Yesterday you probably read some purposefully sensationalist headlines about notorious contrarian self-publicist Armond White making Annette Bening cry at the NYFCC ceremony Monday night. I wasn't going to say anything and I'm not going to link to any of the articles but I'm just going to get two things off the chest.
One, When Annette tears up, be assured that you will feel it. You will find it impossible to be so unmoved as to write snarky misleading headlines about it.
The Bening is All Right
Case in point: Her Majesty's quite awesome and NYFCC award-winning performance in The Kids Are All Right. When she tears up, only non-carbon-based life forms don't feel it.
Her acceptance speech went, according to the Post, something like this.
"Actors are like gardenias-very fragile and sensitive to criticism. Critics feel very vulnerable to criticism as well. We have a symbiotic relationship. We need each other. We need you to write thoughtfully. We need you to keep a close eye on us. We want your approval desperately. That's just in our very nature. We're devastated when we're told we're not good and we're thrilled when we're told we are." She thanked costar Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, who won the Best Supporting Actor honors last night, saying, "Julianne fell in love with Mark onscreen. I fell in love with him offscreen, and my husband knows that because I would go home and talk about Mark."
Given what sounds like a strange evening -- supposedly Darren Aronofsky dissed Armond White and White (who hated Black Swan but then it's a popular film so he's required to) dissed back -- anyone might make a crack about "let's all get along."
Bening, Beatty, Ruffalo and Sunrise Colgney at the NYFCC Event
I've met Darren Aronofsky once myself and though I would never claim to know his personality from one brief exchange he was, in point of fact, joking around with the critics he was talking to (including myself). So I doubt there was true acrimony. I'm guessing it was but friendly barbs and the media reports of the evening are just amping everything up and distorting them.
Anyway... today I am really sour about attention-grabbing assholes. Sensationalist extreme statements and sensationalist headlines and blah blah blah. Everyone falls for it every time and writes about it (OOPS). I'm just hyper sensitive about it today due to Sarah Palin's typically insensitive typically sociopathic typically dangerous response to the Arizona tragedy. BLARGH.
In better news, Kerry Washington was at the NYFCC looking incredibly delicious.
But then, does she ever look any other way? She probably rolls out of bed each morning looking better than 99.9% of the population does after hours in a salon.