There's Always the Oscars

Some years the Oscars have been really boring. Sometimes they're fantastic, when things like the above picture happen. And other years they're really masturbatory and annoying. But you know, no matter what, I watch them. I watch them because I love movies, movie-stars, spectacle, and tradition. I have been watching the Oscars since I was a kid, and I have never missed a broadcast.

Marion Cotillard just won for La Vie en Rose. I haven't even seen the goddamn film, and I'm crying like a baby. Part of the reason I'm crying, I suppose, is because she seems so sweet and very genuine and I'm always glad when good things happen to sweet and genuine people. But I think the main reason I'm crying is because I miss my mom: we always used to watch the Oscars together, and I would stay up real late and then get up and go to school the next morning and argue with people about the winners (and losers).

Sometimes I think that film might be the greatest art form ever created. Movies have this ability to capture and crystallize some of the most intense moments of our lives. I love the complete sensory spectacle of watching a film in the theater. I love the visual, the sound, the lives of the actors, the stories they tell, the directors, the editing . . . everything that goes into it.



When I was very young, I wanted to be an actor. It was a dream that continued well into my young-adult life: it is a dream I still have. But I left it on the backburner a few years ago. I'm not sure why, perhaps I'm lazy. It feels indulgent and silly to say "I want to be an actor." I feel that I didn't have the stamina to take on lame jobs to make money. I also felt that I'm not attractive or thin enough, and sadly, it seems that these are requirements.

Everytime I watch the Oscars, or go to see a fantastic play here in New York, I just weep. I weep like a sad little girl whose just skinned her knee. My face gets all red and squinched and it's incredibly unattractive.



Perhaps I just have an overactive imagination or maybe I expect too much out of life and out of people. My love of the movies comes from a love of those cinematic moments in our real lives. And on nights like this one when I'm watching the Oscars alone, I appreciate the movies for giving me what real life, sometimes, cannot.