Producers Guild Wins for Spielberg and Actors Behind the Cameras

Another day, another awards ceremony. Who can keep up?!?

Last night The Producers Guild of America gave their big prize, a transparent glassy gargantuan paperweight, to the man who helped The Artist come into being, Thomas Langmann. One thing that's not being much noted -- since behind the screen forces rarely get attention -- is that Langmann was once a regular presence in front of the camera in France and he's actually the son of director Claude Berri (of Jean de Florette/Manon of the Springs fame!). Of course right at the moment he's best known Stateside as 'that guy who was trying to tell his heartfelt story at the Golden Globes while Uggie was doing his tricks' and distracting the television cameras... as discussed on the most recent podcast. Another actor turned producer, Michael Rapaport was also honored (along with his co-producers) for the documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life.

Finally, Steven Spielberg was honored twice. He got a career-tribute and also won for The Adventures of Tin Tin because in Hollywood they like to re-reward the already abundantly successful people. (Notice how honorary Oscars often go to people who've already won Oscars instead of people who never won! Such a strange impulse. Perhaps it's a bit like paying tithing or making sacrifices to your gods?)

Winners List
Motion Picture The Artist
Motion Picture, Animated The Adventures of Tintin
Motion Picture, Documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life

Brangelina at the PGA. Sans cane!

TV, Long Form Downton Abbey
TV, Drama Boardwalk Empire
TV, Comedy Modern Family
TV, Competition Amazing Race 
(speaking of rewarding the same things over and over again...) 

TV, Non Fiction American Masters
TV, Live Entertainment/Talk The Colbert Report

Tobey and The Bening were among the many big names presenting

Vanguard Award Stan Lee (the award was presented by Spider-Man himself Tobey Maguire)
David O Selznick Award Steven Spielberg 
Stanley Kramer Award Angelina Jolie for In the Land of Blood and Honey.
(For young Oscar obsessives in training out there Stanley Kramer was famous for "message movie" staples like Inherit the Wind, Judgement at Nuremberg, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, and the like)
Milestone Award CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves 

Sunday Breakfast Anyone?

Until Oscar season is over I won't have time for those lengthy "Ask Nathaniel" Q & A columns but I sure do miss 'em. Why not a live chat right here on Sunday morning, 11 AM EST? We tried this for the Critics Choice Awards and it was way too chaotic so I jumped back to traditional live blogging for the Globes. But breakfast should be more suitably conversational.

I'll be eating pancakes -- maybe with funny shapes -- and while I'm doing that you can ask me any question you want about the final Oscar predictions (which I'll have finished by Saturday), current movies, and whatnot. Join the morning fun!

Naked Gold Man: Final Oscar Predictions !

I've never been good at math so predicting this year's Oscar race feels especially challenging. You can tell me that a picture requires 5% of #1 votes or that it's 10% or 406 votes or that you need #2 or #3 placements on 69.3% of ballots with odd #1 choices that weren't already tossed aside... None of it will really sink in. For the first time in well over a decade, I had a flashback to my high school algebra class and how my friends (who were in calculus) kept teasing me about my "polynomials?" confusion.  I hate math!*

But in the end what does it matter? Buzz, also an abstraction, is more fun to play with and closer to the truth for non-mathematicians. Best Picture nominations have long required #1 votes, maybe not in the same configurations but they've always required them. And as Joe recently pointed out on the podcast, we're tricked into thinking too deeply about this each and every year. Who thought Frost/Nixon was the best movie of 2008? Who would ever have voted for Chocolat as the best film of 2000? And yet it happens year in and year out. Focusing too much on #1 votes can cloud this certainty: Any film still being discussed as a possibility this late in the game has a fanbase. The question is just 'is that base big / loyal enough within the Academy to secure it a best picture nomination?'

Mo'Nique reading the Best Picture nominees last year!

What Happens With The Screens Behind the Presenters?
For the first time in modern history we'll have no idea until the names are read whether there will be five, six, seven, eight, nine or ten nominees. In past years when they announced the nominees you'd see the blank boxes where the nominees would be revealed while they read out the names. You knew, for instance, if there would be 3 or 5 animated nominees by how many boxes were there even if you hadn't been paying attention to the number of eligible pictures released.

My current hourly obsession is wondering whether we'll be tipped off to how many pictures there are seconds before we hear the titles...

When we knew there would be ten they simply appeared as they were read but there weren't actually boxes behind the announcers to be filled in as there were in years with five. You follow? So this year if there are, say, 6 nominees will we first see the empty boxes and KNOW there will be six before the names are read? 

PICTURE
If we only had five nominees, this race would be easy to call. Our nominees would be: The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Hugo, and Midnight in Paris. And in that order of likelihood. (My preference order, just as reminder from my year in review, would be The Artist, Midnight in Paris, The Help, Hugo and The Descendants.) I believe the nomination tally hierarchy is going to be Hugo, The Artist, and The Help way out in front of other films. Moneyball would, I think, be the spoiler in a traditional shortlist year. No matter how you feel about those films on an individual basis, as a group that's a pretty beautiful spread of the film year: message movies, family dramas, cinematic novelties, smart comedies and releases stretching from summer to Christmas, from critical triumphs to sleeper hits. It's representative and we like the Oscars that way.

More after the jump...

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Podcast: One Last Golden Globe Gala!

You thought the Golden Globe festivities were over didn't you? Nope. There's one more left. It's time for the Film Experience Golden Globe Podcast. Katey, Nick, Joe and Nathaniel all met up for one last pre-Oscar nomination chat. We still don't agree on the movies but we all love the Globes unironically. It's always such a party for people who love celebrities and movies. We're sad it's over!

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the bottom of the post.

Topics include...

• Crowd shots and nominee closeups.
• Introducing... Katharine McPhee!
• The unintentional eroticism of the DeMille Award
• Leonardo DiCaprio's tipping point.
• Johnny Depp, Original Song and other Unnecessaries
• Seating charts, surprise marriages
• Calista and Harrison... and Harrison's earrings. 
• No sloppy Globe seconds for Oscar.
• Uggie up to his old tricks
• What will happen with The Help at SAG?
• Viola Davis vs. Meryl Streep, the problematic narrative
• Octavia Spencer and David Fincher
• Brad vs. George and Mr CrankyPants Joe Reid
• Goodbyes

We'd love to hear your takes on any of the issues discussed in the comments.
We do a lot of theorizing and questioning!

Giddy for the Globes

Scene Work: Corey Stoll On Ernest Hemingway and Woody Allen

With the SAG Awards fast approaching, Oscar nominations hitting on Tuesday and "Original Screenplay" wins and Best Director nominations piling up for Woody Allen how about a little trip back to Midnight In Paris? Specifically to that magical hour when all of the movie's best moments take place. On the first of Gil's (Owen Wilson) midnight adventures he meets the Fitzgeralds who then introduce him to Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll). This introduction -- Stoll pisses off the Fitzgeralds (on purpose) and then badgers and ingratiates himself with Gil, who is reeling from meeting his hero. It's one of the movie's most memorable scenes and Corey Stoll immediately establishes himself as the film's MVP despite a plethora of famous actors in showy cameos.

If you're a writer, declare yourself the best writer! But you're not as long as I'm around unless you want to put the gloves on and settle it."
-Stoll as Hemingway. 

This introduction was also, not so surprisingly, the rising actor's most satisfying scene to shoot. When I spoke to him in December about that bizarre SAG rule which prevented him from technically being part of the movie's Best Ensemble nomination, we discussed this introduction in particular and his working relationship with comeback kid Woody Allen.

"That's the scene I was most nervous about," the actor recalls about his memorable introduction. He loved how 'commanding and unapologetically self-centered' this fictionalized Heminway was. "It's actually the scene where Woody let me do a number of takes. I think often he just lets actors find it themselves. They either find it immediately or not and he still moves on."

He recounts the speed at which Woody works. He doesn't want the actors to obsess too much on the work and wants to keep things more spontaneous. "With this I lucked out. At a certain point after my final take of the closeup he said 'that's 100% what I was looking for'."

I can't help but register surprise that Allen spoke to him at all. You hear stories. His funny response:

That was the only praise that I heard the entire time! He's not big on ass-kissing."
-Stoll on Woody Allen 

Amusingly enough, Allen's purposeful steering of the actors away from actual biography towards communal fantasies presented a slight obstacle for Stoll after the fact. "I've sort of been asked a lot of questions about Hemingway." When he did a public reading of Hemingway's letters he worried that he'd be "a bit of a fraud" in front of scholars. "I knew the basics of his life," the actor says about the famous author, but that isn't what he used, creatively, for the performance.  "What was most important in this context was having his rhythm and cadence and his use of language be the driving force of the performance. As a reader that's what you get.  That's where I put my energy and attention."

The work paid off and the actors career is on the upswing. "All this attention and praise is really nice," he confesses. "But the role itself is so much more satisfying. Whatever happens, I played Ernest Hemingway in a Woody Allen movie!"

Two Stoll Roles: North Country with Charlize Theron. Intimate Apparel with Viola Davis

Currently Stoll is enjoying running into old co-stars on the awards circuit including Charlize Theron (North Country). His "Intimate Apparel" stage partner Viola Davis is also on the campaign trail this year. Would he like to reprise that for a film? "Any day. Any time. Wonderful experience." He's up for Best Supporting Actor next month at the Spirit Awards and one can't help but pray that he'll be a shock surprise on Oscar Nomination morning this year in the same category.

Before we wrap up, I had to ask him about his role in the upcoming summer blockbuster Bourne Legacy opposite Jeremy Renner, also a former co-star

"Please don't tell me you're playing a villain, " I say sharing with him one of my major movie pet peeves. "They always make bald men villains!"

"I can't tell you anything," Stoll says laughing. "I'm contractually obligated! They weren't specific about how they were going to ruin me but there's nothing to be gained."

Interview Index | Nathaniel's Supporting Actor Ballot