Too Much InformationA tuxedo-clad Jordan and Heigl take you to Da Movies with their epic tangent-rich, name drop-y history of Hollywood's biggest night! They’ll dive deep into iconic Oscars moments, like the infamous streaker (and his shocking murder), the fallout from Marlon Brando’s politically-charged boycott, and Charlie Chaplin’s touching homecoming after years in exile — plus lots more lesser-known moments of award show insanity.
You’ll learn all about Oscars gaffes that make “Envelope-Gate” look tame — including the time that an Oscar statuette was stolen right from the stage! — and the disasters that occasionally delayed the broadcast. There’s also the tragic tale of a veteran actor who was forced to sell his trophy to pay for his wife’d medical costs (or take a cruise…), the time Tom Hanks accidentally outed his teacher at the Oscars (or did he…?), and the Oscar nominee who was wanted by police for the theft of tens of thousands of library books!
Egyptian curses, David Bowie’s preferred cologne, and the sad death of Disney child star Bobby Driscoll also get a mention for some reason, as does Jordan’s office break-room photoshoot with Taylor Swift and his unholy hatred of Richard Gere. He also (briefly!) quizzes his beloved co-host about assorted Oscars milestones and discusses his dream-fulfilling trip to the ceremony a few years back — which was nowhere near as interesting as the time the 'South Park' creators went after donning drag and dropping acid. The jury’s still out on how the Academy Award received its better-known nickname of “Oscar,” but that’s pretty much the only fact they WEREN’T able to track down. Strap in, because these two are going until the wrap-it-up music finally drowns them out.
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Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known details behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and so much more. We are your little golden med of Minutia, your tuxedo clad trivia champs of red carpet arcana. You're maestros of movie magic. We don't have wrap it up music, so we're going all night.
Baby. My name is Jordan run Talk and I'm Alex Heigel.
I'll play the wrap up music today, folks, We're going to the Oscars. Pause the episode, pick an outfit, get your glam squad together, maybe runt to stretch limo, and drive around and listen as we give you all the details and wild.
Stories about Hollywood's biggest night.
We are taping this on the Monday after the ninety seventh Annual Academy Award. So the mood is right, the spirit's up, We're here tonight, and damn it, that's enough. Yes, that's right. I just like a wonderful Christmas time into an episode also doesn't really like ooh higo, how do you feel? We were texting a little during the award show last night.
What do you think? You know? I was really off my game this season. I actually did not see too much, yeah saying I really liked I really like the substance. Oh you wouldn't love body horror? Yeah? Yeah, I think that was about it. Oh, I mean I think Dune too, if we're still talking about that, and obviously not Sato, but no, a lot of the big best Actor and best I'm happy Timothy Shall and I didn't win.
I know, I kind of well, no, actually that was the one thing I felt he deserved. That whole movie I didn't think was that good. But his performance, though, that was pretty good. But it was like a bad movie or like not a very interesting movie.
He didn't get that. What No, why is that everything else been handed on to him? He didn't get an oscar. He's not a good actor. I'm sorry, whoa, whoa, Oh, don't act like this is some bomb like like like mine, like extreamely hot take. He's got great bone structure and good hair, and he's anemic in that way that people find attractive. He's not a good actor. I'm sorry. I don't care. Really, Yeah, we show his range in Dune from like petulant sallow aristocrat to like least compelling savory of the universe. Ever, like, I don't what where's your Timothy shallow may evidence, Like where's this great role that he supposedly got in.
Him call me by your name?
Who's a kid? When he did that, wasn't he? Oh my god, I'll give you Wonka. I'll give you Wonka Gough And he was good as Dylan.
He taught himself guitar and these complicated parts he's saying live during the filming.
Did you just say those complicated parts? Oh god? Oh no. First of all, you know that, like all the cool Bob Dylan guitar parts were played by other people in that early stuff, Right, yeah, okay, cool? He sund like Bob, So does everybody. Thousands of people have a Bob Dylan impression. That's true, That is very true. Yeah, we were gonna give a We're gonna give the logan director James Mangold a best director for a behind the music episode like a LARPing. I mean, the Cohen brother has already made the best Greenwich Village movie of all time. That is true.
Let's talk about in front of the Pod door today or no, no different, friend of the Pod, Friend of the Pod Monica. Anyway, Well, Mikey Madison, I call me, by the way. I'm excited to see Anaura. Everyone I've talked to is either said it's great or they said I didn't like it, but you will like it, which I don't know what that means. I'll take that of that. Yeah, so I'm excited. Although I heard a lot of people complaining that it was basically like Hustlers but no people of color. And while Hustlers was thrown into the trash heap of Hollywood cinema, Honora was feted big time.
No Husters was thrown into that because Jennifer Lopez was going to like force her way into an Oscar. I don't know. It was just not a particularly compelling movie season to me. I know, like everyone get mad at me about that. But I didn't see the Karen Coulkin one that he was nominated for. I did see Wicked. Oh you loved Wicked, and I love how much you love Wicked songs for Bangers, and it is good that it won for production design because the production design actually in that was quite crazy and they planted like fifty thousand poppies at one point to shoot the poppy field scene. I didn't see Nickel Boys Gladiator two one for Best Elephant. Well, no it didn't. It was nominated for costume design for Best Elephant. Yeah, lost to Yeah. I don't know, man. I take umbrage with your description of Oscars as movie magic. Though this is movie peckage and tree. This is a different this is movie philating.
Yeah, I understand. I understand that take.
I do.
I do. But in the same way that you know, certain people really get comfort and joy and even a certain amount of excitement in say, the ritual of Catholicism of oh.
Yeah, it's it's fun pageantry. I mean, like, I'll watch it if it's on.
I just I'm also the guy who defended to the death the Macy's Thanksgiving the parade in our episode on it, So I I clearly love my.
Tradition forgot him. It's a very predictable take that I'm having. Obviously everyone will. Of course you did. There's an a song about you, like, of course you's what you think. But uh, you're welcome.
Yeah, oh yeah, I made it for you.
Yeah, for you. Movies, Music, TV and Clare Money France maing the show so fun. A crumby co host is seconds and yeah, I don't know, and I don't get it. I like I watched that. I like the like the fashions kind of fun sometimes and but yeah, I don't know. I mean, you get those rare things like Sean Baker's and I have no quarrel with that man. But it is not to be denied that he was like a legitimately independent filmmaker. You know, he shot Tangerine I think entirely on an iPhone. I like five yep. Yeah, he's so, you know, good for him.
I like that, and made it for six million with a cast and crew I think it was cast and crew of like forty.
I want to say.
It's something insane. And Mikey Madison's like my first celebrity crush in many, many years.
I'm so sorry for you. I know, I'm really happy. Yeah, we're really happy. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's interesting. I think it's I like doing the post mortem on kind of the acceptance speechies in particular, because it's really funny to see people like I don't think I realized Adrian Bradie was so stupid.
You mean you didn't see the SNL thing where he just randomly wears a rosta wig, And yeah, well.
So I was actually thinking about this. Was that what got him like band canceled in Hollywood? Because like, because if you look at his filmography, it is insane. He won an Oscar. He was then in like some weird genre stuff like Splice and Predators, and then he's been in like every Wes Anderson movie and then so much direct to video, nither video, direct to streaming garbage, And I was just like, man, was he actively like blackballed for like kissing Halle Berry and doing that like Jamaican petwa thing? Or is it just is he not good? And then I watched him speak and I was like, you're maybe kind of like there's not that much going on up top. You got like social eyes and you got an interesting face, so or is it dick or both two things can be true. I was at the same time as my therapist always says, yeah, yeah, well have we have we uh, you know, enacted our roles where you're the g whiz guy and the I'm the st on this guy. You know, the Oscars gift bags or how much are they worth? Like forty grand each over one hundred grand overall, one hundred grand we get to that King Christ. Yeah, every time I don't know, man, Like it's been a rough like five or ten years for like the country. Every time I see a room full of people that's rich, I'm like, I should be wearing a bomb, you know, Like I don't. I'm sorry, Like, and all this filating over, like, oh what could art? Art can change the world? Movies can change the world, Like I don't know, they actually can't, Like it's all the worst people in the world are going to keep doing their things and and apparently without consequence, no matter how many movies you make about them or protest songs. So no art failed, Like great, sorry is this new to anyone? Like I'm twenty twenty five, Like look the look at the failed American experiment? Tell me, like movies are revel to change lives or whatever lofty sentiment these people put out, like cool, they're movies. Good, good for making them. I see a lot of movies. I like going to the movies, but like, as far as buy a hook line and sinker for this, I'm like, no, how dare you?
I didn't think we get here quite so fast. I knew we would get here eventually, not in the first five to ten minutes. I mean, folks, I think it's important to remind everyone who's listening right now that we are both recovering slash retired entertainment journalists. So for a solid decade, Awards season in general was the busiest time of the year, and the Oscars specifically was an extremely long, grueling couple of days.
So there's a little bit of ptsdy at play. Here was at like six pm to whenever it raps. I get home at like three or four.
Yeah, and then you, even though you were told not to get up the next morning, you were sort of unofficially expected to get up like a second click hot take, yes, yes, yes, so yeah. For a long time, there was not a lot that was fun about the Oscars for us. So while friends had viewing parties, we were loaded into the war room or a corporate conference room, packed with some of the most stressed out people you could ever imagine, some of whom wearing suspenders, and we'd be writing as fast as we could until two or three in the morning, desperately trying to find new ways to describe a ball gown. It took a few years, but I think the PTSD is worn off, and I'm at least finally.
Able to watch the Oscars for pleasure again, which is good because they actually mean an awful lot to me. I don't know if you know this about me, Heigel.
This is a very very very special episode for me because in your retrospect, the Oscars are kind of my pop culture origin story, though it didn't really occur to me as such at the time. My mother was obsessed with all things Hollywood.
She should have led with this. Now, I'm like, I feel mad. Oh no, no, no.
She loved movies and we always had like a steady stream of entertainment weekly and People magazines coming to our house, and the Oscars were basically a holiday in our household.
She'd watched them as a little girl.
And when I was a kid, she let me stay up way past my bedtime and watched them with her. And it was always her dream to go to the Oscars, but she never got to make it.
So when I got a.
Little older and went to film school to study screenwriting, which I came to completely on my own, I just loved writing and I like you loved the movies.
You know, the dream that everybody at school with me had to go to the.
Oscars was a little extra potent for me because it had this emotional resonance. Now, I have not gotten nominated for a screenplay Oscar, not yet, not yet. But I was sent to cover the eighty fifth Annual Academy Awards in twenty thirteen when I was working for VH one, and I got the assignment like two weeks before the show. And to call it a dream come true was the understatement of the century. When I set foot on the red carpet, I think I got a little taste of what Neil Armstrong felt. It was just it was just so crazy, coming from this little New England town suddenly being there on the red carpet.
It was really really special.
And so, you know, meeting George Clooney and Jennifer Lawrence and Hathaway and all that stuff was cool.
Anne Harvey Weinstein that was less cool.
But the best part for me was just being there because I felt like I got in there for both of us, my mom and me, and that was.
Just really special.
So this is one of those rare moments when my personal and professional highlights kind of merge.
So I can't believe you've set me up for that. Well, encourage all of my worst tendencies, and then you like break the sincerity sound barrier that was so sweet.
Well no, I mean it'll make you feel a little better because I we're about to tell so many horrible stories that would have probably made my mom hate the movies.
So it's not quite a sentimental that's my setup. What have you believe?
But God, I know I say this at the beginning of like every episode lately, but this is quite possibly the longest episode to date. Ah, that's the history of the Oscars.
All right, strap in bitches.
That's right, no fact teasers for you. We're diving right in, ladies and gentlemen. Here's everything you didn't know about the Oscars.
I was gonna say. Starts playing the playoff music. I'm go to wrap it up.
As we delve into the ultimate episode of Movie Magic, we unfortunately need to mention Louis B. Mayor, the original cigar chopping executive and the villain of our recent Wizard of Oz two, for you may remember. For those who might have forgotten, Louis B. Mayor was the head of MGM Studios and the first man to earn over a million dollars a year in nineteen thirty's depression era money. Presumably looking for more things to control, Louis B. Mayor came up with the idea of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in nineteen twenty seven. Basically, there's a way to union bust. He was designed to mediate labor disputes within the industry without the use of actual unions. So that's something I will talk about on the Oscars red carpet. The first official organizational meeting of the Academy was held the Biltmore Hotel in May nineteen twenty seven, where Douglas Fairbanks Senior, a very famous silver screen erasilent Erastar, was elected its first president, and it took roughly a year for serious discussions to evolve about a proposed award of merit that would be dispensed once a year by the Academy. By the summer of nineteen twenty eight, they'd landed on twelve categories to honor outstanding achievements in cinema. These included familiar favorites like Best Actor and Actress, Best Original Writing and Best Adapted Writing, Best Art Direction, Best cinematography and Engineering effects.
As well as some unusual stuff like best title Writing. Oh well, this would have been in the era when they had to do all that, right. Well yeah, yeah, well this is interesting too.
Best Direction was divided into comedy and drama categories.
There were two Best Director categories. Well, yeah, I mean maybe it's like Golden Globes do that too, right, Yeah, that's what the Globes do. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think when you take the long view of the Oscars, it does seem like the ponderous has often won out over the joyous. That is correct, That is absolutely correct. And this is interesting too.
They had two different Best Picture categories. They had Most Unique and Artistic Picture, as well as Outstanding Picture, which I appreciate. It's like one for the big swings and one for the technically great crowd favorite. I think that's really good.
Weren't they talking about doing that recently for like all the Marvel movies that are like technical abominations but used to make a lot of money and now they don't anymore. But like they were talking about like best best money Maker. Yeah, it wasn't it was like box office achievement or something.
Gross. Oh, that's really the sky. Box office achievements made a ton of money, Like you don't know what the okay? That really that makes me mad.
That's what the money is for. Do you know what The funniest thing about this is this is me being way too online? Is I think this goes back to Marty, Marty, my sweet sweet Marty yep calling the Disney Marvel's like amusement park rides or whatever, and all of these people, you know, flipped out. And one of the Russo brothers, who were like the House Marvel directors for a little while and are widely credited or blamed with establishing like the house style and look of those movies, boa in one of these clips like, uh, Marty's like his dog is named Oscar, so he's like, come on Oscar, like on his Instagram or something, and one of the Russo brothers filmed a similar clip where he was like that doesn't hurt my feelings, like all right, come on box office and everyone was like, oh, let's talk about this now in the discourse like uh, and yeah, I don't know. God man, James Mangold Oscar nominee James Mangold made that Indie Bomb like two years ago. They're like the most expensive Indiana Jones movie. Oh that kind of indie, different indie. Yes, yeah, so like look at him, you know, it's just yeah, it's totally meritocracy.
I don't know, though, I thought it was interesting that Anara won all those awards because it almost seemed like a big middle finger from the Academy to.
Like huge studio, massive budget films like that. Was interesting to me. Yeah, I mean there's this idea that for a while it was like genuine people in the trades and everything, but the probably those people don't die, Yeah, and unlike being an actor, you're not like forced off screen, so they just like hung out there giving oscars like Green Book. That's the Academy member right now. What was the average? I mean, they did this a little while ago. This was twenty twenty two. Eighty one percent of them were white. Well, in twenty twelve it reached a particular nadier. There were fifty one hundred members of the Academy. Ninety four of them were Caucasian, seventy seven percent were male, and fifty four percent were over the age of sixty. A full third of them are former nominees and a fifth of them were winners. So in twenty sixteen, like the Oscar so White thing took off and they were like, okay, guys, like what message received? But like that was you know, twenty twelve was not that long ago. Yeah, no, decades. It was just run by a bunch of old crackers. Uh, can I not say that. I don't know anyway, intent is crucial, I intend to hurt. Yes, yeah, I don't know. It's just it's that's that's crazy, Like I mean, of course they're actors. They're they're they're actors. But like just the idea that if you're a nominee and you're voting, you have some kind of score to settle.
Right oh yes, yes, oh yeah, anyway, I mean taking it all the way back to the beginning, it hasn't really evolved much. The first Academy Awards ceremony took like at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May sixteenth, nineteen twenty nine. Tickets for the private dinner cost five dollars.
Adjusted for inflation, that's only like ninety three bucks. Yep, that's how crazy, Like ticketing his guy you could ninety three bucks will get you parking lot tickets to see Taylor Swift.
And the presentation ceremony, hosted by Douglas Fairbanks, who's the Academy president you'll remember.
Lasted just fifteen minutes.
Nice.
At the other end of the spectrum, the two thousand and two ceremony lasted four hours and twenty three minutes. They are about two hundred and seventy guests, and there was no suspense because the results had been announced in February, three months earlier and printed in the Academy's newsletter. The inaugural Best Actor was a german Man named Emil Jannings, who won for his performance in two movies which I don't fully understand, The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. That's quite a title.
His career, uh kind of declined after that.
He was rejected from talkies due to his thick journ An accent, and it returned to his homeland where he fell in with Joseph Goebels and his propaganda machine and starred in multiple films promoting Nazism. Then, when the Allies stormed Berlin in nineteen forty five, Yachtings reportedly carried his Oscar statuette around with him in the street to win over the American GIS and to demonstrate his former allegiance to the US, which I find to be truly one of the most amazing instances of don't you know who I am ing in Hollywood history?
Yeah, that's that's up there. Yeah. Did it work? I don't know, I don't know. I'm unclear. Man, what a piece of Yeah in Shermans Yeah, movie Magic, Yeah, Operation paper Clip. Yeah.
The first ever Academy Award for Outstanding Picture, as it was known then, went to Wings, not the nineties TV show, but a nineteen twenty seven everyone Loves Wings.
Yeah, that was like my first grade teacher's favorite TV show. I remember everybody loved Wings.
But no, this was a nineteen twenty seven silent movie that told the story of two pilots in love with the same woman. The film costs two million dollars to produce, which was put it kind of high on Melissa the most expensive movies at that point. Oh, the next line, making it the most expensive movie of its time. I wrote this up until the release of The Artist in twenty twelve. Wings was the only silent film to win Best Picture.
God remember that.
Yeah that was a weird little blip. Huh yeah, yeah, all happened.
Whatever happened to that guy? And they just take him out back and shoot him.
He's French. He's probably fine. Yeah, she probably be fine over there.
Remember the dog. Everyone loved the dog so much. That dog's I forgot about the dog. Yeah, for you, dog's dead. Let's confirm that.
I go confirm, ihig, I put you on dog confirmation duty.
Let's see.
Was like, I have other things to read, but check it. What was the dog's name? That's a great part trivia question. What the hell is the dog's name Uggie in the movie or real life?
Real life? Of course, the dog died. It died in twenty fifteen of what vaxed? Oh wow, oh here this will interest you.
Initially, there were only two performance categories, Best Actor and Best Actress. Naturally, performers with smaller parts would lose out to those with bigger parts in every sense.
Don't bring Milton Borough into this.
To combat this, the Academy introduced the Best Supporting Actor and Actresses category. In nineteen thirty six, the seventh Annual Academy awards. However, for a time, these winners kind of got shafted. Instead of a full blown oscar, they received a plaque mounted on a wooden alongside a small raised oscar figurine, and supporting players didn't receive the same statuette as their starring peers until nineteen forty three. While on the topic of unfair oscar fights, the Academy opted to make.
A juvenile award in the nineteen thirties.
Apparently after fifty something year old Lionel Barrymore went head to head with nine year old Jackie Cooper, he literally fell asleep during the ceremony because it was past this bedtime.
What made him exempt from the Judy Garland pep pill diet.
I know, I know.
Maybe they have a ceremony. What a grateful little fuck.
Maybe it's like a ceremony. It's like kind of the Hollywood equivalent of a bar mitzvah. It's like, you are now old enough to consume these decks. Adream you are now a man at twelve I'll say twelve, maybe eleven?
Yeah. One.
Like many men of his era, Lionel Barrymore didn't take a great deal of satisfaction in beating a child. In fact, he felt like his oscar was somewhat cheap and by the lowly competition. So to avoid another awkward incident, the Academy instituted the Juvenile Award, which it presented during the seventh ceremony Yeah Oh Yeah, which it first presented in nineteen thirty four. The first recipient was six year old Shirley Temple, quote in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment during the year nineteen thirty four. Unfortunately, the Juvenile Statue didn't solve the bedtime problem, and upon receiving the half sized Oscar trophy, a drowsy Temple thanked the presenter before asking Mommy, can I go home now? I assumed that was scripted and said in a cute way, because if it was a genuine request for rest, she would have gone hinged.
She would have gotten pinched so hard in her soft forearm. Oh man.
A total of twelve Juvenile Awards would be handed out over the next three decades. Recipients included newly minted Enemy of the Pod, Nicky Rooney, Judy Garland, and Bobby Driscoll, The Doomed Child Star and Disney Kid who acted in Treasure Island, Song of the South, and served as the model and voice actor for Peter Pan before falling on extremely hard times. Do you know the Bobby Driskell story. I do, actually, Okay, it's one of the more on the nose ones in Hollywood history because of the fact that he was the model for Peter Pam.
Yeah, he never grew up. Yeah in a way.
Well, I mean he died at thirty one, but like emotionally, he never really found his way out of child stardom. He's kind of the archetypical doomed child star. As a late teen, I think he pistol whips some guy for making rude comments when he was washing his girlfriend's car. Oh, he almost went to jail, got out of it. Then he became a heroin addict and went to prison. Upon his release, he fell in with the Warhol crowd, which is interesting, but struggled to find work, or at least work that paid. He'd say, I have found that memories are not very useful. I eat on a silver platter and then dumped into the garbage.
His end is.
One of the saddest stories we've ever discussed on the show.
Per his Wikipedia page.
On March thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight, two boys playing in a deserted East Village tenement on Tenth Street found Driskell's body lying on a cot with two empty beer bottles and religious pamphlets scattered on the ground. A post mortem examination determined he died from heart failure caused by advanced anthrosclerosis his drug use. He had no identification on him, and photos shown around the neighborhood yielded no positive id. His unclaimed body was buried in an unmarked popper's grave in New York City's Potter's Field on Heart Island. Late in nineteen sixty nine, a full year and a half after his death, Driscoll's mother sought the help of officials at Disney Studios to contact him for a hoped for reunion with his father, who was nearing death. This resulted in a fingerprint match at New York City Police Department, which located his burial on Heart Island. Although his name appears on his father's gravestone at Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, California, Bobby Duscoll's remains still remain in his Pauper's Grave on Heart Island movie Magice. Yeah, that's that's rough. That's a rough one. One of the rougher ones in this episode. Back to the Juvenile Oscar Bay, Hey, we're going to Pollyanna.
Now, great, okay, Pollyanna will get us out of us.
So Juvenile Oscar was last presented in nineteen sixty one to Hailey Mills for Pollyanna. In a nice full circle moment. Hailey Mills was away at boarding school in England and couldn't attend the ceremony, So the last Juvenile Oscar was accepted by its first winner, Shirley Temple, who at that point was grown up in I think working for the un or something, which's like, no, she had like a crazy life. She was like an ambassador.
Oh sure yeah yeah, but just imagining her coming back, they're like, do the voice, Yeah, the voice.
It's like seeing Jerry Matthews who plays Beaver Cleaver now it's like his face still looks like the.
Beaver, even though he's like eighty. It's not it's scary.
I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Maybe Bobby just came out ahead the youngest person to win a competitive Oscar was Tatum O'Neill, who starred alongside her father Ryan O'Neill, noted Batterer in nineteen seventy three's Paper Moon. Tatum was just ten years old when she accepted the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Claude in a tiny tuxedo. Speaking of overachievers, to date, there are only six people in Oscar history who've won two Oscars by the age of thirty. Betty Davis were Dangerous and Jezebel Luis Rainier for The Great Zigfield and The Good Earth, Jody I Had No Idea, Jody Foster for The Accused and Silence of the Lambs, Hilary Swang for Boys Don't Cry a Million Dollar Baby, and Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell.
I still think. I don't think. I'm sorry. I know best This is going to sound like a hot take, but I don't know.
I think best Song is not the same thing. No, Yeah, that's like a Grammy adjacent Yeah no, but.
Yeah, it's like, what is she competing against Meryl Streep?
Like, No, the best Song seems like a young person's game. I agree with you, Yes, that was for the theme, the Bond theme No Time to Die and what was I made for?
From Barbie? That's a beautiful song, Oh it is?
Oh yeah, taking nothing away from their music.
Yeah.
Well, if you're over the age of thirty and haven't won an Oscar and that's you know, kind of a thing you want to happen, all is not lost. Anthony Hopkins became the oldest performance Oscar winner in twenty twenty one at the age of eighty three for his role in The Father.
Yes, what more Academy appropriate move could there be to nominate an old guy who was asleep at the time that he won, and then making him win over the beloved younger black actor who died horribly after completing a flurry of projects. He beat Cheswick those Man. Yeah, that was the Chadwick here Man oh Man, because he'd done I think he was up for mal Rainey's but he's also done to Five Bloods and something else and it was just like again, just like banging out stuff. And then because he had stomach cancer. Whoa.
The record for the oldest Oscar winner had previously been held by Christopher Plummer. A Captain von Trapp, who became the oldest Oscar winner in twenty twelve at the age of eighty two for the ironically named Beginners. And I only mentioned him because he still holds the record for the oldest performance nomination when he got the nod in twenty eighteen for All the Money in.
The World at the age of eighty eight.
Impressive.
Good for him, Yeah, good for him, I say. I like Christopher Plummer. Yeah, what's he done? I mean other than the movies. I mean, like he's got no controversies, does he?
I don't think so.
Oh yeah. He used to call the sound of music the sound of mucus. He hated it. Yeah, well, I don't know, don't quit the hit well as the weirdness of our best Supporting Actor in juvenile categories probably illustrates. The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and sciences were still finding their footing in the early days and generally making up the rules as they went along. This included their stands on eligibility. For example, when the jazz singer Blew Everyone's mind in nineteen twenty seven for being the first mainstream talkie, the Academy judges decided it was ineligible for the first ever Outstanding Picture honors since the whole sound gimmick gave it an unfair advantage over the competition.
I get that.
I respect that decision honestly, No, I don't know. I mean, if all the other movies are silent, I fine. To make it up to Warner Brothers, the studio that made The Jazz Singer, The Academy gave them an Extra Special Award for trying the hardest Extra Special Award, the first Oscars for quote producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer Outstanding Talking Picture, which has revolutionized the industry. It was a forerunner of how scared the Academy would be of any kind of technology for decades. In nineteen eighty two, Tron greenlit by my favorite head of Disney with a head injury for college football guy Roger Avery. They disqualified it for Best Visual Effects because they decided that the computer was cheating. I mean, how do you feel about that? Well, if they could only see Yeah, again, I guess I get it. Like the idea of the apple, it's like there, I get that their basic thing is trying to do keep apples from oranges in or or was as they were adjusting all this ridiculous stuff like, yeah, I.
Mean maybe it was the AI argument. Like back then it was like, wait a minute, but people make things with their hands, not with this like thing.
I guess I could see that, but I don't know, man, it just seems really stupid. But what was I expecting considering how they did old Charlie talk about Charlie Chaplin. I wonder about the first one to actually win. Here's that's a great question. Was what was it one of the would it have been one of the Star Wars? What was the question? First Special Effects Oscar for CGI? It would surprise no one that the most awards is ILM with fifteen and for them. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and say the first one that really relied heavily on computer stuff would have been the ABYSS in eighty nine because prior to that year, prior to had been who framed Roger Rabbit And that was basically as we've discussed, like compositing and a lot of other sophisticated stuff still but even just like rotoscoping and things. So the Abyss is probably the one that broke open the CGI. Yeah, because then two years later it was Terminator two. Then death becomes her then Jurassic Park, then Forrest Gump, so those were all a lot of computer heavy ones. Anyway, It's so funny. All the podcasts I've been listening to have been doing all their oscar stuff, and I'm like, oh, yeah, nothing more fun than hearing people run down oscar statistics. We are, um, so yeah, man, this Charlie Chaplin story is wild. It's Charlie Chaplain, dude. They were like, they didn't let him compete for which movie was this? Oh? I think it was for a movie called The Circus. Oh okay. They wrote him a letter and gave him a special gave him a special award.
They gave two special wards, one to the jazz singer, one of Charlie Chaplin at the first Oscars.
Yeah, the judges have unanimously decided that your name should be removed from the competitive classes and that a special first Award be conferred upon you for writing, acting, and directing the film The Circus. The collective accomplishments thus displayed placed you in a class by yourself.
That's a nice thing to say, but is it.
Because they were worried that he would sweep a writing That's interesting? Huh? The bulk of Charlie's work that everyone's familiar with and made him a star is in this silent era, so you know, a well for him pre Oscar. Yeah. Though he was awarded an honorary troph for the first ceremony, Chaplain only earned a single competitive Oscar in his lifetime, and it took us solid two decades to even see the light of day technically. In October nineteen fifty two, Chaplain sailed to his native London to promote Limelight, was a film he'd again written, directed, scored, and starred in. On his return to the United States, he denied a re entry visa on orders of the Justice Department, which was investigating his alleged communist times. The rumors would prove to be totally unfounded shocker, but the US Attorney General labeled him quote an unsavory character. Limelight was picketed by veterans groups like the American Legion, and the film was pulled from theaters soon after your premiere. Further openings across the country were canceled since the Academy required films to have a public screening in Los Angeles in order to be eligible for an Oscar. Limelight was excluded from competition, and Chaplain said this was hurt him so much that he would never come to the United States again. For twenty years, Chaplain stag Truder's word living in Switzerland, and then in nineteen seventy two the Academy was like, eh, we'll throw you one. Gave him a second honorary Oscar for quote, the incalculable effect he has always had in making motion pictures the art form of this century. I mean they hadn't heard Steely Dan yet, so that's fine. Chaplin actually opted to return to Hollywood and received the honored person and it was a triumphant homecoming. He received a twelve minute standing ovation for just getting on stage. It's an Oscar's record. Yeah. Accepting his award, he said, words seem so futile, so feeble. I can only say thank you for the honor of inviting me here. Like the short ones man, they're just class here, you know. Joe Peshi, you know, kept it classy with his It gets better though. Yes. Limelight was actually given it a wide American release that December, and months later the film, which was by then twenty years old, earned Chaplin his only Oscar in the competitive category for Best Original Dramatic Score, and his co writers Raymond Rash and Larry Russell, had died decades earlier and were given Foster and the Awards. Wow, Bobby mad that's movie magic, American xenophobia, gliding into the nostalgia industrial complex and the motion pictured the industry desired to filate itself. I mean, it's just all Rich Milange. So, as we mentioned earlier, the winners at the first ever Oscars were known in advance. However, for the second ceremony in nineteen thirty, the Academy decided to withhold the names of the winners until being announced on stage, in an effort to create some drama and suspense. This being showbiz real, these are all real Broadway Danny Rose kind of guy. You know, it's just razzle, dazzle, fossy posse, Foster mondays. However, the Academy consented to handing out the list of winners to the newspapers on the condition that they agreed to a strict embargo. Nothing would be published until eleven PM on the night of the Oscars ceremony. This worked for a decade, which is like remarkably the better Angels of humanity winning out there. Then in nineteen forty, the La Times jumped the gun and printed the winners in the evening edition of the paper, and therefore everyone going to the awards, including Clark Gable and Vivian Lay because this was gone with the wind sweep year, knew that that was going to happen before they arrived. God, what were those vibes, Francis, Yeah, oh my god, because all the races would have been already riled up for Haddie McDaniel. Yep, Oh my god. Yeah, bad, bad vibes. And it was hell at the place where our k was.
Assassinated a couple decades later. Terrible fives and pass through down?
Yeah, can we go there?
Tore it down?
Trust me, I'm very bummed about it. Yeah, I know. So the next year the Academy instituted the top secret system that involved sealed envelopes, and by this point the oscars had already employed Price Waterhouse in their pre Cooper days when they were Price Waterhouse overdrive to help handle the vote, to help handle the vote counting so that no one could accuse the Academy reading the outcome. And this was largely due to an uproar over Betty Davis not waiting for her performance in nineteen thirty fives of Human Bondage. Still they get a.
Third party in there to be like, no, we're not raking this because we don't hate Betty Davis.
Yeah, well Betty Davis had shooters out there. Yeah she did, still does. Yeah.
Oh yeah.
What if we did like the gayest most completely out of left field thing and just did whatever happened to Baby Jane for absolutely zero reason that came up in something recently. I think it was a visit of oz One. It always comes up naturally, and so Price, Waterhouse, Cooper, and Young were given the task of tallying the Academy votes and keeping the outcome a secret until showtime. This generally worked pretty well until twenty seventeen, when PDBC accountant Brian cullinan a good Irish boy, was too busy tweeting a picture of Emma Stone, who won Best Actress that night, to focus on his lone job of handing the correct envelope to Best Picture presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Batty Man. You had one job except yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wolf.
This led to the infamous moment where La La Land was announced his best picture rather than Moonlight. A source told people that cullin in was asked not to tweet during the oscarson and that tending to the envelopes quote was to be his only focus. That tweet has since been deleted and and Coulinon is no longer working at Price Waterhouse Coopers and Fire. How many more of those are there? Yeah, the category at fire friend of Fire. There was yet another cringe worthy Oscars mix up at the twenty seventeen ceremony that understandably got overshadowed by envelope gate. This one involved another sensitive aspect of the show, the in memoriam segment. Shamefully, this year they gave they did they should have done a whole thing for David.
Lynch Man that that made me w yeah, yeah, it probably would have been him if it wasn't for the gene actmen.
Oh yeah, I mean yeah, you absolutely know that if anything had been planned, they were like, hmmm acts, the lynch pull out, the pull out, the gene. They had a premontage for him like who is his friend? Morgan?
I told you my dream piece that I've always wanted to do, but I know if I did it, I would never work again. Is like a New Yorker thing and the title is this is what Happens when you die. And it's just like a five thousand word like deep dive expose and like what it's like in newsrooms when like a major celebrity dies, and just all the gross, weird calls that have to be made and decisions and yeah, I love that stuff. I mean, I hate that stuff, but I love that stuff.
That's why we're not doing it anymore. Ye, but talk more about why. Oh for this one. The memorium segment at twenty seventeen was so bad. Well, firstly, fans of comedian Gary Shandling were miffed that the Academy left him out completely. But then an Australian film producer named jan Chapman at a bizarre moment, as Sarah Burrella is saying a somber rendition of Joni Mitchell's both Sides Now, Chapman was horrified to see her own face flash across the stream during the montage. The ceremonies organizer had mistakenly paired her image with the name of costume designer Janet Patterson, who had died the previous October. Chapman, who had actually worked with Patterson on the Last Days of Shenu in nineteen eighty two. In nineteen ninety Three's the Piano, told Variety that she was devastated by the mistake in the telecast. I am alive and well and an active producer, she said.
My daily affirmation.
I wouldn't be that offended. Jesus tell it back, lady producers. The Moonlight La Llaland fiasco wasn't the only time a percenter has read the wrong name at the Oscars. During the thirty sixth Annual Academy Awards in nineteen sixty four, Sammy Davis Junior was tasked with presenting the winner for Best Scoring of Music. Why was it called that?
No, I forget they had a lot of weird music technicality things for a while.
He was given an envelope with the winner listed as John Addison for the film Tom Jones, which is different. I'm just hearing now from this Welsh singer Tom Jones.
Different.
Yes, with Albert Finney. He's a real rascal, that's all I remember. I'm to understand that this is not a biographic biotic The Welsh shak the well sing singer Tom Jones, the man not about the man who has Pantsy's thrown at him repeatedly. Yes, No, he's got a big voice, big big, and he dances. I love his dancing.
There's a really good version of burning down the House with the woman from the Cardigans of Love Full Fame.
Oh you've sent me that? Yeah, it's great. Did Tom Jones everyone in Oscar the good one? Not a good one? Or no, I mean Tom Jones. Did Tom Jones parentheses the good one ever? Winning on? I don't think so, but this one did.
Yeah.
Well, here, get back to the story. We'll come back to this. People realize fairly quickly that there was an issue, considering the fact that Tom Jones again the movie wasn't even nominated for the category. Davis explained the mix up on stage and made a bit out of it, donning reading glasses when he was handed the correct envelope. The category with John Addison was up next, and after reading through the nominees, Sammy Davis like a pro joked guess who the winner is? That's pretty good. Yeah. Both of those incidents, Moonlight and Tom Jones again. I cannot stress this enough the movie and not the singer. We're due to incorrect envelopes. But an error during the nineteen thirty four Oscars was even sillier, with even more horrifying consequences. Oh this is bad.
Don't even don't even joke about this is this is sad right here? That this what makes me sad? Well, this is cringe. Yeah, okay, yeah is what this is?
Yeah, yeah, this is really bad. There were only three nominees that year for Best Director. Two of them were named Frank, Frank Lloyd and Frank Capra. And you see it was gone. Yeah. Oscars host Will Rogers of hanging around with a horse fame and quotes. Yeah, and being way more important to like the generation that wrote all the pop culture books that I read growing up than he ever was to me or anyone else that is correct. Why did I have to know so much about Will Rogers growing up?
Because he was?
But his words failed him This night she delivered that like a papal edict. His words failed him.
That night.
He cast his pros before swine, so Will Rogers, famous horse officionado. Will Rogers announced the winner by saying, come on up and get it. Frank and Frank Capra, that huge softy known for directing some of the most saccharine movies in the history of the medium, made it almost all the way up to the stage before he realized that the spotlight was on Frank Lloyd, who was approaching the podium from the other side of the room.
Oh that's bad, but but Will Rogers. He tried to save it, and I appreciate what he did here.
Yes, he tried to call up the third nominee, George Kukor, to join the two Francs on stage. In his autobiography, Capra elaborated on the incident with the sentiment that you would expect it'd be creative. He was just like, I promise to address it, and he was like, I'm over it. I went to therapy. He called it the longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life, saying I wish I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. Worms out here catching strays from Frank Capra, prick an indispensable part of the ecosystem. What have you done? Certainly win an Oscar in nineteen thirty four, I get I know he won the next year. All right, I'm doing a bit Jesus Christ, won't you let me work? Run tug? I know how Anna Hawthaway felt m when I slumped in my chair, I felt like one the worm, not Ann Hathaway or Bolsh singer Tom Jones.
All of my friends at the table were crying, he said, because I wasn't Tom Jones. Yeah, and then his pants fell down in a trombone music Frank Capra Uh Capper got his revenge the next year when he picked up the best arrest oscar for it happened one night and beat Will Rogers to death with it.
Back to Will Rogers of the horse fame. Uh do you think he ever called the horse a racial slur for fun? Oh?
Most definitely, yeah, like assuredly right, yeah, yeah.
The horse's name was Trigger.
That was Roy Rogers. Different, different.
What it was in my head. Will Rogers also like tauruses, didn't they I'm thinking Roy Rogers, not Will Rogers. Will Rogers, Oh.
You know, Will Rogers.
He was like a a folks see was he a singing cowboy?
I don't know if he was singing, but he was like a Midwestern like humorist. But he had like like a western tinge to him. Okay, he was born a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Okay, I didn't know that. No. Oh, he was a vaudeville guy.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I know him because he's like, you know, I never met a man I didn't like like, he was always very like quotable.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah man. Oh he began his show business career as a trick roper. That's cool. In Check's notes, South Africa, that's maybe not cool. He went to South Africa via Argentina. Will Rogers fascinating life. Yeah, hous just burned down the pulsates fire. He's long dead though, so it's okay, So all this time, he's not the cowboy guy. He's a cowboy guv Is that the cowboy guy? It was definitely Roy Rogers, who I was thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, do you know what his horse's name was? Getting back to this whole event, Soap SuDS?
Like that sounds familiar.
Yes, there's a statue of Rogers riding his horse Soap SuDS, on the campus of Texas Tech.
How about that? How about that?
All right, well, let's make this episode you just get even louder or longer. I should say, but back to will not Roy or Tom Jones. Uh, guy did it again in the same ceremony.
Yeah, he said, he's not a good These are some rookie present to Garis.
They should have gotten Roy Rogers. When he came down to award Best Actress trophy, he summoned two of the three nominees, Diana Wynard and May robson to the stage. Both women assumed that there had been a tie and were very excited. Ben Rodgers thanked them for their great performances before announcing the real winner was Catherine Hepburn then seated, that feels like I'm so I'm that's that's mean girl being.
On stage when you learn you have lost it's incredible. He's like the doctor from Arrested Development.
He's like, yeah, yeah, we couldn't save him. No, And this was not even the most mortifying gaff in Oscar's history. Back in the thirties, an impostor actually went up on stage and just simply walked off with an Oscar. That's great, and you gotta admire the direct approach. It went down in nineteen thirty eight when a woman named Alice Brady was nominated for Best supporting actress for her role in the film in Old Chicago. When the big night arrived, she was too ill to attend. When her name was called. After she won, an unknown man went up on the stage and collected it. Oscar officials assumed he was accepting on Brady's behalf, but he was not. The man made off with the plaque is supporting actors weren't given a statue, as they should never be. The man made off of the plat and it's gone forever. He ate it. We had it melted down to this day. No one knows who the man was or the big whereabouts of the black But you you've said, you've found some people who think it's a myth.
Yeah, but or at least not misunderstanding. But I choose to believe.
Yeah, print the legend as you said, Yes, yes.
And speaking of Oscars theft, we have to talk about the great Oscars heist of y two k in the.
Year two thousand.
In the year two thousand, a crate containing fifty five Oscar statuettes was stolen from a loading dock in bell California, four days before the ceremony. Four days were the Oscars. The statuettes go missing. Reportedly, the factory responsible for producing the oscars worked around the clock to craft another batch in time. Eventually, fifty two of the missing oscars were recovered a couple days later near a dumpster behind a grocery store in LA's Korea Town. A man named Willie Foolgear was back there rummaging, reportedly some boxes to use in an upcoming move, when he then stumbled on the glittering statuettes. Thank god he was looking for boxes and not rummaging around a dumpster behind a supermarket for the more obvious reason, because finding a crate of oscars that would have just been way too on the nose for like commentary on Hollywood Today, it would be, Yeah, so you said that guy kept three for like him, his wife and his kid something like that.
Yeah, so they lost fifty five, only fifty two were recovered. I would I would assume I don't know where the other three went.
Yeah, I that's my guess.
I don't know.
Full Gear told reporters, I've got more oscars than any of the movie stars. He was awarded fifty thousand dollars good for him, and also two tickets to the ceremony. Investigators believed that the culprits took the oscars by mistake, unaware of the crate's contents. But as we mentioned, several of these oscars have never been recovered to this day, so clearly somebody kept a souvenir ever since the incident. The Academy Mandate said Oscar shipments are sent by plane at not a loading dock, and accompanied by armed guards. Well, since the initial awards banquet in May nineteen twenty nine at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, more than thirty one hundred statuettes have been presented.
Is there a do you think that the security I'm guessing the security services like these might be armored truck guys. But do you think if you're like the Oscar security guy, like everyone else makes fun of you, like are you higher or lower than like a CBS security guy.
I don't know, though, because there's a way it's almost like the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where it's like a ceremonial thing where you get it after you get a cush job, after having like seen some stuff.
Okay, that's kind of that's my say. It's kind of a kind of kind of golden sunset. That's my that's my theory.
Okay, but Zulander voice, Where did the Oscar statue come from? In addition to Uncle Louis b the B stands for Bastard Mayor. Another of the Academy's thirty six founders was MGM's supervising art director, Cedric Gibbons, called this is true Gibbee to his friends. He's worked at MGM since its founding in nineteen twenty four and remained there until nineteen fifty six, becoming something of a legend in the process. During his tenure, he designed or at least oversaw countless MGM sets, from the Lobby of nineteen thirty two's Grand Hotel to the Emerald City of nineteen thirty nine is the Wizard of Oz to the fantastical settings of Buzzby Berkeley's Kaleidoscope in nineteen thirties musicals. As former Academy executive director Bruce Davis notes in his excellent twenty twenty two history The Academy and the Award, it was Cedric Gibbons who was tasked with creating an insignia for the Academy just two weeks after its founding, he eventually crafted the design we know and love and.
Lust over sort of well you know what I mean, Like he cove it. Cove it was the word I should use, that covet.
It's a night with the Crusader's sword standing on a reel of film, and the reel, you'll notice, contains five spokes, signifying the five original branches of the Academy actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers.
Gibbons then hired for.
Just five hundred dollars a twenty six year old Los Angeles sculptor named George Stanley to realize his design in three D. The statue was completed in nineteen twenty eight, and these copies were cast in bronze plated in gold, and a dozen were presented at the first Academy Awards ceremony in May nineteen twenty nine. Sadly, Gibbons couldn't make it to the actual ceremony, however, And this is really interesting here, this, I genuinely think will interest you. A fascinating twenty twenty four piece in The Hollywood Reporter by Scott Feinberg makes the connection between the Oscar design and its resemblance to various statues.
Of the Egyptian god top Ptah.
I imagine the p is silent.
It's the title of a house, culture and album. How does she say the I don't know how she said had. As Sweinberg notes in his piece, Ta is the god of arts, crafts, and trade and has been depicted often in gold for thousands of years, is a sleek figure standing erect with a staff in front right hand over left. Now this is.
All rampant speculation, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence.
The nineteen twenties were a time when egypt fever was gripping the nation because the discovery of King touch Tomb in nineteen twenty two, one of the few intact pharaoh's tombs that hadn't been raided by grave robbers. It was Mummuary, Mummuary all year. It was a decade. Yeah, hell yeah.
The media attention sparked by the discovery led to worldwide interest in Egyptology, which influenced all areas of art, fashion, and design. In fact, the style that we now call Art Deco, which is probably the most dominant design trend of the twenties and thirties, with notable examples being Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall and the Chrysler building in the Empire State Building was derived from Egyptian art. The Art Deco tag actually didn't come until decades later. Back in the twenties and thirties. It was called the Nile style because people recognize that it was derived from Egyptian art.
I guess that's better. I guess it's sillier, but I guess that's better.
Yeah, it acknowledges where it came from, and the Hollywood Reporter piece Scott Feinberg theorizes, although he admits that the Academy has never commented on this, that perhaps the design for the Oscar was inspired by Egyptian antiquity. But it gets potentially crazier. It's more than just the design. It could even potentially be the Academy awards more famous nickname. Quoting from Feinberg's piece, But what does any of this have to do with the name Oscar. Over the centuries, depictions of tah were merged with depictions of two other ancient deities, Osirius, a god of resurrection, and Socar, the god of the afterlife, resulting in a feuterary god known as Ta Socar Osiris Socar alone reads awfully similar to Oscar, as does a merger of the names Osiris and Socar. Again, this is purely speculation, but Gibbons or anyone else who recognized the resemblance between Tad and the Academy Award statuette might thereby have arrived.
At such a nickname.
So that's an interesting theory about how they Oscar got its name, and honestly, it's better than the actual.
Stories that have made the rounds for decades.
The most prevalent theory is that Academy librarian and eventual executive director Margaret Herrick remarked that the statuette resembled her uncle Oscar. I personally think that is an insane thing to say, because the statuette has no discernible features whatsoever other than that he is naked and vaguely buff, which honestly raises all sorts of troubling questions about Margaret Herrick's relationship with her uncle ah plus or bloss. The other, even less believable story is also vaguely sexual. Betty Davis claims she named the Academy Award the Oscar in nineteen thirty six because the statuette's rear end reminded her of her then husband Oscar Nelson.
Ah, what a pip she was.
In reality, the term oscars had been in use for years before Davis's claim, and she walked it back. I'm guessing that it was a humble brag about her husband. The Hollywood journalist Sidney Skolski has made the most verifiable claim for coining the term, since he's believed to be the first person to use the term Oscar in the press. He started calling the Academy Award an oscar in his column cover in Katherine Hepburn's first Best Actress win in nineteen thirty four. He said he was tired of writing the phrase gold Statuette and thought he would refer to an old vaudeville joke that made use of the name Oscar. He elaborated on this in his nineteen seventy five memoir Don't get Me Wrong, I Love Hollywood. It was my first Academy Awards night when I gave the Golden Statuett a name. I wasn't trying to make it legiti. The snobbery of that particular Academy Awards annoyed me. I wanted to make the gold statuette human. It was twelve thirty when I finally arrived at the Western Union office on will Cox to write and file my story. I listened to Academy Industry and acceptance talks in seven point thirty. You know how people can rub you the wrong way. I'd show them acting so high and mighty about their prize.
I'd give it a name, a name that would erase their phony dignity.
I needed the magic name fast fast. I remember the vaudeville shows. I'd seen the comedians having fun with The orchestra leader in the pit would say, will you have a cigar?
Oscar?
The orchestra leader would reach for it, and the comedians would back away, making a comical remark. The audience laughed at Oscar. I started hitting the keys. In a few years, Oscar was the accepted name. It proved to be the magic name. The writing of that was weird, and I'll probably have to edit that. The Academy Awards officially adopted the nickname Oscar in nineteen thirty nine, and a piece in Time magazine that same year credit skull is the originator, which I think is a strong piece of circumstantial evidence. But then there was also a story that Walt Disney referred to his little oscar during his acceptance speech in nineteen thirty four, which was supposedly before Skolsky coined the term. I don't know all in all, no one really knows where the term oscar came from.
I'm chalking it up to movie magic. That's disappointing. Yeah, I know. I'd hope that there would be a point to this.
I know, I realized that it was like one of those jokes doesn't have a punchline. Yeah, there's a lot of theories. I like the Egyptian theory.
Yeah, that's that's that's at least nerdy. It's like, yeah, I love that. I just heard that guy was just a big into egypt Mania that had been gripping egypt fever.
Yes, that sounds more racist, Yeah does Yeah, especially when that's what killed one of the guys who financed the King Tut's Tomb expedition, Lord Carnarvin. Yeah he was there, he flew out there to Egypt, and then he is it guay was different.
No, got you got like a mosquito bite or something and then like cut it shaving and it got infected and yeah, it was like some weird death, and that was what led to the theory that there was a curse on King Tut's doom to any who disturbed it. Cool, all right, as you meditate on that, it'll be right back with more. Too much information after these messages.
Well, from ancient Egyptian curses to measurements, that's the tm I promise. The Oscar statuette is thirteen point five inches tall with a five and a quarter inch base. It weighs off eight point eight point five pounds, or about the same as a gallon of milk. Each award statue costs approximately five hundred dollars to produce manufacture from a Britannia metal plated in copper nickel, silver and twenty four carret gold. The manufacturing process starts a year in advance to ensure nothing goes wrong, and from start to finish it takes roughly ten days to make one statuette. Several manufacturers have had the honor of making the Oscars over the years, but these days they're made about an hour and a half outside of New York City at Pollock Talics, a fine arts foundry. Then it's sent off to a partner in Brooklyn, not far from where I live up in green Point called Epner technology that handles the gold plating. Interestingly, the oscars were made out of plaster for three years during World War Two. During WW two the big one due to metal shortges.
Did they make they didn't make it up? Did they send them real ones? Then? Well yeah, so okay.
So for three different Oscar ceremonies between nineteen forty three nineteen forty five, award winners were handed painted plaster and then when the war was over all the recipients of plaster awards are invited to exchange them for real ones. And these plaster ones have gone up for auction occasionally, and there's pictures of like a sticker on the bottom of the base that says temporary trophy, Please handle carefully.
This plaster replica of the awards.
Trophy will be replaced by the golden bronze trophies as soon as medals are available. You will receive an official letter from the Academy immediately after March fifteenth, which will constitute an order for your metal trophy. The Academy regrets the wartime restrictions made that make the substitution necessary.
I don't know.
I would kind of want to keep both. I would want like my real one, but then I would want the weird plaster one.
It was that convincing.
Yeah, yeah, hang on one went up at auction a few years ago. I mean I almost can't tell the difference. It's like a little less shiny. Oh it's not terrible.
Yeah, I was expecting some kind of like click paper mache, some kind of horrible, you know, vaguely sinister child's art project.
Yeah, I would like to keep it.
As like a memory of that weird time. I would like to keep it, said Betty Davis. Well, how about that?
And speaking of last minute changes to their oscars, it's worth noting that as people have watched the ceremony and probably observed, but the statuettes are handed out without their engraved name plaque on the oscar's base. Obviously, that would make it hard to keep the results a secret. In recent years, the stars have made a big show of going to the so called Oscar's bar at the Governor's Ball upstairs from the theater where the ceremony is taking place. The oscar crew wouldn't have time doing drave each oscar on the spot so they have all potential winners' names engraved and waiting.
I want loser name plaques. That would be a cool thing to collect. Do you think they're out there? Oh, I've never seen them, but that'd be cool.
I love like alternate universe history stuff like I have a ticket to the event that JFK was traveling to when he was assassinated and then never made it to him.
Like, I love stuff like that.
There's a poster for the Titanic's return voyage to England that it never made. I just things like that. I just find really like eerie and poignant. Yeah. I can see that the basis of each statuette are pre drilled with holes, so it's simply a matter of screwing on the plaque and sending the stars on their way. But The Guardian did a really cute article on this in twenty seventeen called Secrets of an Oscar Engraver. In the piece, a man named Alex Yurst is quoted as.
Saying, we make a bit of a show of it.
The statues are pre drilled ready for the plaques to be fitted, so all we do is show the winner of the plaque, check the details. All right, attach it, give it a polish, and hand it back.
The whole thing takes about five minutes, although they cost between four and five hundred dollars to make, depending on options like what can you add a mustache on rate of gold?
Gold prices?
Oh? Okay, short, it's market price. All right? Sorry I made fun of you. Sorry, ty, I tried a bit. Sorry.
Sometimes you get some braro on it if you want.
Although they cost approximately four to five hundred dollars to make, the gold plated statuette is technically only worth one dollar. Since venteen fifty one, Oscar winners have been required to sign an agreement stating that they cannot sell the award without first offering to sell it back to the academy for one dollar. Those who refuse are not allowed to keep their trophy. This rule also extends to the winners' families and estate once they die. For the academy, the rule preventing winners from profiting off the sale of their award is intended to quote preserve the integrity of the Oscar symbol. According to The New York Times, this rule was adopted after the errors of Sid Grammont, owner of the famous Chinese theater on Hollywood Boulevard placed advertisements offering to sell an honorary oscar that Gramman had been awarded. We're selling Granddad's oscar. Any takers, god Man, Yeah, that's pretty great. The Horrified Motion Picture Academy brought it back and implemented the no sales stipulation a short time later. The oscar itself contains a minder of this contractual fine print with a small band around the base that's engraved with the phrase the statuette may not be sold or transferred other than bequest without first being offered to the Academy. That's nuts that there's like an engraved gold band around the base that has that fine break. It kind of cheapens it. I don't think they can tell me to do that. That strikes me as unconstitutional. Eh, their house, their rules, it's not it is the Academy awards. But like if you just didn't ever think you were going to win another award, what would they do like sue you? Oh, I see what you mean, Like you sign it and then do whatever you want with it.
I don't I don't know what.
Are they gonna do to me? Send Like Steven Spielberg around to film a coming of age boyhood wonder uh movie about the fu sims of children and dinosaurs, and yet somehow the brutal reality of becoming an adult. Is that what he's gonna do? He said, Oh, Marty over to be Catholic. Marty would mess you Upah, he's a sweet guy. He would guilt, he Marty. I Marty probably uses guilt like a cham he's Italian Catholic. Yeah, he would just make me feel really bad. This permission doesn't apply to oscars given out prior to nineteen fifty one because.
The rule was made in nineteen fifty one, so they couldn't told his grandfather. Yeah, everyone else was grandfathered in. Do whatever they wanted with their oscars, as we will, as we will. Just well, no, there's a really sad story coming up. What if someone won a bunch and sold them for a lot of money? Would that be a happy story? Generally, you don't want to part with your oscar unless you're in a really bad spot.
Yeah, I guess you're right. Has it been murdered with an oscar?
I think frank Kaepra killed Bill Rogers. I told you he bludged him to death. The next year when he I told you I'd be back.
Steven Spielberg paid upwards of half a million dollars each for two wards formerly belonging to silver screen icons Clark Gable and Betty Davis. The director, who has three oscars of his own, donated his purchase as to the Academy. The Oscar statuette is the most personal recognition of good work our industry can ever bestow, He's told Variety, and it strikes me as a sad sign of our times. This icon could be confused with commercial treasure. Michael Jackson meanwhile treated it as just that. Yes, shelling out one point five four million dollars in nineteen ninety nine to by producer David o' Salesnik's Oscar for nineteen thirty nine is gone with the wind. What do we make of that?
I mean, the whole race element in there gets really interesting.
It's really interesting. Okay, okay, okay. Following his death a decade later, at the age of fifty, the statue has reportedly gone missing. The estate does not know where the Gone with the Wind statuette is. Jackson attorney Howard Weitzman told The Hollywood Reporter in twenty sixteen. We would like to have that Oscar because it belongs to Michael's children, not David O's Sells Nicks. I'm hopeful it would turn up at some point. That's funny. Where is it one of the Jackson five? Has it?
Bubbles made off with it? Bubbles like, has it up? Yeah, Bubbles has done horrible things to Oscar.
Obviously, most Oscar winners would prefer not to part with their prize possession, and those pre nineteen fifty one performers who have sold them usually do so to dire circumstances. Case in point, Harold Russell, a World War II veteran who lost both his hands before being cast in the nineteen forty six film The Best Years of Our Lives. I got into an argument with a block of T and T and lost. He would later quit. Get hooks for Hands. That's kind of cool, kind of worth it, I mean, not not like really, I'm sure it's tragic, but like it's kind of cool that hooks for hands.
Google him?
Oh, I know that, Yeah, I know I know about this guy. Though not a professional actor, he received the role because it closely mirrored his own life story, and ultimately it earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as well as an honorary Award for quote bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures. Russell sold the Best Supporting Actor trophy at auction in nineteen eighty two at the age of seventy eight, reportedly to pay for his wife's mounting medical costs. I love the Oscar, but I love my wife more, he told The New York Times. Although I've had the Oscar longer. If I ever get lonely for it, I can watch the picture. Award was sold for sixty five hundred dollars to an anonymous buyer. A few years after Russell's death in two thousand and two, Academy executive director Bruce Davis claimed that the real story was somewhat less tragic. A couple of reporters pinned him down. Davis claimed in The Times it came out that his wife wanted to take a cruise. He had a new wife who knew he had a spare Oscar. Universal Studio had Lou Washerman bought it and donated it back to us. Greatest generation. That was my on so old boss Lou Wasserman got ran ya Russell. Yeah.
Since two thousand and two, the Oscars have been held at the Dolby Theater formerly the Kodak Theater, facility, built with the express purpose of serving is a permanent home for the Academy Awards ceremonies. Outside on Hollywood Boulevard is where the legendary Oscar's Red Carpet is set up. The carpet itself runs five hundred feet long and has rolled out several days in advance and for days before.
It's protected by a layer of plastic.
I was lucky enough to walk it in twenty thirteen, as I mentioned, and honestly, the biggest lesson I learned, and this is a pro tip. Apparently a lot of stars put duct tape on the soles of their shoes because the red carpet is very slippery, huh, and it helps with grip. Yeah, someone on the red carpet taught me that. Yeah, people do fall a lot.
Yeah. No, I mean that was the Oscars where Jennifer Lawrence fell on the way up to receive for Oscar. Oh. I met her earlier that night. She was America's streetheart.
She was, Yeah, I mean, is she still? I don't think so no, it's okay, you can't. Yeah, nothing gold can stay.
Yeah.
I was LIKEX to Mario Lopez on the carpet because I was doing like the questions beforehand, like the red carpet questions, and like everybody has.
Did you ever do red carpet duty?
When you were at people or Entertainment Weekly.
I went to the Comedy Central roast of Don Rickles.
Oh that's a good one.
Oh my god, who did you meet? Triumphany and Soil comic Dog, so Robert Smiegel, not Conan, and then a bunch of different random stand ups who were all doing who were all there, But they kept the real like Johnny Depp was there, and like Robert de Niro was there, Like they kept all the big people away from they didn't do the red carpet because it was at the Apollo. Yeah, they had kept everyone. It was like, you know, you wouldn't you. Johnny Depp was like not walking the sidewalk outside the wall of the theater for a fucking step and repeat, you know. So I did. Yeah, that was fine, It was cool. I had a good time. Robert de Niro is terrible, like not as a person, but as like a yeah, heard that and Marty had a segment and it was like watching men drown, just neither of them able to have Even Marty with his sort of like a vuncular charismo, was like not selling it. So that's my red carpet story.
I mean, this was one of my first red carpets and it was the Oscars.
Yeah, that's a big one, man. Yeah, I mean I was terrified.
I was alone too, Like I flew out by myself, and you know, they gave you this like two by three rectangle of the carpet, and I was next to Mario Lopez who's with He took pity on me, and he was actually like the one he taught me about the shoe thing and and a few others. He was very sweet because he could kind of tell I was I was terrified. Yeah, I mean it's funny. It starts so early. It starts at like two thirty in the afternoon.
So who did you Who did you get to talk to?
You were people cool?
Clooney was dating Stacy Keebler at the time, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, Jessica chess Stain asking them music related questions or just about it, just about everything. I don't remember what I when I.
Asked him, and uh, yeah, those are the big ones.
That's that stuck out. I think Ben Affleck too, Was he drunk? No, that was Argo year. That was the Argo year, so he was like he was he.
Was doing well, yeah, Seth MacFarland because he was hosting that year. Yeah it was cool.
Okay, good, I'm glad you got to have that. Yeah. Well, it was weird because I was going through a breakup at the time, like a week before I went to the Oscars, which is not ideal, and I was like talking with my producers at VH one, like should we make a bit out of this, Like should we do like like sat short on the Oscars red carpet and ask like George Clooney and Ben Affleck and like Jennifer Lawrence for like love advice and rebound advice, and like we were all like kind of considering it, and then at the end I was like, man, no, I don't want to do that. Yeah, yeah, you you would have to not blink doing that. Yeah. There would be a point at which.
I was too raw too. It's very Yeah, that was a weird. That was a part of it was just like God, could you have wait until after I had this craist moment of my professional life.
Please? No, no, they never can. Movie magic, movie magic.
Oh oh yeah, the Cole Kidman was there, Keith Urban, and I do remember it.
Seems like he smells nice Urban. Yeah, I don't remember that, and like high end Musk.
I don't remember that. I remember Mario Lopez did. I'm told that he wears cretiventus for any any any fragheads out there, Any fragrance heads, that's what they call themselves. Sure, no, I.
Told you that. That's my new that's one.
Of my new interests of the last I know.
I did know that. But that's a good that's a good joke.
Cragheads. No, it's serious, that's what they call themselves. Yeah, I was actually speaking. We were talking about prebits earlier. I I my my journey in de niche fragrances began when I was writing a premature obituary for Quincy Jones. And during my research, everyone was like, oh, yeah, musical genius, Oh incredible, and he smells really good, and like everyone kept talking about how good he smelled, and I'm like, all right, Quincy Jones, and you've like done a lot, but like the third thing that comes to people's minds is how good you smell? Like you must you must smell really damn good. And I looked it up and it was this brand called Creed and they've been around for like three hundred years, and it was this uh he apparently wore green Irish tweed, which was also worn by Carrie Grant reminded him of his of his upbringing in England. Robert Redford, I think wore it two and Paul Newman. And then I started looking up like, oh, what other like famous people from history?
Where what are the Beatles wear?
What Paul McCartney wears girlan vettever from nineteen sixty one, by the way, and uh, And then it just became like, oh, what what did like Napoleon wear? Because a lot of these brands have been around for hundreds of years? What did you know? What did Sean Connery wear? What did what did the king wear? What did the queen wear? And so I would get like either go to stores at like department stores and get you know how they sprayed stuff onto yeah, a little tester or sometimes send away for a little like two or three D yeah, and the cheap and it became like, uh, like like scent time travel. It was really cool.
Yeah they say it's the strongest scent tied to memory. Yeah, it really. It was cool.
So now I've started going up to the perfume floor on Sex Fifth Avenue. It's this huge floor just all these different kiosks with different high end brands and go with friends and like, oh yeah, this is what they wore in the silver screen era of Hollywood. They all wore aqua Deparma colonia. Because the costume people still you.
Give guided tours of the Sax perfume department. I mean I do it with friends. Yeah, no, every you should charge for that. Are you kidding me? That's that's you could be Like I could become a beloved tour guide. It was really fun. It was really really fun. Yeah, with the Parma Colonia.
The the coustom people at the studios would spray the tissue paper in the boxes when they would sending like gowns and high and tuxedos to their stars, and so that began the smell of like silver screen era Hollywood, and like David Niven and Ava Gardner and all those people carry Grant back in the thirties and forties.
But yeah, I don't know. It was just cool, like to activate that.
Also, you know, we're straight guys and like scent is very utilitarian. It's like, oh, something's burning or something smells bad. It's like the first time of my life it was like, oh, this is like a pleasurable thing. It's like an that there was a good color or something.
Yeah, it's like opposed to like just going to target and getting like punch. Yeah, oh exactly. Yeah, that was cool.
Speaking of new colors and unlocking different senses, let's talk about the people who went onto the Oscars Red carpet. While tripping on LSD, shall.
We well, first, I wanted to ask you, oh sure, Elvis wore.
Elvis wore a lot of really cheapy There weren't a lot of good options for guys in the fifties and the early sixties.
For all of those ones you just named, well, okay, sure, but okay.
In Tupelo and in Memphis in fifties and sixties, he wore a lot of like old spice brute and a brand called Canoe I think was another one. Oh yeah you Canoe, Oh my god, Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's that's bad cologne.
Oh yeah, no, it's like Grandpa cologne, Like it's like not not good cologne. No, any others, No, I actually I have a Google dog. Oh, I'm sure you do. The only reason your canoe smells like is like what I want to say, it's in Hannibal.
I think you're right.
Oh my god. There's a line in Hannibal when Larie is in the FBI, in the FBI in the van the atf ban and they're going to do a raid on a drug lord. And it's this line that's like when so and so lifted his arms, he demonstrated why something a splash of canoe is not the ship same as shower a shower or something like that. And So I was a kid when I'm boding canoe because I was just like, oh, this is what like an FBI agent would wear. He realized it's like solove, like aqua velva. Yeah exactly, exactly. Oh yeah, so that's been fun for me.
Any other uh, any other people you want to know what they smell like?
I might be able. I might have that information, handy Miles Davis, I don't know that, No, David Bowie, Oh I know Creed Silver Mountain Water, different Creed, different Creed.
He also wore tom Ford Gray vettevir, which then Iman continued to wear after his death to make him feel close.
Yeah, well that's you made it sad. Now, I don't know what else you got. Oh yeah, the South Park guys, right, Oh yeah.
So speaking of new senses and colors, And we're gonna talk about some guys who went to the Oscars, will tripping on acid when their song Blamed Canada from South Park Bigger of Longer, Uncut unexpectedly.
Earned an Oscar nod.
In two thousand, the countercultural television icons had a once in a lifetime opportunity to make their unique.
Mark on Hollywood's Glitzius Night.
We talked about going in big duck outfits, Trey Parker later said, and we thought, if we go in big duck costumes, then they have a reason not let us in. But if we're wearing what other people wear, then they can't really say we can't come in. Technically. The nomination for Best Song went to Trey Parker, who co wrote Blame Canada with lyricist Mark Shaman. So when Trey Parker invited to South Park, partner Matt Stone to be his date. Stone initially wanted to wear a dress in post as a fictitious European model as Trey Parker's date. The idea morphed a bit from there, and ultimately the pair opts to both go and drag, with Trey Parker wearing a painstakingly recreated replica of the low cut Versace gown that Jennifer Lopez had worn into the two thousand Grammys a few weeks earlier, and Matt Stone dawned a dress modeled after the pink Ralph Lauren number that Gwyneth Paltrow had Warren.
To collect her oscar for Shakespeare in Love the year before, in nineteen ninety nine.
They would later say that they regretted not dusting their noses with a bit of powdered sugar for an added effect.
See. I was just about to say, how funny that actually is, Like that they went to people and had these meticulous recreator and then they always have to push it to the one thing that makes it stop. Well, they didn't do that though. They didn't do it. I know, I know, Matt Stone told The Hollywood Reporter in twenty sixteen.
Some people were stoked when we showed up at the Oscars in those dresses, Michael Kaine being one. Gotta of Michael Kaine, oh man, of course, well the British love dress.
Oh I didn't think of that.
You're so right, Yes, cornerstone of their tradition of comedy. But I remember Gloria Estefan was super pissed. Even sadly think I included this. He was saying like, yeah, A lot of people were like, this is the biggest non of our lives. Few so they were stifon.
Okay, yeah, I don't know a what she was being there and b why she was pissed. That's too funny.
But Matt Stone and Trey Parker's attire was not the most far out thing about their appearance at the Oscars. The pair I had wanted to find a way to quote go but not go to the ceremony.
According to the.
Twenty eleven special Six Days to Air The Making of South Park, their solution was to take sugar cubes dast with LSD just before showtime. It's so crazy now to think about. Trey Parker later admit red carpet reporters naturally had a lot of questions, and Matt Stone and Trey Parker answered each one by saying, it's a magical night tonight. That they responded to any question. How about Their attire was just to look off into space, into the middle distance and say, it's a magical night tonight. That's a good bit. That's a great bit. It's just such a magical night tonight.
I mean, please watch an honor, just to be known an honor, just to please watch those clips of this on YouTube, and it is great. I just, man, I don't remember this happening. No, I don't remember having that kind of like Mary prankster attitude on acid, where like I would volunteer to be in public.
That's what they said. That's what I said. Like we like had a really hard time getting out of the limo. They were like, yeah, like on acid, it's.
Like changing locations is really hard and to go from would not be fun.
No, And they said, like get like going from the safety of the limo and the darkness of the limo and the container the limo to like every camera in the western world the sun and like thousands of people. Yeah, they said it was terrible, fine, Oh my god. And their come down was made even more harsh when they lost the Oscar to Phil Collins and his Tarzan track You'll Be in My Heart. When a reporter asked them if it was still a magical night after this disappointment, Trey Parker replied, it doesn't matter because losing just makes it horrible. It's terrible to lose to Phil Collins, especially. Yeah, it's very good to see them.
On the Red carpet is very good. No, no, I mean I remember this getting covered a lot. Yeah, I know, I did them, no quarrel. That's fine, that's a while, and good that they did that.
I don't really feel like give any more airtime to b York's Swan outfit, which, honestly, I was just.
About to say, but now you're gonna give b York this short in a post Lady Gaga world, siss of you? Do you have anything to say about it? I know, absolutely not. Okay, it wasn't that the year she was nominated for the large One Trier movie like That's crazier wearing like a whimsical swan dress to movie that ends with you the spoiler alert that ends with your character hanging themselves.
Oh yeah, but I would like to shout out I have to say about it. I don't in a post lady world, I don't with.
Bjork. I had no quarrel with Bork.
I I okay. It's also quiet. Song is great.
Yeah, you love that one.
I do because it's an old fifties song that she did, and the video is great. Spike Jones video is wonderful.
I know. I have no quarrel with Byork.
She actually remember Tradesman, this bar out by where we used to live in in Bushwick.
I used to DJ there.
It's just like non descriptive bar and a couple of blocks from my apartment. Bjorke just like went there one night. It's just so weird. Yeah, it's all over like Brooklyn Vegan the next day. Yeah yeah, So okay, enough about b York. But I would like to shout out the most expensive dress in Oscar's history, which is Jennifer Lawrence's Pink Your Mature Gown, which was valued somehow. I don't really understand at four million dollars.
Yeah, money's not real. True. I guess the paintings, but you need to put numbers on anything. That's true. Paint things are being sold for one hundred million dollars. I guess that's true. Yeah, I mean, come on, what's his name? Jeff Kutz?
Does this like it's not true?
That's true.
I saw him close. I witnessed her fall down in it, which I can imagine.
It was there like diamond zone into it or I don't remember, I thought.
I mean to me, I remember being very impressed with Jessica chess Stand because she looked like an old school forties like Hollywood star.
I remember just thinking, look like somebody. I mean, maybe this is my design. That was like I went to prom alongside like she was America's sweetheart. I'm not quite sure what you don't remember or understand about that. I know seems eminently obvious to me. Did you ever see the picture of me and Cluining? No? Do you get a selfie with him?
I got a selfie of me and he's like talking to the person next to me.
Because I was I couldn't do it.
I couldn't be I first of all, I was afraid I was gonna get fired if I, like asked for us selfie with him. But you know, I've never asked for a selfie with a celebrity or with anyone, honestly, but certain celebrities know you want it, and they say, do you want to get a selfie? And I do find that endearing, even though I know that's the best. That's Taylor Swift's whole thing. Oh yeah, well she was. She was like, do you want a selfie? And I was like, yeah, I do, Yeah, I really do. And then she was like, no, no, we can do better than a selfie. Let's do a photo shoot here in the breakroom of this office. Oh I remember that, yea, yeah, no, that was fine. Yeah, that was strange. And now there's a bunch of photos on the Internet of me fixing a Xerox machine, and there were others too. I only got that one. But there's us. She's like, has like a fire extinguisher. She's pointing at me, and then we're at like a like a snack's machine, and one of them where she's like, one of us is standing probably me, probably me standing at a garbage can. Most likely me. If me or Taylor Swift is standing in a garbage can, the person who's standing in the garbage can, it's probably me.
So good that she was chill, because everything else about her I would not say she was chill. I don't know. I don't know if I could put that in there. Oh no, I mean, or at least had ideas like, oh yeah.
Oh she was playful. Did you see the thing about Taylor? Asked Lauren Michaels for something. Michaels responded by saying, I don't negotiate with terrorists.
But for someone who hasn't been funny in a long time.
That's pretty funny.
Everybody gets won.
I don't know how much of that we can keep. Speaking of stuff that might not get broadcasts. Now, let's get into the broadcast history of the Oscars.
THEE came to hear Yes.
The second Oscar ceremony in nineteen thirty was the first one to be broadcast by radio, and the first televised Oscars didn't occur until twenty three years later in nineteen fifty three. The first Oscars to be broadcast in color took place in April nineteen sixty six, and to heighten the impact, art directors went ham on the sound, which included forty two fountain spraying water, which I feel compelled to mention isn't necessarily enhanced by color. I didn't actually watch this maybe they projected lights onto it. The show must go on, as we all know, as they show business mantra. But there have been three occasions when the Oscar ceremony was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances.
Nine to eleven.
No, well that because that was in the fall and Oscar.
Yes, the joke, Thank you, Ted, that was the joke.
The tenth Academy Awards was postponed a week as a result of the Los Angeles flood of nineteen thirty eight, which killed over one hundred people and destroyed roads, bridges, and acres.
Of farmland throughout the county.
The five day flood cost upwards of seventy eight million dollars worth of damage or one point sixty nine billion and twenty twenty three dollars, making one of the costliest disasters in the city's history. I bet you that stat was written prior to January. The oscars were delayed again in nineteen sixty eight. A turbulent time.
Oh run dun dum dum dum dum d d s d shun dump dum.
Chopper.
Yeah, do the chopping. Yeah, mao did he? Mau What is that third time you've done it? No? It's, Uh. The only way I know it is from uh.
It's a deer hunter when when they're at the the thing, he says, I.
Think so, I think so.
But it's it's also something about an episode of The Simpsons where Homer's like or no, it's it's bart like beating principal Skinner in a in a steel cage, which were in like a bamboo cage.
Which is, yeah, that's where I saw Mau. Did he Mau? You need to find that later?
Funds that in Well, A lot of jokes for a really not funny event, the Oscars, I can modulate tone.
Yeah. True.
The Oscars were delayed again in nineteen sixty eight. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. The Academy postponed the fortieth annual ceremony, initially scheduled for April eighth, for two days so stars like Harry Belafonte, Diane Carroll, Sammy Davis Junior, Louis Armstrong, and Marlon Brando could attend King's.
Funeral in Atlanta.
One of those things is not like the other man.
Can you imagine how racially horrible that atmosphere must have been to like go to that Oscar ceremony after it was postponed, with like a bunch of these people who were probably like openly celebrating his death. Yeah, I was gonna say, John Wayne was zac. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get We'll get to John Wayne's Oscar.
A little bit. Gregory Peck, the Oscar winning actor who was then serving as the President of the Academy, opened the ceremony on April tenth with a speech acknowledging the tragedy. This has been a fateful week in the history of our nation, he says, we join with fellow members of our profession and men of goodwill everywhere, to pay our respects to the memory of doctor Martin Luther King Junior. He then observed that two of the five films nominated for Best Picture that year, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, both starring Sidney Poitier, dealt with the subject of quote understanding between the races.
The third and most.
Recent time that the Oscars were postponed was nineteen eighty one, just four hours before the ceremony was due to begin on March thirtieth, Four hours earlier in the day, twenty five year old John Hinckley Junior attempted to assassinate the newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan outside a hotel in Washington, d C. Reportedly in an attempt to gain the attention of Jodie Foster.
We all know that story.
Hinkley had developed a psychotic obsession with the actress after seeing her. Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, in which Robert de Niro's character Travis Bickele plus to assassinate a presidential candidate.
We all know the story.
Reagan, who began his career as an actor and was a former Academy member, himself, had pre recorded a message for the Oscar ceremonies opening sequence. The Academy felt it wise to wait until the Commander in Chief was confirmed to be in stable condition before continuing the ceremony. Reagan himself specifically requested that the clip be aired and watched the ceremony from his hospital band with a big old jar of jelly beans.
I have nothing to say about all of that. You have nothing to say about uh, nothing to say about John Hinckley, or nothing to say about Nancy m No. I have nothing to say about that. You know, people love John Hinckley because he went for the Right President show but he failed, And as Donald Trump says, I only like winners. Also, like everyone, you know, all these internet poisoned losers want to like talk about how hilarious it is that John Hickley Junior's still like out there been like making dumb country covers because he was the one who killed Reagan or tried to kill Reagan, and like, yeah, that's fine, but he was also like obsessed over a twelve year old. Yeah, we kind of skipped that part. We do skip that. The guy he shot did like live the rest of his life like afflicted by constant pain and then died. Oh Brady, So not that he was like you know, he was he was in the Reagan circle, so he was obviously a piece of shoot some way. But uh, you know, anyway, where are we talking about.
Well, now we're going to move on to Oscar presenters. Bob Hope holds the record as the most consistent Oscar presenter with a truly terrifying nineteen ceremonies between nineteen forty in nineteen seventy eight. Bob Hope scares me. There's like a real malevolence there.
I feel like, well, I mean, is it kind of the forced cheer under the simmering like hatred eyed stare?
Yeah, yeah, I just I don't know. I mean, anyone who's that close to being Crosby, Well, yeah, you're right about that, and Burrell all in, Milton Burrell, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, I just Jack, Benny, all those guys. I just feel I have nothing to base this on at all. I just feel like they're all bad guys.
Yeah, I mean I think that's pretty I think that's pretty safe to assume.
Okay, good, I'm glad we did this. Yeah, good talk son. Woopy Goldberg became the first woman and the first African American.
To serve as the solo hosts of the show in nineteen ninety four.
But hosts, you know, as we all know, it is a tough job. Sometimes they are called upon to go above and beyond the call of duty. Case in point, and the nineteen fifty nine Oscars wrapped a full twenty minutes. Early producers through to co host Jerry Lewis to just stretch and fill time. Standing amid presenters and newly minted Oscar winners. Lewis announced that they be singing three hundred choruses of There's no business like Show Business before watching a three Stooges program to quote cheer up the losers. He then stole the conductor's baton and led the orchestra in song until NBC got tired of his shenanigans and.
Cut to a sports review show for the rest of the time. Kind of great, although I hate trying to say what an irritating man?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, But arguably the best impromptu Oscars incident curtit nineteen seventy three, when Charlton Heston got a flat tire on the way to the ceremony where he was due to present, and instead producers grabbed Clint Eastwood out.
Of the audience to sup in. They were kind of interchanged. I was gonna say that there's something. Yeah, if you're going to pick any two white guys to just do that, you know, come on, guys.
Yes, speaking of disastrous presenter moments, we have to talk about the opening segment of the nineteen eighty nine Oscars. This has gone down in Oscar's history is produced by Alan Carr, the ultra flamboyant Hollywood wheeler dealer who'd rocketed to the top of showbiz with the success of Greece in nineteen seventy eight, which he'd produced. He was known for his expensive and flashy parties and productions, and so he was hired to produce the sixty first Annual Academy.
Awards in March of nineteen eighty.
Nine, basically to inject some life into it. The edict had been to shift the somewhat rigid ceremony to something a little more out there, and boy howdy, that's what they got. Beforehand, Carr insisted that the night would be quote the antithesis of tacky, and folks, you don't have to be a linguistics expert to know that when someone insists that something will be the antithesis of tacky, it's probably going to be pretty tacky.
The whole thing was.
Musical numbers that would attempted.
The blend old and new and really, yeh, my god, of course he did. I mean, this is the bit that everyone talks about.
There's an actress named Eileen Bowman who dressed up as snow white and sang a rendition of Proud Mary with Rob Lowe that lasted twelve minutes.
That's a lot of airtime. Yeah, and then like the the like underage sex tape had come out right around that time, right, Oh, check that. I think it might have been mo it around it was right after.
Yeah. The long, painful performance baffled the audience, and certain high profile Hollywood actors Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, and Julie Andrews all wrote a letter to the Academy condemning the program as quote an embarrassment and adding insult to injury, and Disney filed a lawsuit against the Academy for not officially licensing snow White. Although the eventually back down with a simple apology from the Academy, this number haunted Rob Low's career for years, and also Alan Carr, whose career never really recovered and he died in the late nineties of liver cancer. And now we got to talk about people who were banned.
Did you do you get into Franco and Hathaway? No you got something to say about them? Oh? No, I people hated them.
I know, I know.
I just thought it was comment worthy because it's one of the big other train wreck ones in recent history people have talked about. I mean, it was train wreck, but it was just like they just weren't great at it.
It was not like uniquely horrible, and that means it's like the David Letterman thing where he introduces Oprah Uma. He produces Oprah Winfrey to Uma Thermon. He makes a whole bit about like, oh, they have funny names, and people were like, he's the worst Oscar host of all time.
It was just not a great fit, not a great joke.
But it's not really we don't get into the slap on here, the Chris Rocks slap, are we not?
Okay?
Yes, so now we are getting into the section of people who have been banned or threatened with banishment from the oscars. Will Smith, for the slap, has been banned for ten years.
Although he went back in the building to collect, right or did they like I don't actually remember how that played out.
He slapped him and he sat back down and then went back up and accepted. Yeah. They it was like, oh, after the fact when they were like, oh, we probably should have taken a stronger stance on that.
Your bands for ten years, Yeah, that was a weird year. I feel like that didn't count. How so I just feel like we just were like it just it was a covid Oscars. Yeah, I feel like we just kind of decided it was going to be We're just going to take a mulligan on that one.
So he's banned for ten years. Will Smith, Bill Cosby and several other felons are banned for life. Understandably, but these are not the only folks to get banned from the Academy Awards Technically. In nineteen ninety three, the Oscars producers did not take kindly to presenters going off script. Then couple Susan Saranded and Tim Robbins took a moment presenting the award for Best Film Editing to address the AIDS crisis in Haiti. Ironically, attendees at the nineteen ninety three Oscars were wearing red ribbons for HIV AIDS awareness. Then later that night, Richard Gear, presenting Best Art Direction, took a stand against the Chinese invasion of Tibet.
Oh yeah, I forgot. Gear was all about Tibet.
All about t Bet. The audience applauded, but Oscar's producer Gil Kates was livid. In an LA Times piece published soon after the telecast, Kates is quoted as saying does anyone care about Richard Gear's comments about China, It's arrogant. He went on to address the comments made by Sarandon and Robbins. For someone who I invite to present an award to use that time to postulate a personal political belief, I think it's not only outrageous, it's distasteful and dishonest.
So shut up and act. In other words, yes, he concluded, I wouldn't invite them to my home, and I won't invite them to a future show. Ironically, all of these speeches are now available on the Oscars YouTube page to watch anytime you want. Please please restart our ratings have been refall in please watch anything about the Oscars for begging you.
All three Tim Robbins, Susan Surround and Richard Gear were reportedly banned from the Oscars for life, but it didn't stick for any of the three. Susan Surroundon won Best Actress three years later for nineteen ninety five's Dead Man Walking, and Tim Robbins scored a Best Supporting Actor win for Mistic River in two thousand and four. Richard Gear has not won an OSCAR since, but he's yeah, He's attended ward shows multiple times since he was supposedly banned, starting in twenty thirteen.
When I was there, maybe I saw him. She's so funny. He just kind of like snuck back on and everyone's like, Ah, Richard, you little scam. It's okay. He talked about this.
He told the Huffington Posts that quote, it seems if you stay around long enough, they forget they banned you. But in a twenty seventeen Hollywood Reporter profile, Gear said that the Tibet Oscars incident did have long lasting effects on his career. He claimed that he'd been denied many film roles because his presence in a movie could tank its overseas box office because releases in China make a lot of money.
So yeah, that's I mean, that's one hundred percent true. Sad trombone for Richard Gear and the Gerbils, that no doubt. Never mind how many how many Gerbils have died in the name of Richard Gear, is that? What's your beef with the Gear?
I hate Richard Gear, Okay, I hate rich.
And Kevin Costs.
I still like them, still like them. I hate the movies they're in, hate their face, I hate their acting. Okay, okay, mister tea and the women get out of here, officer and a gentleman.
No pretty woman.
I've never seen pretty women because I can't get past Richard Gerett.
You lied to our podcast guests.
In which way?
Yeah?
I mean, I do that a lot. I'm not as nice. I'm actually just as mean as you. That's the thing. People don't get listeners. Well, eventually, we were one hundred and seventy five episodes in, and people are gonna have to understand that I'm just as mean as you.
That's why we're friends.
It wouldn't actually work if I was as nice as people think I am. Are you or as mean as people think you are? You're actually nicer and I'm actually meaner, and we meet in the middle. That's how this works.
I can't believe is all just flowed out of here because of Richard Gere. I hate Richarde, Yeah, man, clearly, Okay, that's all right. I don't give a shit. What do you think about Richard gear I don't think about Richard Gere, Yeah, exactly, I don't think about him at all. I mean, I he's one step removed from Julia Roberts in that that nineties stretch where she was like the most beautiful woman in the world, so like, oh, he was a run of my bride too. Yeah, I'm not even talking about that one. I mean like I'm talking about Mystic River, Pretty Woman Era, Missing Pizza. It's is Pizza Mystic Julia Roberts in Mystic River. Boy, what a hotty? Yeah, I don't know, I don't. I'm just he seems so indefensive, like, isn't he He's just like a little guy too, He's not like, yeah, squirrelly face. He got sidekicked in the balls by gas Junior and then like didn't win an Oscar for that lusta Junior did? Oh yeah, what was it for again? Well, speaking of what Richard Gear does when he's naked, let's talk about nudity at the oscars. I'm really I feel like a psychologist that just like unlocked some kind of hidden trauma or like a new insight into you. Like this tends the case into a whole new direction. Jordan hates, I really hate Richard Gear.
I'm sir, We'll get I'm sure somebody's gonna tweet at me about now. I'm looking at at his filmography now to see if this is oh, he was Looking for Mister.
Goodbar, which is a good movie. I don't think like yeah, I just I don't think about him enough. I'm so this is so wild to me that Looking for mis Goodbye is a great movie. Uh dance. Yeah, that was like poised to be his comeback for a second, and then we as a society we're like, no, I think he's like accurately rated. Yeah, oh yeah, he was in the Todd Haynes. I'm not there a Bob Dylan movie as Billy the Kid are Abob Dylan. That's actually his section. I mean, he's not good in it. He doesn't really bring anything to that, but like that is one of my favorite segments of that film because it's like clearly like the basement tapes John Wesley Harding, you know, Pat Garrett Billy the Kid version, and it is like this creepy, sort of demented like Halloween Town that they Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Collexico do a very moving version of a completely throwaway basement tape song called Go Nakapolco that has a masturbation joke in it. So there's that.
He's seventy five dance and he looks like hell, Okay, he looks that he five.
All right, I'm softening now that I see that he's like old as hell, now that I've seen that I've triumphed over him, that the time has.
Ravaged Richard Gear.
Yeah, okay, I want to see if anything else Wikipedia page with Gerbils they scrubbed that. How would Snopes?
Okay, let's look, folks. Do you want to tell the kind folks what we're talking about here with Richard Gear and Gerbils?
No? Uh so, yeah, okay, it's on. It's on. It is on Snopes. But the rumor was that Richard Gear was once escorted to the hospital where they found alive hamster in his nether regions, the larger of the two holes available to men.
There's what my friend Chris Fleming, a comedian friend, we used to go when he was just starting when he was a teenager.
We were all teenagers.
We go to the Boston to these open mic nights and it was always the same EMC and we'd see the same MC do the same jokes fifty times.
And he had this.
Joke and I wish I could get it perfectly, but it was something like, yeah, I started taking and take a Viagra works okay first, like one or two pills, but after that it's really hard to get more than one or two pills up in that tiny hole, and every time we all just doubled over.
Okay, So moving on from that.
My favorite thing I do is when I tell a joke that either.
You don't like or doesn't land, or you just know I'm not going to.
Use, you don't acknowledge it, and you give me something really great to cut on, which is nice.
Sorry, no, this is actually interesting. I read about this. So Richard Gear and Sylvester still Or in a movie called Lords of Flatbush in nineteen seventy four, and they really did like each other. They really hate each other, and supposedly one day Gear spilled like chicken broth or something like chicken soup in Stalone's car and they started a fight and Gear was fired and recast. There's no evidence of this, but they did share an agent who was known to never allow them in a room together. And then in the nineties, apparently after Pretty Woman, an anonymous prankster flooded fax machines across Hollywood with a fake press release from the ASPCA warning about Richard Gear's past abuse of Gerbils. I didn't know that was where that came from, so well, thank you for that. You know, I choose to believe it, not the hamster part, but the Sylvester stillone part. Is a small man, after all, is incredibly thin skin a self heading small man. Well, he's just always been known to be like thin skinned and egotistical. Did you see his recent thing we're talking about how times got soft? No, he had like a like a partictably boomer moment where he was like he was like, well, you know, people just got soft, like they're not challenged as much these days, talking about like soft generations, like life is easy, like throwing participation trophy like that kind of boomer. Oh okay, says the guy with the fake boxing globes from his not being a boxer movies. Uh what were we doing well, speaking of things that Richard Gear does naked. Oh yeah, you had that great Yeah, you had that great segue.
For legal reasons, we should say that he absolutely does not perform a scene X with Jurbils in the privacy of his own home or otherwise, yes, or anywhere else?
Do you want to keep going with this because of how much you hate. You're more alive than I've seen you in weeks by your Richard gear, like you've been gifted by the muse. Well, most people have nightmares about being naked on stage in front of a massive group of people. Thirty three year old, Robert Opple or Ople Did you ever find that out? I don't.
Ople feels right, yeah.
Robert Opele, thirty three years old, streaked across the Hollywood's Biggest night stage with Oscar's co host David Niven in the middle of welcoming Elizabeth Taylor to the stage present the Best Picture Award, and a nude Opple ran behind him. I thought he looked like David Crosby. I know me too, flashing a smile and a peace sign at the camera, and then dashed off again. The streaking fad had swept the country that year. Ray Stevens had in fact just released the country novelty song The Streak, which hit numbers one soon after, and the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers. Even the band launched into it a suggestive stripper theme. David Niven, of course, a paragone of class and pre written jokes quipped, a, isn't a fascinating to think that the only laughed bands bound to get in his entire life by stripping off is by stripping off and showing his shortcoming. When he giggling, Liz Taylor did finally come out, she couldn't resist making a crack of her own.
That's a pretty hard act to follow. That's arguably better than the Nivens.
Yeah. Uh, he gilded the lily too much. Yeah, made it too wordy. Afterwards, Oppa was given the chance to explain himself to the assembled media. People shouldn't be ashamed of being nude in public, he told reporters while standing in the winner's row in front of an oversized Oscar statue. Besides, it's a hell of a way to launch a career. He would later claim that he sneaked past security imposed as a journalist to access the backstage area of the Dorothy Chandeler pavilion, and it all seems so smooth that there were rumors that the stunt had been staged by the ceremonies producer Jack Haley Junior, son of Wizard of Oz's Tin Man. Why else would a man who just trespassed exposed himself on national television and apparently damaged an expensive stage curtain in the process, simply allowed to clothe himself again and address the press. Yes, it seems very offer like, come on. I don't know. This has never proven, but some people associated with the oscars did say that they saw Niven pre writing his ad lib during dress rehearsal before the ceremony, and incredibly for a spontaneous incident that was shot so that you never actually saw Opple's ople tough feet aftermath, Colon not Richard gears No became an Ople became a minor celebrity in the immediate aftermath of the incident, and the media clamored to learn more about him. Initially, he was a speech writer for Ronald Reagan's California gubernatorial campaign, and his politics took a further left turn. At the dawn of the seventies. He became a radical activist, appearing naked multiple Los Angeles City Council meetings to protest the city's ban on nudity at area beaches, and would get jailed for at least one of these. Ople was openly bisectional. Ople was openly bisexual and became active in the queer counterculture in the seventies, socializing with figures like John Waters and Divine, and even working as a part time photographer for gay liberation outlet The Advocate. Although he never explained his precise motives for his Oscar streak, he admitted that it was a great way to jumpstart his career, and that is exactly what happened. For a brief time, he was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show, where he announced his campaign for president with slogan's like nothing to hide and taking aim at Richard Nixon, who was then mired in the Watergate scandal. Not just another crooked dick. That's good, that's good. Yeah. Hollywood producer Alan Carr, the aforementioned man who was blackbald for the worst Oscars ever, and also you know producer of Greece. He hired Ople to streak their party for Russian dancer Rudolph nurriyev here analysis. I mean, this would have.
Been the height of the Studio fifty four era, and I known Area was a mainstay there, so it kind of it kind of makes sense.
Moved to San Francisco in nineteen seventy eight, where he opened Faye Way Studios, the first openly gay art gallery in the country. He became one of the first galleries to display work by photographers like Robert Maplethorpe and artist of Tom of Finland and Opo was hosting friends at Feiwa on July seventh, nineteen seventy nine, when two burglars stormed the studio seeking money and drugs. A scuffle ensued and Ople was shot in the head at close range. He was pronounced dead later that night at the age of thirty nine. The assailants, identified as Maurice Keenan and Robert Kelly, made off with five dollars and a camera. They were arrested on July tenth at San Francisco International while apparently trying to escape to Miami. Thirty years later, Ople's nephew, Robert Opple the Elder, had dropped one P from his name to protect his family, produced the documentary Uncle Bob, which explored the life and work of his infamous relative. It's actually the original plot of What About Bob? I gotta watch that movie? Is that? Hold up? I can't imagine it does? Oh it does, it does.
Yeah, it's just so, what's the word Frisian free zone of insanity.
I mean, because I mean drive.
I mean they are both clearly in real life insane people, and they both clearly hate each other in real life. So that keeps it crackling good. Yeah, And while we're talking about the Streaker, we have to talk about the other most infamous Oscar surprise guests other than Will Smith. One of the most iconic roles in cinema history also gave way to one of the most iconic moments in the history of the Oscars. When Marlon Brando went his second Oscar in nineteen seventy three for his performance as Don Vito Corleone and the Godfather. He wasn't there to receive it in his place. He'd sent Sasheen little Feather, an Apache Native American activist and the president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, to reject the award on his behalf. When Brando's name was announced, Little Feather took the stage in a buckskin dress and moccasins. Although Brando had given her a fifteen page speech to read, she was forced to improvise due to the sixty second time limit that had been disclosed the minutes before the award presentation. I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening, she told the stunned crowd, and he asked me to tell you that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award, and the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television and movie reruns, and also with recent happenings.
It wounded Knee.
I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening, and that we will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity.
He wasn't wrong, no.
But the moment drew a mixed response from the audience. Some cheered, other's booed, and many were simply baffled. It confused Roger Moore, who attempted to present the award, ended up simply taking it home with him, and it was later it was later collected by Academy officials who were disp edged to his house. So she Little Feather would later claim that and enraged John Wayne, another presenter that night, tried to rush the stage and had to be restrained by six men.
Yeah, I sure believe that. Wow. Yeah, I absolutely believe that.
Backstage she was reportedly mocked with faux Native American chants and tomahawk chop gestures.
Oh yes, and.
Was actually even threatened with the rest. So the naked guy fine, but this woman who spoke very eloquently about the plight of the disenfranchised people whose country we stole threatened with the rest.
Yeah. And the guy who was in prison for wounded kneed, Leonard Peltier, just got his sentence commuted finally.
Yes, that's correct.
Yes.
In ninety ninety, Little Feather spoke to People magazine about the fallout she faced in response to her OSCARS moment. She said, I went up there thinking I could make a difference. I was very naive. I told people about oppression. They said, you're ruining our evening. Little Feather died in October twenty twenty two at the age of seventy five, weeks after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences publicly apologized for her treatment at the ceremony nearly fifty years earlier. The abuse you endured because of the statement was unwarranted and unjustified, wrote then Academy president David Rubin. The emotional burden you have lived through, and the cost of your own career in our industry is irreparable. For too long, the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration, he said, lyingly. But there's also some story out there which you can google yourselves, that her family after she died, insisted.
That she stop being referred to as Native American. We just wasn't Native American at all. Yeah, in many ways, she walked so that Buffy Saint Marie could run. Yeah, I think. Yeah. John Wayne got so furious ever, people, It's like he felt protective over of America, of America's legacy of racial bad Yes. Yeah, there's so many stories about him flying off the handle for people being like, yeah, but how do you feel about killing all those engines in your movies? And he's like, I was proud to do it. Yep. What a piece of shit he was? Yep. Okay, moving on.
But Marlon Branda was not the first person to refuse an Academy award. Dudley Nicholas rejected his Best Adapted Screenplay award in nineteen thirty five for the informer due to an ongoing Screenwriter's Guild strike. Some things never change. In nineteen seventy one, George C. Scott responded to his Best Actor nomination for Patent by informing the Academy outright that he would not be attending the ceremony, dismissing it as quote a two hour meat parade. Hell Yes, Hollywood inside assumed that the rebuff would tank his chances during Academy voting, but he ultimately won.
Yes.
Presenter Goldie Hawn exclaimed, oh my god when she saw his name in the envelope, that's oh man. The award was accepted by the film's producer, But I don't think George Scott ever actually took it.
Good for him. I thought you'd like that. He was probably hammered. And then I woke up and was like, I gotta stick with this. Now we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment.
So now we got to talk about acceptance speeches after last night's show. This gets a little weird because, by my research, as cited in places like The Independent, the longest acceptance speech in Oscar's history was given by actress Greer Garson, who went on by again. My research shows me over seven minutes after being presented with the Best Actress statuette for performance in nineteen forty two's Missus Miniver. It's believed that this incident led to the Academy instituting time limits for speeches. However, I'm seeing a lot of headlines today that Adrian Brody's speech last night, that the twenty twenty five Oscars broke the record for the longest speech, and places like Huffington Post are citing geers speech from the forties as clocking in it five minutes and thirty seconds instead of seven which I've been seeing elsewhere, which is now beaten out by Adrian Brody's speech last night, which was five minutes in forty seconds.
It was interminable. Yes, yes, I felt, I mean, I never had any special affinity with him, but I was just like, wow, you really not a lot going on under that hood. Huh No, Given the Greer's speech occurred before TV broadcasts, I'm having a hard time tracking it down and actually timing it. So, yeah, mileage may vary.
But then for one of the shortest speeches, we go to noted short guy Joe Peshi friend of the show, friend of the show, Yes, friend of the pod. He said six words upon receiving a statuette for Best Supporting Actor in Goodfellas, it was my privilege. Thank you, classy. But the record for the shortest Oscar speech in a he's.
Written songs with less fewer words than that. That's true. He is a talented singer songwriter.
But the record for the shortest Oscar speech in a performance category is actually tied between William Holden, who was also probably drunk, and Alfred Hitchcock, who both simply said thank you and walked off. Although I think hitch got an Honorary Irving Thalberg Award in nineteen sixty eight, so he actually had time to prep a speech because he knew he was getting it, and he's still opted not to, probably because he was pissed because he'd gotten six nominations in the past for Best Director and never won.
Yeah, it's a little like the Marty one, where it's like, you know, for finally they give it to him and they're like, okay, yes, I'm begrudgingly happy.
Oh you need to do this. Anecdote from one of Pennsylvania's finest.
Uh okay, it's.
A tough old man from Pennsylvania. Come on, this, says alex Igo, written all over it. Others have been more creative with their moment in the spotlight over the years. When Louise Fletcher won the Best Supporting Actress statue for her role as Nurse Ratchet and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in nineteen seventy six, she gave part of her speech in sign language so she could address her deaf parents watching at home in Birmingham, Alabama.
Fuck. That's touching, Yeah it is. It's like a huge disabilities visibility moment. I don't think I knew that. I want to say thank you for teaching me to have a dream. She signed, you are seeing my dream come true, and then she went and started an Exorcist two oh. But Jack Palance got a even more physical during his speech the blood movie. Tough Guy may have been seventy three years old when he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as gruff cowboy Curly Washburn in nineteen ninety one City Slickers, But he's eager to demonstrate his physical fitness for the audience kind of like an RFK moment. Right, we're like a weird old guy doing push ups. Yeah? Probably was he pretty red? I imagine No, he actually looked kind of deathly pale all to be honest with you, well, either way, he was perhaps inspired by his City Slickers co star Billy Crystal, who was hosting that year, and immediately after arriving on stage, Palan's quoted one of the more colorful lines from the movie, saying that he could crap bigger than the diminutive Crystal. Then he launched into a story about how the insurance agents at the studio worried whether he was healthy enough to act in such a rigorous production at his age. Palence claimed that he hallayed their fears by performing a series of one armed push ups, which he then demonstrated on stage amid loud cheers from the crowd. Your thoughts, you seem distressed. You know it's a meat parade, Sure is, Geersey Scott's. Didn't Jack Palance do other weird shit like he like he like towed like boats with his teeth or something. He was like a real like Johnny b fitness or something. Right, I think it's Jack Laine. Uh, yeah, that is different, guy. I did the Rogers Will Rogers thing. Yeah, wow, I'm sundowning. Uh okay, we can, we can finish tomorrow. No, no, no, no, I mean in my life. Oh I'm it's where the sun is setting. Uh. The moment became a running gag throughout the remainder of the telecast, with Billy Crystal offering comedic updates that Palance was backstage on the StairMaster bungee, jumping off the Hollywood Sign or preparing for spaceflight, according to Crystal's memoir, But when the two co stars met up at the after party, the newfound Oscar winner placed the statuette on Crystal's shoulder before chuckling Billy Crystal, who thought it would be you. That's great. Uh. Crystal accepted the moment his expression of attitude from Palans for co writing the film City Slickers and fighting to cast him, thus helping him take home the Academy Award after two prior nominations forty years earlier. It was his really funny way of staying thank you to a little New York jewey guy who got on the Oscar, Christal recalled during an appearance on inside the actors' studio. The pair reteamed at the Academy Awards the following year for the broadcast introductory sketch, which featured Palins dragging a giant oscar on stage with Crystal again the host riding it. It was very cute. Not a great segue there, no that was not moving from vanity to another sin of the flesh. When Tom Hanks accepted his Oscar for playing no segue.
Yeah, Tom Hanks, There's no segue for this part. When Tom Hanks accepted his Oscar for playing a gay lawyer dying of AIDS in nineteen ninety three's Philadelphia, he took a moment during his acceptance speech to thank his former high school drama teacher, Roleigh Farnsworth, referring to him as one of the finest gay Americans. The tribute had the unintended side effect of launching Farnsworth into the media spotlight, with headlines like outed at the Oscars. In truth, Hanks had called Farnsworth three days before the ceremony and asked for permission to disclose the sexuality in the speech. The pair hadn't spoken since Hanks had graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, California, in nineteen seventy four. I don't know if you'll remember me, Farnsworth, who was then sixty nine, nice recalled Tom Hanks, saying, but I'm an old student of yours. I've got a ticket to the Academy Awards, and if I win, I would like to use your name in regard to the content of Philadelphia. Farnsworth, who'd been private about his sexuality during his thirty year teaching career, said he would be thrilled. I thought, I've been retired for twelve years. What harm could it do, he told People magazine at the time. While many were mistakenly aghast on Farnsworth's behalf, the man himself was deeply moved by Hanks's speech. I didn't know exactly what he was going to say, he admitted, but it was just overwhelming. The experience motivated Farnsworth to join an organization of gay teachers, and later that year he served as grand marshall in an Atlanta parade for children with HIV. But another outcome of Hanks's speech was that it inspired a movie.
Yeah, oh man, this is so funny. I remember as a kid this movie coming out, and like reading an Entertainment Weekly blurb about it and being very like confused as a child to what the circumstances of this were.
Yes, the confusion about whether or not Farnsworth had been outed by Tom Hanks during his acceptance speech gave screenwriter Paul Rudnick the idea for In and Out, a movie about a closeted high school teacher whose secret is invertently revealed during a former student's acceptance speech at the Oscars. As Turner Classic movie host Dave carg observed to The New York Times in twenty nineteen, it's safe to say it's the only Oscar speech in history to inspire another movie.
That's a good movie. Yet yet that's true.
Ah, some Oscar acceptance speech by the numbers.
This is great. This is a late edition of this episode.
There's an amazing blog called stephenfollows dot com which broke down Oscar speeches from nineteen thirty nine to twenty twenty three, and his stats are pretty hilarious. According to his work, screenwriters have the best vocabulary, which makes sense since their speeches on average contained upwards of three hundred and seventy five words, whereas sound mixers have the least, with approximately one hundred and seventy five words.
On average.
The average Oscar speech thanks around nine people. Actress's name checked the greatest number of people, with an average of thirteen point eight per speech, because women are just better.
Yeah. Oh, I was going to mean they talk so much. Yeah they are. It'd be shopping.
The record for the most thanked people during an Oscar's acceptance speech went down.
What parents, No, who, manager?
No, let me the account, Let me tell you the stat You're misunderstanding my stat will you?
I will not you? Was Richard. Here's last mistake.
You are grossly misunderstanding the stat I am trying to share. It's my biggest pet peeve is when people misunderstand the stat I am trying to share. The record for the most people thanked during a single acceptance speech went down on producers John Landau and James Cameron accepted the Oscar for Best Picture for Titanic in nineteen ninety eight. John Landau spoke first, thanking fifty four people by name in sixty six seconds.
Which is impressive that it just as a sheer verbal mechanics. That's good for him. End of radio ad with the like this o you know, like.
Side effects for medication ads skill level.
That's Southern auctioneer level words. Yes. Yes.
He was then followed by fellow producer James Cameron, who thanked nobody.
Yeah. Yeah, that was the King of the World moment, right, Yes, yes, but I mean in his defense he was he didn't note that John had thanked everybody, and he asked for a few seconds of silence and remembrance of the fifteen hundred men, women and children who died in connection with the Titanic, the ship, not the shoot. James Cameron only killed maybe fifteen people for legal reasons. Because I still want to write a book about the making of the Titanic movie. I told you about that, right.
I pitched it to my book ye, to your agent, and he said, yeah, I don't know if it has the same mass appeal as some of my other projects. Like I just I just did it. I just sold an oral history on the Big Bang theory. And I was like, this is this is Titanic. This is up there with like the Wizard of Oz and the God thought.
It sounds really dumb. It's a dumb thing to say, Yes, yes it was.
Uh here, this is an interesting fact, speaking of being ungrateful to people who support them, the instance of people thanking their partners has decreased by ten percent in the last decade, which I find interesting. I blame COVID honestly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard to thank everyone on poly cool with these younger actors, you know.
And let's get a bummer stat out of the way. Harvey Weinstein is the second most commonly thanked living person in Oscar's history.
Boy, yeah, people, Hollywood was really propped up by him for a very long time.
But Spielberg is the most thanked living person. A lot of that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk about some winners. We love winners on this show, Heigel.
Yes, that's true. We do love winners, and especially when they're sore winners. Yes. One of the bitchest acceptance speeches ever given was by a songwriter, composer Randy Newman. To no one's surprise, Who've been nominated fifteen times before he finally won for his original song If I Didn't Have You from two thousand and one. In his speech, he thanked the music branch of the cat to me for quote giving me so many chances to be humiliated. That's I mean, his family has the most oscars in history though. Yep, that's why he was so bitters because his like Thomas and his like uncle had both already scooped up multiple Oscars by this point. But they were like that, Randy, No, we all like him. Paul Newman wasn't even in the building when he won his first competitive Oscar for Best Actor in the Color of Money. He had previously said, I've been there six times and lost. Maybe if I stay away, I'll win. Love Paul, Yeah, my second favorite, Paul. Yeah, he's probably might have been a little toasted that night, just geting, getting drunk on bud, just being like, Yeah. Barton Scorsese had been nominated seven times when he finally won for the Depotted in two thousand and seven. The Academy must have let the word out early, because he was presented for the honor by his old seventies New Hollywood raging bulls. You know those guys, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola. They didn't invite John Carpenter. They never do.
It's a very cute moment.
It is.
Yeah, I assumed when I saw them all up there, and like everyone knew, Oh, it's got to be going to Marty, and I assumed like that was one moment when they kind of let the secret out just so they could get everybody there. But then last night they had Mick Jagger on hand and Elton John was nominated, and it almost seemed like, oh, they've got Mick Jagger to give it to Elton, and then it went to some I forget who it went to, and Mix seemed like visibly disappointed, and so I'm wondering maybe that was like, Oh, everyone just assumes it's going to go to Elton, let's get mixed. Maybe in this what if all three of those guys were up there and it went to like, I don't know, Giamo del Toro or.
Something, then that would have been funny in the audience.
Lowers's head, dude, Giermo.
Do Toro fish movie. Oh.
Another really cute on stage Oscar's moment is Muhammad Ali comes out to surprise Syvester Stallone when he was presenting an award during like the Rocky Year, and they engage in like a brief, good natured sparring match on stage, as Ali jokingly accusedes Stallone of like stealing his life story for the Rocky Script.
It's so adorable.
I mean, like a year or two earlier, Stallone had to like sell his dog to be able to eat and survive, and now he was at the Oscars with his hero like surprising him on stage.
It's very sweet. Yeah, that is quite cute. It's also become a tradition over the years for winners to take a photo kissing their oscars. This trend began with a great Audrey Hepburn after she run won hers for Roman Holiday in nineteen fifty four. In no surprise to those of you with taste and wherewithal, the most nominated actor at the Oscars is Meryl Street is a total of twenty one between Deer Hunter and Night teen seventy nine and The Post in twenty eighteen. Catherine Hepburn still holds the record for the most wins at four, with Streep and Jack Nicholson tied for second with three. Apiece composer and Spielberg buddy John Williams is the only person in Oscar's history to be nominated in seven consecutive decades, starting in nineteen sixty eight, for Best Scoring of Music for Valley of the Dolls. Yeah, baby, to his most recent nominations for Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny and twenty twenty four. They all have to be good. It's bookended by. To date, he has racked up a total of fifty four nominations, he's won five and he's also the oldest person ever to be nominated at age ninety two.
And he was nice to my mom back of the nineties.
Most importantly, I mean's he is the greatest of all time. Like it's not even yeah, nobody's actually competing for that category with John Williams. I'm sorry everyone else.
He's a family gout fit where it was like the Porn Awards and they had all these like best score for partial Yeah.
John Williams with the London Symphonic Orchestra. So good. However, Walt Disney has the most Oscar wins ever. In all, he's won twenty two competitive Oscars and four honorary Oscars out of possible fifty nine nominations. He was nominated for an Oscar a year between nineteen forty two and nineteen sixty three.
But he just like ran animation in Hollywood, so and they're all animation categories.
I'm assuming so I don't know that. I don't count that. Yeah, it's a bit like the Apples and Oranges thing like. Oh, I lost an award to the Seven Dwarves. The record for the shortest Oscar winning performance goes to Beatrice Strait, who played the heartbroken wife of a philandering TV station president in Sidney La Maze nineteen seventy six film Network. She appears in just one scene, which she delivers an impassioned monologue confronting her husband about his affair. Five minutes and two seconds of screen time well spent. The moment earned her an Academy Award, alongside co stars Paid Dunaway, who took him the Best Actress statuette and Peter Finch, who became the first actor honored with a posthumous OSCAR. James Deem was the first actor to earn posthumous nominations, with back to back nods in nineteen fifty five and fifty six for East of Eden and Giant, respectively. And who's the other posthumous one? It was Heath Ledger, right, Oh, he blecher you. Jean dou Jardins has the distinction of winning an Acting Oscar with the least amount of dialogue for the Artists in twenty eleven. The film is almost entirely silent save for twelve words, two of which are his with pleasure, with Pleasure avec Cezier. The Artist was also the first entirely black and white film to win Best Picture since The Apartment in nineteen sixty, over half a century earlier. Oh and Okay, Yeah, Let's go to Sweepers. As of the ninety sixth Academy Awards twenty twenty four, forty one films have won at least two Acting Awards. Of these, three A street Car Named Desire nineteen fifty one, Network in nineteen seventy six and Everything Everywhere, All at Once in twenty twenty two have won three Acting awards. A street Car named Desire scored statuettes for Vivian Lay, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter. However, Marlon Brando lost Best Actor to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. In Network, Peter Finch, Fade Dunaway, and Behri Strait all won, but Ned Batty lost Best Supporting Actor to Jason Robards for All the President's Men, Everything Everywhere, All at Once did not have a Best Actor nominee, but won Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, Best Supporting Actor for Kei Hui Kwan, and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis, which, if I remember correctly, was some kind of an abomination because there was another Best Supporting Actress win that people were like, why is she in this? For being the token white lady in this movie? There actually have been ties in Oscar history. Meanwhile, in nineteen thirty two, during the fifth Academy Awards, Frederick Marsh received one more vote for his performance in Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde than did Wallace Beery for the champ but under the Academy's rules at the time, a difference of less than three votes was considered a tie, not how ties work, and both actors were honored. March and Beery also shared the fact that they had each recently adopted children, which led Frederick Marsh to joke, under the circumstances, it seems a little odd that Wally and I were both given awards for the best Male Performance of the Year. That's funny. In later years, the rules were changed to recognize that only an exact tie in a major category because no shit. In nineteen sixty nine, during the first Academy Awards ceremony to be televised worldwide, Katherine Hepburn for The Line in Winter, the movie Not Her State of Being, and Barbara Streisend for Funny Girl, shared Best Actress honors when each received precisely three thousand and thirty votes. For Hepburn, this was her record setting eleventh nomination and third win. For Streisan it was her film debut. Catherine Hepburn hated her I have to assume.
Yeah, I kind of guess that this is such an all about Eve moment.
Or show Girls. We should do Showgirls. Sure, I've never seen it. Oh, it might How does it rank in the U in the Hustler's Magic, Mike Honaura, it might be a little too much for you for me? Yeah, how so? Because it's Joe Estra was writing, the guy who wrote Basic Instincts, So it's like his idea of how like beautiful women talk to each other and it's horrible. But it's also Paul Vyrhoven, who whoa I didn't know that, and comic Blachlin's in it. Oh my god, No, it's fascinating. It's a fascinating movie, but I don't think I can wholeheartedly recommend it. No, I can, Yeah, I can watch show Girls Joe for Showgirls. As we mentioned earlier, Peter Finch was the first performer to win a Costumius Oscar for Best Actor in nineteen sen teventy six Network. The award was accepted by his widow. The sixtieth Academy Awards in nineteen eighty eight was the first time we had an Oscar nominee who was actively being sought by police. This was screenwriter Gustav Hasford, who wrote the book that Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket was based on the Short Timers. He was listed as a co writer on the script, although exactly how much he contributed has been debated, and at the time he was wanted in connection with grand theft charges involving a large collection of library books, which is just adorable. Well, well, the law library books. His Wikipedia page is quite something. In nineteen eighty five, Hassford had borrowed ninety eight books from the Sacramento, California Public Library but never returned them. An arrest warrant for misdemeanor grand theft was issued, but local authorities were unable to find him. In March of nineteen eighty eight, shortly before the Academy Awards ceremony, campus police from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, found nearly ten thousand library book in Haspard's rented storage locker. At the time, he had eighty seven overdue books and five years of Civil War Times magazine checked out cow Pauly Slo Library.
Good for him.
The materials were initially valued at three grand and were later revalued at twenty grand. Haspard's book collection, to use that term generously, included books borrowed and never returned from dozens of libraries across the United States, from libraries in Australia and the United Kingdom, and legitate in My favorite note book was taken from the homes of acquaintances, not even friends. Acquaintances is a fiend for books. He is a kleptomaniac, but just for books. It'd be so fun. I mean it says Civil War books too. Oh man. I wonder if he transitioned it all to like Ken Burns DVD's played Friend five Well there wasn't much a later in life. Among this spectacular collection were nineteenth century books on Edgar Allan Poe and the American Civil War. Hasford had obtained borrowing privileges at cal Poly Slo as a California resident, using the residential address of a motel near campus and a false social security number. In nineteen eighty eight, he was charged with two counts of grand theft and ten counts of possession of stolen property. On January fourth, nineteen eighty nine, Hasford was sentenced to six months imprisonment, of which he served three months, and promised to pay eleven hundred dollars in restitution from the royalties of his future works. He was also ordered to pay the shipping costs for the return of seven hundred and forty eight books to nine libraries throughout the United States. Hasford was impoverished and suffering from untreated diabetes, and pulled Leonard Cohen on everyone's ass. He moved to the Greek island of Aegina and died there of heart failure on January twenty ninth, nineteen ninety three, at the age of forty five. I'd say that counts as a win. Oh my god, ten thousand library books and stole it books stolen from acquaintances. Yes, and he just got off with a letter. He just went to Greece about it. What a sham.
So those are the winners, but let's not forget the losers. We cannot forget the losers on this show. Let me tell you, Glenn Close and Peter O'Toole have the ignoble honor of earning the most Oscar nominations without a win.
They've each racked up eight.
Peter O'Toole was apparently annoyed when he learned he was getting an honorary Oscar In two thousand and three, Variety reported that he sent a letter to the Academy asking them to hold off with the honorary award quote until I am as he is, quote still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright. Frank Pearson, the president of the Academy, responded with a note saying the award is for achievement and contribution to the art of the motion picture, not for retirement. It will be at the Academy fee to pick up when you're eighty or whenever you're ready. But as we mentioned at the top of the episode. Even losers have a reason to celebrate thanks to the infamous Oscars swag bags loaded with gifts worth upwards of one hundred grand. These include multiple luxury vacations, signature chocolates, a range of beauty products, jewelry and more. Some years have even gifted the nominees therapy sessions, cannabis infused chocolates, and cannabis.
Seed facial moisturizer.
But back to the winners. We should really only talk about winners on the show. Here are some fun facts about those who have taken home the Little gold Man, delivered in the form of a quiz higel. I want to ask you if.
You know some of these.
There are only two families with three generations of Oscar winners. Who are they? Barry Moore's no, that's a good that's a great guess.
I know. Newman's no for me.
You know what, these might be performers as opposed to writers. Actually, because you're right, the Newman's of the most Oscar nominated family eighty nine nominations in counting. Yeah, actually, no, those are only two generations now that I'm looking at.
The Newmans are only two generations.
But yeah, so, okay, we have two families who have three generations.
Of Oscar winners. Let me tell you. Yeah, The Houston's Walter Houston one Best Supporting Actor in nineteen forty eight. John Houston won Best Director and Best Screenplay in nineteen forty eight, and granddaughter Angelica Houston won Best Supporting Actress in nineteen eighty five. And then, of course, the Coppola's Carmine Coppola one for Best Dramatic Score for The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola one for Best Original Screenplay.
Oh, he wrote the screenplay for pat But that's still only two generations though, And then Sophia, Yeah, Sophia Coppola, what's the third? Francis Coppola's dad wrote the theme to The Godfather.
That was Nino Roda and it was also based off of Sicilian folk melodies Sicilians love to Steal.
Carmen Coppola won both the Academy Award for Best Original Score and Golden Global Were for Best Original Score composed with Nina Roda.
Yeah, all right, this is a good question.
There's only one pair of brothers who've been nominated for acting Oscars.
Who are they? And before you answer.
Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck don't count because Ben's two Oscars weren't for acting, they were for Best Original Screenplay for good Will Hunting and Best Picture for Argo.
One pair of brothers nominated for acting oscars, Bill Murray and Brian Doyle Murray.
It is River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix, River for Running on Empty in nineteen eighty eight and Joakeen for Gladiator Walked the Line and the Master.
I honestly didn't know that seems like a gimme. I just didn't know River Phoenix that ever been nominated. I thought he was just like he was widely agreed to, just be like a little boy king.
There are only two married couples who've won acting oscars.
Can you name either of them currently or at the time.
Oh, that's a good question. They were not married when they both won in some In one case, they were married when one of them won.
Jesus Christ, can you give me some decades here, or.
At least like forties and fifties, in fifties and eighties, fifties and eighties. This one will make sense when you hear it.
Is it Hitchcock and his wife? Mm hmm.
He never won a competitive Oscar, so we got Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Paul Newman won nineteen eighty six for the Color of Money.
Joann Woodward won in.
Fifty seven for the Three Faces of Eve. They were married in fifty eight, which was after Woodburg got or Oscar Lawrence a Living One for Hamlet in nineteen forty eight and Vivian Lee for Streetcar Named Desire in nineteen fifty one.
All right, good for them. Yeah?
Oh, she also won for a Gun with a Wind too. Oh, this is another good one. Angelia and Joelie won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Girl Interrupted in two thousand. Her father John Voight won Best Actor for nineteen seventy eight Coming Home. Who is the only other father daughter Best Acting pair?
They both won Best Actor.
Yeah?
Is it Paltrow?
Oh no, but that's a good And it's not during either.
That would have been my second guest. I don't know who is it? It is Barbarella herself? Oh sure? And old Henry Jane Fonda Yeah, for.
Clute in nineteen seventy one and Coming Home in nineteen seventy eight, and her father Henry Fonda one in nineteen eighty one for On Golden Pond.
Okay, two more of these.
Who's the only Academy Award winner whose parents both also received to Oscars. I can give you multiple choice if you want, please one Angelica Houston, two Liza Minelli, three Jane Fonda, or four Sophia Coppola both.
Parents would have been was it is Liza? It is Liza, That is correct. I thought you glitched out on me. There No, okay? Wow?
One for six that was good. And finally, this is a tough one. Joelnathan Cohen each won Oscars for the direction of No Country for Old Men. It was only the second time in Oscar's history that two individuals shared the directing honor. Who was the first? You will never get this? Well, I mean you might, but.
Toby Hooper and Steven Spielberg for Poltergeist.
It deserves it.
But no, I don't know, dude.
Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins winning for nineteen sixty one's West Side Story.
Yeah, okay, I would never have known that, and I don't care. All right, let's get into the racial stuff. Yes, we have now arrived at the Oscar so white section. It took more than a decade for an African American to win and even receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Acting. The honor went to Hettie McDaniel, who earned a Best Supporting Actress statuette. I think it was a plaque back then for her role as Mamy in nineteen thirty nine's Gone with the Winds. While the achievement was an important breakthrough for black performers, the moment was not completely victorious for McDaniel, the daughter of two former slaves. Segregation was still the law of the land throughout much of the United States, and producer David o' selznik had the pool strings to ensure that McDaniel would even be allowed to attend the ceremony at the Ambassador Hotel's Coconut Grove nightclub, which had a strict no blacks policy their words, Despite David oh Sales MC's endorsement, McDaniel was prohibited from sitting with her fellow cast mates. Instead, she was banished to a small table in the back of the room along with her escort and agent. This was still an upgrade from the film's Atlanta premiere, for which she was barred entirely an African American's Children choir was hired to pose as slaves at the event, and this choir included a young Martin Luther King Junior. McDaniel found herself typecast following her famous role and gone with the wind, and went on to play more than seventy domestic servant.
Roles over the next decade. She would say, I'd rather play a maid than be a maid. Even so, the NAACP took a dim view of her credits and effectively just owned her for allegedly perpetuating negative stereotypes. The indignities continued even after McDaniel's death in nineteen fifty two. Her final wish was to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery, but this was denied due to her race and the oscar she bequeathed the Howard University was deemed worthless by appraisers. The plaque then went missing by the early seventies, and to this day.
It's never been recovered. Jesus Christ, that is just a little on the nose. Yes, Holy, that got worse and worse. Yeah, yep, oh my god, this history of the States we are.
It would be sixty two years before another black actress received an Academy Award great odds. This time it went to Halle Berry for her starring turn in two thousand and two's Monsters Ball. This moment is so much bigger than me, she said during her tearful acceptance speech. It's for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened. Barry remains, I believe, the only black actress to ever win in the Leading Role category.
And she's still keeping it tight.
The first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor was Sidney Poitier, who won for Lilies of the Field in nineteen sixty three. Denzel Washington became the second African American actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor for Training Day in two thousand and.
One flawless movie No Notes.
And he's the first African American actor to have won Oscars for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He won for nineteen eighty nine's Glory and a black filmmaker has never won Best Director.
There it is there, it is.
In fact, it took seventy seven years for a non white filmmaker to win Best Director. That honor belongs to ang Lee who won in two thousand and six for Brooke Back Mountain. It took eighty one years for a woman the win Best Director. That was in twenty ten, when Catherine Bigelow triumphed over her ex husband James Cameron for The hurt Locker.
Beautiful moment in Hollywood history. Also a great film. I mean yeah, I love her whole arc against James. It's son funny. Yes. Rita Moreno became the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar for her role as Anita in nineteen sixty one's West Side Story. She would be the only Hispanic woman for nearly six decades, and then Arianna Bose won the award for the same role in Steven Spielberg's remake in twenty twenty one. In addition to being the second Latina to win an Acting Oscar, she's the first openly queer woman of color to win an Oscar. And Zoe Saldana became the first American of Dominican origin to win Academy Award on Sunday for Emilia Perez, a movie which was extensively cast and location scouted for in Mexico and then neither shot nor casted anything Mexican in it, and also whose star has just a rich, well documented history of saying real bad stuff about other races. So we did it, Joe. We kept Amelia Perez from cleaning up.
All right, I have another question for you, Heigel. There have been two other instances of two different actors winning Oscars for the same character. Do you want to guess who they are?
Oh? Would it be John Wayne and Jeff Daniels for True Grid? Not Jeff Daniels, Jeff Bridges. No, No, you're you're overthinking it. You know these? Wait? Two different asking?
Oh, two different actors, one Oscars for playing the same character.
This has happened twice. Harry Potter, No, I don't know. I don't know. Sorry, man, I'm burnt.
Marlon Brando and Robert de Niro as don Vito Corleone for The Godfather Got Mother Part Too, and also Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker in the Dark Night and Joker respectively.
Yeah, that was that was embarrassing. I don't know. Maybe I don't love the movies as much as I thought I did.
But back to big winning movies. The most Oscars won by a single film is eleven. This has happened three times in Oscar's history. Ben Hurr was the first to attend em eleven Oscars in nineteen sixty, followed by Titanic in nineteen ninety eight, and finally Lord of the Rings the Return of the King in two thousand and four. Out of the three, the Lord of the Rings was the only film to win every single Oscar. It was nominated for all eleven nominations. It took all of them. That is insane. I've still never seen it.
Ah, come on, you should watch those just as an example of like truly the Nail and the Coffin for that kind of filmmaking. But things I don't like that filmmaking is the thing. Yeah, I mean there's that. I know Peter Jackson loves the Beatles, but no, it's just like there's never going to be anyone who gets to do that again. Yeah. Yeah, So it's just interesting from that perspective. Yeah.
The most nominations received by a single film are fourteen, and only three movies have notched those numbers nineteen fifties All About Eve, which only won six awards. Nineteen ninety seven is Titanic, which, as we mentioned, won eleven awards in twenty sixteens La La Land, which only won six. Three films have won the Big five categories Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay in nineteen thirty four Is It Happened One Night, nineteen seventy five's One Flew of the Cuckoo's Nest, and nineteen ninety one's Silence of the Lambs. Hell, Yeah, and did you know, Heigel, I'm sure you do.
I'm sure.
I'm sure this guy knows. This guy knows. An x rated film one Best Picture. Midnight Cowboy has gone down in cinema history. Is one of the most revered films of the sixties, thanks in large part due to Dustin Hoffman's unforgettable portrayal as Ratzo I'm walking here Rizzo, the wanna be pimp who befriends the naive stud known as Joe Buck played by John Voight, and for Fred Neil right, and for the Harry Nilsen doing the freend Neil song Everybody's Talking at Me? Yeah, Yeah, Well. Its reputation is a Best Picture winner is reasonably well known. Few realize that it's the first and to date only X rated movie in Oscar's history to earn that distinction. However, the EX certification meant something very different at the time than it does today. We've been that Cowboy was released in May nineteen sixty nine. The Motion Picture Association of America the MPAA was then only six months old. They distributed X ratings to films that contained content judged unsuitable for children, such as extreme violence, strongly implied sex, and graphic language. Many mainstream movies of the era, including a Clockwork Orange, Las Tango in Paris, and The Evil Dead, were marked by the X, which barred anyone from under the age of sixteen from entering. Ultimately, the rating was phased out in nineteen ninety in favor of the NC seventeen rating. But interestingly, the studio that produced Midnight Cowboy labeled it with an X rating themselves without even submitting it to the MPAA. United Oris production had David Picker just assumed that the sexually explicit nature of the film, plus the druggy, psychedelic freak out scenes and homosexual themes made it an obvious contender for the strictest and he said, we didn't want to go through the exercise of submitting it since we weren't prepared to change the movie.
He's talking to the Hollywood Reporter. Stranger Still, when.
The MPAA did opt to review the movie in nineteen seventy one, they downgraded the rating to an R, well less extreme R.
Yeah, I mean the NPA for for the longest time, the ratings board were just awful. I mean, we've touched briefly on it wasn't the guy in charge of it for one year, like a for the Exorcist one, it was like a religious fundamentalist and held a particular grudge against the against that film. There's all it's it's utterly opaque, and every filmmaker who's done anything in marginally challenging subject materials talking about how artificial it all is. Where the they'll like pull three frames out of a scene like or a certain amount of Buddock thrusts in a sex scene, they'll resubmit it seven to ten times, and then the last two times they didn't change anything. But and they're like great, yeah, yeah, awful movies. Matt movie magic.
And now before we sign off, there's a few other assorted Oscar winning movie factoids that I'd like to share with you. In the form of a multiple choice quiz.
Says, get back to trivia, its to someone else.
What was the first fully animated film to receive a Best Picture nomination? Was it one The Lion King, two, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, three, Beauty and the Beast or.
Four Toy Story three. I want to say Beauty in the Beast Right, You're correct? Yeah, thank god we did. We did an episode on it to date.
What is the only film to win both an Oscar for Best Actor and a Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actress.
Is it one? Wall Street?
Two?
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Three Forrest Gump or four Bohemian Rhapsody. Uh, Bohemian Rhapsody. No, Wall Street? Who's the Well? I guess that answers my question. Who's the female lead in Wall Street? I believe it was You didn't know it either. I think it was Daryl Hannah. Yes, Daryl Hannah. That's sad.
I know which Best Picture winning film is the longest run time with three hours and fifty four minutes, Titanic, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind or Oppenheimer.
Did Oppenheimer set the new record or is it still shorter than Titanic. I don't know, I got nothing. Gone with the Wind? Oh okay, never seen it? Sorry, I haven't either.
The first color film to win Best Picture, but the longest movie to ever win an Oscar, although not Best Picture, was the nineteen sixty eight classic War in Peace, which ran over seven hours.
Game is that Tartowski or one of those people other people have to pretend to care about or they think so? Two more, The two thousand and three film The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King is one of only two sequels to win Best Picture? What was the other? Godfather? Too correct? Please? And finally, what's the first foreign film to win Best Picture? Is it? One?
Parasite?
Two? Life Is Beautiful? Three Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or four of the Umbrellas of Cherburg. I guess Trapching Tiger. I'll say I don't recall it winning Best Picture, but I wanted it to.
It was Parasite in twenty twenty. I also took you so long?
Yeah, when you said that, I also kind of knew that, but hey, I didn't say it, and I'm suitably chastened.
Director Bong Joon ho said, once you overcome the one inch tall barrier of subtitles. You will be introduced to so many more amazing films. Yeah, yeah, well, Heigel. In the end, there's only one more fact left to share. The only person actually named Oscar to win an Oscar Oh, thank God, was Oscar Hammerstein, the second who won for his song The Last Time I saw Paris in the nineteen.
Forty one movie Lady Be Good. And now I hear the wrap it up music playing.
Yeah, it was almost as long as the actual ceremony.
I just want to thank my parents and Jordan and Jeffrey Katzenberg, especially Michael Caine obviously. Yeah, John Carpenter for all you do. Kurt Russell, please die before you say anything really bad or right wing in public, because that will destroy me. God well, I like to think Jesus, of course, through him, all things are possible.
Movie magic, movie magic, way, movie magic. It's just a magical night. All right, my ben, I'm My name is Alex Heigel.
All right, My name is My game is mister movies, the guy who loves going to the movies. That's what I That's what I do do. I get water now, mommy, can I please go to pet And I'm Jordan runtagg We'll see you at the movies. Go in, Go do the movies. Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk.
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.
The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel.
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
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