at the end of Sunday night's show, the name of the winner was additionally telegraphed by wins for director Sam Mendes, scenarist Alan Ball and cinematographer Conrad L. Hall.

No matter how upset Academy president Robert Rehme and executive director Bruce Davis were about the Journal's poll (calling it "a threat to the Academy process"), moviegoers and pundits went into the broadcast fully aware that the dramedy about dysfunction, repression and crisis in a suburban neighborhood was the film to beat. And, as it turns out, the Journal poll of 6 percent of the Academy was largely accurate.

A 'Beauty'

of a night

This year, the Academy distributed the wealth, particularly in the technical categories. In addition to the best picture and best director categories, the Journal's random sampling foresaw "Girl, Interrupted's" Angelina Jolie and "The Cider House Rules' " Michael Caine winning in the supporting categories and Hilary Swank taking home the best actress trophy for her performance as the slain cross-dresser Brandon Teena in "Boys Don't Cry."

Rather than subvert excitement about the actual telecast, the poll just made the show seem that much more interesting: Surely, 356 people could be wrong - but only when it came to eventual best actor loser Denzel Washington. In the future, if such a poll were to have any merit besides eliciting the ire of the Academy, it would be in disclosing who placed second in the voting. How many voters cost Washington his second Oscar or Haley Joel Osment his first? Who came in fifth, Meryl Streep or Janet McTeer? It'd be like picking over bones, but more interesting than who-wore-what gossip.

The poll seemed to abate any interest in the reversal of the studio feud that began last year between Miramax, which produced "The Cider House Rules," and DreamWorks, which made "American Beauty." (When Miramax's "Shakespeare in Love" topped DreamWorks' "Saving Private Ryan" last year it was considered an upset.) But the studio squabbling took a back seat to widespread and often-surreal cynicism that nipped at the heels of both the show and the awards this year, capped by the Wall Street Journal controversy.

Three weeks ago, 4,200 ballots were lost in a postal snag. Ten days later, 55 Oscar statuettes were stolen and then 52 of them later discovered in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles - in a dumpster by a fellow named Willie Fulgear. Numerous editorial cartoons and entertainment news shows did their best to deflate the show's mystique and imply that the show is as predictable as the awards themselves. Strangely, this cynicism only underscored its absence among the nominees. In spite of its bleakness, "American Beauty" is ultimately a feel-good movie about feeling bad, which with its depictions of drug use, masturbation, closeted homosexuals, jailbait and rotten marriages didn't strike close enough to home in Hollywood to turn it off.

Apparently, Academy voters left their irony at home along with bad taste. The show's tacit theme this year was good taste over tackiness. There was wild speculation about how many women would take a cue from Jennifer Lopez and the Versace drape she wore to the Grammys last month. Excepting Cameron Diaz's chest and the backs of Charlize Theron and Drew Barrymore's gowns, the flesh parade was mostly in retreat. Even

a Gothed-out Cher joked that she was behaving herself, letting the cross dangling in front her crotch speak for itself.

If irony and the Oscar show have never officially been introduced, the Academy is wholly dependent on its hosts for supplying levity, because it doesn't really like comedy - it is treated like Oscar's ugly stepsister. Is it possible that Academy members don't take to comedies because they know Billy Crystal (or Whoopi Goldberg) will bring the laughs?

This year, the show was not only the most seamlessly produced, it was tame. Robin William appeared with a piece of black duct tape placed metaphorically over his mouth. The production number (best-song loser "Blame Canada" from "South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut") that came after he ripped off the tape was the night's apex - despite the fact that the song's profanity had to be censored. (One suspects that had Lopez shown up in that gown the show's producers, Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck, would've sent her back home.)

But aided by Crystal's unsparing and punctual spontaneity, the show was downright hip, more so than it's been in decades. The decaying conductors, Tom Conti and Marvin Hamlisch, were put back on ice and replaced with the verve of Burt Bacharach, and there was an air of techno-chic that was enhanced by the four Oscars "The Matrix" took home. Of course, that was at odds with the Academy's attempts to retool its image with a grandiose montage of how Hollywood has captured man's evolution and - with the inclusion of a scene from "Primary Colors" - his fall. Presumably, the confusing montage was a reaction to the fact that the accuracy of nominees like "The Hurricane" and "The Insider" has been questioned.

Later, welcoming the newly Ted Turner-less Jane Fonda back to the Hollywood fold - to give Polish director Andrzej Wajda his award - was a shrewd move. A former polemicist herself, she probably was the only women in the room who'd seen his films, which taken together comprise a masterful, moving index of Poland, modern and archaic. Although her credibility stumbled a bit when she said "I'd like to prevent the award" rather than "present," it beats the heartbreak of seeing her do the Tomahawk chop.

The presentation of the Irving Thalberg award to Warren Beatty - complete with filmed testimonials - was a love-in that was aggrandizing and shapeless. "There will be no sex jokes," lamented buddy and presenter Jack Nicholson, who with his spiked, shorn haircut and jowls, looked like he'd been released from the pound. There also would be no clips of some of some his best acting - like "Mickey One," "Inside Daisy Clover," or "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" - but there was a fine snippet of the cruelly panned "Ishtar." But

o one was quite able to explain to the world why Beatty was receiving the honor - which he deserved. The choice seemed self evident and failed to present the actor-writer-director-producerpolitician as anything more than the President of Hollywood. The beatific reaction shots of his wife were a nice touch. They'll probably get her elected first lady in the Wall Street Journal's next Academy poll. <