Q: What's the difference between the Oscars and the GLAAD Awards this year? A: The queers in the audience at the GLAAD Awards will be out.
Not only is that question frivolous but the answer is less correct than ever. The point is that there is considerable correlation between the two lists of nominees.
Five of the 13 features with multiple Academy Award nominations have significant queer content and/or gay directors, and half of the nominees for Best Director are gay. (Stephen Daldry counts as a half because the once openly gay director is now married to a woman.)
Daldry's The Hours is third on the most-nominated list with nine, including acting nods for Ed Harris' portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS, Julianne Moore as a woman who may be seen as a latent lesbian and Nicole Kidman as bisexual author Virginia Woolf. Also nominated is (straight) David Hare's screenplay based on the novel by (gay) Michael Cunningham.
Moore is also nominated in the lead actress category (her performance in The Hours was submitted as supporting so she wouldn't compete with herself, even though her role was equal to those of co-stars Kidman and Meryl Streep) for Far from Heaven. She plays a woman who, in the late 1950s, discovers her husband (Dennis Quaid, surprisingly snubbed for Best Supporting Actor) is gay. Gay Todd Haynes was nominated for his writing but not his direction.
Haynes seemed a shoo-in for both when Far from Heaven was released in early November but release schedules were skewed so that the idea of December releases having the best chance of nomination became a self-fulfilling prophecy. All five Best Picture nominees opened in December, some only in Los Angeles and New York, and of the films with six or more nominations, the only ones released before December were Road to Perdition (July 12) and Frida (Oct. 25).
Frida star Salma Hayek got a Best Actress nomination for playing bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in the film she worked tirelessly for years to get made and equally hard to promote. Bisexual Brazilian Caetano Veloso duets on Frida's Best Song nominee, 'Burn It Blue.'
Todd Haynes was one of three gay directors inspired by Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Spain's Pedro Almodovar, showing less of that influence than in many of his previous films, was nominated for both his writing and direction of Talk to Her (Hable con ella), even though the film wasn't submitted by Spain for the Best Foreign Language Film award. (The one that was didn't get nominated.) France's Francois Ozon was submitted but failed to score a nomination for his sublime musical murder mystery 8 Women, while Mexico's mediocre entry, El crimen del Padre Amaro was nominated.
The film Mexico should have submitted, Y tu mama tambien, is competing with Almodovar and Haynes for Best Original Screenplay. Its homoerotic undercurrent and climactic male-male kiss were enough to earn it a GLAAD nomination as well.
Ian McKellen, with a much smaller role in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers than he had in The Fellowship of the Ring, wasn't nominated this year but may have a good shot next year when The Return of the King is already being predicted to scoop up awards for the entire trilogy (and Frodo and Sam are expected to consummate their relationship—not!).
The Great Straight Hope at the 75th Academy Awards is Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, which came in second with 10 nominations.
Last but most, the film with the most momentum as of this writing as well as the most nominations (13) is Chicago. There's not much gay-specific content—nominee Queen Latifah's prison matron, Mama Morton was more of a dyke in the stage version—but director Rob Marshall (nominated), screenwriter Bill (Gods and Monsters) Condon (nominated) and executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are all gay; and it's a musical. The song 'I Move On,' by gay duo John Kander and Fred Ebb, also is up for an award.
At the 1973 Academy Awards a gangster movie and a musical were tied with 10 nominations each. The Godfather only won three but one of them was Best Picture, while Cabaret won eight, including Best Director. A Gangs/Chicago split would likely go the other way, with Scorsese winning more for his past work than the current film, which most critics agree is far from his best.
Whatever happens, we'll be watching on March 23 and paying special attention to whom the winners kiss when their names are announced and whom they thank in their acceptance speeches.
Other notable gay filmmakers nominated include Scott Rudin (Best Picture, The Hours) and Dean DeBlois (Best Animated Film, Lilo & Stitch). A Best Foreign Film nomination went to the Dutch gay-themed comedy Zus & Zo.
And in an interesting choice, a best documentary feature nomination went to Bowling for Columbine.
INFO: www.oscar.com, www.glaad.org .
