Book is Here; Oscar Wrap-Up

Posted on March 26, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

First, a personal note: I got my advance copy of The Rough Guide to the Universe yesterday; you can see it modeled by my beautiful assistant just to the right of this text. Notwithstanding one minor flaw (there are a couple of places where metric units should be alongside more familiar imperial units like miles and degrees Fahrenheit and aren’t — not that it’ll matter to those of you here in the US), it looks really nice. If you’re in the UK, you’ll have it on your shelves in a couple of weeks, while here in the US we’ll have to wait until May. Hopefully the universe won’t change too drastically by then.

In case you’re wondering what it’s like to hold a book that’s actually written by you, let me tell you: It’s very cool, similar to (but, I’ll be the first to admit, on a substantially lower level) the feeling you get when you hold your child for the first time — that whole I can’t believe it’s actually here thing combined with the wow, I made this thing. The major difference, of course, is that one’s actually a child, and the other is actually a book, and someone who gets as wrapped up in the latter as much as the former needs to get out more. Also, you won’t have to pay for your book to go to college, or worry that it’s going to marry a jerk one day. Even so, it’s neat.

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I went 4 for 6 for my Oscar predictions, which is slightly worse than I usually do, but slightly better than I expected this year, because I haven’t been paying attention. Moreover, I don’t feel at all bad about the two I missed — Adrien Brody as Best Actor and Roman Polanski as Best Director — since no one expected either of them to walk away with the hardware. Especially Polanski, of course. However, in this particular case, it probably didn’t hurt Polanski that the woman he had raped with when she was a girl wrote an article in the LA Times saying she thought the Academy should just go ahead and give Polanski the Oscar. As they say, you just can’t buy that sort of publicity. One wonders now if Polanski will be allowed back into the States; when even the rape victim has publicly backed Polanski, the position of the LA District Attorney that the man should go to the big house might appear to be churlish. Not incorrect, mind you, just churlish.

Also, of course, I pegged the Bowling for Columbine win and Spirited Away; the former was not a surprise, but the latter was, at least to a number of media, who assumed that it would go to Lilo & Stitch because it’s Disney, and it was a big hit. But this is one time when Academy members differentiated between fun and competent (L&S) and an actual work of art (Spirited Away). Also, it’s the highest grossing film in the history of Japan, and 100 million anime fans can’t be wrong. The Spirited Away win is also good news for the Best Animated Film Oscar, since the choice of art over popularity (in the US, at least) legitimizes the award as something other than an opportunity for Disney and Dreamworks to pad their Oscar tallies on alternate years.

As for Columbine, as I said, I don’t know why anyone’s surprised about its win. Aside from its worth as a film (which is not inconsiderable, although it’s not really accurate to call it a straight-up documentary), it was a prime opportunity for Academy voters to make sure a political statement was made on Oscar night without jeopardizing the image of Hollywood at large — after all, it would have been surprising if Moore hadn’t have gone off on Bush. And it’s just the Documentary award. It’s not like Nicole Kidman went up and said “shame on you, Mr. Bush.” It’s like inviting the proverbial bull into the china shop. You know something’s going to get smashed. And maybe that’s what you want to have happen.