Will Sean Penn and Tim Robbins Follow Michael Moore's Oscar Winning Performance?
Press Action
Sunday, February 01, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand02012004/
By Mark Hand
The acceptance speech that Michael Moore gave at the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony after winning the best documentary award for Bowling for Columbine was, for me, the highlight of any awards show in recent years. And I’m sure the publicity from the speech — both positive and negative — spurred sales of his books and videos and helped to boost the fee he can charge for speaking engagements.
Moore was already a pariah to the Bill O’Reillys and Laura Ingrahams in punditland who love to tell left coasters to just shut-up and entertain. In terms of the impact on his career, there was only an upside to using the Oscar platform to bash Bush. In the year since making the speech, Moore has hauled in boatloads of money from his best-selling book Dude, Where’s My Country? and the still hot-selling Stupid White Men. And income from sales and rentals of Bowling for Columbine is surely helping to pad Moore’s bank account.
Moore has had great financial success since the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony and has received positive reviews of the speech from people whose opinion he values. Based on those facts, it’s difficult to understand why TimeWarner celebrity slobber rag Entertainment Weekly would suggest that Tim Robbins, should he win the best supporting actor award for his performance in Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, steer clear of getting partisan in his acceptance speech given what happened to Michael Moore. EW’s Jeff Jensen writes: “But as you’re preparing that acceptance speech, Tim, keep it light. We offer two words of caution: Michael Moore.”
Jensen has it wrong. Michael Moore’s performance is the perfect example of how a controversial acceptance speech can help one’s career. As an actor, though, Robbins probably has more to lose than Moore, who is riding the celebrity non-fiction political book wave here in the United States and loving it.
Although he has a small production company on the side and occasionally directs, Robbins risks getting blacklisted as an actor by the major Hollywood studios if he steps over a line of political acceptability. Robbins could probably get away with criticizing Bush’s war on Iraq in an acceptance speech as long as he pledges his support to the U.S. troops stationed there. If, let’s say, Robbins decided to criticize Israel’s apartheid policies and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (that’s not going to happen, of course, but let’s imagine for a moment), it would be lights out for his career as an A-List movie actor. Hollywood can tolerate only one Vanessa Redgrave in its ranks.
My prediction is Robbins, should he win the Oscar, will follow Jensen’s advice and keep it light like he did at last week’s Golden Globes. He’ll thank the Academy, Susan, Clint, Marcia Gay and Sean and then walk off stage. Sean Penn, I think, is the wildcard. If he wins the best actor Oscar for his work in Mystic River, who knows what he’ll say about Bush’s Iraq policy. Robbins is an old pro at these events. But for Penn, awards shows are a forum to which he’s unaccustomed. He’s liable to jump into the orchestra pit and start throwing punches if the show’s conductor, Bill Conti, dares to strike up the band before Penn is finished with his speech.
Getting back to Moore’s acceptance speech at the 2003 awards show, it’s interesting how his assessment of the Bush regime at the start of the invasion of Iraq has stood the test of a year’s time. “We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons,” he said. With all the recent controversy surrounding the inability of Bush/Blair to find any WMDs in Iraq, Moore should be proud of his pronouncement he made a year ago before a worldwide audience. As for Moore’s endorsement of Wesley Clark for president, now that’s another story.
For memory’s sake, here’s Moore’s short speech, most of which was said while Conti’s orchestra was attempting to drown out his words:
"I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they’re here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much."
Moore’s speech was a success not only for giving right-wingers more ammunition in their valiant fight against “liberal” Hollywood but also for its sheer entertainment value. Although honored by the award, Moore had no time to express false humility in his speech. He had one mission: expose Bush and the Iraq war as frauds.
The Academy Awards show is a highly choreographed annual glamour video epic featuring people who generally are as narrow-minded in their artistic production as Washingtonians are in their public policy development. The only rewarding feature of the show is that it airs live and its producers cannot completely edit out the bits of spontaneity they don’t like. Many viewers welcome the relief from Oscar drivel when the self-possessed show business-types taking the stage have the nerve to throw away the script and tell us how they really feel about something other than themselves.
Mark Hand is editor of Press Action.