‘Help! I’m at the Oscars... get me out of here!’ — Ed
YOUR movie has been nominated for a whopping 10 Academy Awards. The night ahead will be spent rubbing shoulders with the world’s biggest stars in the glitziest event on the planet. So what are you most looking forward to?
Well, if you’re the downto-earth Dubliner behind The Favourite, the highlight is simply coming home.
Speaking ahead of tonight’s Oscars, producer of The Favourite Ed Guiney told the Sunday Independent he is all partied out: “I know this sounds really boring but I am actually really looking forward to getting on the plane back home to Dublin on Monday night.”
He added: “I love Dublin, walking with my son to school, getting a coffee and wandering into work in the morning. It’s such a lovely start to the day.”
Perhaps Ed’s keenness to return stems from the knowledge that — win or lose — the movie has been a massive success for Element Pictures, taking US$ 71.4m at the box office.
He says: “So many times a film has gone in with more nominations than we have — 10 or 11, like Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, for example — and it got none. Likewise In The Name of the Father had seven and got none. But in a way you can’t be too disappointed because, from a commercial point of view, most of the value is built in to the nominations.
“In the case of The Favourite, it went from showing in 600 screens across America to around 1,600,” he says.
Speaking about the wave of controversies that has hit many of the front runners including Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, BlacKkKlansman and Roma, he says previous award ceremonies haven’t been so fraught with tension.
“There seemed to be less angst around [the year Room was nominated] so maybe there is more this year,” he said describing it as “a very sensitive time”.
Meanwhile, young Irish designer Laura Jane Halton has dressed the partner of Paul Young of Cartoon Saloon for tonight’s ceremony. The studio is nominated for Best Short Animation. Aged just 34 and with a two-week deadline to design and fit the dress, it will be her fourth dress on the world’s most famous red carpet.