do the jitterbug rag

 

David Niven

People are crazy and times are strange

I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range

I used to care, but -- things have changed

I really love that Bob Dylan song.  He wrote it for a movie called Wonder Boys (2000) and it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.  (Same honor at the Golden Globes, too.)

In Rolling Stone magazine Brian Hiatt wrote about "the effortless feel of the playful-yet-ominous, hard-grooving, utterly dazzling 'Things Have Changed'..."

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Even though I didn't watch this year's Academy Awards, I was thinking about the Oscars tradition in general, because of ongoing reports and controversy over Will Smith hitting Chris Rock.

And it wasn't just hitting him -- it was walking up out of the audience, to the stage and hitting him up there.  That was weird.  It broke boundaries of audience and host, civilized behavior on a regular day, and the elegant and gentlemanly behavior expected at a public event that was being televised around the globe.  Wrong -- and shocking -- on a multitude of levels.

It got me thinking about past Oscars ceremonies where something was either controversial or -- just not up to what it ought to have been.  In the latter category I would include Halle Berry's Best Actress win and also Gwyneth Paltrow's -- instead of a coherent (and please, brief) acceptance speech, both of these ladies just got up there and cried.  And cried.  

I was distressed.  I wished someone had coached them on how to behave -- both if they won, or if they did not win.  Either way, you gotta have a plan and stick to it.  Live up to the occasion.

        In the Controversy category, I remember some people used to be critical of the dreamy Richard Gere because he would use his moment on the Oscars' stage to bring awareness to the predicament of Tibet, where people were being badgered by the Chinese.  

        I don't think Gere's critics were pro-communist dictatorship, but they were kind of kvetching because the Academy Awards is to celebrate movies, not to bring your political causes.  (I do not know whether they checked with the people of Tibet before running their mouths....)

        I didn't have a problem with it.  Richard Gere can speak on a cause that's important to him -- if you could bring about some positive change through awareness, without going to war, I think that's a good thing.  And he just said his piece and then was done.  It wasn't as if he was filibustering.

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The craziest thing that ever happened at an Oscars ceremony (up until now, anyway) might have been in 1974 when a streaker ran across the stage behind David Niven, who was addressing the audience.

"Streaking" was a phenomenon for a couple years in the 1970s.  A person would run naked across some public space.

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Favorite Oscar Moment - The Streaker

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