Tony Awards 2017: Key Moments, Interesting Stats, Winners List

by Nathaniel R

Last night the American theater community, and a boat load of adjacent stars (hello Tina Fey & Scarlett Johansson) celebrated Broadway triumphs at the 71st Annual Tony Awards. As expected the revival of Hello Dolly and Dear Evan Hansen owned the evening with 4 and 6 wins respectively. Composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are now halfway to the EGOT in less than half a year having picked up the Oscar for Best Original song for La La Land back in February. But the peak of the evening was Bette Midler's very funny, quite enthusiastic and extremely long acceptance for Best Actress in a Musical (the biggest lock of the evening going in). It's the first time I can recall a performer ignoring the orchestra trying to play her off so insistently that they finally gave up. Her speech had a whole and even better second act as if the orchestra's interruption was just a particularly noisy intermission! 

Kevin Spacey began his hosting job with a very strange and anxiety ridden number about competing with the memories of Tony hosts like Neil Patrick Harris, James Corden, and Hugh Jackman...

Whoopi Goldberg made a cameo with an "in the closet" joke, which played very strangely given that she was standing right next to a man who's famously been inside one his whole career. For his part, Spacey relied heavily on his rather amazing if also dated impersonation skills trotting out his super Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton mimicry for mini-skits within the show. He also leaned into his past and present personal career peaks with American Beauty, Usual Suspects, and House of Cards jokes and cast reunions.  But, alas, not a host for the ages even though he seemed like a smart choice on paper.

Glenn Close presented Bette Midler her Best Actress prize

Backstage before commercial breaks Crazy Ex Girlfriend's Rachel Bloom brought the theater nerd funny and maybe she should host in the future! More after the jump including a complete list of winners...

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Wish You Were Linked

Pajiba on the staggering popularity of Adam Sandler movies on Netflix
EW super cute unseen photos from the production of La La Land (it's on DVD very soon)
THR a Richard Gere profile on the new indie phase of his career and why he isn't in the big studio pictures anymore
i09 a tour of Marvel Studios with peeks at all six movies in various stages of production
The Guardian on the making of the wonderful British comedy Wish You Were Here (1987) for its 30th anniversary. God, Emily Lloyd was sensational in that. Remember her? The '87 Oscar Actress lineup was special but I still missed her there.

Tracking Board Bill Condon who did the James Whale biopic Gods and Monsters is in talks to direct Universal's remake of Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. Shouldn't he feel queasy about this as a fan? 
Awards Daily on the TV Drama Series Actress race. Will it be Claire Foy, Keri Russell, or...? 
Variety Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will feature five, yes five post-credit scenes. Are we really still counting these in the running time? It's probably time to acknowledge them for what they are: commercials. 
The Guardian they're still planning a sequel to Labyrinth (1986)? What is the point? (sigh) 
Coming Soon. Is King Kong in the public domain all of a sudden or something. Hot on the heels of Kong Skull Island there's an unrelated TV series in the works on the big ape and his home island
Coming Soon Taraji P Henson is now trying her hand as an action lead. Proud Mary about a hitwoman with a job gone wrong is now filming 

Theatahhh People
Theater Mania Tony/Oscar winner Kevin Spacey will host the Tony Awards, claiming he was "their 15th choice"
Playbill Sutton Foster is a new mom!
Playbill The complete cast recording of Groundhog Day starring Andy Karl (Rocky, Twentieth Century). He's headed for another Tony nod for sure. I attended opening night and he was terrific. I wish I got invited to more opening nights because it was jampacked w/ celebs: Anna Wintour, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kate Burton, Hope Davis, lots of people I half recognized (as my friend StinkyLulu who I went with would say "30% famous")... and in my row Christian Slater! 
Broadway Blog If you're near St Louis, you should check out The Tennessee Williams Festival May 3rd-7th. It sounds amazing 

Double Winners & Chart Updates

No Oscar Trivia today. Unless you count all the stuff that's on the Oscar pages. The major category charts have been updated with our popular "how'd they get nominated?" speculation, chosen preferred Oscar clips, and other sorts of trivia. Every acting chart plus Picture and Director are update! Woooo

Thoughts? Comments? Feelings? Nonsense? Opinions? Do share. (Note: The final predictions full article will go up tomorrow but you can see a sneak peek of the predictions on the chart index.)

Okay fine, fine. You have to have your daily trivia don't you? As if the charts aren't enough! You're so greedy, sometimes, I swear. After the jump the six double winning actors who are two for two in that they won both times they were nominated, never losing an official Oscar race. (Obviously they lost out on nominations over the years but that's a different thing and everyone does. Even Streep)

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They Ain't Nothin' But Two Hound-dogs

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason on 'Elvis & Nixon.'

We get a "Thank you, thank you very much" fairly early into Elvis & Nixon, the new comic bio-pic detailing that legendarily bizarre photograph of the musician and the politician shaking hands in 1970, and that tips the movie's hat toward its will to please - this is a genial little thing, a bejeweled trifle, that leaves these two men's storm-clouds mostly off-screen at the horizon, opting instead for a light-hearted clash of Fame and Power and the Great Men who wield either/or. At times the Jack Benny score wouldn't feel out of place.

Not that not taking itself overly serious is a demerit by any means - Michael Shannon is The King of taking himself awfully seriously, so it's a relief to see him relax here under a different crown. He never really looks the part, but then everybody looks the part enough when you slap enough Presley paraphernalia on them (there's a wry little scene where Elvis meets an Elvis impersonator at the airport that messes with these notions of identity and self) - so Shannon under-plays and amuses through that under-play, allowing everybody around him to fill in the gaps. His Elvis is one who knows what a change in temperature his very presence causes upon entering a room, so why work so hard? Everybody will remember what they remember, regardless of what he does or doesn't do.

Kevin Spacey too tries to turn Tricky Dick into a goof, but that's a taller order (Dan Hedaya did the best job I've seen in the movie Dick, by leaning hard into Nixon's oversized assholishness) and he's given less to work with than Shannon - the film's clearly more interested in its Graceland cast of characters then the White House suits; unless I'm forgetting something I don't think we ever see Spacey outside of the Oval Office? 

Anyway once the fateful meeting finally comes to pass, the movie screeches to a halt in the best sense - indeed I think it would've been a better movie had it found a way to slow time to such a standstill that it extended these scenes out for even more of its run-time. We never much care about anything else that the script tries to make us care about, but there's real burning love between its two main attractions.

Grade: B-

Thoughts I Had While Staring at this Elvis & Nixon Poster

Manuel here. Maybe it’s the whole “grass is always greener” thing, but I’ve always loved the UK quad posters. That’s certainly the case with this one for the upcoming comedy/drama Elvis & Nixon. If the title hasn’t clued you in, the film is about the random one time meeting between the King and the President which led to one of the most famous photographs in American history. You may have seen the trailer for this Liza Johnson film and here are 5 thoughts had while staring at this playful poster...

1. Spacey as Nixon makes sense to me but that Shannon as Elvis is some left field casting, no? He does brooding and complex and crazy and worried aren't you curious about how he'll fare here. (Also, unplanned, but I just realized Shannon made TFE's latest banner up top!)

2. This 60s sketch comedy design seems much better tailored for the film than the more serious-minded US poster. (I mean, you don’t cast Johnny Knoxville if you’re going for straight drama.)

3. So much hand-acting in this poster! Then again, both outsized icons are known for their all too often parodied mannerisms. (Can this really move beyond an SNL skit?)

4. Nixon lends himself so easily to crazy comedy (Yes, I’m talking about Dick)

5. Who do you think Spacey called up first for tips on playing Nixon: John Cusack (Lee Daniels’ The Butler), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) or Anthony Hopkins (Nixon)? I hope he talked to Dan Aykroyd, actually

Elvis & Nixon opens in theaters on April 22nd, so you have until then to convince yourself that maybe the cheeky tone and bonkers casting means the film has a peculiar sense of humor worth indulging.