Hey, It's Just My Opinion...

August 3, 2008, Copyright Glenn Kenny!

—Can The Dark Knight beat Titanic? And if The Dark Knight beats Titanic, what does that say about Titanic? Or The Dark Knight? Or the rate of infla­tion? Or the entropy of over­seas mar­ket­ing? Or day and date releas­ing, in the­ory and/or prac­tice? Or, finally, and most cru­cially, wankle rotary engines? 

If The Dark Knight is so great, incid­ent­ally, why is George W. Bush’s approv­al rat­ing still hov­er­ing around 30%?

—I heard the news—only 30 weeks till Oscar. Are you excited? Moi, aus­si. But some­times I feel an Odd Man Out (and not in a James Mason way—thank heav­ens!), par­tic­u­larly when I’m not get­ting the lingo. That tres hot Hot Button man David “Yes you did, you invaded” Poland put up a post over the week­end entitled “Oscarbama or the McAdemy Awards” (oh, you kid!) and I have to admit this par­tic­u­lar sen­tence just stopped me dead: 

“On the oth­er hand, cer­tain people who are not on the east side of a cer­tain street that bor­ders Times Square would prob­ably love to get into that battle and put The Old Man in his place in a dir­ect head-to-head battle.”

Can some­body get me a U.N. interpreter—for OSCAR?

Well, maybe—as I’m sure Screamin’ Chuck Stephens would insist—it works bet­ter in con­text. Let’s back up to Poland’s pre­vi­ous sentence:

“And for that mat­ter, Rudin is prob­ably appalled with the idea of an appeal for The Reader being made by invok­ing two lost Oscar-winning film­makers… espe­cially Pollack, for whom Rudin went well out of his way to keep the keep the press at bay as Pollack dealt with his ill­ness and efforts at recovery.”

Nope. Still noth­ing. Other than that some people in Manhattan would like to get into a battle, and thereupon do head-to-head…battle. Who’s “The Old Man,” any­way? Scott Rudin just turned 50, which I under­stand is the new 35 or so. Heck, it bet­ter be—I’ll be that age in about a year myself! And how old is friend David, anyway?

But back to Obamoscar McMania (ha!),later in the column, Poland poses the ques­tion, “Can a light film, like Rachel Getting Married, shock people and emerge amongst a palette of very dark-minded films?” I’m loathe to employ vul­gar­ity here, but my first thought was “Fuck if I know.” Anybody got any ideas? 

—Speaking of Oscar, and of The Dark Knight, Eric P. Lucas writes in the Los Angeles Times that the late Heath Ledger shouldn’t get one for his Joker per­form­ance in Dark Knight, because if he does, mil­lions of kids will emu­late him by get­ting con­flict­ing pre­scrip­tions from mul­tiple doc­tors and then acci­dent­ally mix­ing them in a leth­al com­bin­a­tion. For myself, I only hope that the United States’ health care sys­tem will have advanced enough by the time all these kids reach Ledger’s age that each and every one of them can afford to do this. Lucas also asks: “How many young men pick up a gui­tar to emu­late [Jimi Hendrix], and wind up under a bridge with a bottle of Colt 45 pick­ing out a wobbly solo on a tinny set of strings?” He’s spot-on, as my Brit friends say. You should nev­er aspire to any­thing, ever, lest you wind up under a bridge in Seattle where Eric P. Lucas can tsk at you. But if you do wind up under that bridge, would you con­sider Silver Thunder Malt Liquor rather than Colt 45? It really is the, um, shizzle. 

—Did you know that Tom O’Neil wrote the first “real” books about the Oscars, the Emmys and the Golden Globes, and that they were pub­lished by Viking and Penguin Putnam? And that he is a tire­less research­er who has writ­ten “for the L.A. Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Variety, TV Guide, USA Today, E! Online, Billboard and scores of oth­er top pub­lic­a­tions” and that he is “the per­son most often quoted by the Associated Press and Reuters when award art­icles are writ­ten” and that he “launched the first web­site all about all of the awards” and that that web­site “involved the con­tri­bu­tions of 45 of America’s top journ­al­ists writ­ing for free just because they wanted to be part of it” and that for 20 years he has “appeared fre­quently on TV as an author­ity about all show­biz awards” and that he “can’t think of a TV show or net­work that cov­ers Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys that I haven’t appeared on — and often” and that, aside from that, “over the last 30 days” he’s “appeared as an awards author­ity on Entertainment Tonight, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and CBS’ The Early Show” and that “speak­ing of Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys, he pos­sesses what he believes is “largest private col­lec­tion of his­tor­ic show­biz awards any­where on Earth,” amassed through dec­ades of “care­ful col­lect­ing” and includ­ing “Golden Globes won by Ben-Hur (best film) and Dynasty (best TV show), two of Katharine Hepburn’s Oscar nom­in­a­tions (Suddenly, Last Summer, The Rainmaker) and some of her academy mem­ber­ship cards, the Tony Award for best play (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), the Writers Guild of America Award won by High Noon, etc. — plus lots more, all on view at the Hollywood Museum in the Max Factor Building at 1660 N. Highland Ave., just south of Hollywood Boulevard.”

You didn’t know that? Well, if you didn’t, he would be happy to tell you all about it. He won’t even add “What the fuck have you done lately?” like James McAvoy at the end of Wanted. Well, actu­ally, he will, only without the “fuck.”

But we’ve asked you before, Tom, and we’ll ask you again—have you writ­ten a hit play? 

—Oh wait, I get it! 42 West, the PR firm! Whose offices are on West 42^nd Street, which either bor­ders or actu­ally con­sti­tutes the heart of Times Square. I guess if Poland is going with “bor­ders,” he’s gotta be right. Still, who’s “The Old Man?”