It’s 5:15 p.m., just 15 minutes before the start of the 87th annual Academy Awards, and the backstage winner’s interview room is already packed with journalists and gossip.
It’s not hard to see why. For the first time in years, the show doesn’t feature a sure-thing front-runner.
Sure, everyone will have a heart attack if Julianne Moore doesn’t win for her devastating performance in Still Alice, and nobody expects anyone but J.K. Simmons to walk away with Best Supporting Actor for all the good-natured abuse he administered in Whiplash, but the night undoubtedly carries a little more mystery than the average Oscars telecast.
5:20 now, and everyone is readying up for the show to begin on our special backstage feed. These are the last hours before the veil is dropped and we learn the answers to the big questions. Birdman or Boyhood? Eddie Redmayne or Michael Keaton? How in the hell was The LEGO Movie not nominated?
Okay, we may never get an answer to that last one, and readers of this report likely know the answers to those first two questions, but I’m stuck firmly in the past. 5:29 p.m., Pacific Standard Time to be exact.
Oh look! Shut up everybody! The Oscars are starting!
Okay, I’m back. Let me tell you, when you’re crying backstage at the Oscars because Neil Patrick Harris got to you (it happens every time) nobody will offer you their handkerchief.
However, some may be surprised to find that Simmons doesn’t necessarily jive with his character’s questionable methods. “I think there’s much to admire in Fletcher’s passion for art, for, in his case, specifically, jazz music,” said Simmons. “I don’t find much to admire in his pedagogy.”
So what does Simmons consider to be a better way to find your passion? “You know, I read a very romantic book when I was young, when I was in college, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet,” said Simmons. “And I’ve always felt that, you know, if you are in any kind of an artistic, creative endeavor and you feel that there’s something else you could do for a living and be happy, I think you should do something else because you are much more likely to find comfort and happiness. And if you can look deeply within yourself and honestly answer that there is nothing else that will bring you satisfaction, then there’s your answer.”
One of the locks not discussed above was the work done by everyone involved in The Grand Budapest Hotel in order to make it feel so genuinely grand and Budapest-y. Much of Wes Anderson’s vision in his films relies on the precise nature of his production team, so it’s needless to say that he found the right people for the job.
Interestingly enough, all of those presented with awards forwarded their praise to director Wes Anderson. “What shall I say?” said Pinnock. “Wes is extremely meticulous, and he has very definite ideas about production design and set decoration. So, it’s a very, very collaborative thing. He’s involved in everything that we do. Isn’t he?”
The set, costumes, and makeup all contributed towards the same zany, posh, and highly stylized goal, and they succeeded with flying colors, whether those colors were via paint, silk, or eye-shadow.
NEXT: Patricia Arquette continues her brave statement backstage concerning equal rights for women
As we predicted above before it was actually announced (we know, we’re as impressive as Neil Patrick Harris), Patricia Arquette scooped up the Best Supporting Actress award, and she wasn’t afraid to use her win as a platform to speak up for women everywhere, as well as people everywhere, and that focused, progressive attitude extended to the backstage press room.
“It is time for women,” said Arquette. “Equal means equal. And the truth is, the older women get, the less money they make. And it’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don’t ‑‑ one of those Superior Court justices said two years ago in a‑‑ in a law speech at a university, we don’t have equal rights for women in America and we don’t because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women. So, the truth is, even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface, there are huge issues that are applied that really do affect women.”
One of the smaller, yet still important, bouts of the night came with the announcement of the Best Animated Feature award. While some hoped for a How to Train Your Dragon 2 win or even a surprise The LEGO Movie write-in campaign (we’re never letting it go), Big Hero 6 nabbed the top prize.
“Can we finally say that we did feel pressure?” said Hall.
“Because we’ve been saying that we didn’t. But, no, you know, we were all thrilled by the success of Frozen because it’s a little hard for everybody to understand, but we all kind of work on each other’s films. Chris [Williams] actually storyboarded on Frozen and did the voice of Oaken, and we all contributed just like Chris and Jen, the directors of that movie, contributed on this movie, giving us notes and stuff like that. So we all have ownership over everybody’s films.”
“It is such a team at Disney animation right now,” added Roy Conli. “It’s an amazing team that works together on every project. So I looked at it as just an inspiration.”
When asked about the greatest challenge of establishing a Marvel style origin story, Williams responded that it was actually more of a balancing act.
“We’ve all been at Disney, each of us, for about 20 years, and every movie is hard, but they’re hard in their own way,” said Williams. “And I think you’re getting to the heart of what was uniquely difficult about this one which was taking all the disparate elements and bringing them together. And there are two distinct genres we were taking on, a super hero origin story, and a boy and his dog or a boy and his robot story and we had to tell one without making it at the expense of the other.”
According to visual effects artist Paul Franklin, he was able to relate to the film for more than one reason.
“Just to make this film I had to go away from my home for over a year, away from my young children,” said Franklin. “So I felt very much an empathy with the character, with Matthew McConaughey’s character, and that helped inform everything you do, particularly in the end sequence of the film where we’re trying to maintain the emotional intensity while also providing a spectacular result.”
But then again, it was more than just backdrop. They were actually able to be there on set to put the actors into the actual scenic environment of the film in order to avoid the dreaded Phantom Menace effect, according to visual effects artist Paul Franklin.
“What we were able to do is we were able to bring that visual reality onto the set,” said Franklin.
“We used live in‑camera projection. Whenever you’re looking out of a spacecraft window, you’re seeing what the actors actually saw on the set. So we weren’t using green screen, we were doing it live. And our sets were more like simulators than regular sets, and so that level of photographic reality informed everything that we did.”
Beyond that, they ended up consulting with a higher power in order to correctly illustrate some of the more majestic wonders of the universe.
“This time we had the access to the amazing skills of Kip, who is one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists,” said Paul Franklin. “And he gave us the maths, the physics which describes the universe and how these extraordinary things would actually look if you were able to go and see them.”
NEXT: We talk to ‘Whiplash’ film editor Tom Cross, ‘Birdman’ cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and Graham Moore, screenwriter for ‘The Imitation Game’
Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has essentially become the Meryl Streep of cinematography at this point after winning the award twice in a row, was happy to reveal his initial thoughts about the one-shot nature of the film.
Clearly, he has changed his mind since then. “When he brought the script and talked about the characters and why it had to be one shot, he‑‑ you know, he captivated me, and I truly wanted to do the movie,” said Lubezki. “And it was really, really complex, very hard. We had to‑‑ you know, there’s no book that says how do it.”
By far one of the strongest films of last year was the hyper intense and physically impactful Whiplash. We at Hypable were lucky enough to ask the Academy Award winning film editor, Tom Cross, what he did to generate the natural energy that propels you through Whiplash‘s twisted story.
Indeed, many reviews of Whiplash praised Cross specifically for his sharp eye and his masterful precision. He also revealed a technique that the film’s director, Damien Chazelle, specifically asked him to use to make the film’s most intense scenes really stand out.
“He wanted the other scenes with other characters to have a different editing style,” said Cross. “So the scenes with Andrew and his girlfriend, played by Melissa Benoist, he wanted those to play the opposite. He wanted those to be gentle and‑‑ and romantic; and in that way they’re very traditional. They’re not cutting. And the same to a certain extent with the scenes with his father, Paul Reiser. He wanted those to play at a different pace. And I think that was a brilliant choice on his part, because it enhances the faster paced and more violent cutting that happens in other scenes.”
Graham Moore, who accepted the Best Adapted Screenplay award for his work on The Imitation Game had one of the most touching and meaningful speeches of the night, and when commended for it in the backstage press room, he expanded on why he said what he said.
Moore was already an expert on Turing long before he was hired for the job writing The Imitation Game. Since he was a teenager, in fact. With so few gay historical icons being taught in classrooms, Moore stresses the importance of having role models like Turing that everyone can look up to for their incredible contributions to society.
“When you’re approaching a story of this magnitude and you’re approaching a life and a person as unique as Alan Turing, there’s this tremendous responsibility on your shoulders and I felt a tremendous responsibility on my shoulders to tell his story fairly and accurately and responsibly,” said Moore.
“Alan is someone who was so mistreated by history. He is someone who, as a gay man, was persecuted by the government on whose existence he provided for. And, as such, I always felt like he needed a film that spread his legacy, that celebrated it and brought it to a new audience of people who might not otherwise have been exposed to this man because history had treated him so poorly.”
NEXT: We talk to Eddie Redmayne about his amazing Oscar win, and Julianne Moore discusses her two award worthy roles of last year
Although many Oscar scientists had Redmayne’s name picked for the top award for days (something about him winning the SAG award and, you know, almost every other award as well), it still came as a shock to the press room when his name was announced instead of Birdman star Michael Keaton.
An audible gasp echoed across the room, and by the time Redmayne got to the stage, you could tell that he was still gobsmacked by the win.
We were one of the lucky few able to speak to Redmayne directly after his win, and we asked him about a story that he told us months ago concerning how he was able to work Stephen’s physical degeneration into his muscle memory so that he wouldn’t have to worry about spending too much brain capacity on his physical movement.
You can watch Redmayne explain it himself below:
“When I was approaching the film, we knew we weren’t going to be able to shoot chronologically,” said Redmayne, much to the shock of most of the people listening. “So we were going to have to jump into different stages in Stephen’s life and within the same day. And so I didn’t want for Stephen‑‑ the illness was of very little interest to him after he was diagnosed. He’s someone that lives forward and lives passionately. And so, similarly, I didn’t want the film to be about the physicality. So I wanted to have the physicality so embedded in me that we could play the human story, the love story. And so I went to the ALS clinics in London for about four months with a choreographer, wonderful Alex Reynolds, and she helped to sort of train my muscles to sustain those positions for long periods of time.”
Funnily enough, she had already received the top award at Cannes earlier last year for David Cronenberg’s incredible new film, Map to the Stars. How often does an actor win the top award at two different awards shows for two very different roles? Not often enough to make it seem real to Julianne Moore.
“You know, I was so lucky to get these great parts, and so close together,” said Moore. “I didn’t really think much about it except that I was fortunate to get to kind of explore these really interesting characters. But I never imagined this. I certainly never imagined that I would win Cannes in the spring and then kind of follow it up with an Oscar for another film. So that’s just‑‑ it’s beyond. I keep saying this to my publicist who is over there. I’m like, ‘is this happening? Can this be happening?’ It’s pretty crazy.”
NEXT: We talk to ‘Birdman’ director Alejandro G. Iñárritu about his decision to shoot the Best Picture winner in one take
The top two awards of the night were the most anticipated this year, as they represented what many Oscar experts identified as “the big reveal” of the night. Would Richard Linklater be honored for his 12 year effort towards artistry? Did Alejandro G. Iñárritu strike gold by digging so close to the vein of America’s love affair with film and superheroes?
Birdman: Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance nabbed both the Best Director and the Best Picture award, and we can’t wait to tell you that we were actually able to talk with Iñárritu about what informed his decision to conceive this masterpiece as an “all-in-one-take” film.
Sure, the film isn’t truly in one take, but that isn’t what matters according to Iñárritu.
Watch him respond to our question in the video below!
“You know, it’s‑‑ it’s funny. There has been a lot of discussion about this, you know. When you present a film with a strong formal approach, you will have, obviously, strong reactions. People have been sometimes reacting against it or, obviously, accept it passionately. I think, you know, my own intention was not to‑‑ to flash or to impress anybody. I‑‑ I really always thought that the subtlety of the way we did it, it was basically my intention. Maybe I fail. But for me, my intention was that nobody should notice this, that nobody should say, “Oh, my God.” I‑‑ I just wanted that the people can‑‑ got caught in the‑‑ in the emotional journey of this guy three days before opening a show where everything was falling apart without any‑‑ with a‑‑ in a restless kind of journey; and‑‑ and I thought that without cuts, I will not distract people by this kind of conventional juxtaposition of spaces, and places, and time but just to live in that conscience that is talking to him all the time. So I always want this to be a storytelling, you know, device, something that was more related to that and not the technicality of it. You know what I mean? So, anyway, people sometimes felt in a way, you know, affected by it in a bad way, but the intention is just a narrative tool.”
The real highlight of Iñárritu’s time on stage however, came in the form of his bite-sized words of wisdom. When responding to how the win would affect his career, he expertly responded back with “I don’t have a career. I have a life!” He also came up with one of the best euphemisms for fear that we have ever heard.
“Fear is the condom of life, you know,” said Iñárritu. “It doesn’t allow you to enjoy things.” We don’t think the director was necessarily decrying prophylactic care, but it’s an incredible sentiment either way.
Oh, and about that unfortunately placed green card gag that Sean Penn fired off at the podium? Iñárritu loved it.
According to the director, Penn and he became good friends on the set of 21 Grams, so the ribbing was well received between friends. With so many efforts to make the night a progressive event, however, it did come off a little strange, especially to people who didn’t understand their relationship. Iñárritu had a few words of his own about the response the joke would eventually receive, before concluding that if we focus too hard on our differences, it can stop us from connecting as humans.
“I don’t know how many nationalities are in this room, but I don’t feel different to anybody of you here,” said Iñárritu. “You know, it can be from any continent, from any language. I don’t care. So I as an artist, as a human, as a filmmaker, I‑‑ I cannot have these stupid borders, flags, and passports. Those are a concept that were invented by a human society. But, honestly, naked, in tighty‑whities we will be the same. And I‑‑ I have never felt that different. So for me to make films in United States, or in Africa, or in Spain, or in Mexico, I’m talking about human beings and emotions. And‑‑ and I think that’s the beauty of art. Art doesn’t have those stiff ideological borders that fuck the world so much.”
Much like how it was impossible for Neil Patrick Harris to actually predict this year’s Oscar winners, nobody could have guessed that a night that usually sees millionaires handing each other trophies would turn into a night that was really about something much more. This ceremony is known for casting its light on only one group of people in particular (“the best and the whitest” according to Neil Patrick Harris), so it was refreshing to see an Oscars broadcast that made itself about more than just golden statues and dazzling gowns.
It was a night dedicated to the moving pictures and the people that make them happen, no matter who they are, where they were born, the color of their skin, their sexual identity, or their gender. Some may decry the telecast for being “overly political,” or voice the very valid opinion that the nominations weren’t very diverse in the first place, but it’s important to remember that “politics” didn’t win any awards tonight. People won.