Some of Oscar night’s odd moments explored

0

LOS ANGELES
— The Academy Awards are over: The statuettes have all been handed out,
the red carpet’s been rolled up, the sparkling gowns returned — or not.
So it would seem there’s no more suspense surrounding the Oscars …
and yet, there are still some moments lingering from Sunday’s telecast
that have viewers confused.

There was the point, now dubbed the “Kanye West”
moment, when infighting among filmmakers was apparent during an
acceptance speech. Then there was Sean Penn, mumbling
something about Oscar night omissions. Consider the unexplained sign
held up by one of “The Cove” documentary stars just as the camera
hurriedly cut away. And how about the quick mention of a winner’s
life-threatening illness and Tom Hanks’ rush to name the best picture?

Oh, but the night was full of such questions. Did George Clooney really once throw Sandra Bullock into a pool? And why was Clooney looking so surly?

As for Bullock’s unplanned dip, all involved
remained virtually mum. “You might want to ask George about that. See
how much information he’ll give because it is funny to everyone else
but me,” Bullock said, smiling backstage Sunday evening.

And while there was no admission of guilt, the “Up
in the Air” actor did cop to a certain poolside antsiness around the
newly anointed lead actress winner. “Sandy and I have been friends for
25 years,” Clooney said through his publicist Monday, “and I do stay
away from pools when she walks by.” A fear of retaliation perhaps?

And the scowl, what about that?

“He and Alec (Baldwin) and Steve (Martin) were making pre-arranged grimacing faces at each other. All planned,” just to be funny, Clooney’s representative, Stan Rosenfield, assured in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, the filmmakers behind “Music by
Prudence,” the best documentary short winner, declined to elaborate on
exactly what was happening on stage as co-producer Elinor Burkett seemed to steal the mike away from director-producer Roger Ross Williams during their acceptance speech.

On Sunday, Burkett told Salon.com that she and
Williams had recently settled a lawsuit over the film and had not
decided who would accept the award. She told the Web site that when she
went up to accept the Oscar, Williams’ mother blocked her with a cane.
On Monday, Burkett was unavailable for comment, though she will be
appearing on Joy Behar’s HLN show Tuesday evening.

Williams, who finished his speech on Monday’s “Larry
King Live,” declined to discuss the issue further. “What I’m gonna do
is I’m not gonna talk about it, actually,” he said. “As far as the back
and forth, I’m really not gonna get into that. It’s over. It’s about
the movie.”

In one of the evening’s more emotional speeches, production designer Robert Stromberg,
who took home the prize for “Avatar’s” art direction, referenced
overcoming a deadly illness more than a decade ago but did not disclose
what he had suffered from. When asked about it backstage, Stromberg
said, “It was a bout with something that was ready to kill me and it
was really bad.” It was a “personal experience,” he said, something so
private he had not even discussed it with his fellow film crew members.
He was unavailable to discuss it further Monday.

Another unusual moment during the show occurred when environmental activist Ric O’Barry held up a sign on stage while someone was accepting the feature
documentary award for “The Cove,” a film about the dolphin harvest in Japan. Viewers hardly had a chance to read the sign before the camera panned away, leading many to wonder what its message was.

“It was a number to text where people can go to take
action for the dolphins,” O’Barry said. “It’s not a protest sign, and I
didn’t mean to be disruptive, but there were a billion people watching.
As soon as I held it up, they started playing the exit music.”

Already more than 50,000 people have sent in text messages of support, O’Barry said.

Later on in the show, Sean Penn,
the lead actor winner last year for his portrayal of Harvey Milk in
“Milk,” took the stage to present the award for lead actress and
delivered instead one of the telecast’s most perplexing moments.

“I never became an official member of the academy,
but the academy and I do have in common that we neglected to
acknowledge the same actress in our own ways two years running,” he
said, clearly not reading from the teleprompter. “So, I’m going to
start fresh with the academy and acknowledge these wonderful
actresses,” he said and then read the nominees’ names.

So what actress was he referring to? That would be
his estranged wife, surmises his publicist. “It would be a reasonable
assumption to say he was referring to Robin Wright, because he didn’t thank her last year in his acceptance speech,” e-mailed Penn’s representative Mara Buxbaum, and he was likely making a statement that “the academy failed to nominate her this year for ‘The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.’ “

As for Hanks’ rush to announce the best picture
winner, an explanation came via tweet from Hanks himself Monday
morning: “OscarShow Flash — Nope, I didn’t hurry the Best Pic bit,” he
tweeted. “That’s how it was planned and rehearsed from the get go.”

(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.

Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.