BEST ACTOR Roberto Benigni vs. Ian McKellen Benigni’s SAG award bodes well. Tom Hanks? He’ll live. “He already makes $25 million against 20 percent of the gross,” says one insider. “No one is paid more.”
SUPPORTING ACTOR Robert Duvall vs. Billy Bob Thornton The night’s tightest race. We’re betting on Thornton, but Duvall–another surprise SAG winner–may triumph.
BEST DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg vs. Roberto Benigni The man who has everything vs. the man who’ll say anything. Benigni’s “I’m so Italian” act has charmed Hollywood, but our money’s still on Super Steve.
BEST ACTRESS Gwyneth Paltrow vs. Cate Blanchett Cate’s great, but Gwyn’ll win. She’s said to have made as much as $3 million a picture. If she prevails, says one studio president, “maybe someone will be crazy enough to pay her $10 million.”
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Kathy Bates vs. Judi Dench Bates is the only Yank, which could cinch it. Dame Judi had only eight (great) minutes.
“It’s a kind of validation that one appreciates at middle age. And also, I’d love to have one of each kind–one for best actress, one for supporting. I’d love to have a whole collection.” –Kathy Bates, “Primary Colors”
“It would make my parents very happy.” –Ed Harris, “The Truman Show”
“The Academy voters don’t need to hear campaign speeches from any of us because this isn’t the race for president. They’ll vote their conscience, and which-ever film they honor will be the film that should have won.” –Steven Spielberg, “Saving Private Ryan”
“I would like to thank all the people who vote. I would like to send a cake to everybody!” –Roberto Benigni, “Life Is Beautiful”
“[Robert] Mitchum came up to me during the ceremony once and sensed I was a little nervous. So he leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Remember, it’s all a crock of s–t’.” –Nick Nolte, “Affliction”
“For a hobby, I’ve been looking into Web sites that make predictions. According to the astrological chart of one Web site, it seems that Tom Hanks is destined to win by virtue of his birthday, which seems to me quite unfair.” –Ian McKellen, “Gods and Monsters”
“You come in a car and everyone’s yelling your name out and there’s flashbulbs and stuff–that’s the most nerve-racking part for me. I’ve got these insecurity complexes from when I was a kid. I still believe I don’t deserve stuff.” –Billy Bob Thornton, “A Simple Plan”
title: “The Envelope Please” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-18” author: “Lucille Stewart”
MENDES: Directing is a very lonely occupation. You think you’re the only one who goes through it. This is our AA meeting. My name is Sam, and I am a director. [Laughter]
JEWISON: I have always felt tremendous pressure from studios. Maybe it’s because my pictures haven’t been that interesting. “Can we cut to the chase? Can you put more chases in? Can you cut it down?” All of this is brought to bear upon the filmmaker. And all you are trying to do is try to tell a story you believe in.
MINGHELLA: You are being a little bit pessimistic.
JEWISON: [Laughs] Well, I’m old.
MINGHELLA: The movies which have surfaced this year–they didn’t conform to anyone’s notions.
JEWISON: But it was a terrible year until September! Until “American Beauty” came out, there was nothing. And then all of a sudden we were crammed with five, six, seven wonderful films all between September and December… I am so tired of listening to all of the marketing and the demographics. I’ve always felt that I was alone and besieged and totally paranoid. Right now the biggest picture is about a white mouse. Let’s face it, that’s what’s been doing the business.
MENDES: But there’s a director here who’s made what is certainly one of the best movies of the year, “Boys Don’t Cry,” and it’s not indicated by box office. I imagine it hasn’t appeared on any box-office chart.
PEIRCE: It’s on the chart, but it’s never going to be higher than No. 35. I don’t have big stars. But I’ve never felt a sense of competition with the people who make $26 million their first weekend. OK, fine, the top slot is going to be taken by a mouse. Why does that need to be a threat?
SHYAMALAN: I wrote it for my little girl. She got to see it, and she loved it. But I wrote a kind of personal [draft of the screenplay]–almost a period piece based on the E. B. White novel. Then I left to do “Sixth Sense,” and they added the fart jokes. They ended up making a much more generic, formulaic movie. They are ecstatic with their box office and all, but I think that they learned the wrong lesson.
SHYAMALAN: I started out trying to do more personal films, like the ones that filmmakers at this table have made. But I wasn’t fitting in doing that. My instincts are: How do I make the most intelligent commercial movie for a mass audience? How do I make a superintelligent decision for both the 70-year-old woman and the 13-year-old boy? It sounds silly, but I get satisfaction from making stories that way. Even in film school, everybody else was into Godard and I was the one with the raiders of the lost ark cap on. But, you know, when I went to the airport the other day, and I tried to check my bags in–they saw my name, and all the baggage people started going nuts. “I saw ‘Sixth Sense’ four times!” “That was the best film of the year!” I’ll take that, you know? Those decisions that I made that were so restricting in the storytelling process became so rewarding.
MINGHELLA: One of the great and important elements of “The Sixth Sense” is that it takes its time. It demonstrates there’s an audience–a big audience–out there who doesn’t need to have the film flash by. There’s this strange preoccupation in America with length, and in the most bizarre way: “We paid $8, don’t give us too much!”
JEWISON: “When am I going to dinner?”
MENDES: It is about trusting the audience, and not offering them a climax every 10 minutes. It’s the “Twister” syndrome. “Twister” should have built up toward one enormous twister. They should have been chasing one big twister–like “Jaws,” effectively. Now you don’t trust that the audience will wait. There have to be six twisters of all different sorts.
MINGHELLA: I had an epiphany during the making of “English Patient.” I found a cast that I absolutely believed in, and nobody else did. I remember some really sad days, some pathetic days, where I was in Hollywood as an interloper with my briefcase. And in my briefcase were photographs of the cast. And I was sort of holding them up and saying, “This is Kristin Scott Thomas, and she was in…” People were looking at me and saying, “Kristin who?” I felt like such a jerk, and it was such a defining moment for me because I thought, “Well, listen, I believe in this cast, and I am going to make the movie with this cast, and if they don’t give me the money then I’ll go home and I won’t make films with American money.” And as a result of getting away with “English Patient”–and with that cast–it made me feel all the more that the imperative is to hold on to a sense of what you’re trying to achieve. Just living or dying by what you know as a filmmaker.
MANN: The choice I got the weirdest reaction to was when I said Daniel Day-Lewis was going to be Hawkeye in “Last of the Mohicans.” Because American studios didn’t know him. They said, “You mean that skinny guy? That short, skinny guy in a wheelchair?” Because all he had done was “My Left Foot.” I said, “Well, he’s not short. He’s a tall, skinny guy.” With Russell–in a way it’s a simple thing. I don’t cast for physical type. There’s this strange kind of poetic calculus you try to work out. “Is this what I want? Do I feel right about it?” And then you’re sitting with Russell Crowe, and you decide that the strength he has–the kind of inner drive–is right for Jeffrey Wigand. You just know when you know.
PEIRCE: Well, the first thing we did was take her down to Astor Place, in Manhattan, and cut her hair where the boys get their hair cut–and she looked like Matt Damon! [Laughter] Then I sent her back to L.A. with this thing called “Hilary’s regime.” She had to do what all these trans girls do. She had to bind her breasts and pack a sock in her pants, and wear boy clothes. And she had to go out there [in the world and try to pass as a boy]. If she succeeded, great. And if she failed, she had to look people in the eye and feel the humiliation of failing. And then she had to go back home and do it all over again. Because then she was doing what [the real] Brandon did. What was strange was beginning to get some of the hatred from people when they found out that she was a girl passing as a boy. And Hilary got terrified because she was kind of in this emotional no man’s land… Casting is an amazing thing. There’s no guarantee that the person you’re looking for even exists. It is beautiful and terrifying.
SHYAMALAN: This kid is brilliant. We did one scene–it was a nothing scene. He just had to walk into the kitchen. I said, “I want you shaken up. Let’s pretend that you’ve been walking from your bedroom to the kitchen, and you got confronted by a ghost that grabbed you. Then your mom called you and the ghost went away.” So I said, “OK, roll sound…” And all of a sudden we hear this huge banging, and the set starts to shake. Everyone was looking around, like, “What is going on?” And we look over, and Haley is throwing himself against the wall of the set over and over and over–and getting shaken up. And I go, “Action, action!” And he stops, and he just comes into the kitchen. It was an amazing thing to see someone who was going to go all out like that. An 11-year-old.
MENDES: It is the most uncanny thing. You can feel it in the room. They don’t shuffle or eat Mars bars. They tell you in silence. You can feel, “Oh, my God, they don’t understand this.” I very much enjoyed the preview process. I said I didn’t want the National Research Group doing it. I didn’t want to do a focus group or [scorecards]. I said, “I’d like to do it myself.” The one thing I asked the NRG was, “What’s the first thing you say when the movie’s over?” And they said, “We ask who liked the movie and who didn’t.” I said, “I can’t do that! That is way too on the nose!” So I got up, and I suddenly became terribly [shy and] English. I said, “Well, who kind of liked the movie?” And about a third of the people put their hands up. The studio was sitting there, and I thought, “Oh, Christ, I’ve blown it!” Then I said, “Who kind of didn’t like the movie?” Only two people put their hands up. I said, “Well, what else is there?” A guy in front of me said, “Ask who really liked the movie.” And then they all put their hands up.
SHYAMALAN: [To Minghella] I would guess that the preview screenings for “Ripley” were hellish. And the reason I’m guessing that is that [movies ask audiences to put themselves] in the main character’s shoes. I’m guessing they came out of your previews going, “Why did you do this to me? [Why did you make me identify with a murderer?]” Am I guessing right?
MINGHELLA: Having advertised, as noisily as I could, the importance of what you have achieved with “Sixth Sense,” I also want to say that I am not as invested perhaps in thinking that the only criterion of a good movie is its box-office results. The films that I have loved are often displeasing in some ways. They’re unraveling. And sometimes they’re tragic. I have a friend who made “Notting Hill,” and he said that they had previews where people were whooping at the end. And I thought, “Well, I don’t think I’ll ever make a movie where anybody will even whoop!” But pleasing people is not the only thing which gives value to a piece of work–particularly if you aspire to film as art. In the dark days of “Ripley” previewing…
MINGHELLA: Oh, of course. I mean, it’s a film which kicks you, if it works correctly. It asks an audience to go on a journey with a man who descends into purgatory. You’re not supposed to feel great at the end, but you are asked by a research group, “How great did you feel?”
MANN: I think the paradigmatic story about the kind of previews you’re talking about was “The Exorcist.” It scared the hell out of everybody. And they said, “How’d you like the film?” “I hated it.” It had the worst preview cards imaginable because it scared people.
SHYAMALAN: [To Minghella] I have so many things to say to you about your movie, because it’s so interesting, so ballsy. I don’t have nearly the balls to make the movie you made–at least for right now. [Laughter]
JEWISON: You will.
MINGHELLA: I think we’re all crippled in some way by lack of confidence. In keeping with our 12-step meeting here–My name is Anthony, and I am a director–I’ll admit that my absolute terror was that I would make another movie and everybody would say, “Well, he was a flash in the pan.”… When people talk about the value of awards–the most significant thing about them is that they are enablers. They make you think, “Well, actually, I’m not completely useless.”
JEWISON: To be nominated by your category–by your peers–is probably the best part of the Academy. That’s why I love the Academy’s lunch for the nominees, because everybody is a winner. You all get up like a bunch of kids at school. You get a certificate and someone shakes your hand and they give you a T shirt. Then you walk back to your table and you think, “Oh, my God, there’s Steven Spielberg. He did ‘Private Ryan’–but all he got was a certificate and a T shirt, too.”
MINGHELLA: You could never dare wear that T shirt. It says academy nominee.
MENDES: [Laughs] I went to the Academy Awards, and all I got was this stinking T shirt.
‘American Beauty’
SAM MENDES
Synopsis: A dreamy black comedy about a deeply fractured suburban family. Mendes (a wunderkind stage director famous for “Cabaret” and “The Blue Room”) gets terrific performances from Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening.
Oscar prospects: “Beauty” will be nominated across the board–and looks like the early favorite to win best picture.
‘Boys Don’t Cry’
KIMBERLY PEIRCE
Synopsis: A brutal, heartbreaking real-life story about Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank)–and what happened when murderous Nebraska boys discovered that he’d been born a girl named Teena Brandon.
Oscar prospects: Swank, who took home a Golden Globe, has a good shot at winning best actress. Chlo??? Sevigny may well be nominated for best supporting actress.
‘The Insider’
MICHAEL MANN
Synopsis: The true story of Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), who got up the nerve to blow the whistle on the tobacco companies, and Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), who quit “60 Minutes” when CBS couldn’t get up the nerve to run the interview.
Oscar prospects: “Insider” should get three key nominations–best picture, best director and best actor (Crowe).
‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’
ANTHONY MINGHELLA
Synopsis: A young, broke con artist (Matt Damon) goes to Italy to bring home a rich expat named Dickie (Jude Law)–and he’s so taken with Dickie’s glam lifestyle that he’d kill for it.
Oscar prospects: Tough call. It could pick up best-picture, best-director and best-actor (Damon) noms.
‘The Hurricane’
NORMAN JEWISON
Synopsis: Inspiring true story of boxer Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, who spent 19 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Jewison (“In the Heat of the Night,” “Moonstruck”) also follows the black teen who launched the fight to release the boxer.
Oscar prospects: Denzel Washington’s an easy bet for a best-actor nom. Best-picture and best-director nods? Possibly.
‘The Sixth Sense’
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN
Synopsis: A mesmerizing movie. A psychiatrist (Bruce Willis) treats a boy (Haley Joel Osment) traumatized by ghosts.
Oscar prospects: A best-supporting-actor nod for Osment and a best-screenplay nom for Shyamalan. If the Academy doesn’t punish “Sense” for ostensibly being a genre movie, it could also get a much-deserved nomination for best picture.
title: “The Envelope Please” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-07” author: “Thelma Lonergan”
Not that anyone’s hurting. The annual executive-pay numbers that have come to light recently are a reminder that excessive CEO pay is a redundant phrase. Leaders of large companies now routinely pull down pay packages measured in eight figures. Since the pay numbers have long lost any sense of proportion, it is time to give CEOs what money can’t buy–special recognition. Hollywood has its Oscars, so perhaps corporate America should have its own awards. Some suggestions:
The ‘Don’t Go Away Mad’ Award: When Jill Barad resigned her CEO post at Mattel this spring amid mounting losses, the company gave her a severance package of roughly $40 million, far more than her contract called for. Robin Ferracone, chairman of SCA Consulting, which designs executive-pay packages, says she is noticing that boardroom problems are increasingly resolved with cash. “Money is being used to diminish friction to a degree that I’ve never seen before,” she says. Mattel and other companies mentioned in this article declined to comment beyond what is stated in their financial documents.
The ‘You da Man’ Medal: Most executive-pay packages include a hefty carrot of incentive pay such as stock options. The theory is that if executives perform for shareholders, their pay should reflect it. But some executives are so darn important that they get huge W-2s just to come to work. William Gross, who runs the biggest bond fund in the United States for Pimco and is a master of his craft, is getting $35 million a year for the next five years as a “retention award,” according to the firm’s financial documents. Talk about a fixed-income fund.
The Flyboy Ribbon: It’s not just enough to have use of a corporate jet. When Apple Computer wanted to show Steve Jobs how much it appreciated his efforts this spring, it gave him a Gulfstream V (list price: about $40 million). Sure, the board also gave him 10 million stock options (not long ago, a grant of 1 million stock options was considered huge), but a G-V is a better way to get someone’s attention. A runner-up for this award is Donald Fites, who recently retired as chairman of Caterpillar in Illinois. Because of “continuing concerns about the personal safety” of Fites, he gets use of the corporate jet this year, for up to $75,000 worth of travel.
The ‘E Is for Effort’ Prize: One hot trend in executive pay is “special transaction” bonuses to CEOs for doing deals that are presumably above and beyond the call of duty. After Honeywell merged with Allied Signal last year, the CEOs of the two companies each got a “special bonus award” of $1 million for doing the deal. Pearl Meyer, an executive-pay consultant, says such awards should be used sparingly, and should be made in the form of stock, to focus on creating shareholder value.
The Joan Rivers Award: Shareholder activist Nell Minow wants to do to free-spending boards of directors what Joan Rivers has done to fashion-challenged movie stars: embarrass them. That’s hard to do because CEO contracts are often buried as attachments to any number of documents. So Minow has helped launch a Web site called that gathers up contracts for easy viewing. For example, the former CEO of Global Crossing, Robert Annunziata, spelled out in his contract the make of the Mercedes he wanted (SL 500) and his demand for monthly first-class airfare to Los Angeles from New Jersey for his family, including his mother. (Annunziata left the company in March.) The late Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once spoke about the virtues of public disclosure by saying that sunshine was the best disinfectant. Will it work with executive perks? Don’t bet your Gulfstream on it, even if the company bought it for you.
