Pictured Charlize as Aileen.
Gay was more than Oscar nominee Marcia Harden's middle name last weekend.
Charlize Theron's 'incredible' (her favorite adjective) performance as lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster was one of the few overlaps between the two Hollywoods. She was honored by both the 'haves' at the 76th Academy Awards and the 'have-nots' at the 19th Independent Spirit Awards.
The other dual winners were Sofia Coppola for her Lost in Translation screenplay and Errol Morris for his documentary The Fog of War.
Theron had rightly been considered unbeatable for her physical and emotional transformation into Wuornos, who was executed for killing six men (she admitted to a seventh) in the Daytona Beach area, although some, particularly relatives of her victims, felt the film made the character too sympathetic.
As if striving for gender parity in negative gay images, the Academy honored Tim Robbins as Best Supporting Actor for his Mystic River role as a man who had been raped by a pedophile when he was 11. Instead of making one of his political speeches Robbins urged victims of abuse and violence like his character to seek counseling.
All manner of gay jokes punctuated both ceremonies. Both opened with jokes about the industry's fight against piracy featuring respective hosts John Waters and Billy Crystal. Waters went on far too long and needs direction when he's performing, but it was almost worth it when the subject of his six-minute rant, Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Jack Valenti, made a surprise appearance to 'arrest' Waters. Who knew Valenti had a sense of humor?
While Waters made a bad joke about angry lesbians rioting backstage: 'We're here! We're queer! We want an agent!' Crystal was involved in no less than three gags about same-sex marriages. In one scene of the opening montage that inserted him into nominated films Crystal woke up in bed with Bill Murray exclaiming, 'We're legal in Massachusetts!' Later Robin Williams posed with Crystal and said, 'Look at us—a San Francisco wedding cake.' Finally, the punch line of a bit about beautiful women dreaming of being 'Mrs. Billy Crystal' was a shot of Sir Ben Kingsley imagining himself as 'Sir Mrs. Billy Crystal.'
And speaking of gay marriages, ABC took advantage of their huge audience to plug a March 12 20/20 on which Barbara Walters interviews Kelli Carpenter O'Donnell about life with Rosie.
Coppola, whose film fared better at the Indie Spirit Awards—it also won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Bill Murray)—than the Oscars, seemed as drab and charmless as she had a month earlier at the Golden Globes. But Queer Eye's Carson Kressley was in the audience and may have taken her in hand afterward because Coppola looked much better the next night and carried herself with more poise.
The Spirit Awards honored—at least with nominations—several of 2003's most wonderful films, all of which flew totally or mostly under Oscar's radar: American Splendor, The Station Agent, Pieces of April, Thirteen, Raising Victor Vargas, Better Luck Tomorrow and Gus Van Sant's Elephant. All were too small and too edgy for the Academy.
In the first award at the Spirits Judah Friedlander, playing gay Toby Radloff in American Splendor, lost for Best Supporting Actor to Djimon Hounsou, who played a man dying of AIDS in In America.
The Station Agent won for Best First Screenplay and the John Cassavetes Award for best feature made for $500,000 or less. The dramedy shows how queer it feels to be a dwarf, even a straight one.
Openly gay Marc Shaiman was Music Director for the Oscars. I'm not sure of the status of Music Conductor Harold Wheeler but he has a number of queer credits so I think we can claim him.
Australia's Adam Elliot, an Oscar winner for his animated short Harvie Krumpet, included 'my beautiful boyfriend Dan' in his list of thank-yous. The tribute to those who passed away in the last year included director John Schlesinger and actor Michael Jeter, both gay.
Mention must also be made of the elephant in the room that Gus Van Sant had nothing to do with: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was too big for the Independent Spirit Awards (it probably cost more than all of their nominees combined) but won all 11 of the Oscars for which it was nominated. I had predicted it to win eight so it was responsible for half my correct guesses; 16 of 24 made it a good year for me.
Was it my imagination or were heterosexuals trying to be extra romantic this year at the Oscars? Two winners told mushy stories about the childhood sweethearts they married and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith acted like honeymooners.
The comedy highlight of the Independent Spirit Awards was the banter between Jennifer Aniston and Mike White. White, the son of Soulforce founder Mel White, wrote himself a memorable queer role in Chuck & Buck and also wrote The Good Girl, for which Aniston was nominated last year. When they came up to present the Best Screenplay award White started talking about Aniston losing and wouldn't let it go, twisting the knife hilariously.
That show almost wrapped in its scheduled two-hour timeframe while the Oscars went on for three hours and 45 minutes, most of which was dispensable. Arguably the deadliest portion was when three dirgelike Best Song nominees were sung in a row, broken only by Liv Tyler coming out and putting on her glasses to introduce each song.
It seems unfair that Charlize Theron got her looks back after making Monster, in addition to winning all the awards. By the way, I'm not the lawyer named Steve Warren she kept thanking. (She also thanked her 'leading lady,' Christina Ricci.)
After last weekend a lot of actresses are going to want to play lesbian serial killers, so you women reading this had better get busy and start killing to generate some scripts.
