I am relocating my awards coverage to ScottFeinberg.com — an address that should be much easier to remember, and a much more polished site. I hope you’ll update your bookmarks and visit often!

Thanks, and see you at ScottFeinberg.com!

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BEST PICTURE
Frontrunners
“The Fighter” (Paramount, 12/10)
“True Grit” (Paramount, 12/25)
“Love and Other Drugs” (20th Century Fox, 11/24)
“Another Year” (Sony Pictures Classics, 12/?)
“Inception” (Warner Brothers, 7/16)
“127 Hours” (Fox Searchlight, TBA)
“The Social Network” (Columbia, 10/1)
“Somewhere” (Focus Features, 12/22)
“The Tree of Life” (Apparition, TBD)
“The King’s Speech” (The Weinstein Company, 11/26)
Major Threats
“Toy Story 3” (Disney, 6/18)
“The Kids Are All Right” (Focus Features, 7/9)
“Conviction” (Fox Searchlight, 10/15)
“Hereafter” (Warner Brothers, 10/22)
“Secretariat” (Disney, 10/8)
Possibilities
“Black Swan” (Fox Searchlight, TBD)
“Blue Valentine” (The Weinstein Company, 12/31)
“Fair Game” (Summit, TBD)
“Eat Pray Love” (Columbia, 8/13)
“Never Let Me Go” (Fox Searchlight, 10/1)
“Winter’s Bone” (Roadside Attractions, 6/11)
“Morning Glory” (Paramount, 11/12)
Outside Shots
“How to Train Your Dragon” (Paramount, 3/26)
“Get Low” (Sony Pictures Classics, 7/30)
“The American” (Focus Features, 9/1)
“The Next Three Days” (Lionsgate, 11/19)
“Everything You’ve Got” (Columbia, 12/17)
“Mother and Child” (Sony Pictures Classics, 5/7)
“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (20th Century Fox, 9/24)
Not Happening
“Shutter Island” (Paramount, 2/19)
“Robin Hood” (Universal, 5/14)
“Green Zone” (Universal, 3/12)
“Greenberg” (Focus Features, 3/19)
Still Seeking Domestic Distribution
“Biutiful”
“The Conspirator”
“London Boulevard”
“The Way Back”

BEST DIRECTOR
Frontrunners
David O. Russell (“The Fighter”)
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (“True Grit”)
Edward Zwick (“Love and Other Drugs”)
Mike Leigh (“Another Year”)
Christopher Nolan (“Inception”)
Danny Boyle (“127 Hours”)
David Fincher (“The Social Network”)
Sofia Coppola (“Somewhere”)
Terence Malick (“The Tree of Life”)
Major Threats
Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”)
Lee Unkrich (“Toy Story 3”)
Clint Eastwood (“Hereafter”)
Lisa Cholodenko (“The Kids Are All Right”)
Tony Goldwyn (“Conviction”)
Randall Wallace (“Secretariat”)
Possibilities
Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”)
Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”)
Doug Liman (“Fair Game”)
Ryan Murphy (“Eat Pray Love”)
Mark Romanek (“Never Let Me Go”)
Debra Granik (“Winter’s Bone”)
Roger Michell (“Morning Glory”)
Outside Shots
Dean Deblois, Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon”)
Aaron Schneider (“Get Low”)
Anton Corbijn (“The American”)
Paul Haggis (“The Next Three Days”)
James L. Brooks (“Everything You’ve Got”)
Rodrigo Garcia (“Mother and Child”)
Oliver Stone (“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”)
Not Happening
Martin Scorsese (“Shutter Island”)
Ridley Scott (“Robin Hood”)
Paul Greengrass (“Green Zone”)
Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg”)
Still Seeking Domestic Distribution
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Biutiful”)
Robert Redford (“The Conspirator”)
William Monahan (“London Boulevard”)
Peter Weir (“The Way Back”)

BEST ACTOR
Frontrunners
Mark Wahlberg (“The Fighter”)
Jake Gyllenhaal (“Love and Other Drugs”)
Ryan Gosling (“Blue Valentine”)
Jeff Bridges (“True Grit”)
Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech”)
Leonardo DiCaprio (“Inception”)
Sean Penn (“The Tree of Life”)
James Franco (“127 Hours”)
Major Threats
Stephen Dorff (“Somewhere”)
Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network”)
Jim Broadbent (“Another Year”)
Matt Damon (“Hereafter”)
Possibilities
Robert Duvall (“Get Low”)
Andy Serkis (“Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”)
Sean Penn (“Fair Game”)
Jack Nicholson (“Everything You’ve Got”)
Outside Shots
Harrison Ford (“Morning Glory”)
George Clooney (“The American”)
Kevin Spacey (“Casino Jack”)
Michael Douglas (“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”)
Russell Crowe (“The Next Three Days”)
Not Happening
Michael Douglas (“Solitary Man”)
Russell Crowe (“Robin Hood”)
Matt Damon (“Green Zone”)
Ben Stiller (“Greenberg”)
Still Seeking Domestic Distribution
Javier Bardem (“Biutiful”)
Colin Farrell (“London Boulevard”)
Jim Sturgess (“The Way Back”)

BEST ACTRESS
Frontrunners
Anne Hathaway (“Love and Other Drugs”)
Annette Bening (“The Kids Are All Right”)
Lesley Manville (“Another Year”)
Michelle Williams (“Blue Valentine”)
Hilary Swank (“Conviction”)
Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”)
Carey Mulligan (“Never Let Me Go”)
Diane Lane (“Secretariat”)
Major Threats
Naomi Watts (“Fair Game”)
Julia Roberts (“Eat Pray Love”)
Helena Bonham Carter (“The King’s Speech”)
Julianne Moore (“The Kids Are All Right”)
Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”)
Nicole Kidman (“Rabbit Hole”)
Possibilities
Jennifer Connelly (“What’s Wrong with Virginia?”)
Diane Keaton (“Morning Glory”)
Reese Witherspoon (“Everything You’ve Got”)
Bryce Dallas Howard (“Hereafter”)
Outside Shots
Tilda Swinton (“I Am Love”)
Annette Bening (“Mother and Child”)
Elizabeth Banks (“The Next Three Days”)
Not Happening
Greta Gerwig (“Greenberg”)
Still Seeking Domestic Distribution
Robin Wright (“The Conspirator”)
Keira Knightley (“London Boulevard”)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Frontrunners
Geoffrey Rush (“The King’s Speech”)
Christian Bale (“The Fighter”)
Sam Rockwell (“Conviction”)
Mark Ruffalo (“The Kids Are All Right”)
Major Threats
Josh Brolin (“True Grit”)
Andrew Garfield (“The Social Network”)
John Malkovich (“Secretariat”)
Ed Harris (“What’s Wrong with Virginia?”)
Possibilities
Brad Pitt (“Tree of Life”)
Andrew Garfield (“Never Let Me Go”)
Outside Shots
Bill Murray (“Get Low”)
Miles Teller (“Rabbit Hole”)
Not Happening
Mark Ruffalo (“Shutter Island”)
Still Seeking Domestic Distribution
Colin Farrell (“The Way Back”)
Ed Harris (“The Way Back”)
James McAvoy (“The Conspirator”)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Frontrunners
Keira Knightley (“Never Let Me Go”)
Kristin Scott Thomas (“Nowhere Boy”)
Anne-Marie Duff (“Nowhere Boy”)
Elle Fanning (“Somewhere”)
Major Threats
Jessica Chastain (“Tree of Life”)
Dianne Wiest (“Rabbit Hole”)
Andrea Riseborough (“Brighton Rock”)
Barbara Hershey (“Black Swan”)
Winona Ryder (“Black Swan”)
Possibilities
Dale Dickey (“Winter’s Bone”)
Mila Kunis (“Black Swan”)
Amy Adams (“The Fighter”)
Juliette Lewis (“Conviction”)
Outside Shots
Hailee Steinfeld (“True Grit”)
Sissy Spacek (“Get Low”)
Thekla Reuten (“The American”)
Rebecca Hall (“The Town”)
Mia Wasikowska (“The Kids Are All Right”)
Not Happening
Cate Blanchett (“Robin Hood”)
Still Seeking Domestic Distribution
Alexis Bledel (“The Conspirator”)
Evan Rachel Wood (“The Conspirator”)
Saoirse Ronan (“The Way Back”)

This morning, I had the pleasure of chatting with the legendary comedienne Joan Rivers about her life, work, eccentricities, and the new documentary that showcases all of the above, Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg‘s aptly titled “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” (trailer). The film, which debuted to widespread acclaim at January’s Sundance Film Festival, is very funny, as one might expect considering its subject, but also surprisingly moving. It touches upon the tragedy (a husband’s suicide), pain (a mentor’s rejection), and loneliness (a byproduct of aging) that have helped to fuel — and, even after 76 years, continue to fuel — Rivers’ trailblazing career in the public eye, and leaves one with a newfound respect for Rivers herself.

Following are excerpts of our conversation, which touched on the documentary; her work in comedy, on QVC, and along red carpets with her daughter Melissa Rivers; her roast on Comedy Central; NBC’s Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien debacle; Betty White‘s surprising resurgence; the next generation of female comics; her new TV Land show “How’d You Get So Rich?”; the possibility of an Oscar-hosting gig; and much more…

Why did Joan Molinsky became Joan Rivers?
Because in those days, which were the mid-sixties to the seventies, you liked to have a “theatrical name,” quote-unquote, and my agent’s name was Jerry Rivers. So that was it, just a good name.

Who were your comic role models and inspirations?
Probably Lenny Bruce. And there were lots of women around, but they were doing it and looking funny at the time, you know, like Phyllis Diller was at her height. She was wild-looking, silly-looking, and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to look pretty.

When did you first realize that you were funny?
Always. Always [been] funny.

What made you decide to allow cameras to record your private life — for the first time, I believe?
No, it’s not really. They did a couple of “Biography” specials on me and stuff, but they were such pandering — you know, “everybody loves you” talking heads. And I just thought that the work that these two girls do is extraordinary, and I thought they could really get an honest picture of what it’s like for a year in the life of a performer. And I think they did. [Note: Co-director Stern's mother is a close friend of Rivers's.]

What was your initial, immediate reaction upon seeing the completed film?
None — and that’s a good question — none. I’m too close to it. I was in awe at what they were able to put in, and — not disappointed, that’s the wrong word — surprised at some of the things that they left out.

As long as you mention that, may I ask what some of the things were that you were surprised they left out?
Well, my personal life, my social life. They mainly concentrated on my professional life, which is great, but it looks like I have no friends in the world, it looks like I don’t have a family, you know? But they only had 89 minutes or something to do it, and obviously it’s getting amazing reviews — they picked which they thought were the most interesting things, and they were obviously right.

After watching the film, I couldn’t help but wonder what really drives you to continue to work so hard and to continue to subject yourself to audiences. In the film you joke that it’s largely due to bad investments and the need to fund your lavish lifestyle; there’s also a montage in there that seems to suggest that it’s anger or even hate about certain things; and your daughter, meanwhile, expresses her belief that it’s really just the same thing that’s driven comedians forever, namely the need for approval. But I wonder what really is the driving force that makes you continue to do this…
I think it’s all of the above, plus I just love the work. I love what I do. I’m one of those lucky people that has been able to survive all their life doing what they love, what they wanted to do from being a child on. I never wanted anything but this business, and how lucky I was that I was able to make a life in it.

Is there a step in the process that you love most of all? Is it the writing, or the delivery, or the audience response, or something else?
It’s everything. It’s everything. To think of an idea, and laugh about it, and then do it on stage that night, and then they laugh? That’s great. It makes you feel so good.

As someone who was also unfairly screwed around by NBC late-night, what’s your take on the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien debacle? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who won? Who lost?
I think they both won. Conan got $45 million — not a bad check to walk away — and then Conan, after all his boo-hooing that “I was pushed out by Leno, boo-hoo, boo-hoo,” went and pushed out Lopez. No one has put that piece of the puzzle together yet, which I find the most interesting of the whole thing — he did exactly to George Lopez what Leno did to him! And Leno absolutely belongs at 11:30 — he’s boring, he’s easy, he doesn’t make waves. He’s perfect for late-night ’cause you can go to sleep and you’ve missed nothing.

The documentary doesn’t devote much if any time to your work on red carpets, which is the primary way that many people who grew up during the 1990s and 2000s know you–
Right.

Are you surprised that it wasn’t touched upon more?
Again, that was their choice. I just allowed them into my life, and they were around me for 14 months, 15 months, and they had to pick what they thought was the most interesting.

As far as that chapter in your life — the fashion stuff — how did it come about?
Well, everyone forgets that I designed my own line on QVC for 20 years. So I’m very much into that kind of fashion. All through college, I worked in window display — which is a combination of fashion and showbiz — for Lord & Taylor. Those were my summer jobs and my jobs right out of college. So I was always kind of involved with fashion. And I just like fashion. It was just a natural thing. And every woman comments, every woman sits in front of her screen and says, “I like her dress, I don’t like her dress.” Every woman’s a fashion expert.

Before you, had anyone ever asked the question, “Who are you wearing?”
I figured that question out — not a heavy question to figure out! [laughs]

No, but it’s really become a popular catchphrase…
I know, and the New York Times, when I was saying it in the beginning, was saying, “How superficial and how stupid to say this!”

Well, I think you won that one…
Yeah, I won that battle.

Many of the critiques that you’ve made have been very entertaining, but some of the recipients of them have asked, “Who are you to make them?” What would you say to them?
“And who are you to wear such an ugly dress?!” [laughs]

There’s a generation of female comics now — Ellen DeGeneres, Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, etc. — who very possibly might not have been interested in doing what they’re doing or been able to do it were it not for you. Therefore, I’m curious: who, in your opinion, is the comic heiress to Joan Rivers?
There is no heiress! I am alive, and I am well, and I am working at the top of my form, and I couldn’t give a shit. There is no mantle to be passed; I am wearing the mantle, and it is a gorgeous mantle.

If you had not led such a public life, what do you think you might have done with your life?
I would have been a funny dentist’s wife in Larchmont. I don’t know because I think, somehow or other, I would’ve gotten into this business. It might have been community theater, who knows? I just always was hellbent on getting into the business.

What’s been the hardest part of it? If you could lose one part of it, would it be the fierce competition or criticism? I mean, the documentary features your thoughts on the Comedy Central roast, which really seemed like something that you were not gung-ho to do at all. And, when you did do it, they were not nice — they got into plastic surgery, and age, and stuff like that. At this stage of your life, what do you need that kind of crap for?
The money was amazing. The money was amazing, which is exactly why I did it. I ended up having a great time with it, and I loved the people I worked with. But I never do roasts; I don’t let them do one of me and I don’t like to do them. I just think they’re stupid because, again, you’re always gonna say the same thing — there are, like, six areas that you can talk about with anybody, and it’s so boring, and who cares? And they always end up saying, “But, seriously, I love you!” Oh, go away! I’m not a roast person.

You must have thick skin, though. You don’t let that stuff bother you?
I knew what was coming. In the documentary, I said to my assistant, “They’re gonna do plastic surgery, and age, and QVC jokes.” And then you saw the show and they did plastic surgery, and age, and QVC jokes. As I said, I’m not a fan of roasts.

If you could go back and change one thing about your life — the work side or the personal side or anything — what would you have liked to turn out differently?
Oh, I would have loved to have been a great opera singer.

Really?
Oh, God! I would have loved to be able to get on the stage at the Met and just belt it out. Oh — oh, my God!

Did you ever pursue that at all? Not necessarily at the Met, but at a lower level?
You haven’t heard me sing. [laughs]

In the film you talk about “the book” — your calendar book. How’s that filling up these days? What are your plans for the future? What are you up to next? Is there anything that you’d like to do that you haven’t done yet?
My book is busier than ever, thank God, which is amazing. I want to do everything I said in the movie. I want to go back to Broadway; I’ve never been in a situation comedy — of course, I’ve never even asked to read for one. Melissa and I have a new TV show coming out in December, a reality-show. I have my own show, “How’d You Get So Rich?,” on the air in its second season. My jewelry. It’s all — life is okay! No complaints at this moment.

What do you make of all the hubbub over Betty White hosting “Saturday Night Live”?
I think it was wonderful. I think she’s a great comic actress, and I think she was so underrated until now. When you look back, she was on “Mary Tyler Moore” — hilarious. She was on “Golden Girls” — hilarious. She’s a wonderful comic actress. How great for her, at 88, to be so feted. I mean, that’s just wonderful.

Now there’s a grassroots campaign for Betty White to host the Emmys or the Oscars. Next to her, you’re a kid! Would you ever be interested in doing that? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate turn-around, to bring you inside from the red carpet?!
Oh, in a hot second! But they’ll never do it. I’m an outsider. They will never do it. Again, you’ve gotta learn in this business to survive. You put on your blinders and you do your own race. They will never do it. I have never been an insider, which is one of the big things for the movie shows. And I would probably be the 19th down on the list.

But, playing the devil’s advocate, aren’t Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres, and Jon Stewart outsiders? Yes, they’re in show business, but they’re not really movie people…
But they’re just perceived differently. And who cares? Again we’re back to that — I don’t look, I don’t care.

Photo: Joan Rivers performs stand-up in Edinburgh, Scotland in May 2009. Credit: Underbelly Limited.

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]]> http://andthewinneris.blog.com/2010/05/13/joanrivers/feed/ 0 http://andthewinneris.blog.com/2010/04/29/monicavelour/ http://andthewinneris.blog.com/2010/04/29/monicavelour/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:02:43 +0000 Scott Feinberg http://andthewinneris.blog.com/?p=4845270

Keith Bearden‘s “Meet Monica Velour” premiered on Sunday at New York’s School of Visual Arts as part of the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival. After just a few minutes of establishing material, the film began to look a lot like other low-budget indies that recently clicked: its protagonist is a veritable — and virginial — nerd (very similar to the title character in “Napoleon Dynamite”); it constantly employs sight gags like a decades-old Weenie-mobile (not a far stretch from the VW-bus in “Little Miss Sunshine”); its script calls for hip/irony-laden dialogue and terms like “Homeslice” (which is embarassingly similar to “Homeskillet” in “Juno”); and the list goes on. The reality is that this film cannot compete with those films on their strengths, but it does have a few of its own — and none is greater than the actress who plays its eponymous character, Kim Cattrall.

It takes a while before Monica Velour pops up, since the film is ostensibly the story of Tobe, the 17-year-old outcast (20-year-old newcomer Dustin Ingram) from the state of Washington who is obssessed with her. Tobe, whose mother died when he was just three and who was raised by his alcoholic grandfather (Brian Dennehy in a colorful performance), has spent his youth escaping from the present into the past. His bedroom (and head) are cluttered with nostalgic memorabilia — old music, old movies, and, yes, old porn. Shortly after he graduates from high school, he reads that his favorite porn star of all, a 1970′s blonde bombshell named Monica Velour, will be making a rare appearance at a strip club in Indiana. That happens to be the same state in which a fellow nostalgist (Keith David) is willing to pay him good money for the Weenie-mobile (his grandfather’s graduation gift to him), so he decides he cannot pass up the opportunity, even though it means driving halfway across the country.

The strip club turns out to be a dump, the clientele pigs, and Monica Velour… well, a little past her sell-by date. Her get-up and routine look like something out of Vaudeville, and when some of the audience starts to shout mean-spirited catcalls at her (basically calling her a grandma), Tobe, emboldened by the alcohol that the club has been forcing down his throat, musters the strength to speak up in her defense — and gets himself pummeled in the process. Later that night, after being fired from the club, Monica comes across the ambulance in which Tobe is being treated, and agrees to take him back to her trailer-park home until he has sobered up. Once there, the truth about his situation (he’s a virgin who worships her) and hers (she’s a drunk who mourns for the life she could have led and yearns for the daughter that her ex keeps her from seeing) begins to come out, and — wouldn’t you know it — they form a “Harold and Maude” (1971) type bond… that eventually crosses a line that Harold and Maude, thankfully, never did, but in this case seems only fitting.

Ingram does a good enough job (although he sometimes plays up the weirdo-factor to such an extent — staring open-mouthed for long stretches or chucking and kicking his bicycle in front of strangers — that one wonders if there’s actually something wrong with him), but the truth is that this movie would be nothing if not for Cattrall, who shines. Even though the actress, at 53, doesn’t look a day older than 40, it still took real guts for her, as someone who is best known as the glamorous, confident, even cocky Samantha from “Sex in the City” (and its forthcoming sequel), to scrape off all of her makeup, lay bare her wrinkles and saggy bits, and portray a defeated has-been. Moreover, the film could easily have sunken into campy melodrama, but thanks to Cattrall — and the vivacity, humor, and compassion always evident in her cat-like eyes — it never does. As foolishly and meanly as Monica sometimes behaves, one can’t help but like and root for her.

NOTE: I got a particular kick out of the film because I, too, once spent some time getting to know a porn star with whose work I may or may not previously been acquainted.

On Saturday evening, “Monogamy” (video preview) — the feature debut of Dana Adam Shapiro, who received an Oscar nomination for co-directing the great documentary “Murderball” (2005) — premiered at the Borough of Manhattan Community College as part of the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival. Ironically, it followed a screening at the same location of a new documentary about New York’s disgraced ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer, but I digress…

The film stars Chris Messina, the oblivious bridegroom-to-be in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008) and neglected husband in “Julie & Julia” (2009), and Rashida Jones, the wife in “I Love You, Man” (2009) and regular on TV’s “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation,” as a hip, modern, engaged couple who learn some unsettling things about each other as their wedding day nears.

Messina’s Theo and Jones’s Nat live together in Brooklyn. He’s a frustrated artist, barely makes ends meet as a photographer who gets most of his work taking wedding photos for other couples, but eventually creating a side-business called “Gumshoot” in which he is hired by clients to covertly photograph them throughout the day. One, a beautiful young blonde who turns out to be an “exhibitionist,” tempts his wandering eye, which is perhaps more inclined to wander than usual because Nat, of late, is less inclined to meet his animalistic hunger for sex. (Think Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” only wearing a dog mask left over from Halloween.) For Theo, what begins as an erotic curiosity evolves into a peeping-tom obsession that causes him to neglect his fiancee, even when she is hospitalized with a staph infection. Little things (forgetting to bring her guitar to the hospital) take on bigger meaning (perhaps even overdramatically), and the couple soon find themselves in peril.

In Messina’s highest-profile roles heretofore, he has, quite frankly, specialized in playing nebbishes (who, several friends have independently mentioned to me, chew food like a cow), so I was rather surprised to see him playing a psychologically-complex, sexually-assertive, rough-around-the-edges man (who, I must admit, chews food like a cow) — and quite impressively. In fact, he somewhat reminded me of a young Gene Hackman, who, you may recall, conducted some surveillance of his own in “The French Connection” (1971) and “The Conversation” (1974).

As for Jones (who, incidentally, is the daughter of the musician/record producer Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton), she definitely possesses the beauty and magnetic quality that stars are made of. In this particular film, though, most of the meatiest material belongs to her co-star, and she is primarily called upon to sing a little, cast suspicious glances, and affect disappointed pouts — each of which she does, I might add, nearly as alluringly as my personal favorite singing, mood-swinging cutiepie, Zooey Deschanel.

A few other quick notes: Cinematographer Doug Emmett deserves special mention for creating a cool documentary-look to the film, not unlike that of Steven Soderbergh‘s “The Girlfriend Experience” (2009)… The film runs a little longer than it needs to, and if I were Shapiro I might consider eliminating unnecessary elements like a horny hospital doctor and a single friend’s cute young daughter, neither of which add much if anything to the story… Some big names came out to support the film at its screening and/or after-party at Beba at 71 Spring Street in Soho — among them, ex-couple Billy Crudup and Claire Danes, “Star Trek” (2009) cast-mates Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, Selma Blair, Mamie Gummer, Tom McCarthy, and Scott Speedman.

Here’s video of the post-premiere Q&A with the stars/director/producers/crew:

On a rainy evening in early January 2010, in a corner of the bustling lobby of the Hyatt Hotel adjacent to Grand Central Station in Midtown Manhattan, I chatted for nearly two hours with the actor who created the most memorable character to grace the big screen in 2009. No, I wasn’t in the company of Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Mo’Nique, or Christoph Waltz, but rather Fred Melamed, a 53-year-old who has worked for decades on radio (as a top voiceover artist), stage (including a stint on Broadway), and screen (appearing in no fewer than nine Woody Allen films, among others), and who most recently brought to life the unforgettably unctuous Sy Ableman in the Coen brothers’ best picture Oscar nominee “A Serious Man.”

Fred’s performance, which provides many of the film’s funniest moments, is beginning to develop a cult-like following. It earned a shoutout from Roger Ebert; a plea to Oscar voters from A.O. Scott; and a piece of both a best ensemble nomination from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Robert Altman Award from the Indie Spirit Awards. I’ve watched it half a dozen times now — largely because I was so excited to see different relatives’ and friends’ reactions — and the content and delivery crack me up every time. (Indeed, I’m such a fan that I seriously considered dressing up as Sy Ableman for Halloween before remembering that I’m a grown man.)

I asked to speak with Fred for those reasons, and because I realized that his performance was unlikely to garner individual awards attention for a number of reasons—it’s but one part of an ensemble piece; it’s in a comedy; Fred’s not a household name; he made it look so easy; etc. As I wrote in January, I’ve decided to devote at least two posts each year to celebrating individuals—one from “behind-the-scenes” and one from “on-screen”—who I strongly feel deserved more attention than they received over the course of the awards season. For 2009, my behind-the-scenes choice was Eric Steelberg, the cinematographer of both “500 Days of Summer” and “Up in the Air”; as for on-screen talent, no one deserves to be highlighted more than Fred.

Below, you can read a the full transcript of our conversation, which covers everything from Fred’s early years, to his struggles with weight and substance abuse, to his collaborations with Woody Allen and the Coen brothers, to a theological discussion about the meaning of the opening and closing scenes of A Serious Man, to criticisms about the way that film portrays Jews and Judaism. I think you’ll find it—and Fred—to be fascinating. I know I did.

What I’d love to do, if I may, is start all the way at the beginning: where were you born and raised?

Sure. I was born and raised right here in Manhattan—one of the relatively few people that you meet who was actually born and raised here. I was raised on the east side, 72nd Street and 2nd Avenue. I went to Hunter College Elementary School here in the city; and then I went to a prep school called Riverdale up in the Bronx; and then, when I was about sixteen, my father, who had been a television producer for many years, decided that he wanted to be a writer, a novel writer—he had actually decided that a couple of years prior—and was not successful at it, and my family, kind of, fell on hard times financially. So we moved to Florida—where my uncle had a real estate venture that was going and my father joined him—which, for me, was kind of like moving to Mars. I had never lived in the suburbs; it was a very, you know, hard place for me to understand; but I spent the last two years of high school there, and then came back up north to go to college. I went to Hampshire College, sort of a hippie college. At the end of my years there, I met two women—one called Tina Packer and one called Kristen Linklater—and they had just started a company called Shakespeare & Company, a kind of interesting pan-English-speaking company, and I was one of the original members of that company—she actually bought a beautiful house called The Mount, which had been Edith Wharton’s estate up in Lenox, Massachusetts, so we lived there and performed there. And then I decided I needed more training, so I went to Yale Drama School—

Fred as Oedipus in a Hampshire College production of “Oedipus,” circa 1975 (Fred Melamed Collection)

I hope I can cut you off for a minute because I have some specific questions about a number of the things you mentioned. For instance, you mentioned your parents, and I’ve read that the story is actually a little more complex than just that, so I hope you can talk about that…

Oh, I’ll be happy to. It’s actually quite a complex story. I was adopted, and I always knew, from the time that I could talk, that I was adopted. And I think I had the normal curiosity that kids have about that, but I didn’t have any burning, kind of, desire, as some people do, to go hunt out my biological parents. But I used to always ask my mother and father that raised me, you know, “Who were my parents—my biological parents?” And they would say, “Well, we don’t know. We picked you out of a room of children. We liked the way you looked, and you were smiling at us, so we picked you.” And I had no reason to doubt that that was the truth. One day, when I was twenty-seven years old—which is now half my life ago exactly—I came back home— I used to play cards—I was a very serious poker player, and I spent about half my waking hours playing cards—and it was late at night, about, maybe, one-thirty in the morning, and I saw this answer on my answering machine, and it was a woman’s voice, and as soon as I played the answer I could tell that her voice was, sort of, tremulous; there was something definitely going on. She said, “My name is Nancy. Please call me collect at” this number in California. So I thought maybe it was about work or something; I didn’t know. I thought, “Well, I’ll call.” She said, “You can call late.” It’s three hours earlier in California, so it was whatever it was, ten-thirty there. So I called her. And she said to me, “You know that you’re adopted?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Well, I’m your birth mother, your biological mother.” So we talked for probably about five hours that night, all about the circumstances of my nativity, and birth, and who my father was, and who she was. And it turned out that she was an actress and, kind of, a wannabe director. I had worked at the Guthrie Theatre, after I got out of drama school, for a year; and she had worked there. And there was another theater in Florida that I had worked at that she had worked out. And she had been the girlfriend of a man that I became friendly with. I mean, very strange coincidences. So we met shortly after that. She was living out in L.A. and she said, “I’m gonna be coming to New York in a couple of months. Would you like to meet?” And I said, “Yes, I would like to meet.” So I remember showing up in the bar of the Regency Hotel on 57^th Street or 59^th Street or wherever that is with a shoebox full of pictures of when I was a kid; and she had pictures, too, and all that. You know, it’s funny—nothing else in life is like that experience ’cause you feel connected in some way, but you, kind of, don’t know what to make of it. And I remember I felt that I should be cautious, even though I felt like I liked her. And she said to me that night—it was late at night, maybe ten-thirty at night; we’d been talking all night; and she said to me, “Listen, I’m hungry. I want to get something to eat—nothing fancy, but I’m just hungry. Where can we go to get something to eat late?” So I said, “Well, you want, like, a hamburger?” She said, “Yeah.” Jackson Hole was a big chain all over New York at that time, so I said, “Well, I know this place Jackson Hole. It’s nothing great but, you know, you can get a hamburger.” So we go to Jackson Hole, and she had this very fancy silk blouse on, and she grabbed ahold of the hamburger, and out of the hamburger came squirting about a quart of ketchup all over this red blouse, and I knew that we must be related—there was no doubt in my mind. Sealed the deal for me. So we met, and we became friends, and so on. And there’s much more to tell of that story but I won’t go on with it. So she was an actress; and my biological father—who I didn’t meet until I was fifty, and who recently passed away—was a British psychoanalyst. And, strangely enough— I live in Montauk, which is in the very easternmost tip of Long Island; he lived in Shelter Island, which is about fifteen minutes from where I live, so I got to know him, and his family, and everything.

Well, perhaps the most interesting part of the story, to me, is that he was related to Stella Adler’s family?

Yes, related to the Adlers—mind-boggling, to me, at least. He didn’t really know them, but he was a relative. He was born in London in the thirties, and when the war came he was sent to live with his grandparents in South Africa, and part of the Adler also had lived in South Africa, and, I gather, he or some part of his family became reconnected with them at that point. So I don’t actually know the nature of the connection, but we are distantly related. Stella Adler—of course, the very, very famous drama teacher—taught at Yale, although that was before I got there. The whole thing is, like, such a Movie fo the Week that nobody can believe it.

Did you go to the movies as a kid? And, if so, were there any films or actors that were particular favorites or influences?

I was a huge movie and television fan all my life. I’m one of those typical stories—I had asthma growing up; and I was always rather chunky; and never picked to be on anybody’s sports team—I was one of those kind of kids. [laughs] And I was always good at imitations; and I was very, kind of, verbal; and liked to play with words; and stuff like that. And I loved movies and I loved TV. And it just so happened that my dad—my adoptive father, who was my real father; also now passed away—was a TV producer, so I would often get to go to the studio with him. He produced Car 54, Where Are You?, which is an old, old-time show; and December Bride; and Let’s Pretend; and shows of that era—shows of the late fifties, early sixties. Count Basie Show. So I was fascinated with movies and TV from an early age—really, really liked them. I was an enormous Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan, as many kids my age were—I’m 53 now—so that was a big, exciting thing for me in my life. And when James Bond came along, I was a huge James Bond fan. And then I began to get interested in what you might call, kind of, more serious movies at a very young age. A friend of mine from high school was a big Truffaut fan, and got me involved in both Vittorio de Sica’s films and Truffaut’s films, which I liked very much, so we used to go to film festivals and things like that. And I was also an enormous Hitchcock fan. And, when I was very young, I wanted to be a director—I went through a brief period where I wanted to be a director. My father said, “Oh, you don’t want to do that. It’s too tough.” He said I should be an archeologist [laughs]—which I guess he thought was easier, although being an archeologist is pretty tough out there in the desert.

When did you first realize that you wanted to be an actor? Was there a moment? An experience? Did something bring the desire about? Or did it just, sort of, evolve over time?

Well, I mean, it was a kind of funny thing; I fell into it. Like a lot of actors that you meet—or a lot of other people—I was a musician first. I was one of those people that hand a band in junior high school and high school; and really liked music; and played the guitar, and the bass, and drums, and stuff; and always enjoyed that very much. And then I had a friend—a close friend in high school—who was into directing plays, and he would always say to me, “Be in my play! Be in my play!” And then it so happened that he went to the same college that I did, so he kept me asking me to be in his plays. And I was very flattered by the fact that other people asked me to be in their plays. And where I went to college, which was Hampshire College—this is no longer true, but in those days—you could pretty much do whatever you wanted, so I wish I had studied a, kind of, broader palette of things that I was interested in, but I acted constantly. I never thought that I would do it as a profession; I just liked it. And then, the last year that I was there, I met Tina Packer and Kristen Linklater, and then I thought, “Well,” you know, “this is something that I really enjoy in a deep way. Maybe I could actually do it as a profession.” But, you know, I didn’t actually come to that decision ’til really after college.

Over the years since, you’ve done stage and screen acting, as well as voiceover work, and teaching. Did these things always overlap, or did one thing give way to the next and then to the next?

No. I’ll tell you the honest truth about that. What happened with me was I went to Yale, and at Yale we were educated strictly as theater actors. I was in the last class that came in under Robert Brustein—while I was there, Lloyd Richards came and began, but my class was the last class that actually had Brustein as both an admittance judge and as a teacher—so his imprimatur was still very much on Yale when I was there, and there was no education whatsoever in film acting or anything like that. It was all theater acting, the presumption being—not an entirely correct presumption, but the presumption being—that if you were adept at that you could find your way into acting in movies and other things. Yale is a small drama school—there were only twelve people in my acting class the year that I graduated; I graduated in ’81. The year that I was in, David Alan Grier was in my class; Kathy Borowitz, who was also in our movie, who’s married to John Turturro. John Turturro, Fran McDormand, Rock Dutton, and a number of other very famous actors were in the class below us. I was one of the people who was typed at being good at comic stuff, and Yale worked largely like a repertory company—there was a repertory company attached to it—so Yale had many strengths, and one of those strengths was that you got to act a lot, you were on your feet a lot, but one of the, kind of, not so good parts about it, at least for me, was they constantly, sort of, used you to do the things that you were strong at and the things that you were less good at it you were not as encouraged to work on as perhaps you might have been in less performance-oriented schools. Anyway, after I got into Yale, I went to the Guthrie. And after that, I was in Amadeus on tour for a year—a bus-and-truck tour of Amadeus—and then I did it on Broadway. So I was in Amadeus for, like, seventeen months—a super-long time—and it drove me nuts. I couldn’t handle doing a long-run; it began to really, really get to me, and I began to have a terrible problem with stage fright after about, maybe, nine months in it, where I had to marshal every ounce of strength that I had to get on stage, and I had to resort to taking drugs and stuff like that. This was after many years of being an actor, and having devoted myself to being a stage actor.

Fred, bottom row/second from left, with his castmates from the Broadway production of “Amadeus” in 1983 (Fred Melamed Collection)

To what do you attribute that?

Well, I’ll give you the answer to that, although it’s a complicated answer. I think it has to do the reason that I chose to be an actor. I think, to reduce it to a very, sort of, reductive, psychological answer, I chose to be an actor, as some people to, because I wanted to lift the spirits of my family, of certain depressed members of my family, and I felt greatly empowered with the ability to do that—except, ultimately, I resented it, and it was too much of a yoke for me. Also, it was my orientation towards acting; I thought that an actor had to be superhuman, not human, which I now no longer feel, but as a young guy that was, kind of, the way I looked at it. And it began to be burdensome. If I was doing a comedy, the audience would laugh most of the time in the same places, and I began to, strangely, resent the fact that they would do that [laughs], which is, of course, crazy. Some people become relaxed in a long-run, and they get better, and they find new things to discover; for me, it wasn’t working that way. It took all my concentration and dedication to get myself to simply do the best I could, and that wasn’t as good as I felt I owed the audience. And, after that, I said, “That’s it. I don’t want to be a stage actor anymore.” And I thought, “Oh, I’ve made this horrible mistake.” I was so ashamed. I thought, you know, “This is terrible. People have told me not to be an actor, and I said, ‘I’ll show you,’ and I became an actor, and I was on Broadway.” And I was a young guy—I was twenty-six or -seven years old—and I had a gig on Broadway, and I had friends that would have been, you know, elated to have a Broadway job in a big Tony-winning play like Amadeus, and I was miserable even though I loved the play. So I thought, “Oh, man, this is awful. What am I gonna do?” And then I began to go into a very, very dark period of depression—which I think had a little bit to do with that but mostly to do with my own inner demons, my own inner problems and things—and really didn’t want to appear before people anymore. Simultaneously, I became very successful as a voice actor, which I was fortunate to do because it allowed me to make a very good living—I mean, I made a lot of money doing that.

How did it start?

Well, my initial agent that I had when I got out of drama school left the agency that she had worked with—which was an agency that didn’t handle people for commercials, only for plays and movies—and she went to an agency that was very strong in voiceover actors, and commercials, and stuff like that. So I thought, “Well, I’m here, I might as well make a few extra schekels” seeing what I could do. So, very soon out of the box, I was lucky to get some very big accounts. I got MCI—this was before people laughed when you said “MCI” [laughs]—MCI, and Mercedes-Benz, and some other very large accounts, as a voiceover actor, relatively soon after starting. And I thought, “Well, this is great, you know? I can make three or four hundred thousand dollars a year and work, maybe, ten days a year.” Also, at the time, I got extremely, extremely heavy; I, for many years of my life, weighed over four hundred pounds—not that I’m any sort of, you know, bodybuilder today, but I was at the point where not only was my health, you know, seriously effected by it, but I was ashamed. And, also, it limited very significantly the kind of parts that I could play. I mean, to be frank with you, I had to wrestle with a lot of my own problems and defects of character—addiction and other difficulties. I have two kids, both of whom have autism, and that came into it. But, you know, people deal with things in life. But, for me, this kept me from being— I had a period in the late-eighties, early-nineties where I became very active in movies, as well as doing voiceovers, which I enjoyed. I started to become active in that stuff again, which I really, really liked. But I regret—I shouldn’t say “I regret,” but I feel that I wish I had a chance— I’ve been in, probably, like, maybe, twenty films altogether—and scads as a voice actor in television shows and stuff like that, but that’s strictly as a voice actor, which is a very limited kind of acting. I wish, honestly, that I had done much more acting, because I truly enjoy it so much. And, also, in that period, I was writing a lot, and that’s another thing that I enjoy, that I, you know, pursue.

Fred in a scene from the 1987 film “Suspect” (TriStar Pictures)

I don’t know if you’d call it a formal collaboration or if it just kept happening time after time, but I know that throughout the eighties and nineties you ended up working several times with Woody Allen. How did that come about? And what was that like for you?

Well, he chose to use me, and he pursued me—well, I don’t mean ‘pursued’ me like it was any kind of great pursuit—but he chose to put me in a lot of his movies, for which I’m very grateful. And I enjoyed him. We had, you know, a sort of a relationship where he would call and I didn’t have to audition—he or Juliet Taylor, who would cast all his films, would call, and would say, “Well, it’s this kind of a role,” and “Are you interested?” And I’d say, “Sure!”

How did it first start with you two?

When I first got out of school, he was making Hannah and Her Sisters—I think I was out maybe a year or so, and I think I had just come back from the tour of Amadeus—and Juliet Taylor had seen me audition. There used to be—I think there still are—these big auditions they had for kids in drama school called “League Auditions,” where agents and casting directors come to, sort of, a centralized audition. And she had seen me—I chose to do comic stuff in that—and she, I guess, thought I was funny, and so she called and said, “Woody has a role in this new film. Are you a Woody Allen fan?” And I was a huge, huge Woody Allen fan—enormous. And it also so happens that my family was very close to the Roberts family—Tony Roberts’ dad, whose name was Ken Roberts, and my dad were best friends for years and years and years, so I knew Tony Roberts very well growing up, and I had always admired the fact that he had been in all these Woody Allen films. [laughs] Anyway, the first film was Hannah and Her Sisters, and I had a small part—well, my parts in his films are generally quite small, but he called me many times—and I played a doctor in that, and I got to know him a little bit as a result of that, and he’s a very, very interesting person that I enjoy.

What do you make of him? He’s, kind of, an enigma, a lot of people say…

I think he is an enigma. I mean, what I think about him is he loves working, he loves writing and making movies, and he’s smart enough and wealthy enough that he can live in a world that is, to some degree, a world that he likes, as people that are either very talented, or very wealthy, or very fortunate can do. I don’t mean that it’s a totally, you know, isolated world, but I think a lot of things that people are forced to deal with or even things that many people like to deal with he really doesn’t like to deal with. He doesn’t like social obligations, in the sense that many people do—I mean, I think that’s obvious. He likes sports—he enjoys watching sports on television. He enjoys writing. He enjoys talking about certain things. But he’s a very, very serious person. You know, I was surprised when I first met him that he never cracks a joke, and I took it upon myself to always try and, like, make jokes to him, make him laugh, and was not always but occasionally successful. I remember one particular occasion where he called me in to do a movie, and I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years—it was actually not too long ago—I hadn’t seen him for a few years, and in the intervening years I had unfortunately gotten very heavy [laughs]; I had gained, like, sixty pounds. But he was lovely and sweet like he always is, and he said, “Fred! Fred! How are you? It’s great to see you! What have you been doing since I’ve seen you?” And I said, “Well, Woody, I’m sure you’ve seen all of my exercise videos that are flooding the stores now!” And there was stone silence—he had no idea that I was four hundred pounds and I was making a joke because four hundred pound people don’t usually make exercise videos. He said, “Oh, that’s, that’s terrific!” Absolutely no idea. Not that he doesn’t have a sense of humor; it just wasn’t in his, sort of, script of the way that things should go. But he’s a very interesting person. I think a lot of people were surprised when they met Soon-Yi. Soon-Yi gives him a run for his money—she’s a very, very alive, interesting person with a lot of opinions—maybe because of that horrible stereotype of what Asian women are like, or because she’s younger than him. But she really is an interesting, to me, well-suited partner for him. Very funny, and encourages him to do things, which I think is good for him. He’s a genius, but like many geniuses he’s different, in certain respects, than a lot of people.

Fred knew he’d ‘made it’ when MAD Magazine parodied his character from the 1986 film “Hannah and Her Sisters” (MAD Magazine)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that, to some extent, he’s responsible—though a few steps removed—for you coming to the attention of the Coen brothers…

Yes! That’s quite true. He’s not responsible, in general, for my coming to their attention, but responsible for them, kind of, considering me for A Serious Man. The way that I first came into contact with the Coen Brothers was, as I explained, I went to drama school with Fran McDormand, who is, of course, Joel’s wife; and John Turturro and Kathy Borowitz, who are all frequent collaborators of the Coen brothers; and I also knew John Goodman from years ago, long before he was famous and all that. So I, kind of, knew some people in their ‘orbit,’ you might say. And twenty years ago I’d auditioned for Barton Fink—their movie Barton Fink—and I auditioned for the role of Jack Lipnick, who was that very pushy film producer. And I didn’t get the role—it was gotten by a wonderful actor, a man called Michael Lerner, really a genius actor who actually had a cameo in A Serious Man also.

Did he really?

Yeah. He’s the guy who has the heart attack when they go to the law office. Gets the papers ready, and he smokes his pipe, and then all of a sudden— Yeah, that’s Michael Lerner. But he got that role, and he was terrific in it—he was actually nominated for an Oscar—this was in 1991 or 1990. According to Ethan Coen, I placed—I came in second. I was a little younger than he was. But they remembered me from that. And then there was another situation some years after that when they were making Hudsucker Proxy, and they were interested in me for a role in that, and I was doing something else—I couldn’t do it.

There was a strange, kind of, request for what that part would entail, wasn’t there?

Oh, yes, you heard about that?! Yes. The role, which was not a particularly big role but it was, kind of, a memorable role, was— I was supposed to appear in a diaper and a sash—I was supposed to be, like, a New Year’s baby. And I said that, you know, “On no grounds will I consider doing any form of gratuitous nudity unless I lose some weight.” But, as it turned out, I was not able to do it anyway. So that was Hudsucker Proxy. And then this movie— It’s interesting, they happened to have been working on writing three movies at the same time: No Country for Old Men; our movie, A Serious Man; and Burn After Reading. They’re very interesting in their writing methods; they work on more than one script at once simultaneously often, which is amazing to me because one is more than enough for me. But I think when they get stuck on one they just move to another; there’s always new stuff to do. Their whole writing thing is fascinating to me—how they work—and I’ve talked to them about it quite a bit. But, anyway, they were working on three movies simultaneously, and they knew when they were writing it that Burn After Reading was gonna be a star-studded movie, so when you have a movie like that you have to schedule when you can do it based on—I mean, look at all the big stars who are in it—when they could get all of those people together. So they made No Country first and A Serious Man last, but that was a total accident; it was just because of the availability was in the middle. So while they were screening footage for— There was a particular part that they wanted to cast in Burn After Reading, and they were looking at Tea Leoni for a part in that, and the movie that they were screening I happened to be in with her—

Which was that? Hollywood Ending?

Hollywood Ending, yeah. So while they were looking at it, they just looked at the scene, and one of them said to the other, “Oh, there’s Fred Melamed. Remember? Maybe he’d be good for this part.” So shortly after that—this was quite a while ago; this was almost three years ago—I was at home in Montauk and I got a call directly from them, not my agent, just a call—

Fred and Woody Allen in a scene from the 2002 film “Hollywood Ending” (DreamWorks)

It was one of the Coen brothers?

It was actually their casting director, but with them there. They work with wonderful, wonderful—in my view—well, everybody that works with them is pretty wonderful, but their casting directors, at least the ones that I’m familiar with, are terrific, Rachel Tenner and Ellen Chenoweth. Anyway, there I am, and I get a call, and Rachel Tenner says, “Hi, Fred, it’s Rachel Tenner. I have Joel Coen on the phone here. Are you busy?” “Uh, I- I- I’ll see if I can pencil you in.” So Joel gets on, he says “Hi,” duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, “Listen, we have this part that we think maybe you’d be good for. Would you be interested in reading it?” I said, “Well, of course, by all means!” So they sent it over to me, and I read it, and I thought, “Gee, what an interesting, you know, movie this is!” And only after I read it, and thought about it, did I realize how good the part was, aside from how interesting the movie was. I mean, it was such a good part.

I hope I can just interject for one second to ask you something that I was thinking about. On the one hand, having the Coen brothers calling you and telling you that you’re perfect for a part in one of their films has got to be the ultimate compliment. On the other hand, you then read it and see the part is Sy Ableman! [laughs] What do you do?

Right. Well, that was what I told, you know, all of my friends—or what they told me. I mean, everybody who read the movie, including my own movie, said, “This guy is the most, you know, obnoxious, opinionated, insufferable windbag in cinema history; you were born to play him! You must play this part!” [laughs] Kathy Borowitz actually asked me on the plane, “Was he written for you?” [laughs] Which he wasn’t. But, I mean, you know, parts that are like that don’t come along that often in your lifetime—at least they haven’t in mine—such a beautifully written part, so funny and also so evil at the same time. You know, just great. So I read it, and I loved it, and they said, “Well, we want to come in and put you on tape.” So I said, you know, I’d be thrilled to, so I came into the city, and I read it. And I’d made a specific decision about how I wanted to play it—I always try and prepare a lot and know what I’m doing when I’m auditioning for things—and, you know, they were laughing, and I really got the idea that they really liked it and stuff. So Ethan said to me, “That was terrific. We really, really liked it. But we just want to make you aware—” And it had said in the script—it described him—it said, “He’s a pompous, overweight, Jewish loudmouth who talks like a rabbi,” I think was how they described it in the script. So Ethan said to me, “You know, that was fantastic, but I just want to make you aware that we’re working on another movie now which we’ve just started shooting, and we have to shoot it and then it’s gonna be a year of post ’til we can even start this movie, so it’s probably gonna be not for another sixteen months ’til we even start this.” So I said, “Well, that’s okay. I have my own personal project: I’m trying to move the whole overweight, pompous, Jewish, rabbinical thing back to the center of American sexuality where I feel that it really belongs, which ought to take me about a year—at least a year.” Uphill battle. I’m still working on it.

You had all that time to think about the part, and even before the audition you were thinking about the part, so in your opinion, who is Sy Ableman, other than just “a pompous, overweight, Jewish loudmouth who talks like a rabbi,” and what’s his story?

Well, I mean, even though I’ve described him in a rather judgmental way, the truth of the matter is that whenever you play a character you try and look at the character as a person looks at themselves, you try and look at the character from his point of view. And I think as evil as he might appear to some people— I mean, after all, he’s evil because he’s deceptive. It’s not that he does such bad things; it’s that he does them in such a misleading way, that he attempts to mislead. But I think he genuinely believes that he knows what’s best, like all really evil people do, you know? I think few people in this world, no matter how calamitous what they do turns out to be, set out to be evil; they just think that they know what’s best, and that if only everybody would listen to them and do things their way the world would be so much better for all. So Sy Ableman, even though he is selfish, obviously, I think genuinely believes that he would be such a better steward of everything in Larry’s life—his wife, his children, his house—than Larry could ever be that why even argue about it? It’s so obvious. And what’s so maddening, but also what, sort of, makes Sy Ableman unbearable or, I don’t know, interesting, if he is, in fact, interesting, is his method is to almost hypnotize people. His method is to be so soft, to be so massaging of people that they can’t reckon in their mind that he’s trying to do something really, really wrong. So I was trying to play him like he was, sort of, massaging everyone; that was his M.O. When I approach a character, I do the, sort of, Michael Chekhov way of looking at it, where characters have what Michael Chekhov called an “essential gesture”— which doesn’t necessarily mean a physical gesture; it’s kind of a metaphoric way that they behave. So his way is to kind of— It’s not exactly ‘charm,’ it’s more like ‘manipulate,’ but the manipulation is a gentle—he hopes—pleasurable manipulation, and if they’ll just relax enough he’ll push them out of the way.

Fred and Sari Lennick in a scene from “A Serious Man” (Focus Features)

Even just his, or your, delivery of lines and words—“Laaaaarry,” or “of cooooourse,” or “everything’s gonna be fiiiiine”—is sort of hypnotic…

Yeah. You know, honestly, people often say to me about my voice—stepping up my voice—and I never think about it. I just— It’s like if you’re pretty; you know, if you think about being pretty, you stop being pretty. It’s part of me, so when it’s useful it just gets used.

You didn’t manipulate it at all?

No.

So that was really it…

Yeah. What I’m thinking is—what I’m trying to do to Larry is—say to him, “Larry, you know I’d never hurt you. You know I love you. Listen, I know this is hard for you, Larry, but, believe me, it’s for the best.” And when I think that way, that’s the way it comes out. It’s not that I tell my voice to do anything; it just comes out that way. But, in some parts, you know, it’s still me, but some characters don’t accomplish things that way so, you know, they wouldn’t talk that way.

I find it interesting that you used the word ‘evil’ because I looked at him and I said, “This guy’s a pain in the ass,” and if I were Larry I’d tell him to go play in traffic, but the only thing that, to me, would be ‘evil’—and I wasn’t certain if this was even something we could attribute to him—was if the letters to the tenure committee that Judith says Sy had written on Larry’s behalf were, in fact, the anonymous letters that were demeaning Larry…

I can tell you what I think, but I can’t tell you what the Coens think. Actually, I probably shouldn’t tell you what I think! You know, it’s confusing because, on the one hand, Judith says, “He thought so very highly of you that he wrote letters to the tenure committee.” On the other hand, after I’m dead, Arlen still says to him, “You know, the letters have still been coming.” Although it could be that I mailed them late enough—that’s possible.

So they never said to you whether or not you were the one mailing those letters?

No.

’Cause that was never clear to me. I mean, it could be the father of the student who was accused of cheating…

It could be. I have my idea in my head of what it was, but I prefer to let the audience guess or infer whatever they think. But when I say ‘evil,’ all I really mean by evil is ‘selfish.’ After all, what is evil? It’s just people being selfish. And the reason Sy Ableman was not a difficult character for me to play was— I don’t know if this is true of everybody else, but in my family and in my schooling I encountered dozens of people who said to me, “Don’t worry. I know what’s best for you and for everybody else. Let me just be the boss and everything will be great.” This was something I encountered every day of my life. So Sy Ableman, even though he was doing it with adults, not children, was not such a very atypical character, as far as characters in my life went. Also, that, kind of, pained way that he had of doing it [laughs] came from somebody in my family. I had an uncle—my uncle Jerry, also now long-dead—who was the sweetest, nicest guy, but he always had this look of, like, pain on his face, and the nicer he was the greater the look of pain. I don’t know, it just was him. And I somehow got the idea, when I was, kind of, getting the part ready, “It would be great to somehow put Uncle Jerry in there, that pained look.”

Fred in a scene from “A Serious Man” (Focus Features)

And I heard Harold Bloom, also?

They told me— It actually says in the script, “He looks like Harold Bloom.” And Harold Bloom was at Yale when I was at Yale, but I’d actually never gone to a Harold Bloom lecture, so I downloaded all of these pictures from the Internet and there was Sy Ableman. You know, a little older than me, but that same, kind of, hangdog look—all these flowery words coming out of this pained face!

Considering all of these faults of Sy, why, then, does Judith prefer him over Larry? Larry’s not perfect, but he’s trying…

Well, again, I can give you my speculation, but it’s only speculation. Ethan—when asked about the budget of this picture, which was seven million dollars, which is very limited by most people’s standards—he said, “Well, Fred Melamed is the sex star of this picture. When you have Fred Melamed as the sex star, seven million dollars is a lot for the movie.” [laughs] So he inferred to me through certain things that he said, although I don’t know if he said this to other people, that, perhaps, Judith is not fully happy with Larry in that department. Why, I have no idea. Who knows?

Larry doesn’t seem very assertive…

Maybe. He’s certainly nice; he’s considerate. But who knows? That’s, maybe, a rather glib answer. I think a more obvious, maybe, correct answer is Larry’s not very ambitious. You know, he likes his physics; I think he’s interested in physics, although he doesn’t seem to be a great communicator of it—he’s certainly not like going to, you know, a Richard Feynman lecture—the kids are, like, yawning while he’s writing the equations up there. But he’s not ambitious. He likes his life—he likes his children, but he doesn’t seem all that involved with his children, he doesn’t seem all that involved with his wife, he’s not all that involved with his temple—he doesn’t seem to be all that involved in all that much. He, kind of, seems to take it for granted—at least, that’s the way it seems to me. So, with Sy, she’s getting somebody who (a) has, kind of, a high-profile—a ‘macher,’ as they say in Yiddish—kind of a bigger deal in their little St. Louis Park, you know, schul community; and, also, at least as far as lip-service goes, maybe he’s more attentive—maybe he, you know, asks her how she’s doing, he asks her about things, he buys her flowers. Who knows?

Who is the eponymous ‘serious man’?

It’s me, without a doubt. Without a doubt. It’s said in the script about six times. The rabbi says, “Sy Ableman was a serious man.” And Larry says at the end, when he’s desperately trying to get in to see Marshak, the most lofty rabbi, “I’ve tried to be a serious man,” but he can’t even bring himself to say, “I’ve been a serious man.”

Fred and Michael Stuhlbarg in a scene from “A Serious Man” (Focus Features)

So what does it mean to be a ‘serious man’?

Well, you mean in the world of this movie or in the real world?

Well, according to the perception that Sy and Larry seem to share…

Well, I think it’s used ironically in the movie. I think a person who is held up as an object of esteem or an object that deserves esteem, like Sy Ableman, is revealed to be utterly selfish and self-interested in the end, but he’s lionized within the community because he does certain things. I mean, at his funeral [laughs], the rabbi says, “Not only was he a good person”—he uses the Hebrew word for ‘a good person’—but he says, “maybe he was even a Lamed-Vovnik!” Which, for people who aren’t Jewish or don’t know what that means, there are supposed to be thirty-six people alive in the world at any one time who are so good, who are so beyond good, that their righteousness alone keeps the world alive. You know, which is like calling—I don’t know, I can’t think of someone who’s a used-car salesman anymore—Sy Sperling, the toupee guy, is one of the people on whose moral character the whole world revolves, one of the great people of all time. [laughs] People have often said, you know, “What does the beginning quote have to do with the movie?” And all that—

Do you mean the opening vignette or quote?

The quote. Well, also the vignette. You know, it mystifies me when people say they don’t understand what the opening vignette has to do with the rest of the movie—

What do you make of it?

Well, I mean, what happens? After all, what happens is— First of all, it’s about Jews—not assimilated Jews, or supposedly assimilated Jews, as the Jews in A Serious Man are, but Jews as we, sort of, might imagine, you know, stereotypical Jews to be back in the day. They’re Jews who live in a shtetl; dirt-poor; scraping a living together; bound by not only religion but superstition of all kinds—a belief in ghosts, ‘dybbuks,’ and other things like that; and largely subject to traditions and ways of doing things that have no basis in what we think of as scientific, you know, fact. So there they are, not on the wide-open plains of Minnesota but in a tiny little house in Poland or wherever they’re supposed to be there, and the wife does something of an extreme nature—I don’t want to spoil it in case anybody hasn’t seen the movie—based on a suspicion that most people would regard as superstitious, right? And she’s convinced—she’s willing to take this action that might completely alter their lives— Instead of looking at a simpler answer, she’s looking for cosmic-meanings in things, and what she supposes as the cosmic-meaning of an event compels her to do something which is irrevocable and terrible. Larry, also, is looking for cosmic-meanings for the collapse of his life. You know, in Judaism they say that there’s a ‘covenant’—they use the expression ‘covenant.’ Now, a covenant means an agreement between God and man. I’m talking about Judaism as if I know anything about it, and the truth of the matter is I know precious little about it [laughs], but my understanding of the covenant is that man is supposed to be righteous, is supposed to follow the ten commandments—and what is God’s side of the bargain in the covenant? Well, when I asked that of a rabbi, he said, “God’s side of the bargain is that He will hear our prayers.” Not that He will grant us what we need or want, but His ear will be ours. That seems like a gyp; that doesn’t seem like a very good deal for old man, that deal, does it? If we are the ‘chosen’ people, what are we chosen to do? Well, the answer most people are given in Hebrew school is chosen to be an example, chosen to lead the world. I mean, if you look at the history of the world, we may have been chosen for extra hatred, extra punishment, extra vilification, extra trial, extra persecution. Larry would like to believe, as most people would like to believe, as most people would like to believe, that if he followed a defined set of rules—if he just followed them—he would have an ironclad assurance that he would be protected from misfortune. And who wouldn’t want to believe that, right? But experience shows us again, and again, and again that the righteous—even the innocent—are punished for reasons that we cannot divine, reasons we cannot understand. I have two children with autism; they were born with that; what in the hell could they ever have done to deserve that? Everybody knows people that have gotten cancer, or worse, or all kinds of things; you cannot fathom why these things happen, right? So is there a rhyme or reason? If there is, all we can say for sure is, “We don’t understand it.” There may be such a thing as God’s will, but why certain things happen, particularly what seems inequitable, unfair, punishing, wrong—why that stuff happens—we have no good answer for. Larry would like to understand—and more than that amend his behavior—so that he would be protected from all of these horrible things going wrong. But the fact is even if you act utterly righteously you have no protection.

I think that’s very interesting, and I think it reaches the same conclusion that I reached watching it, but I actually came it a different way and I’d love to get your take on it. I looked at the vignette and then the rest of the movie and said, “Here’s a guy—the man who helped the husband on the side of the road, who’s now coming by for a bowl of soup to warm himself—and he’s done a good thing, he’s done the right thing, and what does he get in return for it? He gets murdered—or stabbed, and we can safely assume he’ll eventually bleed out and die. And Larry, also, tries to do everything right, to whatever extent he’s capable—tries to be an honorable professor who won’t compromise his grading standards; tries to be a decent husband and father, at least by keeping the peace; and what does he get in return for it? At the end of the movie, we see that he’s presumably about to receive a fatal diagnosis. And the son, too—what has the son done? He’s just had his Bar Mitzvah; he’s just gotten the message, hopefully, from the rabbi; he’s back in Hebrew school; he’s trying to return the money to the kid who he took it from; and what does he get in return for it? We can reasonably conclude that he and his class are about to get wiped out by the rapidly approaching tornado…

It sure looks that way.

So the thing that I saw in common was that no matter what you do you can’t stop what’s coming—which struck me as interesting because, as you mentioned, they wrote this film at the same time as No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading, which essentially have the same message. In fact, they explicitly state it in No Country for Old Men—I think Ellis, the old guy in the cabin, says it—and I believe there’s a similar exchange in Burn After Reading. So, I don’t know, perhaps it’s overanalyzing—

I don’t think so. I think you’re absolutely right about that. And, after all, what is the thing that’s coming to all of us, whether we’re good or not? I mean, that’s the final shot, right? I mean, death comes to everybody. Now, by the way, I don’t think the message of that is, “Therefore, be a prick”—I don’t think. I think what it means is, “You can’t look for an otherworldly reward, like a Heavenly reward, and you can’t expect that even if you are righteous things are gonna always go your way.” It means—I mean, this is the way I think of it—“You live better; you get certain things better; but you still are subject.” I mean, let’s talk about the ending for a minute because both the beginning and the ending people were thrown by. I love the ending. Now not everybody does [laughs] but, to me, I love it, and I’ll tell you why. Larry has all these terrible problems, right? Except then, when you get a problem like a doctor saying to you, “Well, come in. You have something in your X-ray that we can only discuss in the office,” or you’re looking down the end of the block and there’s a tornado that’s, like, the biggest thing you’ve ever seen, you know, in nature, well, then all of the other problems that seemed so consuming and terrible— It’s, like, you have nostalgia for the good old days of those kind of problems, you know? And, ultimately, we all stand facing the big problem—that’s where we all are. Also, the thing that I love so much about that ending of that movie, and I also love this about No Country—and Ethan did say to me that they wrote them simultaneously and he thoughts one effected the other—

Oh, he did?

He did.

That’s interesting…

That ending— Well, let me put it this way. When you see a lot of movies—and I’m particularly interested in this because I’m writing this movie and write movies—everybody yearns for a resolution in a movie or a story of any kind. And, generally, the resolution allows you to go back to your life—you’ve experienced something; you may have had a cathartic feeling; you may have had a sympathetic feeling; you may have had a happy feeling; you may have had a sad feeling—but, in some sense, you’re delivered back to your life with this changed mood. This ending sends you back to the movie; you keep thinking about this movie. And that’s partly because of the movie, but it’s also partly because of the ending. The Coen brothers’ movies, especially some of them—I love this one, I love Barton Fink, I love The Man Who Wasn’t There, those are some of my favorites of their movies, Fargo—they get into this, kind of, space between your conscious and your unconscious mind, at least mine, and they, kind of, rattle around in there, and, I don’t know, they stay with you.

Well, this one provokes debate, it provokes anger, it provokes discussion—it is almost like a rabbinical sermon that you may not agree with or fully understand, but that you discuss and debate…

I mean, I think it’s definitely provocative and I think it’s, kind of, like a litmus test: I think anybody who believes in God will not be convinced that God doesn’t exist from this movie, and if you don’t believe in God or if you’re skeptical about God you’re not gonna get any, you know— So I don’t think it really changes anybody’s mind, but I think what it does do is it gets into your head and it recurs—you know, its images and its ideas recur—and, to me, that’s how you tell an effective work of art; it gets in you and it bounces around in there. And, by the way, I will say in earnest that I don’t think is an easy movie to sit through; there’s a lot in this movie that’s uncomfortable. I mean, some of it is very funny; some of it is pleasurable; but a lot of it is challenging. Some people resent that because they feel like, “Well, if I’m going to be entertained, it should be pleasurable all the way through.” There are other people who have more of a thrill-ride idea about it, that, you know, “Some of it should be challenging.” But it’s not an easy movie, at all, to be an audience member for. I must have seen it seven or eight times, and my wife has seen it also, and we still talk about it—and I know every word of it. You know, there’s a lot to it.

Let me preface my next question by saying that the focus of my Web site is the Oscar race, the awards season, and the awards process, so I talk to a lot of Academy members; I also talk to a lot of other people, just as a moviegoer; and I talk to a lot of Jewish people, being a Jewish person myself. My sense, from talking to people in each of these are all different circles—which sometimes overlap—is that there are a lot of people who love the movie, who adore it, and who think it’s genius; but there are also a lot of people out there—especially Jewish people, as I’m sure you’re aware—who say that it doesn’t offer a very flattering portrait of what it’s like to be a Jew in America, and some of whom go to the extent of saying that they find it even anti-Semitic. I don’t think I’d go that far, but I can understand their frustration when they say, “Is there any character in this movie who one would aspire to be like? Is there any character in this movie who is presented without, sort of, an embarrassing flaw?” I have it near the top of my top 10 list of the best movies of the year, so I’m not trying to knock the movie, but I’m just curious how the Coens or you, as Jewish people, might respond to that…

No, I think it’s a valid criticism, and it’s one that, kind of, has no answer, you know? Philip Roth, who I’m a great fan of, had much the same thing said about many of his novels. After all, it’s a milieu that they’re writing about that’s familiar to them. But I don’t think there’s much of an answer that can be made to that. I mean, you could make the argument, “Who in The Godfather is somebody that is to be emulated?” Nevertheless, I’ve seen The Godfather two hundred times, and every time it comes on television I still watch it because there’s something about it that’s truthful, even though some of it is exaggerated. I mean, I don’t think the real Gambinos or whoever they were—I don’t think a lot of them were as good-looking, or as heroic, or gave the kind of deep thought to certain things that, maybe, certain people do in The Godfather, or the, kind of, dramatic, sort of, you know, considerations of things. But there’s something very true about what’s in that movie. What’s true about it? Well, for example, one thing that’s true about The Godfather is it shows people can be very evil, at one level, and at the same time love their families, right? That’s a truth.

Bernie Madoff…

Yeah. It’s funny you mention Bernie Madoff—I’m doing a film about Bernie Madoff.

Are you really?

Yeah. Well, if it works out. Somebody just approached me about it.

That’s cool…

When you see it, you know that that’s true. So—not to sound more pompous than I do already—

No, no, no…

But what is the function of a movie? Well, it’s certainly to entertain you, but part of the entertainment and part of its value is that it shows you something true.

I agree. I think that part of the issue that people have with A Serious Man, though, is that the Coens seem to have renounced their Judaism, and so it’s effectively like having an outsider criticize the religion—they say they’re not observant, and I think Joel has even converted or is raising his child as whatever Frances McDormand is. And, look, Precious is getting nailed for the same thing—that’s a film by black people presenting a portrait of black life that’s not very flattering, and a lot of black people are angry about that because they say that others may make the mistake of believing that it’s representative of the culture at large when, in fact, it’s not…

I mean, to be perfectly frank about it—and maybe I shouldn’t be so frank since we’re being recorded, but to be perfectly frank about it—I do think that there are a lot of people who are Jewish who are in great positions of authority and power in the movie business, and rarely do we examine ourselves in movies, and if we do it tends to be examination at arms-length—we tend to look at the Orchard Street Jews or Jews not quite so close to home, you might say.

Well, you know, Jews ran four of the five major Hollywood studios during most of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and which was the first one to put out a film about anti-Semitism? 20th Century Fox, the only one run by a non-Jew…

Right. I mean, they outdid the goyem when it comes to grandness—I mean, go to Hillcrest Country Club sometime. So, to be honest with you, I have heard—and this wouldn’t surprise me if it were true—that people in positions of very significant authority in Hollywood have been offended by the movie. Not necessarily ‘offended’ by it, but they are concerned that it shows a picture of our people—Jewish people—that is not very flattering to the world. And I don’t think they’re wrong for saying that. I also think that there is something of an obsession among Jewish people—and I think I can say this as a Jew—about, “What is it gonna mean for the Jews?” “How are the Jews gonna fare in it?” “How is it gonna effect the Jews?” And while I deeply, deeply resent and loathe anti-Semitism—I mean, I deeply do—I can’t imagine anybody really getting whatever anti-Semitic suspicions they have or tendencies they have reinforced by this film. I mean, after all, what are the, sort of, hackneyed visions of Jewish people that anti-Semites have? Well, they’re supposed to be money-hungry; they’re supposed to be cheap; they’re supposed to rule the world—rule all the banks and everything like that. Well, in this movie, I mean, there are a lot of people who look Jewish, but you have Jewish actors playing Jewish people. And, I have to say [laughs], I have been surprised how much has been made about how ugly everybody is supposed to be in this movie—I mean, it’s Jewish actors, you know, and there are some people with big noses, and hairy ears, and all that, but, you know, if you look at The Godfather or any other movie that’s about an ethnic group—or Precious—you know, not everybody is movie star handsome, especially when they’re trying to be accurate about it. I mean, some people have said— There was one particular reviewer, Ella I forget her last name, who reviewed for the Voice, who said, you know, it showed every kind of unpleasant Jew there is—pushy Jews, fat Jews, duh-duh-duh-duh Jews, and some people say that Larry is ineffectual and, therefore, sort of, a caricature of an ineffectual Jew. Well, all of those characters—fat, selfish, ineffectual—are true of Christians, are true of Muslims, are true of—

True, but I guess what the critics say is, “We take enough crap from outsiders. Do we really need our own people practicing self-immolation?” Because, whether the Coens like it or not, they are, technically, Jewish—

I don’t think they resent it at all. I mean, I’m making certain presumptions, but I think culturally they feel entirely Jewish, but Midwestern Jewish, which is a somewhat different thing from being an east coast or a west coast Jew. They tend to be much more like Midwesterners in that they are circumspect; you know, they’re not effusive. I think of Jews as being more like me—more talkative and effusive, you know, with our hands and of that, can’t shut ’em up, that kind of stuff—whereas they are more like Midwesterners. But, in terms of the amount of passion that they feel about things—and maybe this is a stereotype, too, I don’t know—but I think they’re very Jewish in that. And they feel themselves to be very Jewish. I don’t think they’ve renounced their Judaism in any, kind of, formal way. I think, maybe, the idea that God can be petitioned through prayer, or that God will take care of you if you’re righteous, if you follow the Torah and the commandments—I’ve forgotten the world for the Jewish law—that idea maybe they are skeptical about. But, gosh, I think everybody is. And I’ve read a lot of Jewish writers—rabbis and others—who say the questioning nature of this movie, even the cynicism of this movie, is part of what makes it so Jewish. In other words, I don’t think those people are wrong. I don’t think this paints a flattering picture of Jews. But, you know, does Fargo paint a flattering picture of people from Minnesota? Does No Country for Old Men paint a flattering picture of people from Marfa, Texas? Well, people could say they’re misanthropic. I would say they love the good in people and they don’t like the bad in people, and sometimes they find more bad than good. [laughs] I think there are anti-Semitic people in the world—I’m not trying to say that there aren’t; I mean, I certainly think there are—but I don’t think those people are very influenced by Coen brothers movies.

Or that they would make it very far into this one, with all the various Yiddish and Jewish cultural references…

Look, I’ve used this example before, but you and I have both seen The Godfather, right?

Yes…

Now, I speak about three words of Italian. If you understand Italian, and if you’ve grown up with people like those that are in that movie, and you know what that cooking smells like—and I’ve been around it enough to know something about it—you will get a different level of intimacy from that experience. But can you enjoy it? Can I enjoy it? For sure! There’s a ton in that we can appreciate—even when they’re speaking Italian.

But do you think that parts of it go over our head?

Sure.

So it’s a different experience. I mean, I can’t imagine— I have an uncle, who’s not Jewish, married to my aunt, who is Jewish, and if they went to see this movie together I wonder if he would even be able to think about some of the questions that we’re discussing and debating today because I suspect he would be more focused on trying to understand the context of some of the situations, and rituals, and things like that…

Well, I mean, I think some of it is mysterious, a little bit, but I don’t think it’s that— The more specific a story’s milieu is, the more specific its framework is, in a way, that makes it more universal to people. And even though people may not know Hebrew—I mean, I don’t know any Hebrew, I was never Bar Mitzvahed, or any of that stuff—I mean, it’s familiar to me because I’ve heard it a million times, but I actually don’t know what a lot of it means; and I know what a Bar Mitzvah is, having gone to Bar Mitzvahs; but, you know, I only learned as an adult what a lot of that stuff meant. I mean, I thought a Bar Mitzvah was more like a fancy birthday party where you got presents—and, in fact, that’s what it is; I mean, the idea that you become a part of the congregation, and that you’re an adult in a certain sense, while it was in the language, I never saw it in any of my cousins’ new ways of acting, you know, or anything like that. So I don’t think this movie is quite as— I mean, I think it may be a little bit exotic to some people who are unfamiliar with it, but I think it’s also exotic to Jews because there’s a lot in the movie that’s not—

Well, how about Jews in Minnesota—that’s a niche group…

Yeah. Well, to me, it’s an interesting group. It’s funny—when I first got out of school, I lived in Minnesota for a year; I was working at the Guthrie. So when I went back, when we made the movie, I got to see a lot of my, you know, friends that I had been friends with many years before that. The tenor of Minnesota, the flavor of Minnesota is largely Scandinavian—at least I feel like it is—but the Jewish people that you meet there don’t seem out of place; they’ve just, sort of, adapted. You feel much more like it’s a shtetl, you feel much more like it’s a separate— Even though St. Louis Park, where they’re from—people think that it’s a Jewish place; it’s not. It’s about, maybe, a third Jewish. There’s many other ethnic groups there. But there’s few enough Jews in Minnesota—and specifically in Minneapolis—that if you don’t know somebody, you know his dentist is your cousin, or you know somebody bought a car from— “Who is Ron Meshbesher?” “Well, he’s the attorney that everybody uses when they get into—” You know? It’s not that big a community. So, in a way, they’re not really so mixed, they’re not really so assimilated. You feel that much more there than you do living, like, in New York. I mean, I grew up thinking that most people were Jewish ’cause I grew up in Manhattan.

Do you have a favorite scene or line of dialogue that you delivered as Sy Ableman—something that you enjoyed either doing it or watching it later?

There were so many. I have to say, honestly, I had such a good time making it. It was so much fun, and it was so funny to me. The first day that we shot the scene in Embers—which is the scene where Judith and I, sort of, bully Larry out of the house to move into The Jolly Roger Motel—was the first scene we shot. And that’s the scene where [laughs] I tell him to count to ten, you know, to control his, whatever, his temper. All that stuff. That, to me—I remember when we were doing that—was hysterically funny. It was our first day on the set, and Michael was laughing, and I knew Michael—we had rehearsed a little bit for, you know, a couple of days before that—and I knew already that Michael was a really, really good actor. And we had worked the night before, just ’cause we knew everybody was gonna be nervous—it was the first day and stuff—but, you know, he actually cracked up a few times, which was great—

I hope it’s gonna be in the outtakes on the DVD…

You know, usually when you get the first release DVD they don’t put a ton of stuff on it, so I’m hoping that one day there’ll be a Criterion DVD where you’ll see all the— I mean, I’m not sure what’s— I read one thing about what’s gonna be on this new one. But I hope there’s a good directors’ track, too. I always like that.

Fred participates in a Variety Q&A with his friend and “A Serious Man” co-star Michael Stuhlbarg (Life Magazine)

Yeah. But I don’t know—they tend not to be too expressive about their films once they’ve made them…

Well, I mean, I’ve listened to their directors’ track for The Man Who Wasn’t There, talking with Billy Bob Thornton. But I’ll tell you a funny thing about directors, in general, which I think most people who are not filmmakers, kind of, don’t know, which is that—especially in cases of people like the Coen brothers, who write most of their own movies, as well as making them—a lot of the stuff that impresses us, that sticks in our mind as being the heart and soul of the film, to them is long passed by the time they make the movie. They wrote it, they thought about it, and then they, kind of, give the movie over to the actors after they’ve written it. And the directing process is more about solving problems. Like, I remember saying to Ethan [laughs]— For some reason The Man Who Wasn’t There escaped me. I had just never seen it. And it got a very lukewarm critical reception—at least, what I thought was lukewarm. I went home while we were making the movie—I worked for three weeks, and then I went home for two weeks, and then I came back for three weeks—so in the two week period that I went home— I have a big home theater at home, and I have a high-def DVR box to record movies, so I recorded it. And I thought, “Man, what a great movie this is! I think this is such a beautiful movie.” I was so shocked that it was not a big hit. Well, for one thing, it came out in 2001, right after the terrorist attacks; and a lot of people, kind of, found the Billy Bob Thornton character so passive that they didn’t like it as a movie. I loved it! So I said to— We were online— Joel and Ethan, unlike some directors, eat with everybody else—you sit down, you know, there’s a craft service thing, you sit, it’s like a big cafeteria, and we yap, have fun, you know, they’re great, they’re wonderful. So I said to Ethan, “You know, I just saw The Man Who Wasn’t There. I never saw it before. What a great film that was! That was a fantastic film.” And then he launched off into, “Oh, you know,” this “went wrong,” and “We had such a hard time doing” that, and “Billy Bob’s wig never fit right,” and duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. For them, it’s a series of obstacles that are to be overcome. The beautiful part of it, that we see, is like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But, you know, the real part that I remember is we could never get the light to be right. That’s the funny thing about being a director—it’s problem solving; it’s getting your vision, but getting your vision made in spite of all the things you have to deal with. I’ll tell you a great story about that, if I might—I know I’m going on, and on, and on. My favorite story about directing was told to me by James Gray—I’m sure you know James Gray, the director.

I think he just did Two Lovers this year…

Yes. Two Lovers just came out. He’s a very interesting guy, and he said—I keep talking about The Godfather, which is one of my favorite movies—“Remember in The Godfather there’s that great character Luca Brasi? Well, the guy who played Luca Brasi was not an actor; he was a wrestler—a well-known wrestler by the name of Lenny Montana, a big star in the fifties and early sixties. Francis loved Lenny Montana, and, particularly because there’s a scene, you probably remember, where he gets garroted, he gets killed with a garrot and his eyes, kind of, bulge out of his head, and, because he had been a wrestler, he had the ability to do this unbelievably well. So Francis really, really wanted him in the movie—but he was not really an actor, and he was very nervous. And the first day of shooting was the scene where he’s supposed to come in to Marlon Brando, because Marlon Brando has paid him the great honor of inviting him to his daughter’s wedding, and he’s supposed to say thank you very much for inviting me, and that’s the scene. So he had a line, and the line was, “I want to thank you for the great honor of inviting me to your daughter’s wedding.” That was the line he was supposed to say. And Marlon Brando was being difficult and he wrote, like, “Screw you” on a piece of paper, and taped it to his head, and, you know, was trying to make trouble, as he enjoyed doing. So Lenny Montana was extremely nervous—it was his first scene; it was with Marlon Brando; he was not an actor; and he couldn’t get his line straight. He could never get the line straight. They shot it, and shot it, and shot it like fifty times, and he could never get it right. He’d say, “I want to thank you for inviting me to the wedding of your daughter on your daughter’s wedding day— on the day of your daughter’s wedding—” Right? So, if you actually look at the scene, what he says is, “Godfather, I want to thank you for inviting me to your daughter’s wedding on the day of your daughter’s wedding.” Right? So they did it fifty times, and Francis said, “I got it.” And Robert Evans said, “What do you mean you got it? He didn’t do it!” “No, no, I got it, I got it.” And Robert Evans said, “You can’t stop. He never did it right once. You gotta get it!” Francis said, “Trust me.” So they do a brief setup right outside, right after they shoot the scene, of Lenny Montana—Luca Brasi—practicing the speech as if he’s very nervous. Not in the script. He says, “You’re sitting here, and you practice.” “Godfather, I want to thank you for inviting me to your daughter’s wedding. Godfather, I want to thank you for inviting me to your daughter’s wedding.” So, in the movie, you see him practicing, and then the next scene he goes in, and he says it, and he’s so nervous he goes, “I want to thank you for inviting me to your daughter’s wedding on the day of your daughter’s wedding.” And it’s great! Because what James Gray says—correctly—is a film is like wild horses: it always gets away from you. There’s so many things involved when you’re on a set that happen. You know, and sometimes you get a very happy accident—a lot of times—but sometimes you get not so happy accidents. So a great director—and I saw the Coens do this a zillion times—uses things that happen accidentally to tell the story.

That’s a great story, and it actually leads very well into my next question. I’ve interviewed a few people who have worked with the Coens—Javier Bardem, Roger Deakins, and others—and, if I remember correctly, what I tended to hear was that they do a lot of pre-production work and then come onto the set and have very little to say—give very little direction. Was that your experience in your own dealings with them and when you observed them working with others?

Well, I did, in fact, find that to be true. I was very surprised at it because, you know, I knew that they control their movies so fully and they get such great performances out of people. I mean, if you look at, certainly, Fran McDormand’s work, if you look at the work of John Turturro, if you look at the work of John Goodman, if you look at the work of Steve Buscemi—in my view, some of the best performances of these people—and these are people who often give great performances, but—some of their all time best have been in the Coen brothers’ movies. So I was very surprised to learn that the way that they get these performances out of people is they write very, very well-realized characters in their screenplays; and they give them a world to inhabit that is very plausible, that feels very real; and then they like them to be creative. This is probably the most tired observation that actors make every day but, believe it or not, good screenplays are extremely rare. It’s hard to write a good screenplay—very hard—and you don’t come across one very often, and when you do it makes you really sit up, and you go, “Wow!” You know, nine times out of ten, when you get a screenplay you think, “Okay, well what the hell am I gonna do with this? I have to do something with it.” I mean, you always have to do something with it, but it’s problematic. When you get a great screenplay, it inspires you and you think, “Oh, I could do this!” Or “I could do that!” Or “I could do this!” And it’s exciting to you; it’s not, like, a problem—at least, that’s the way that it feels to me. So I was surprised to learn—and I only learned this after my own experience and then asking other people that had worked with them—you know, “Is it always the same?” And they said, “Yeah, that’s the way that it is.” They create this great atmosphere where you feel, kind of, loose, and you feel like they have great faith in you. But they write you something very strong, and then they give it up to you; they say, “Okay, now we want to see what you have to do with it.” And, if they you’re going a little bit down a wrong alley, you know, they’ll tell you, but it’s very gentle. You always feel, with them—at least, I did and the people that I observed them with—you always feel that they have great faith in you.

How did it come to be that you observed the Coens at work even when you were not yourself in scenes?

Well, for a long time, I’ve been writing different things—some movies—and I had an idea for a movie a couple of years ago. It’s a made up story, but it was inspired by the true story of a friend of mine who was very famous in the world of rare maps—I won’t tell you the whole story now, but I wanted to make this movie about him. He was found to have been stealing extremely valuable maps, and it shocked everybody that knew him because he was such a great person, as a human being. Anyway, I had an idea to make a movie based on his story, influenced by his story. When I got the call to do the Coen brothers’ movie, I was in the middle of writing it, and I thought I would really like to direct this movie myself. So, while we were doing the movie, I had many days where I wasn’t working—where I was, you know, just there in Minneapolis, and, you know, you can do whatever you want—so, in the first week that we were shooting, I said, “Listen, would you mind very much if, on days when I’m not working, if I came down and just hung out? Because I see the way that you work with Roger”—Deakins, the cinematographer—“and other people on the movie, and the actors—it’s, you know, very, very—from my point of view—unusual, and I see the great results you get out of people. Would it be okay if I just came?” And they said, “Absolutely,” you know? “You’re more than welcome. Any day you want to come, come down.” And they said another thing to me which was shocking—they said, “Any time you have an idea about anything, don’t feel shy.” Which, in the movie business, you just don’t hear that—it’s not an insult or anything, but just nobody says that. Directors are already, like, overwhelmed with people, you know, giving them opinions and also asking them questions, so this is something you never, ever, ever hear. I only actually gave my opinion about one thing, and they actually wound taking it, which was completely shocking! [laughs]

Fred on the set of “A Serious Man” with directors Ethan Coel, left, and Joel Coen, right (Fred Melamed Collection)

I have to ask what that was…

What happened was early on, when we all got the scripts, the motel was called The Jolly Roger—it’s a minor point, but I just thought it was a great name for a motel, especially since it, kind of, infantilizes Larry, it’s so sad and pathetic. I just thought it was great. So then, when we got to Minneapolis— You know, with scripts, you get revisions, and they’re different colors—that’s the way it’s usually done. You get a buff copy, and you get a salmon copy— And when they’re trying to tell you what version it is it’s always by the color. So, the first revision, the only important change was— There was a couple of name changes of characters, and they had changed the name of The Jolly Roger to The Aqua City Motel. And I thought, “What the hell? Aqua City? What’s that mean?” So I said to Ethan, “How come you changed it?” He said, “Well, we found this actual motel called The Aqua City, and it’s period correct, and we can save, you know, like, five thousand dollars if we just make it that way.” And we had one day of rehearsal, and I said, “Listen, forgive me for being a big-mouth, but it’s so, so much better to have The Jolly Roger, I think—it’s so much stronger, it’s so much funnier.” And they, kind of, looked back and forth at each other and, you know, they didn’t render any decision or anything, and, you know, Ethan said, “Well, I don’t know, I don’t know.” And then, like, two weeks later, we saw in the scene shop they were working on a sign that said, “Jolly Roger.” So they decided that that was true. I said they could CGI it, you know? It’s only in two or three shots, the motel. But I guess probably it was cheaper to make a real motel sign than to CGI it. But, anyway, that was the only thing I remember that any actor asked for. You know, their scripts are so beautiful that you don’t really want to change any line. Sometimes I would make a mistake, you know, and say the wrong line, just ’cause I got it wrong, but you’d find that what they wrote was, like, always better than whatever you came up with.

The scene that was in the trailer, in which Sy is in Larry’s classroom and starts banging Larry’s head against his chalkboard—what’s that about?

Well, you mean the dream sequence?

Yeah. What do you think the meaning of it is?

Well, I think Sy is unmasked in that scene. You know, if you remember the beginning of the scene, he’s demonstrating on the blackboard Heisinger’s Uncertainty Principle—or at least he’s attempting to—and the last thing he says is, “So you can never really understand it, but you will be responsible for it on the mid-term.” [laughs] And then, when everybody leaves the room except for me, he realizes that I’ve been sitting there listening the whole time, and he says, “Well, did you understand that?” And I say, “Yeah, of course. Except I know what’s going on—I actually know what’s going on.” And he says, “Well, maybe in Heaven—” He uses the Hebrew word for it. And I say, “No, no, in this world! In this world I knew what was going on.” And I think he realizes then that he made this big mistake in thinking that maybe I actually had been a righteous man and that, maybe, Judith had something. I think it’s just a realization that he had swallowed the community view hook, line, and sinker, and that really, maybe, he should have had a little faith in himself and his own judgment. I mean, the next thing I say after I tell him that is, you know, what I’ve done to his wife—a very unflattering description of how I’ve behaved with his wife—which is probably the most painful thing you can hear if you love somebody. So I think it’s his suspicions revealed to be true—that he’s been taken advantage of and misled.

Fred and Michael Stuhlbarg in “A Serious Man” (Focus Features)

One final question: After stepping away from acting for a while, you came back, made this film, and your work has been very critically embraced—you’ve got the dean of film criticism, Roger Ebert, singing your praises; you’ve got a film critic for the New York Times, A.O. Scott, putting you on his list of people who most deserve an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor; you’ve got the best ensemble nomination from the Gotham Independent Film Awards. You must be struck by everything that’s going on. Looking forward, what’s your outlook? How has this changed things? And what do you hope to do as a result?

Well, what I hope to do is what I’ve always hoped to do, which is to work on projects that are interesting to me and support my family [laughs]—I know that sounds a little pedestrian, but that’s the truth of it, is to work on stuff that I think is good; that I like; that has, you know, meaning to me; and that I can make a living at. And this movie has reminded me, in a personal way, what’s so great about acting—how great it is. And I don’t just mean the plaudits that I was fortunate enough to receive because I felt that way before I got any of them. Just doing it was so pleasurable, so much fun.

Richard Kind, Amy Landecker, Joel Coen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred, and Ethan Coen at the U.S. premiere of “A Serious Man” (Life Magazine)

On February 29, 1940, Hattie McDaniel was awarded the best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in “Gone with the Wind” (1939), becoming the first black actor or actress to ever win an Academy Award. On March 7, 2010 (70 years and one week later), Mo’Nique was awarded the very same honor for her performance in “Precious” (2009). During Mo’Nique’s acceptance speech she said, “I would like to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring what she had to so that I would not have to.”

In a recent article in Parade magazine, “Precious” director Lee Daniels said that Mo’Nique is “obsessed” with playing McDaniel in a film about her life. Then, this week, Mo’Nique announced that she has formally optioned McDaniel’s life story, paving the way for a project in the near future.

Last night, Mo’Nique paid special tribute to McDaniel at the Oscars: she wore a royal blue gown and a flower in her hair because, she later told members of the press, McDaniel had done the same on the night she collected her Oscar. (You can see side-by-side photos of the women accepting their Oscars at the top of this post, and watch video of McDaniels’ acceptance speech by clicking here.)

THE LATEST…

11:58pm/est: BEST PICTURE

• Nominees: “Avatar” (20th Century Fox, 12/18), “The Blind Side” (Lions Gate, 11/20), “District 9” (TriStar, 8/14), “An Education” (Sony Pictures Classics, 10/9), “The Hurt Locker” (Summit, 6/26), “Inglourious Basterds” (The Weinstein Company, 8/21), “Precious” (Lions Gate, 11/6), “A Serious Man” (Focus Features, 10/2), “Up” (Disney, 5/29), “Up in the Air” (Paramount, 12/4)
• Projection: “The Hurt Locker”
• Presenter(s): Tom Hanks
  

Winner: “THE HURT LOCKER”
Commentary: Make no mistake about it: David has slain Goliath! “The Hurt Locker,” which first premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival but only became a critical darling in mid-2009, establishes a new record for the lowest-grossing best picture winner ($14,700,000 domestically); over the past 31 years — the time period for which widespread data is available — no best picture winner earned less than $43,984,230 domestically, the box-office take of “The Last Emperor” (1987). For the 15th time in 20 years, a film with the lead or co-lead in total nominations has won best picture (both “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” had nine). And Bigelow, who had already become the first female to win the best director Oscar, also becomes the first female to have directed a best picture Oscar winner. (For much more information on “The Hurt Locker,” check out a primer on the film that I recently posted and the audio of a post-SAG screening Q&A that I conducted with its stars Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie back in November.) Meanwhile, “Avatar,” which has earned more money at the box-office than any other film in history ($720,180,000-and-counting domestically, $2,559,189,000-and-counting internationally), proved unable to overcome snubs in the acting and screenplay categories (only one film has ever managed to win under the same circumstances, and that was 77 years ago). And fellow best picture nominees “An Education” (3 total nods), “District 9” (4 total nods), “A Serious Man” (2 total nods), and “Up in the Air” (8 total nods) become only the 135th, 136th, 137th, and 138th best picture nominees in 82 years of Oscars to go home empty-handed.

11:53pm/est: BEST DIRECTOR

• Nominees: Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”), James Cameron (“Avatar”), Lee Daniels (“Precious”), Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”), Quentin Tarantino (“Inglourious Basterds”)
• Projection: Bigelow
• Presenter(s): Barbra Streisand
  

Winner: KATHRYN BIGELOW (“THE HURT LOCKER”)
Commentary: Bigelow makes history by becoming the first female in the 82 years of the Academy Awards to win the best director Oscar — taking the prize over her ex-husband Cameron, to boot! Streisand can be overheard saying, “I am so honored to present you this” as she hands her the statuette. I encourage you to check out our recently-posted retrospective of Bigelow’s work and rundown of female directors who paved the way for her and for whom she has paved the way (several of whom cheered her nomination and potential win when I reached out to them for comment last month).

11:39pm/est: BEST ACTRESS

• Nominees: Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”), Helen Mirren (“The Last Station”), Carey Mulligan (“An Education”), Gabourey Sidibe (“Precious”), Meryl Streep (“Julie & Julia”)
• Projection: Bullock
• Presenter(s): Michael Sheen (Mirren), Forest Whitaker (Bullock), Oprah Winfrey (Sidibe), Stanley Tucci (Streep), Peter Sarsgaard (Mulligan), Sean Penn (the envelope)
  

Winner: SANDRA BULLOCK (“THE BLIND SIDE”)
Commentary: As I wrote last month, Bullock — who is greeted by a standing ovation — seemed to have an edge in this race because 51 of the previous 82 best actress winners won for a performance in a film that was nominated for best picture (which Bullock’s is); only 11 of the previous 82 best actress winners represented the sole nomination for their film (which Streep is); and since the first SAG Awards in 1994 only 4 women have won the Golden Globe for best actress (either drama or comedy/musical) but not the SAG Award for best actress and still gone on to win the best actress Oscar (which boded well for Bullock but not for Streep) and no woman has ever lost both the Golden Globe for best actress (either drama or comedy/musical) and the SAG Award for best actress and still gone on to win the best actress Oscar (which did not bode well for Mirren, Mulligan, or Sidibe) And that’s before you consider that Streep has already won two Oscars and garnered 16 Oscar nominations; Mirren won an Oscar only 3 years ago; and Mulligan and Sidibe are nominated for their first starring roles; whereas this is the first nomination of Bullock’s long career as a leading lady, and while most people don’t usually win on their first nomination exceptions are periodically made for “America’s Sweethearts”. Some fun facts: (1) only two other Oscar-winning performances have come in movies that grossed more money domestically than Bullock’s ($250,480,000 and counting): Heath Ledger (“The Dark Knight,” 2008) for best supporting actor and Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” 1994) for best actor; (2) Streep’s record number of acting losses grows from 13 to 14; her closest living competition is way behind her: Jack Nicholson (9), Peter O’Toole (8), and Al Pacino (7); and (3) Bullock becomes the first person to ever win a Razzie for worst performance and an Oscar for best performance in the same year.

11:24pm/est: BEST ACTOR

• Nominees: Jeff Bridges (“Crazy Heart”), George Clooney (“Up in the Air”), Colin Firth (“A Single Man”), Morgan Freeman (“Invictus”), Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker”)
• Projection: Bridges
• Presenter(s): Tim Robbins (Freeman), Colin Farrell (Renner), Vera Farmiga (Clooney), Julianne Moore (Firth), Michelle Pfeiffer (Bridges), and Kate Winslet (the envelope)
  

Winner: JEFF BRIDGES (“CRAZY HEART”)
Commentary: Bridges, the beloved child of Hollywood and veteran actor, is greeted with a loud standing ovation and gives a lovely speech thanking his parents and the many others who have helped him over the course of his five-plus decades in the business. He became the clear favorite for this prize as soon as Fox Searchlight unveiled “Crazy Heart” in November — they hadn’t even planned to release it in 2009 but bumped it up when resources became available thanks to “Amelia” flopping. Now, on his fifth nomination, he finally takes home the prize, having waited longer between his first nod and first win than all but three others in Oscar history: Henry Fonda waited 41 years between his best actor nod for “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940) and best actor win for “On Golden Pond” (1981); Alan Arkin waited 40 years between his best actor nomination for “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” (1966) and his best supporting actor win for “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006); and Jack Palance waited 39 years between his best supporting actor nod for “Sudden Death” (1952) and his best supporting actor win for “City Slickers” (1991).

• Kathy Bates introduces the best picture nominee “Avatar.” The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

11:14pm/est: BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

• Nominees: “Ajami” (Israel),“The Milk of Sorrow” (Peru), “A Prophet” (France), “The Secret in Their Eyes” (Argentina), “The White Ribbon” (Germany)
• Projection: “The Secret in Their Eyes”
  
• Presenter(s): Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino
  

Winner: “THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES” (ARGENTINA)
Commentary: A big thank you to my sources on the Academy’s foreign language committee, who told me that this moving film appeared to be much better received by Academy audiences than several of the more critically-embraced but stiffer alternatives. This becomes the second Argentinian film to take this prize, joining “The Official Story” (1985).

• Keanu Reeves introduces the best picture nominee “The Hurt Locker,” which was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed him in “Point Break” (1991). The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

11:06pm/est: BEST FILM EDITING

• Nominees: “Avatar” (Stephen Rivkin/John Refoua/James Cameron), “District 9” (Julian Clarke), “The Hurt Locker” (Bob Murawski/Chris Innis), “Inglourious Basterds” (Sally Menke), “Precious” (Joe Klotz)
• Projection: “The Hurt Locker”
  
• Presenter(s): Tyler Perry
  

Winner: “THE HURT LOCKER”
Commentary: The ACE Eddie winner has now corresponded with the best film editing Oscar for 10 consecutive years. This category is also a crucial stepping stone on the way to a best picture win, as the same film frequently — but not always — wins both.

11:01pm/est: BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

• Nominees: “Burma VJ” (Oscilloscope), “The Cove” (Roadside Attractions), “Food Inc.” (Magnolia), “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” (Kovno), “Which Way Home” (HBO)
• Projection: “The Cove”
• Presenter(s): Matt Damon
  

Winner: “THE COVE”
Commentary: This social-activist doc about dolphin slaughter in Japan caught the attention of blogger Jeffrey Wells and then many high-profile celebrities (including Ben Stiller), who championed it all along the way.

• Jason Bateman introduces the best picture nominee “Up in the Air,” in which he played a key supporting part. The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

10:54pm/est: BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

• Nominees: “Avatar” (Joe Letteri/Stephen Rosenbaum/Richard Baneham/Andrew R. Jones), “District 9” (Dan Kaufman/Peter Muyzers/Robert Habros/Matt Aitken), “Star Trek” (Robert Guyett/Russell Earl/Paul Kavanagh/Burt Dalton)
• Projection: “Avatar”
  
• Presenter(s): Gerard Butler and Bradley Cooper
  

Winner: “AVATAR”
Commentary: The Camerons and the “Avatar” cast stand up and cheer the winners. Only a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of chatting with Letteri about the pioneering technological work that he and his team did on this film over the course of several years — all that I can say is it’s probably the most deserved honor of the night.

10:46pm/est: BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

• Nominees: “Avatar” (James Horner), “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Alexandre Desplat), “The Hurt Locker” (Marco Beltrami/Buck Sanders), “Sherlock Holmes” (Hans Zimmer), “Up” (Michael Giacchino)
• Projection: “Up”
  
• Presenter(s): Jennifer Lopez and Sam Worthington
  

Winner: “UP”
Commentary: Lopez and Worthington introduce well-choreographed dancers — the choreographer/”Dancing with the Stars” judge/Oscar show co-producer Adam Shankman‘s touch — performing to snippets of each of the nominated scores. (Very well done, but not necessarily related to film in any way, is it?) Giacchino wins — a really nice guy who, in addition to “Up,” has worked on many other Pixar films (most recently “Ratatouille”) and also works with J.J. Abrams (this year on both “Star Trek” and television’s “Lost”).

• Demi Moore introduces James Taylor, who plays guitar over a montage of select Hollywood figures who passed away over the past year. These include Patrick Swayze, Jean Simmons, Tullio Pionelli, Eric Rohmer, David Carradine, Dom DeLuise, Army Archerd, Ron Silver, Brittany Murphy, Lou Jacobi, Betsy Blair, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Cardiff, Kathryn Grayson, Roy E. Disney, Larry Gelbart, Horton Foote, Budd Schulberg (audible applause for this controversial figure), Michael Jackson, Natasha Richardson, Jennifer Jones, David Brown, and last but certainly not least Karl Malden (loud applause).
  

10:34pm/est: BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

• Nominees: “Avatar” (Mauro Fiore), “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (Bruno Delbonnel), “The Hurt Locker” (Barry Ackroyd), “Inglourious Basterds” (Robert Richardson), “The White Ribbon” (Christian Berger)
• Projection: “The Hurt Locker”
  
• Presenter(s): Sandra Bullock
  

Winner: “AVATAR”
Commentary: An obviously clenched and nervous Bullock introduces the nominees and announces the winner. “Avatar” was not a clear favorite in this category if only because many people don’t know whether to credit the film’s look to its cinematographer or visual effects artists or someone else. (The cinematography of “The White Ribbon” had been named the best of the year by the cinematographers’ guild, but the foreign-language film was not seen by nearly as many members of the full Academy, which votes to determine the winner of this award.)

• John Travolta introduces the best picture nominee “Inglourious Basterds,” which was written and directed by his “Pulp Fiction” director Quentin Tarantino. The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

• Elizabeth Banks calls attention to the Sci-Tech Academy Awards that she helped to present several days ago.

10:26pm/est: BEST SOUND MIXING

• Nominees: “Avatar” (Christopher Boyes/Gary Summers/Andy Nelson/Tony Johnson), “The Hurt Locker” (Paul N.J. Ottosson/Ray Beckett), “Inglourious Basterds” (Michael Minkler/Tony Lamberti/Mark Ulano), “Star Trek” (Anna Behlmer/Andy Nelson/Peter J. Devlin), “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (Greg P. Russell/Gary Summers/Geoffrey Patterson)
• Projection: “Avatar”
  
• Presenter(s): Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick
  

Winner: “THE HURT LOCKER”
Commentary: “The Hurt Locker” becomes only the third film in the past decade to sweep both sound categories, joining “King Kong” (2005) and “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2008). It now seems very, very likely that “The Hurt Locker” will defeat “Avatar” for the best picture Oscar.

10:24pm/est: BEST SOUND EDITING

• Nominees: “Avatar” (Christopher Boyes/Gwendolyn Yates Whittle), “The Hurt Locker” (Paul N.J. Ottosson), “Inglourious Basterds” (Wylie Stateman), “Star Trek” (Mark Stoeckinger/Alan Rankin), “Up” (Michael Silvers, Tom Myers)
• Projection: “Avatar”
  
• Presenter(s): Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick
  

Winner: “THE HURT LOCKER”
Commentary: The two presenters present a montage about sound editing/mixing narrated by — who else? — Morgan Freeman. Then “The Hurt Locker,” which won the CAS and BAFTA awards for best sound, beats the epic “Avatar.”

• Martin and Baldwin preview a clip about horror movies with their own spoof of this year’s breakout genre-hit “Paranormal Activity.” Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart, two of the three hot young stars of the “Twilight” franchise (which I wouldn’t really categorize as horror) take the stage and introduce the actual montage. (I noticed Stewart’s hands were tightly clasped behind her back, probably to curb her usual tick of playing with her hair while speaking, no.)

• Charlize Theron introduces the best picture nominee “Precious.” The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

10:09pm/est: BEST COSTUME DESIGN

• Nominees: “Bright Star” (Janet Patterson), “Coco Before Chanel” (Catherine Leterrier), “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” (Monique Prudhomme), “Nine” (Colleen Atwood), “The Young Victoria” (Sandy Powell)
• Projection: “The Young Victoria”
  
• Presenter(s): Tom Ford and Sarah Jessica Parker
  

Winner: “THE YOUNG VICTORIA”
Commentary: Ford and Parker are paired together as presented, presumably because he makes nice clothes and she wears them? Anyway, the great Powell takes the prize. Kudos to her publicists, who ran an aggressive but tasteful campaign. Upon accepting her prize she remarks, “Well, I already have two of these, so I’m feeling greedy.” I’m sure that is of great consolation to her fellow nominees.

10:06pm/est: BEST ART DIRECTION

• Nominees: “Avatar” (Rick Carter/Robert Stromberg/Kim Sinclair), “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” (Dave Warren/Anastasia Masaro/Caroline Smith), “Nine” (John Myhre/Gordon Sim), “Sherlock Holmes” (Sarah Greenwood/Katie Spencer), “The Young Victoria” (Patrice Vermette/Maggie Gray)
• Projection: “Avatar”
  
• Presenter(s): Sigourney Weaver
  

Winner: “AVATAR”
Commentary: Weaver, the star of “Avatar,” presents the award to her film’s art directors. Goliath finally picks up its first win of the night; in all likelihood, not its last. Acceptance speech, part 1: “Jim Cameron, this Oscar sees you!” Acceptance speech, part 2: “13 years ago, my doctors told me I wasn’t gonna survive.” Quite the juxtaposition!

• Colin Firth introduces the best picture nominee “An Education.” The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

9:55pm/est: BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• Nominees: Mo’Nique (“Precious”), Penelope Cruz (“Nine”), Vera Farmiga (“Up in the Air”), Maggie Gyllenhaal (“Crazy Heart”), Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”)
• Projection: Mo’Nique
• Presenter(s): Robin Williams
  

Winner: MO’NIQUE (“PRECIOUS”)
Commentary: Despite playing a horrifying character, refusing to campaign for the Oscar, and making some questionable comments/decisions over the past few months, Mo’Nique snags the top prize and receives a hearty and largely standing ovation from the audience. She becomes only the fourth African-American actress (out of 16 nominated) to ever win an Oscar in this category, following in the footsteps of Hattie McDaniel (“Gone with the Wind,” 1939), Whhoopi Goldberg (“Ghost,” 1990), and Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls,” 2006). She thanks the Academy “for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics.” A win for Mo’Nique’s co-star Gabby Sidibe — and perhaps even for best picture — somehow feels a lot more plausible right now.

• Queen Latifah introduces a montage of highlights from this year’s honorary Oscars ceremony, where John Calley, Lauren Bacall, Roger Corman, and Gordon Willis. Corman and Bacall are in attendance, stand up, and get a well-deserved standing ovation from the audience. Bacall: talk about a living legend!
  

9:47pm/est: BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

• Nominees: “District 9” (Neill Blomkamp/Terri Tatchell), “An Education” (Nick Hornby), “In the Loop” (Jesse Armstrong/Simon Blackwell/Armando Iannucci/Tony Roche), “Precious” (Geoffrey Fletcher), “Up in the Air” (Jason Reitman/Sheldon Turner)
• Projection: “Precious”
  
• Presenter(s): Rachel McAdams and Jake Gyllenhaal
  

Winner: “PRECIOUS”
Commentary: This is a stunning upset over “Up in the Air” and makes me believe that “Precious” may be a lot stronger in other categories. Fletcher, a soft-spoken, lovely guy, takes the stage to cheers from Sapphire and everyone else associated with the film, among many others. Fletcher becomes the first African-American to ever win an Oscar for a screenplay, either adapted or original.

• Jeff Bridges introduces the best picture nominee “A Serious Man,” which was directed by the Coen brothers, who also directed him in “The Big Lebowski” (1998). The camera then cuts away to a shot of the directors and voiceover-stars of the film.

9:38pm/est: BEST MAKEUP

• Nominees: “Il Divo” (Aldo Signoretti/Vittorio Sodano), “Star Trek” (Barney Burman/Mindy Hall/Joel Harlow), “The Young Victoria” (Jon Henry Gordon/Jenny Shircore)
• Projection: “Star Trek”
  
• Presenter(s): Ben Stiller
  

Winner: “STAR TREK”
Commentary: Stiller takes the stage in full Na’vi makeup, speaking the Na’vi language, and informing James Cameron that he’d like to plug his tail into his tail. Then he announces the winner of the category, in which “Avatar” is not even a nominee. There’s a quick cutaway to “Star Trek” star Pine clapping. (Not sure anyone else from the film is even there.)

9:34pm/est: BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

• Nominees: “The Door” (Juanita Wilson/James Flynn), “Instead of Abracadabra” (Patrik Eklund/Mathias Fjellström), “Kavi” (Gregg Helvey), “Miracle Fish” (Luke Doolan/Drew Bailey), “The New Tenants” (Joachim Back/Tivi Magnusson)
• Projection: “Miracle Fish”
  
• Presenter(s): Carey Mulligan and Zoe Saldana
  

Winner: “THE NEW TENANTS”
Commentary: This category is brutally unpredictable — last year they gave it to a Holocaust short, this year to a comedy about a gay couple who move into a troubled apartment building takes the category. Go figure!

9:33pm/est: BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM

• Nominees: “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” (Jon Alpert/Matthew O’Neill), “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” (Daniel Junge/Henry Ansbacher), “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” (Steven Bognar/Julia Reichert), “Music by Prudence” (Roger Ross Williams/Elinor Burkett), “Rabbit à la Berlin” (Bartek Konopka/Anna Wydra)
• Projection: “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant”
  
• Presenter(s): Carey Mulligan and Zoe Saldana
  

Winner: “MUSIC BY PRUDENCE”
Commentary: This was an incredibly competitive category. Timeliness and sentiment was on the side of “The Last Truck,” but alas. Burkett rudely interrupts Williams’ acceptance speech. Williams becomes the first African-American to win an Oscar in this category.

9:30pm/est: BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

• Nominees: “French Roast” (Fabrice O. Joubert), “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” (Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell), “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” (Javier Recio Gracia), “Logorama” (Nicolas Schmerkin), “A Matter of Loaf and Death” (Nick Park)
• Projection: “A Matter of Loaf and Death”
  
• Presenter(s): Carey Mulligan and Zoe Saldana
  

Winner: “LOGORAMA”
Commentary: The win streak of Nick Park’s “Wallace and Gromit” films in this category finally comes to an end. I’m shocked that this film hasn’t been sued yet — it’s basically “Pulp Fiction” starring corporate logos, complete with gunfire and cursing.

• Samuel L. Jackson introduces the best picture nominee “Up.” The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and voiceover-stars of the film.

• Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick, who are decidedly not in high school anymore, come out to introduce a special tribute to the late director John Hughes, who specialized in flicks about kids/teens and their troubles throughout the late ’80s and ’90s, and who passed away suddenly last August at the age of 59. Following a video montage of clips from Hughes’ films, a huge group of the stars whose careers owe a great debt to Hughes (including the largely reclusive Macaulay Culkin) take the stage, deliver a few funny and touching remarks about the man, and call the audience’s attention to his family in the audience.
  

9:11pm/est: BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• Nominees: “The Hurt Locker” (Mark Boal),“Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino), “The Messenger” (Alessandro Camon/Oren Moverman), “A Serious Man” (Ethan Coen/Joel Coen), “Up” (Bob Peterson/Pete Docter/Thomas McCarthy)
• Projection: “The Hurt Locker”
  
• Presenter(s): Robert Downey, Jr. and Tina Fey

Winner: “THE HURT LOCKER” (MARK BOAL)
Commentary: Following a back-and-forth about the desires of writers (represented by Fey) and actors (Downey), the nominees are introduced with dialogue read and displayed over footage of the scene to which an original screenplay gave birth. Boal, a reporter who returned from covering EOD units in Iraq and wrote a script based on what he saw, is then honored (over chief rival Tarantino). He especially thanks Bigelow and dedicates the win to the troops who are still in Iraq and to his father, who passed away only a month ago and “would have liked this a lot.”

• Chris Pine, whose sci-fi film “Star Trek” was denied a best picture nomination by the Academy, graciously introduces the best picture nominee “District 9,” another sci-fi flick with which he has no personal affiliation. The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and stars of the film.
  

9:00pm/est: BEST ORIGINAL SONG

• Nominees: “Almost There” (“The Princess and the Frog”), “Down in New Orleans” (“The Princess and the Frog”), “Loin de Paname” (“Paris 36”), “Take It All” (“Nine”), “The Weary Kind” (“Crazy Heart”)
• Projection: “The Weary Kind”
  
• Presenter(s): Amanda Seyfried and Miley Cyrus
  

Winner: “THE WEARY KIND” (“CRAZY HEART”)
Commentary: Cyrus stumbles a bit with her reading of the teleprompter but makes it look cute by noting, “We’re both kind of nervous — this is our first time doing this!” Following clips of each song being composed and also the scene in which each is featured in its respective film, the announcement is made. This was Bingham’s first nomination; Burnett was previously nominated for the song “Scarlet Tide” in “Cold Mountain” (2003) and also contributed to the films “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (1998) and “Walk the Line” (2005). He also worked on another Jeff Bridges film, “The Big Lebowski” (1998). Bridges and Gyllenhaal, the stars of this film, and Robert Duvall, one of its producers, are visibly delighted.

8:56pm/est: BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

• Nominees: “Coraline” (Focus Features), “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Fox Searchlight), “The Princess and the Frog” (Disney), “The Secret of Kells” (GKIDS), “Up” (Disney)
• Projection: “Up”
  
• Presenter(s): Cameron Diaz and Steve Carell

Winner: “UP”
Commentary: Following a teleprompter blunder (Diaz referred to Carell as “Jude” since Jude Law was originally scheduled to be her co-presenter) and clips featuring the “stars” of the nominees talking to outgoing Oscar Special host Barbara Walters about the honor of being nominated, they cut to the announcement. Pete Docter, who has been at Pixar since “Toy Story” (1995), accepts the award on behalf of all of the people at the studio. “Up” joins “Finding Nemo” (2003), “The Incredibles” (2004), “Ratatouille” (2007), and “WALL-E” (2008) on the list of Pixar productions that have won this category since its establishment in 2001.

• Ryan Reynolds introduces the best picture nominee “The Blind Side,” which stars his co-star from “The Proposal” Sandra Bullock. The camera then cuts away to a shot of the director and stars of the film.
  

8:48pm/est: BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• Nominees: Matt Damon (“Invictus”), Woody Harrelson (“The Messenger”), Christopher Plummer (“The Last Station”), Stanley Tucci (“The Lovely Bones”), Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”)
• Projection: Waltz
• Presenter(s): Penelope Cruz
  

Winner: CHRISTOPH WALTZ (“INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS”)
Commentary: Waltz’s portrayal of the tri-lingual Nazi Col. Hans Landa becomes only the eighth performance delivered largely or entirely in a foreign language to win an acting Oscar; the other seven were Sophia Loren (“Two Women,” 1961) for best actress; Robert De Niro (“The Godfather, Part II,” 1974) for best supporting actor; Meryl Streep (“Sophie’s Choice,” 1982) for best actress; Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God,” 1986) for best actress; Roberto Benigni (“Life Is Beautiful,” 1998) for best actor; Benicio Del Toro (“Traffic,” 2000) for best supporting actor; Marion Cotillard (“La Vie En Rose,” 2007) for best actress; and Penelope Cruz (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” 2008) for best supporting actress. He also becomes the first actor to win an Oscar for a performance in a Quentin Tarantino-directed film; the four others who have been nominated but lost for their work with the celebrated “actors’ director” are John Travolta (“Pulp Fiction,” 1994) for best actor; Samuel L. Jackson (“Pulp Fiction,” 1994) for best supporting actor; Uma Thurman (“Pulp Fiction,” 1994) for best supporting actress; and Robert Forster (“Jackie Brown,” 1997) for best supporting actor. Harrelson, Tucci, and 80-year-old Plummer, meanwhile, remain Oscar-less. Upon accepting his statuette from Cruz, Waltz riffs on his iconic line as Landa, “Oscar and Penelope? That’s an uber-bingo!” He also effusively thanks Tarantino, who has called the part of Landa the best he’s ever written, and which Waltz himself has called Shakespearean.

• Yep, now Martin and Baldwin tap-dance onto the stage together and introduce one another. (It’s been years since we had more than one host of the show — but that’s how it used to be every year during Hollywood’s Golden Age.) The duo riff on each other; their “It’s Complicated” co-star Meryl Streep’s annaul nominations (and losses); “The Last Station”; Vera Farmiga and the pronunciation of “Up in the Air”; Dam vs. Dame Helen Mirren; and Streep again; “Precious” (nice to see Gabby’s mom in the audience, by the way) and its stars; the tendency to deny stand-up comedians Oscars; Woody Harrelson’s proclivity for pot; and James Cameron (slapping on 3-D glasses) and “Avatar”; Cameron’s marriage marriage to Bigelow (she’s clearly uncomfortable); George Clooney (now they’re just ticking off stars to try to keep the TV audience tuned in for as long as possible); Christoph Waltz playing a Nazi obsessed with Jews (and motioning all around the room); Sandra Bullock (“Who doesn’t love Sandra Bullock?” “Well, tonight we might find out!”); the young’ns (Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner, who seem nervous but chuckle at “Take a look at us guys; this is you in five years!”)
• Harris breaks into a narrative musical number surrounded by dozens of dancers, often shot from above like a Busby Berkeley sequence in a 1930′s musical. So-so lyrics. Gets a sitting-ovation. Now, on with the show?
  
• Neil Patrick Harris takes the stage. As he says, “What am I doing here?” Well, I guess because he’s been such a hit hosting every other awards show this year. I expect that this will lead into an introduction of the actual co-hosts, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.
• Lead actor and lead actress nominees collectively introduced as if they’re on a reality show, provoking a big ovation. (Not sure why the supporting actor and supporting actress nominees aren’t up there with them.) Sidibe and Renner seem happiest to be there. Lots of cut-away shots to famous faces in the crowd.

PRE-SHOW COMMENTARY…

• A few posts from the past few months that are worth revisiting today: my annual narratives/precedents post; my top 10 snapshots of 2009; my top 10 films of 2009; my 2009 all-snubbed team; my top 10 films of the 2000s; my own Oscar ballot; my analysis of the nominees; my projection of least-likely winners; and my final forecast of winners.

• For additional commentary on the Oscars, be sure to follow @ScottFeinberg — and dozens of other film analysts and industry figures — on Twitter.

• One of the neat things about the extended awards season is that it has afforded me more time to meet/pose questions to awards hopefuls. (Here’s a complete list of/links to all of the interviews that I’ve conducted during this award season.) Since voting is over, I feel that I can now say that the coolest of the bunch were — in no particular order — Quentin Tarantino, Anna Kendrick, Woody Harrelson, Viggo Mortensen, George Clooney, Gabby Sidibe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Carey Mulligan, Jeremy Renner, Michelle Monaghan, and Ben Foster.

• I suspect that the best clue for the best picture race is the Producers Guild of America Award — that was the only other precursor that followed in the Academy’s footsteps by expanding its best picture field to 10 nominees and switching over to a preferential ballot; they anticipated 8 of the Academy’s 10 nominees (they nominated “Invictus” and “Star Trek” over “The Blind Side” and “A Serious Man”); and they wound up picking… “The Hurt Locker.”

• Some of the challenges of blogging about this year’s Oscar race? Having to…
  • Distinguish between “A Serious Man” and “A Single Man”; “Julia” and “Julie & Julia”; “Up” and “Up in the Air”; and “9,” ”Nine” and “District 9” – before I’d even seen any of them
  • Remember that it’s not “Anvil,” “Bad Lieutenant,” “Capitalism,” “Valentino,” and “Precious,” but rather “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans,” “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” and “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
  • Correctly spell and/or pronounce Louie Psihoyos, Lone Scherfig, Gabourey Sidibe, Saoirse Ronan, Neill Blomkamp, Mira Nair, Ben Whishaw, Zooey Deschanel, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Michael Stuhlbarg

• One of the cooler pieces of news I’ve heard today: the Academy’s producers have instructed presenters to drop the politically-correct line “And the Oscar goes to…” and go back to the original line “And the winner is…” when they open an envelope to announce a winner. See, everything old is new again — and the title of this blog suddenly seems a lot more relevant, don’t you think?!

Tonight, the 82nd Academy Awards will bring an end to the 2009 awards season, providing final answers to questions that we’ve been tackling on this blog every day since the last Oscar show came to an end 378 days ago. If you can’t watch the show or want to better understand what you’re watching, stay right here for complete and up-to-the-minute coverage throughout the evening — we’ll keep you informed about all of the presenters, nominees, winners, and speeches, while providing you with statistical analysis that you won’t find anywhere else. New updates will push down older updates so that you won’t have to scroll down much; you will, however, have to periodically refresh your browser for all the latest. Thanks for choosing to spend the most exciting evening of the year with us!

“Racing Dreams” Zooms to Front of Pack
School of Visual Arts Theatre, New York City
Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Tribeca Film Festival happens so early in the year (mid to late April) and showcases such small films (which usually don’t yet have distributors) that there’s usually little if any advance buzz about the films, making it terribly hard to decide which are worth your time. Many are not, but this year I got lucky. A publicist-friend told me about the films on which he was working, strongly recommended several, and then mentioned “Racing Dreams” almost as an after-thought. I don’t think a doc about kids trying to become NASCAR drivers sounded that appealing to either of us, but I decided to take a chance on it because it was directed by Marshall Curry (whose previous doc “Street Fight” garnered an Oscar nod) and produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (who I figured I’d like to see in the flesh). Little did I expect that it would be the best doc that I’d see all year; garner a standing ovation throughout its credits; and win Tribeca’s Audience Award. Based on the look on Curry’s face in this photo (seated at about 4 o’clock) as he watched the audience begin to rise to its feet (including Johnson two rows in front of him), I don’t think he expected it either.

The Man of the Hour
Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto
Friday, September 11, 2009

Few people have ever generated more excitement at the Toronto Film Festival than George Clooney, who was in town for the premiere of “Michael Clayton” in 2007 and returned to premiere two films in 2009: “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and “Up in the Air.” While the latter was widely celebrated and went on to earn him a best actor Oscar nod, the former was widely derided and quickly forgotten. In this photo though — taken right after the credits began to roll and the talent took a bow following the “Goats” premiere — Clooney seems perfectly happy, displaying his famous million-dollar smile as he ducks out of the audience.

Curious George
Private Residence, Toronto
Friday, September 11, 2009

Following the premiere of “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” several members of the press were invited to hop aboard a bus to an undisclosed location in order to celebrate the film along with Clooney and Bridges. After a 20-minute ride, we were dropped off in front of one of the most expensive mansions in Toronto — and greeted by a pen filled with real goats. While Bridges chilled out in a corner with a couple of friends, Clooney was surprisingly gregarious, standing in the center of the room and cordially greeting all comers. Not surprisingly, there were many. At one point, a fellow actor asked him what had happened to his hand, which was heavily bandaged. Clooney’s reps had informed the media that the actor had closed a car door on his own hand, but he could be overheard telling this acquaintance that his new girlfriend was actually the one who’d accidentally shut the door too quickly and he was trying to spare her the media attention. Moments later, he excused himself again to take a phone call, and I quickly snapped this candid shot. Yes, even George Clooney gets hurt; owns a cell phone (a Motorola, if you can believe it!); and makes and takes his own calls.

The Last Emperor
The Standard Hotel’s Boom Boom Room, New York City
Tuesday, November 3, 2009

On a blisteringly cold night, the fashion and film worlds came together for a party at one of New York’s trendiest new penthouse bars to celebrate the iconic fashion designer Valentino and “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” a doc about his life and work. It was organized by director Matt Tyrnauer and New York-based publicists, who were trying to stir up fresh enthusiasm for the film as Oscar voting neared. (It wound up making the best doc shortlist of 15 films but not the final five.) Among those in attendance were producer/beer heiress Daphne Guinness, talk show host Charlie Rose, actress/socialite Mischa Barton, actor Adrien Brody, producer Brian Grazer, actor Hugh Jackman (who is pictured in this photo listening to Valentino), and Jesus Luz, the 22-year-old disk-jockey who got the gig through a mutual friend of his and Valentino’s: Madonna, who showed up at the end of the party and danced with a few of the buzzed guests (myself included, if you can believe it — I still can’t).

A Face in the Crowd
Abe & Arthur’s, New York City
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Following the New York premiere of “Brothers,” director Jim Sheridan and stars Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman (whose blue dress became one of the most talked-about fashion items of the year) headed over to Abe & Arthur’s in the Meatpacking District, a magnificent space that packed in a lot of folks. In this photo, Portman — easily the most beautiful woman in this or virtually any room — seems to be moving amongst the crowd as if she was just another anonymous person, as opposed to one of the most famous movie stars in the world, something that one wouldn’t expect to see at this sort of an event. (Sheridan is the white-haired man she is walking past in the photo.) When I spoke with her the following week backstage at the Gotham Independent Film Awards, where she was presented with a career tribute at the ripe old age of 28, she explained that she’s as happy as she’s ever been because she’s finally getting to play confident, intelligent, mature adults on the big screen.

The First Lady
Cipriani Wall Street, New York City
Monday, November 30, 2009

I arrived at historic Cipriani long before any of the nominees for the Gotham Indepedent Film Awards that would be held there later in the evening. While strolling around the magnificent space, I ran into a publicist for “The Hurt Locker” and asked how confident she felt about the film winning best ensemble and best picture over “A Serious Man” in a few hours, not to mention throughout the rest of the awards season. The answer? Not very. Throughout the show, my videographer and I hung out in a corridor just off of the main press room where I was conducting 1-on-1 video interviews with several winners and presenters. When we heard that the best picture award was about to be bestowed, I ran into the main press room to watch the announcement on a closed-circuit monitor along with my fellow journalists and the publicist who had expressed her doubts about the film earlier in the evening. Upon hearing that “The Hurt Locker” won, she broke into a little dance before regaining her composure. Moments later, the film’s stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty, writer Mark Boal, and director Kathryn Bigelow all made their way into the room to take questions from the small group of journalists gathered there. At one point, I caught the eye of Bigelow, with whom I’d had the privilege of chatting quite extensively earlier in the awards season, and she flashed me a beautiful smile that I captured in the photo you see above. Little did I — or she — know that she would go on to become only the fourth female to ever earn a best director Oscar nod and possibly the first to ever win.

The (Re-)Coronation
The Beverly Hilton, Los Angeles
Sunday, January 17, 2010

I arrived early to this year’s Golden Globe Awards and snagged a front-row-center seat in the press room, where all of the winners swing by to take questions moments after they leave the stage. We were visited by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, and the entire casts of “Mad Men” and “Glee,” but the biggest winners of the night were clearly the folks behind “Avatar,” especially its writer-director-producer James Cameron. Cameron, who won best director and best picture (drama) at the show (and then lost all subsequent awards in both categories to his ex-wife and her film “The Hurt Locker”), was clearly thrilled to be back on top, which prompted me to ask him the rather cheeky question: “Is it fair to say you’re still the king of the world?” Most journalists’ questions were directed at Cameron, rather than his collaborators who accompanied him to the podium (actors Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver, as well as producer Jon Landau), and Cameron seemed more than happy to lecture at-length from the podium about the technology advances of “Avatar,” the underappreciation of acting in CGI films, and many other subjects. I think this photo captures, as well as any, Cameron’s return to the winner’s circle — even if it only lasted for a night.

He’ll Be Back!
Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara
Saturday, February 6, 2010

Part-time Santa Barbara resident James Cameron was invited to receive the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Modern Master Award this year. The evening-long tribute got off to a rocky start, though, when Cameron began delivering his acceptance speech prior to participating in a Q&A with moderator Leonard Maltin. Maltin, who might have allowed Cameron to proceed, seemed anxious to get the Q&A started, and eventually interrupted Cameron to bring him up to speed. Then, once their discussion got underway, Maltin inexplicably seemed to rush past large portions of Cameron’s life and career. After Maltin introduced clips of Cameron’s work on “The Terminator” films, it finally became clear why things had been so out-of-whack: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California and the star of the aforementioned films, had flown in to present Cameron with his award himself, and was introduced to do so right in the middle of the Q&A because he had to leave immediately afterward in order to catch a flight back to Sacramento. Though the press had been notified about the special appearance prior to the ceremony, Cameron seemed genuinely surprised. This photo shows Cameron after he walked over to greet Schwarzenegger and accept his award. As Schwarzenegger began to leave, he stopped himself, turned around to the microphone, and winkingly remarked, “I’ll be back!”

The Odd Couple
Lobero Theatre’s Green Room, Santa Barbara
Sunday, February 7, 2010

The most memorable event at this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival was viewed by only a handful of folks who were willing to miss the Super Bowl in order to witness a unique moment in film history: Quentin Tarantino, the 46-year-old writer-director, interviewed Kirk Douglas, the 93-year-old legendary actor-director, following a screening of Douglas’ 1975 directorial effort “Posse,” which the film history buff Tarantino had specifically suggested be shown instead of more famous Douglas films like “Lust for Life” or “Spartacus.” The event — which Tarantino labeled “not a Q&A but a Q&K” — was a gesture of thanks from Tarantino, to whom Douglas and the festival had presented the fourth annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film back in October 2009. I happened to be hanging out in the green room when Douglas arrived, and the photo above captures the lovely moment when Tarantino, a man known for violent movies, gently greeted one of his heroes — who emphasized during the Q&A that the admiration was mutual.

The Dude Comes Home
Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara
Sunday, February 14, 2010

On the last day of this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival, local hero Jeff Bridges stopped by for a Q&A with my fellow Oscar blogger Kris Tapley following a screening of “Crazy Heart,” the film for which he was/is widely expected to win the best actor Oscar. As the Q&A came to an end, the mayor of Santa Barbara surprised Bridges with a formal proclamation declaring it Jeff Bridges Day in the city. Bridges seemed very touched, hugged the mayor, and then graciously stuck around for several minutes to sign autographs for many of the people who had packed the Lobero Theatre for his event. I snagged this photo from the corner of the stage, and particularly like it because it captures Bridges in profile, with his shadow clearly visible behind him, as well as the genuine adoration and excitement of the folks who were clammoring for his attention.

All photos featured in this post were taken by/are the property of Scott Feinberg.