Barbara Bush famously stormed out of the theatre during Silence of the Lambs. "I didn't come to a movie to see people's skin being taken off," she remarked. Fair enough, but I remember thinking Poor woman is so out-of-touch that she doesn't see how freakin' COOL this movie is.
What goes around hath come around.
18 Best Pictures later, I find that I, too, have walked out on the winner. Not that The Hurt Locker offended or surprised me. It was more or less exactly what I expected, only boring. Around the fifth "tense" bomb-defusing scene, I found my mind wandering. When my mind drifted back, it was not kind to Hurt Locker. Jesus fucking christ, this is monotonous. Haven't I already seen this scene three or five times? I realized that I didn't care if the characters blew up. I realized that I didn't know the characters' names. I thought of them in terms of their archetype. That's the Guy Who Might Snap. That's the Trailer Trash. That's the Noble Black Man. That's the Guy On His Last Tour of Duty. I wonder what Dex is doing in her crate right now? Fuck this. I'm bored.
So I left with 20 minutes or so to go.
As much as I'd like to chalk this up to my barbarabushification, I suspect something far less amusing is at work. That Kathryn Bigelow's film would win, and she for Best Director, was a fait accompli ages ago. What a story! The first female director to win those honors! Against her ex-husband, even!
And indeed it is a great story. I just wish it seemed more earned and less ordained by people who very much like to congratulate themselves for setting the trends of proper thought. (Now that's getting the most possible mileage out of their high school diplomas.) Indeed, the collective praise for the film seemingly amounts to little more than "It was directed by a woman."
But maybe, I thought, Maybe I'm just reading too much into this.
And then it came time for the Best Director award. Expecting to see last year's winner, Danny Boyle, be the presenter as custom dictates, I moaned when the most self-congratulatory windbag of them all trotted out instead. Tonight, Barbara Steisand was delighted to tell us, the first woman director might win. (Pause so you can applaud) Or the first black director, which would be delightful too. (Pause so you can applaud) And when she opened the fateful envelope, she didn't merely announce the name. "Well, The Time Is Now," she intoned in bold title caps, thereby ensuring her own place in history as this moment is reshown. And then she announced what we already knew with certainty to such a degree, Steisand and not Boyle was presenting. Barbara Steisand, the Rosa Parks of female directors, slighted for Yentl because of her vagina and not because it sucked bilgewater.
Yentl, that is.
Enjoy your circle-jerk, Academy. You earned it. Me, I'm going to go watch Lost in Translation, by the vastly more deserving Sophia Coppola.
But one question remains: who'd you pay to take your GED test?