The roar could be heard from blocks away. As stars stepped out of their limousines and press members stuck microphones in their faces, the enthusiasm of thousands of cinephiles crowding Hollywood Boulevard echoed across the red carpet and brought in Hollywood’s biggest night with style. As the likes of nominees Bradley Cooper and Jonah Hill laughed together on the red carpet, dozens of golden statues waited backstage for their future owners to claim them in a haze of winner’s euphoria.
Although each category had its favorites to win, this was one of those rare Oscar years where it was truly anyone’s time to shine. It was difficult to make a call with so many strong films and nominees all reaching for the gold, but somehow voters managed to find a way to do the impossible: actually compare these incomparable films to each other and name a winner.
On one end, you have an outer-space allegory for resilience in the eyes of life and death, and on the other end you have a gripping true-life story of a free man sold into slavery. In a different corner all-together you’ll find a shipping captain put at extraordinary odds to protect his crew and himself from pirates, a group of swindlers looking to make a huge score right under the noses of the FBI, and a man searching for companionship in the world of Siri and smartphones.
Like always, the night started with a bang by naming the year’s best supporting actor. Last year we spoke with Christoph Waltz about his award-winning role in Django Unchained, and this year caught us by surprise when we realized we had already talked to winner Jared Leto during the first press event for Dallas Buyer’s Club earlier this year. He unfortunately had a cold during the press conference, but he seemed to look much better with an Oscar clenched in his hand.
Or, well – y’know – not clenched in his hand. As soon as he met the press backstage, he handed his Oscar down to the reporters in the front row. “Does anybody want to try it out for size?” said Leto. “If anybody wants to fondle it…here…pass it around. If you have the swine flu, please don’t touch it.”
We at Hypable were actually lucky enough to wrap our hands around the (surprisingly heavy) statue. People always talk about how heavy those things are, and it bears repeating here. It’s probably somewhere around twenty pounds. “I think this is the first person to ever give their Oscar away for an orgy in the press room,” said Leto. “My God.”
When security took the Oscar back and placed it at Leto’s feet, he bent down and gave it back to the next row of eager journalists. Breaking every established convention and rule set forth by the Academy, Leto talked to every journalist with familiarity and took the time to chastise the organization’s strict ‘no cameras in the press room’ rule when fellow reporters attempted to take selfies with his award. “You guys want to get the media, let the media do what they do!” said Leto, which was met with a staggering roar of approval from the journalists. “Viva la revolution, baby,” added Leto.
When makeup artists Adruitha Lee and Robin Matthews also took the stage for their incredible work in Dallas Buyer’s Club, we at Hypable asked about their unheard of $250 makeup and hair styling budget. We remarked that such a budget was “insane” and that it “shouldn’t work,” but that they somehow made it happen.
“You know, we really didn’t have any choice,” said Robin Mathews. “Matthew and Jared came to the film so committed and beautiful, and we saw the commitment to the work they were doing. The acting was insane. They were bringing their A-game, and we had to do it for them and Jean-Marc, our director. And so we said, ‘250 bucks, 75 bucks, we’ll do it.'”
For a film that focused so deeply on the physical transformation of AIDS patients, the amount seems ludicrous, but the innovative movie magic makers made it work by stealing corn meal from their mother’s cabinet and going back to the basics of visual film-making.
It’s important to note that they turn off the sound for the awards during the actual winner’s interviews, so although 20 Feet From Stardom producers Morgan Neville and Caitrin Rogers were on stage at the time, an audible joyous gasp jolted the press room when the reporters read Christoph Waltz’s lips and realized that Lupita Nyong’o had just won best supporting actress for her role in 12 Years A Slave.
“I can’t believe this is real life,” said Nyong’o. “I’m really overwhelmed!” She went on to call her brand new Oscar “this golden man” and even “this young man” while remarking that it hadn’t quite sunk in that she was actually holding it. “It’s in my hands, but I haven’t wrapped my mind around it yet,” said Nyong’o. “You hear these people wanting you to win and predicting that you win, but it’s not real until you hear Christoph Waltz say your name.”
Mere few months before the awards, Nyong’o admitted that although she didn’t rule out the award as an impossibility, she didn’t dare expect to actually win it. “You have to allow for the impossible to be possible,” said Nyong’o.
She went on to clarify a few words from her acceptance speech. “[Steve McQueen] really honored a people that have been really unsung for a long time, doing this film,” said Nyong’o. “I feel their spirits have been honored.”
The science fiction survival epic Gravity unsurprisingly picked up just about every technical award (they created technology to make the film possible after all), including both best sound editing and best sound mixing. They revealed the secret behind the film’s tricky “there’s no sound in space” problem: expertly interweaving the film’s natural diagetic sound with the miraculous now-Oscar-winning score.
Skip Lievsay, who was also nominated this year for his sound work on Inside Llewyn Davis, compared Gravity to the musical, saying that in order to be successful, they needed to pay attention to every pitch and every pause. As sound editor Glenn Freemantle says, Gravity is “a ballet with all these things exploding around you.”
Then came the process of shooting the actual film. Since they couldn’t go to space, director Alfonso Cuarón, his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and his team of visual artists had to meticulously plan every aspect of the film before they could shoot even a single frame.
“The important thing was the reverse engineering of the whole process,” said Cuarón, as a key member of the technician staff. “As opposed to a conventional film in which visual effects are a part of the post production, this is a film where editing, visual effects, and cinematography started pretty much two years before we started shooting.”
Making everyone’s office Oscar pool a little bit easier, Frozen was distinguished as the best animated feature, with the oft-covered “Let It Go” claiming the best original song award. Song creators and real-life husband and wife duo, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, took the stage to claim the award, and they were frankly glowing about the attention that the song has garnered.
“The girls and I made something for you, Bobby,” said Anderson-Lopez as she produced a handmade “EGOT” necklace and draped it around her husband’s neck. “It’s made of pasta.”
Revealing the inspiration behind the song, Lopez said, “We have two girls just like Elsa and Ana, and we wanted to write a song that would instill in them that shame and fear shouldn’t stop them from being the amazing people that they are,” said Lopez. They also dropped a hint that Johnathon Groff’s character from the film (you know, the one that sings the song about reindeer) would get a better part in the upcoming Frozen musical on Broadway.
When asked about the overwhelming reception the song has gotten from the public, both of them said that they are just grateful their music has made an impact.
“You don’t really comprehend something like that,” said Anderson-Lopez. “We wrote this song to tell a story, you don’t imagine that it would spread this far. Every single day on my Facebook or on my Twitter, I get some kind of testimonial from somebody who says, ‘This song stopped me from committing suicide,’ or, ‘This song just helped me through the cancer treatment for my kids,’ and that is just so meaningful to us that our song can go and give hugs to people like that.”
12 Years A Slave and Her picked up the best adapted screenplay and best original screenplay awards respectively. Screenwriter John Ridley took a humble approach toward the award for his adaptation, which was based on Solomon Northrop’s original memoir.
“The only thing I would say, is that the praise goes to Solomon,” said Ridley. “I’ll tell you what it means to me. I think of my parents, who simply wouldn’t let me settle for second best. I think of Solomon. To write his memoir in certain parts of the country was a death sentence. So to be able to stand here and adapt that work, I know that ‑‑ I know there are a lot of people who made this opportunity. I’m very proud, I’m very humbled, and I’m very hopeful for the future. I am so thankful to the academy and so many other people who awarded this story, and not just for me, but for Solomon.”
Ridley acknowledged that before he started the project, he didn’t even know Solomon’s name. More than anything, he’s happy that his screenplay has allowed Northrop’s book to be republished and brought to schools across the nation. According to Ripley, it’s important that people spend money to see these kinds of stories since it’s one of the most direct ways to make a change to society.
“Unfortunately, it’s relevant because there are more people in slavery right now than in any other time,” said Ridley. “And as beautiful as this film is, my fear is that people would walk away from it and say, ‘That’s the past, that’s the distance. Thank God that’s not us anymore.’ I hope that people, if they feel anything at all, will think about the world we live in at this moment right now.”
As Spike Jonze accepted Her‘s only win of the night, he talked about what lurks at the core of the film, past all of the technology and sexually voiced operating systems,
“I wanted to write about relationships and intimacy and the challenges of intimacy,” said Jonze. “There’s still loneliness and longing, we have everything we want, but we’re still longing for that connection.”
Jonze also mentioned that he’s reached the point of his career where he feels comfortable writing stories rather than just directing them. He called it a “next stage” of sorts, so it will be exciting to see if his next directing project is also something he wrote himself.
Speaking of directing, Alfonso Cuarón was rewarded for his eight years of groundbreaking work developing Gravity, and within moments of the announcement, Twitter exploded with messages from Mexican fans.
As the first Mexican director to receive an Oscar for directing a feature film, Cuarón spent most of his time onstage delivering accolades to his fellow Mexican film-makers, especially films that haven’t had the luxury of the mainstream exposure that graced Gravity. “I really appreciate and I’m really grateful with all this support that I’ve been feeling from Mexico,” said Cuarón. “But I just ‑‑ I would love if that same support is given to some other films that are coming out of there with Mexican filmmakers, shot in Mexico, and with Mexican subject matters.”
Cate Blanchett (to no one’s surprise) added the best actress award to her collection of accolades for her unforgettable and tragic turn in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. To date, she has garnered 25 different awards (including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA award, a Screen Actor’s Guild Award…probably a Grammy or two) for the role that many are calling “the modern day Blanche Dubois.”
“Roles like this don’t come along very often,” said Blanchett. “It was a real synthesis for me with the long, deep connection I’ve had with the theatre and the intangible connection I’ve had with film. I have to thank Woody Allen, and the script that he wrote provided me that forum to kind of make that synthesis happen.”
Even though she’s been favorited to win for months (not an easy task on a Meryl year), she was sincere in her appreciation for her fellow nominees. “Every year I watch this thing remotely, and every year there are five, six, 10, 12, 20 performances by women that I am gobsmacked by and inspired by.,” said Blanchett. “And you know, it gets whittled down to five ‑‑ is it five of us? And I mean, to be in conversation with those women, you know, by proxy, because we are all crammed together into one category, I mean, that’s the privilege. And the rest is just chocolate.”
Matthew McConaughey scooped up the best actor statue for his mesmerizing portrayal of a resilient cowboy that refuses to quit his freewheeling life after being stricken by the AIDS virus. Even though we had already spoken to the actor about developing the character of Ron Woodroof in our interview with him last year, we couldn’t help but ask him about the McConaissance that we’ve found ourselves in.
“That’s good,” chuckled McConaughey. “McConaissance.” He remembered the term from Sundance, when it started to pick up heat as a “thing.” It’s at its indisputable height right now, though we admitted to Matthew that we didn’t coin the term.
“I took a couple of years off,” said McConaughey. “I didn’t know if it would be two years, I didn’t know if it would be three years, four years. I took some time off to stop doing the things I was doing because I wanted to do something that I felt like I could give an original take on, something that scared the hell out of me. And I started going out, and I started doing work. That started back with, like, Killer Joe, Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike and things like that.”
“I got to be honest with you,” continued Matthew after pointing a long, waggly finger at us. “I’ve been more process-oriented than I ever have been. I’ve been more like, F‑it, go for the experience, Matthew. What’s the personal experience I can get out of this as an actor? I love the daily construction and architecture of making a movie, and when it’s over, being fulfilled in the making of that movie. And what if it rises to somewhere, if it goes straight to DVD, forget it. That was about making the movie. It was a process, you worked with people and went to work and put your head down and did it. Now, the results came in more than ever by just putting my head down and sticking to the process.”
You can watch the whole thing, (and listen to us ask him!) in this video below:
By the end of the night, the breath in the press room was collectively held when Will Smith walked to the podium to announce the best picture. Imagine then, the deafening roar that nearly equaled the noise we heard hours earlier from the movie fans lining Hollywood Boulevard when 12 Years A Slave picked up the most prestigious award of the night. Steve McQueen stepped up to the microphone of the press room and was asked how it feels to be the first black director to win the award. “I’m as cool as a cucumber, obviously. You saw the jump. It’s one of those moments in life that might never happen again, and you’re living it, you’re there, and physicality just takes over,” said McQueen.
“I had to pick up dog poop today,” said Brad Pitt, interrupting the 12 Years A Slave director. “In my bedroom.” Once he got past having to deal with his dog’s fecal issues, he opened up about the film. “I loved this story,” said Pitt. “It’s a real achievement by Mr. McQueen. I think it’s important because it deals with our history. It’s important that we understand our history – not for any kind of guilt – but just to understand who we were so that we can better understand who we are now. And most importantly, who we’re going to be.”
One of the journalists noted that this year marks 75 years since Gone With The Wind won best picture, which casts slavery in a much different light. “The background characters are now in the foreground. Their history, their lives, more than they ever have been before,” said McQueen. “I think people are ready for this narrative. People want to embrace it and accept it to move forward.”
As the night wrapped up and the cries of laughter, surprise, and ecstasy died out, you could almost hear the clock resetting. Just 365 more days until the films, the stars, and roar of the crowd returns to Hollywood Boulevard.
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