The three-week climax of film awards season starts here, with the Oscar nominees’ lunch on 6 February, the Baftas on 12 February and the Oscars on 26 February. But before all that, here are my awards of awards, the only ones that really count …
Most legendary refusenik: Marlon Brando, Academy Awards 1973
The list of people who have refused an award is surprisingly short (certainly compared to, say, the long list of Brits who have turned down OBEs, knighthoods, etc). There are plenty, such as Woody Allen, Katherine Hepburn and Jean-Luc Godard, with a policy of hardly ever or never showing up to the ceremony, but that is not the same as pointedly refusing. As far as the Oscars are concerned, it effectively boils down to three people. Screenwriter Dudley Nichols declined his award for The Informer (1935) due to a writers’ strike. George C Scott loathed what he called the “meat parade” of the Oscars and repudiated his best actor nominations for The Hustler (1961) and Patton (1970). (When he won for Patton, his producer accepted the award on his behalf.)
But of course, the most legendary refusenik is Marlon Brando, who sent the Native American campaigner Sacheen Littlefeather to turn down his best actor award for The Godfather in 1973. Presenters Liv Ullmann and Roger Moore had given a weirdly stilted intro into an echoing silence, and looked genuinely nonplussed when Littlefeather declined Roger’s proffered statuette with a raised palm before giving a speech about Hollywood’s misrepresentation of Native American peoples. It was a surprising, spontaneous moment, the like of which is now micro-managed out of existence. Roger Moore took Marlon’s statuette back to his LA home and the Academy sent an armed guard round to pick it up.
Brando also refused his Golden Globe for the same performance.
Most relaxed or exuberant person at an awards ceremony: Julie Walters, Baftas 1984
When it comes to nominees letting their hair down and becoming exuberant at an awards ceremony – which generally happens after a dinner – pundits tend to cite the Golden Globes, which prides itself on being looser, freer, more worldly, less uptight than the Academy Awards, having an uproarious host and TV camera angles set up for laughing A-lister cutaways. Yet the now defunct British comedy awards and the UK Press Gazette’s British press awards are also known for extreme exuberance. It could be that not being televised is a key way to help nominees relax and become unselfconscious, although there are always smartphones.
As well as being a brilliant comic, Jessica Hynes became an awards-season legend at the Royal Television Society bash in 2013, when she won best comedy performance, got up on stage and announced “Fuck film, television is my fucking heart!”, and to widespread cheering launched into a long, passionate speech of almost Chaucerian exuberance on the subject of how much she loved the medium, her colleagues and her fellow nominees. Another honourable mention should be given to the British independent film awards and the 2011 host, Chris O’Dowd, who appeared exuberant almost from the outset. But the gold still goes to Julie Walters, picking up her Educating Rita Bafta in 1984.
Walters recalls that after her speech, she left the stage and had a long and involved conversation with someone under the table.
Most notable absentee: Jack Nicholson, Baftas 1975
All awards-season audiences, whether in the room or watching at home on TV, know the strange “swiz” feeling of realising that the winner is not there among the tuxed throng, but is sending their thank-you speech via a live satellite linkup – or worse yet, prerecorded video – from their faraway movie location or hotel room. Unlike the other nominees and winners, this one knew his or her victory in advance, and the conventions of envelope suspense and nominee-equality have been messed with. Every nominee weighs the importance of being there in person. Theoretically, not showing up makes no difference to your chances, but everyone has heard rumours about awards ceremonies that favour attendees. The lesson here, for contenders without serious celeb clout, is always RSVP yes. Cry off only at the last moment.
But the best and most generous absentee has to be Jack Nicholson, accepting his best actor Bafta for The Last Detail and Chinatown in 1975. His acceptance was beamed live to London’s Albert Hall from the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with Nicholson in costume and makeup as McMurphy, giving a quasi-in-character speech with the rest of the cast in attendance, after some comedy business of breaking a plate of glass so he can be heard. Louise Fletcher even comes on as Nurse Ratched to take him away. It’s like a surreal deleted scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – or a weird trailer for a film that no one had yet seen. OK, so Nicholson didn’t show up, but he provided an elaborate and interesting moment.
Most embarrassing unscripted moment: Frank Sinatra introducing Cary Grant’s lifetime achievement Oscar, 1970
It’s a tricky one, but the winner here has to be Frank Sinatra, for his quite extraordinary performance in presenting a lifetime achievement Oscar to Cary Grant in 1970.
He gives a very generous little speech introducing Grant, although delivered with a strange edge of menace, as if quite prepared to punch out the lights of anyone who disagreed or was insufficiently rapturous. Then, once the montage has been played in, Cary himself comes on to a standing ovation. But Frank is weirdly reluctant to leave him alone to make his speech, cracking wise about his female leads slapping his face and then wondering about “all those pretty gals” with whom he had love scenes. “No topical jokes,” says Cary, and Frank shrugs: “I just thought you might want to join the club.” Cary Grant was long rumoured to be gay, in an era when homophobia kept gay men in the closet. Can Sinatra really have chosen this moment to kid around on the subject of Grant’s sexuality?
Most sensational gag: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Golden Globes, 2015
Hosting the Golden Globes in January 2015, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did what I think is still the most sensationally chancy gag in awards season history: their routine about Bill Cosby, who had become untouchable almost overnight, when accusations of sexual assault were made public at the end of the previous year and claims had emerged that he was a serial abuser who drugged his alleged victims. Riffing on the movie Into the Woods, and other fairytales, Poehler said: “Sleeping Beauty just thought she was getting coffee with Bill Cosby!” Then Fey did the rasping Cosby voice: “I put the pills in the people! The people did not want the pills in them.” Amy replies with: “That’s not right,” as if disapproving of the bad-taste joke, but carries on: “It’s more like: ‘I got the pills in the bathroom and I put them in the people.’”
Perhaps only female comics, and ones of Fey and Poehler’s calibre, could get away with this material, and perform it with such fearlessness and sure-footedness. The following year, at the Emmys, Tina Fey was visibly unamused when a treacly off-stage voice announced that Bill Cosby was coming on to present an award … but host Jimmy Kimmel appeared and grinningly announced it was just a joke. And, actually, the surrealism of that sucrose voice was funny. But the moment for Cosby gags had come and gone.
Most unsatisfactory presenter: me, London Critics’ Circle awards, 2006
The London Critics’ Circle hosts its annual award ceremony in January, often at a swanky hotel. Reviewers are asked to make presentations, and 10 years ago I was one of them, presenting screenwriter of the year to Stephen Frears for The Queen. My memory of the event is that I tried a joke which was received with the same kind of stunned silence that greeted news of Queen Victoria’s death in the House of Commons.
But the most unfortunate part of the evening was that a problem in the kitchen meant that the dinner, but not the wine, was hours late. People were exuberant and convivial, but in an impatient and ill-tempered way. Charles Dance was seated at my table, and, fixing me with his diamond-hard, glittering gaze, asked if I had any connection with the event. “Oh yes,” I said. But my attempt to claim a co-celeb status with Mr Dance was thwarted when he flicked a contemptuous finger at his empty plate and said: “Well, then, perhaps you can tell me what’s happened to the food?”
Most poignant moment: Vanessa Redgrave, Baftas 2010
When Vanessa Redgrave accepted her Bafta fellowship in 2010 (that is, Bafta’s rather elegant equivalent to the Academy’s “lifetime achievement”), she gave a delicate, almost ethereal speech, in which she thanked Prince William, who had presented it, and also mentioned both of his parents.
It was a rather “establishment” moment, and certainly very different in tone to the fiery best supporting actress Oscar winner’s speech she gave in 1978 for Julia, in which she attacked the “Zionist hoodlums” who had objected to the documentary she had just narrated: The Palestinian. And yet Redgrave’s speech had a heartbreaking dignity. Just one year before, she had lost her daughter, Natasha Richardson, who had died after a skiing accident. This loss, while not exactly the elephant in the room, was a terrible new fact of life, an unmentioned burden of grief that lent something poignant to her demeanour, and a new perspective to her career as an artist.
Best red carpet appearance: Miss Piggy, Baftas 2012
Some might say that Joan Rivers was queen of the red carpet, the slightly strange awards season tradition in which a reporter stands at the margin of the hallowed red path to greatness and waits for celebs to deign to favour them with a word. It’s a tinseltown version of the royal walkabout. But, in 2012, Bafta had the inspired idea of getting Miss Piggy to host the red carpet, and she had A-listers queueing up to be gently roasted.
Her presence was satirical gold, so much so that, really, Miss Piggy should be at every red carpet event. But she hasn’t had a red-carpet gig since. Perhaps her appearance has to be rationed for fear that such pure absurdism will undermine the whole awards season economy.
