Amy Westcott on Her "Black Swan" Costume Snub

Wescott's Nina sketchesGiven my fascination with Costume Design, you'll recall I already named my nominees (which included Amy Westcott and Rodarte for Black Swan) and said a few words about Westcott's own work on Black Swan, I drank up this interview in Clothes on Film with the designer post-Oscar snubbing. And I'm alarmed that I missed it two days ago.

A week or so ago film sites were discussing whether or not it was fair that Rodarte could not be nominated alongside her (everyone assuming that Black Swan would be nominated). Perhaps I was just naive but I didn't realize that ill feelings were brewing behind the scenes. Is life imitating art given the rivalry in the Black Swan plot.

Here's what the talented designer tells Clothes on Film about Rodarte's lack of credit and the interviews and press that followed once the film caught fire.

Clothes on Film, Chris: Are you aware of the controversy surrounding yourself and fashion house Rodarte (the Mulleavy sisters) in the press; that they should be credited alongside you as costume designers?

Amy Westcott: Controversy is too complimentary a word for two people using their considerable self-publicising resources to loudly complain about their credit once they realised how good the film is.

CoF: Do you feel as though you are being vilified for something out of your hands?

Westcott: I was happy for Rodarte’s persistent publicity efforts at first; I’m so proud of the film and anything that brings it to an even wider audience is genuinely welcome. I tried to put aside my ego while being airbrushed from history in all of their interviews, as I’m just not that kind of person anyway. But when articles were planted that attacked me personally as if I had conspired against them I felt nothing but despair and betrayal. I don’t have a publicist working for me, needless to say, and I was asked to stay quiet –“not to engage”, to avoid any bad press towards the film. Unfortunately this seems to have proven detrimental to the perception of my work on Black Swan. I didn’t make the rules that the Guild and the Academy set and I am proud of my professionalism and commitment to my work, so to have my name dragged into such ill-informed gossip is galling and hurtful to say the least.

Sad that things went in that direction. Westcott also talks about how she feels about the snub, working with Aronofksy, whether she'll work with fashion design labels again on a film, and what was hardest to achieve on the visually stunning film. Well worth a read.

I Linked a Man With My Bare Hands

Acidemic recommends some girly gloomy Twilight ancestors. Fascinating.
The Carpetbagger the financial value of the Oscar bump. Interesting but I always find these figures suspect because so many films that get nominated are just starting their runs around Oscar time so it's tough to say WHY people are seeing them exactly and what they would have done financially had they been snubbed.
Shortlist Funny profanity-laced Paul Rudd interview. Is there any other kind?

Q: So, what’s the nastiest, baddest thing you’ve ever done?
A: I killed a man. With my bare hands. And my mind. I hurt him, I really punished him with my bare hands, but I wound up killing him with my mind.

The Beast the 50 Most Loathsome Americans
In Contention Ruffalo finally gets the Oscar nod. An appreciation
The Best Picture Project have you seen this blog? Alyson is watching every Best Picture nominee and writing about them.

One more as you pirouette outta here...

Lipstick Eater interesting piece about Black Swan's text of femininity but more specifically about Natalie Portman's feet. I love this bit.

After she retches, Nina flushes the toilet by stomping on the handle with one foot. This is one of my favorite moments in the movie. Kick-flushing the toilet is such a punk rock gesture, so there is a weird thrill in seeing the stomping foot covered in dirty pink satin rather than black Doc Martens: the pink doesn’t at all dampen the violence of the gesture.

Then there's three paragraphs on her knitted Ugg boots. I kid you not. Bless.

How I Did Prediction-Wise. How 'Bout You?

I'm not much for stats but for what it's worth, here's how I did on my Oscar predictions.

74% (89/120) if you include all categories, including those very few others predict like the short features.
77% (81/105) if you drop the three shorts categories which very few people bother with, thus upping their predictive ratio ;). If you'd like to know how I stack up with other pundits, I'm hearing Kris Tapley edged me out with 84/105 but am I in second place this year? Does anyone know? 81 is a good score. Yay me!
88% (40/45) in "the big eight" director, picture, acting and screenplays

Best Categories: I went 100% in Animated Feature, both Actress categories and Lead Actor -- if I'd only seen Hawkes over Garfield, I would have had an historic 100% in all acting categories --  correctly assuming those Big Hollywood Players raving about Javier Bardem (Ben Affleck & Julia Roberts among them) would do the trick for him. Another category I'm really proud of is Animated Short, which is often difficult to guess and I went 4/5 after viewing clips from all the finalists.

Worst Categories: I totally biffed Makeup (1/3) which is, in my defense, year after year the most baffling category (though I think The Way Back is very deserving and I also nominated it in my own awards). But I'm much much more surprised to have done so poorly on the Sound Categories (3/5 in each). In my defense there this is a very unusual year: for once the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing nominations are not virtual mirror images of each other. In fact, I can't recall a year ever with less overlap. Only two films Inception and True Grit show up in both categories. Usually these categories are 4/5 overlaps. Frustrated that I didn't predict the Angelina actioner Salt since I nominated in my own awards and it was my "alternate" that I nearly went with but in the end I chickend out and just used the Sound guilds nominees, which turned out to be not at all what Oscar's sound branch was thinking ;)

Just Curious: Did anyone predict I AM LOVE for costumes? I'm so thrilled that happened for Antonella Cannarozzi.

Very deserving if I do say so myself.

What are you most proud of from your predictions? Where did you fail most spectacularly?

all Oscar race posts
complete list of nominations

Sad News and My Ballot For Best Costumes

First, the very sad news. If you've been reading the past couple of days you probably saw the "visual category film bitch nominations". While adjusting coding today, to finalize the page, I accidentally somehow  erased the entire page. I've lost four categories worth of published nominees and writeups (animated film, visual effects, makeup, and editing) as well as preliminary stuff that wasn't published. I can't seem to find a cached url that will display it -- i'm not sure it would display now in anyone else's "history" or cached pages?  I am d-e-p-r-e-s-s-e-d. That was probably eight hours of work and there are no extra minutes this time of year. Let this be a lesson to everyone: never keep your files only in one place. I'm not even sure i'll remember what I nominated or wrote. It may take me much longer and post-oscar noms to do this now. I always complete the Film Bitch Awards in the traditional categories before the Oscar nominations but this looks like the year where tradition might finally die. Sniffle. Blotchy tears will short circuit my keyboard now.

But there's no sense in not posting what I'd already written about costumes. But IF you think your computer will display a cached version of the visual nominations page don't click on this new version ;) and try it and email me a pdf or something.

Just for the hell of it, for example's sake, I want to talk about two costumes pictured below (I chose them at random) in the absurd hope that a few of you out there will reveal a previously hidden obsessive love of costume design. I want to create a series devoted to it but I need to know you're out there first.

Amy Westcott and Mary Zophres done good.

What can costumes tell us about characters? Quite a lot. Amy Westcott (Black Swan) and Mary Zophres (True Grit) will probably be Oscar nominated tomorrow, each for the first time, and I've also nominated them. Westcott is undoubtedly benefiting from Rodarte's "Swan Lake" ballet costumes (Rodarte can't be nominated with her due to contractual issues) but her own work is very fine, too. Maybe Westcott wouldn't be nominated without the Rodarte bells and whistles but that says more about the Academy's resistance to contemporary character costuming than about the quality of her work.

The color coding of all of these similarly dark and vaguely possessed women is delicious, just subtle muted variations (blacks, greys, white, pinks, etcetera) since they're distorted reflections of each other. Isn't it perfect with a capital P that Winona Ryder's evening wear on the night she's thrown in the trash heap --  excuse me, retiring --  is basically a big silver "X" . She's a goner.

Over in True Grit Mattie's clothes don't quite fit her (amusing smart choice) and Rooster's look like they desperately need to be laundered but isn't it perfect that LaBoeuf's outfits look so new and fastidious and that they're fringed. His pride takes a beating in the film but he's wearing it, you know? He cares about how he looks.

MY NOMINEES IN COSTUME
alas none of the other visual categories that have vanished like tears in the rain

Would you like to see a recurring series on costume design in 2011?

Follow the Red Carpet Road

Just for kicks -- synchronized kicks while singing "We're Off to See The Wizard" -- I've been casting some of this year's behind the scenes Oscar hopefuls as denizens of the that magical land Over the Rainbow. It's less gay than it sounds, I promise. I blame Hailee Steinfeld's pigtails for the inspiration. It's all her fault.

Find out which character each Best Director candidate plays and help me cast the other players. Read the article at Tribeca Film