A royal night at the Oscars for ‘King’s Speech’

LOS ANGELES
— The monarch may have stammered terribly, but Oscar voters spoke
loudly and clearly Sunday night, handing “The King’s Speech” four
Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best original
screenplay.

The come-from-behind “King’s Speech” coup concluded a providential journey for the drama about Britain’s King George VI (played by Colin Firth, who won the lead actor Oscar) and his unconventional speech therapist, Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush).
The film beat out “The Social Network,” which had been considered the
likely choice for best picture for much of the fall and early winter,
but ended up with three Oscars despite many critical plaudits.

“What an incredible, incredible honor,” said “King’s Speech” producer Iain Canning, picking up the top trophy from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Producer Emile Sherman thanked the film’s financiers for daring to invest in a period drama
about elocution. “It’s not,” Sherman said, “an obvious film to back.”

But apparently, it was an easy one to vote for.

At every turn, “The King’s Speech” enjoyed extraordinary fortune: British filmmaker Tom Hooper,
who directed the movie, discovered the tale only after his mother
attended an unrehearsed reading of a play about the king at a tiny
theater outside London. Rush got involved only after a producer’s assistant dropped off the script at the actor’s front door.

Screenwriter David Seidler, 73, who
had promised the Queen Mother he wouldn’t write about her stuttering
husband in her lifetime, waited 25 years before moving ahead with his
project.

Hooper, 38, whose best-known work heretofore was the HBO mini-series “John Adams,”
thanked Firth and Rush — “I’m only here because of you guys,” he said —
and gave credit to his mother for seeing the play and suggesting it
should be his next movie. “The moral of the story,” Hooper said, “is
listen to your mother.”

Firth, who had been nominated in the actor category
last year for “A Single Man” but lost, accepted his award and quipped,
“I have a feeling my career’s just peaked.”

Even though “The King’s Speech” won the top prize, no single film dominated the 83rd Academy Awards, emceed by actors James Franco and Anne Hathaway,
two of the youngest hosts in recent memory. The duo joked about trying
to attract younger viewers to the broadcast, though the show featured
multiple homages to Hollywood history — including a surprise appearance by 94-year-old Kirk Douglas.

The ceremony marked the second year that 10 films
were competing for the best picture prize, up from five previously. The
academy expanded the category in a bid to include more popular
favorites, and this year, most of the films crossed the $100 million mark at the box office.

Writer-director Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller “Inception” took home trophies for cinematography
and in three technical categories. “True Grit,” the Western that came
into the evening with 10 nominations (second only to the dozen for “The
King’s Speech”), left the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with none.

Natalie Portman, who trained for a year to play an
obsessed ballerina in “Black Swan,” won the lead actress Academy Award,
fending off strong competition from Annette Bening in “The Kids Are All Right.” “This is insane,” a visibly moved Portman said.

The boxing drama “The Fighter” dominated the supporting actor categories as predicted, taking trophies for Christian Bale, who played the film’s washed-up, drug-addled pugilist Dicky Eklund, and Melissa Leo, who co-starred as the domineering matriarch.

Bale appeared humble in his win despite being a
heavy favorite for the prize. Leo said she was “shakin’ in her boots,”
which may have explained why she dropped an expletive into her
acceptance speech. The swear word was censored by ABC, but nevertheless became a running joke throughout the rest of the ceremony.

The writing wins also went as expected. Seidler, who
had been working in television until “The King’s Speech” (his last film
credit came 12 years ago), got a bit lost trying to find the microphone
after his name was called for the original screenplay award. But his
momentary confusion didn’t stop him from delivering a charming speech.

“My father always said I’d be a late bloomer,” said
Seidler, who was inspired to write the script because he himself
stuttered — as a child he had listened to King George VI on the radio, knowing that the monarch had overcome a speech
impediment. “This is to all the stutterers,” Seidler said. “We have a
voice and we have been heard, thanks to the academy.”

Aaron Sorkin won the adapted screenplay award for “The
Social Network,” based on the book “The Accidental Billionaires.”
Sorkin, best known for writing television’s “The West Wing,” said the
prize “will be a source of pride for me every day for the rest of my
life.”

Alternative rockers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross took home the prize for best score for “The Social Network,” beating out favorite Alexandre Desplat, who composed the score for “The King’s Speech.”

“Toy Story 3,” which director Lee Unkrich described as a film about “talking toys that had something very human
to say,” won for animated feature. “Toy Story 3,” the highest-grossing
film of 2010, also won for best song, “We Belong Together,” by Randy Newman.

Director Charles Ferguson and producer Audrey Marrs took home the Oscar for their documentary “Inside Job.”

Two of the year’s biggest blockbusters, “Inception”
and “Alice in Wonderland,” dominated the technical categories, with
“Inception” winning for sound mixing, sound editing and visual effects
in addition to cinematography. “Alice” walked away with two Oscars, for
art direction and costume.

“In a Better World,” from Danish director Susanne Bier, won the best foreign language prize.

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(c) 2011, Los Angeles Times.

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