And the name on everyone’s lips at tonight’s Oscars...Trump
The Oscars have seen a few political protests over the years. Now Celia Walden expects a flood
IT HAS become the question dividing Hollywood’s stars; to protest or not to protest?
Now, with cinema royalty gathering in Los Angeles for the Oscars, the British contingent has weighed into the debate of whether to use the Academy Awards ceremony to make a stand against President Donald Trump.
And they appear to be as split over the issue as their American counterparts. At a pre-Oscars party held in honour of this year’s British nominees, several stars and industry figures urged their colleagues to speak out against Mr Trump’s policies.
David Harewood, who played the director of the CIA in Homeland and appeared in the acclaimed BBC drama
The Night Manager, said he endorsed any Oscar winners who took the opportunity to criticise the US president.
“Any attempt to bash Trump is good,” he said. “It’s going to be a fun night. Definitely get your recorders out for some fun speeches.”
But Neil Corbould, whose work as a special effects supervisor on Rogue
One: A Star Wars Story has been nominated for an Academy Award, said the Oscars ceremony was the wrong place to start making political points. “It should be for the film people I think,” he said. “Political is another platform.” Director David Mackenzie, whose
Hell Or High Water, starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, has earned four Academy Award nominations, including best picture, said he feared political statements would be diluted by the “babble” surrounding the Oscars. He said: “There’s a lot of politicising going on. I hope the message doesn’t get diluted by too much babble.”
However, Cara Speller, the British producer of Pear Cider
And Cigarettes, which is nominated for best animated short film, said artists had a “responsibility to speak out”.
“I won’t be doing that. Other people will put it much better than me,” she said. “But I think that’s great and I think it’s important. Our very way of life is being threatened and curtailed.”
Tonight’s 89th Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre is expected to be dominated by political speeches against Mr Trump’s policies, particularly his travel ban on people from seven mainly Muslim countries, his revoking of environmental protection laws and his attacks on the press. Jessie J, the London-born singer who performed at the Film Is Great event, said the Oscars were a “perfect situation” to address politics. She said: “Artists and performers and people in the limelight have to reflect the times. For people to be able to have freedom in their speeches is a perfect situation to talk about what people are avoiding talking about. If you’re not outraged, you’re not listening.” The reception was thrown by Chris O’Connor, the British Consul General, at the West Hollywood restaurant Fig & Olive, in Melrose Place, where a menu was laid on by Gordon Ramsay. Among the guests were Minnie Driver, the director John Landis and French model and actress Gaia Weiss, star of Mary, Queen
of Scots and The Legend of Hercules. British actors are not hot favourites this year but still have a reasonable chance to walk away with a golden statuette. Dev Patel is second favourite for best supporting actor for Lion, in which ‘Artists and people in the limelight have to reflect the times. If you’re not outraged, you’re not listening’ he plays an Indian who, having been adopted by an Australian couple as a child, goes home to find his real family.
At 40-1 Andrew Garfield, who was born in Los Angeles but raised in Britain, is an outside contender for best actor for Hacksaw Ridge. In a stronger position is Naomie Harris, who plays the part of Paula, a crack addict mother, in Moonlight. Her searing performance earned a nomination as best supporting actress. At 16-1 she is second favourite.
The Irish actress Ruth Negga is 33/1 to win best actress for her part in Loving, about a mixed race couple who defy segregation laws in 1950s Virginia.
The Film Is Great event followed a rally in protest at Mr Trump’s travel ban attended by some of Hollywood’s leading stars, including Jodie Foster and Michael J Fox.
Outside the Beverly Hills headquarters of United Talent Agency, which cancelled its Oscars party to stage the protest, Foster said: “This year is a very different year and it’s time to show up. It’s time to engage. We know the first attack on democracy is an assault on free expression and civil liberties and this relentless war on truth.”
She added: “No matter who you voted for, red or blue, whether you’re white, black or brown and all the colours of the identity rainbow – this is our time to resist.”
Also addressing the rally was David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, now head of the International Rescue Committee, who appealed to America’s sense of humanity to tackle “a refugee crisis the likes of which has never been seen before”. The rally came amid reports that Khaled Khateeba, a 21-yearold Syrian cinematographer who worked on the Oscar-nominated The
White Helmets, had been denied entry to the US after officials reported finding “derogatory information” against him.
In what is often referred to as La La Land, Mr Trump’s opponents now face a backlash of their own. One Arizona Republican group called on the “backbone and decent people of America” to stand up against the “bitter people of the entertainment industry”.
Mr Trump appeared to hit out at the rally, writing on Twitter: “Maybe the millions of people who voted to Make America Great Again should have their own rally. It would be the biggest of them all!”
Mr Trump’s supporters urged television viewers to switch off the Oscars coverage should any stars criticise the president. That could mean a lot of people scrambling for the remote control.
Should actors just shut up? You could condense two months’ worth of awards season chatter in LA down to that single question, which will be answered tonight at the 89th Academy Awards – or what might just turn into a fourhour Trump troll-fest watched by upwards of 40 million people.
TV pundits and Uber drivers broadly think “yes”: what these Tesladriving, vegan, Hollywood liberals dripping in Harry Winston diamonds know about the real world could be written on the back of one of their bleeding-heart scripts. But plenty of other folk are defending the right of the “A-List Resistance” to publicly denounce Trump.
Just as well. For any self-respecting member of the Hollywood elite, denouncing Trump and his policies is no longer just advisable but expected. Loudly and proudly, on Twitter, on the red carpet and in the awards show pulpit, Hollywood’s PTSD (Post-Trump Stress Disorder) has been making itself felt.
It kicked off with Meryl Streep’s six-minute castigation of Trump at the Golden Globes in January, and took hold at the Producers Guild Awards later that month, where John Legend, the singer, declared: “Our vision of America is directly antithetical to that of President Trump” and Nicole Kidman pointedly called for “greater empathy”.
At the Screen Actors Guild Awards the following night, Ashton Kutcher decried Trump’s immigrant ban and welcomed “everyone in airports that belong in my America”, a sentiment echoed by everyone from Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who revealed in a heartfelt speech that her father had fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France) to Best Actress Oscar nominee Emma Stone, who was overheard saying backstage: “We have to speak up against injustice, and we have to kick some ass.”
This was precisely what Stone tried to do at the Baftas a fortnight later, where she called upon the unifying power of art “in a time that’s so divisive”. Sadly her comments didn’t quite have the clarity of Streep’s – or indeed the authenticity of Ken Loach’s political attack, earlier that evening, on the “callous brutality” of the British government. But one thing is clear: this year’s Academy Awards are likely to be the most politicised in its 89-year history.
Getting political at the Oscars was once a risky business. Back in 1942, at a ceremony celebrated a week after President Roosevelt’s order to begin Japanese internment, not a single person dared speak up about what was to become one of the most shameful dates in American history. In 1972, Jane Fonda managed to keep quiet about her politics when receiving her Best Actress award for Klute, but the press conference she gave backstage minutes later about the “murders being committed in our name in Indochina” was frowned upon by the Academy.
A year later, when Marlon Brando sent the Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his
Godfather Oscar on his behalf, in protest at the treatment of American Indians by the film industry, the stunt was met with jeers. After Palestinian rights supporter Vanessa Redgrave deplored “Zionist hoodlums” in her 1978 acceptance speech the subsequent winner, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, drew cheers for his admonishment of “people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda”.
Not that this deterred Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere, all of whom made political statements (at the detention of HIV-positive Haitian immigrants and human rights abuses in China respectively) at the 1993 Academy Awards – statements Oscars producer Gil Cates called “outrageous” and “distasteful”. Michael Moore was roundly booed in 2003 for tearing into George W Bush while accepting his award for Bowling for Columbine.
Times have changed, however, and in the social media age, not propagating your personal political propaganda on any platform provided will get you worse than roundly booed: it will get you ignored. Which explains why Hollywood has been working itself up into righteous rages at the Oscars for a few years now, on issues ranging from the ethical treatment of dolphins to equality for women, LGBT rights, climate change and diversity in film.
While all are worthy crusades (one would never want to accuse luvvies of picking causes at random and playing up their outrage), the one they have embarked upon en masse in 2017 is very different. This time it’s not a prejudice or an antiquated school of thought that they’re fighting but a single man who represents every prejudice and antiquated school of thought Hollywood reviles most; a man who has managed to offend every demographic the movie industry has taken under its wing.
Although one or two A-listers have dared speak up in the president’s defence (Matthew McConaughey told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that “the cultural elite of America should give [Trump] a break”, while John Voight went so far as to call him “an answer to our problems”), in a fight pared down, Hollywood-style, to good versus evil, these lone industry voices have been all but muted by the rest of the gang. At tonight’s awards the outrage will be 100 per cent real – and it sure as hell won’t be drowned out after two minutes by the Oscars Orchestra.
“Spontaneity helps all these shows,” the producer of this year’s Oscars, Michael De Luca, insisted when asked how he plans to deal with a potential Trump troll-athon. “I don’t like this attitude that just because someone’s a celebrity, their right of free speech is taken away.” Which is why, far from warning nominees not to get too political, organisers have made it clear that “guests won’t be censored” – even if swearing is involved – and that “messages will be heard”.
One person sure to respond to those messages (although he may not go so far as to listen to them) is Trump himself – probably in a series of characteristic stress-relieving tweets later tonight. It was in one such latenight tweet that the president called Streep “one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood”, confirming how much her speech had stung him personally. Because try as he might to convince the American people otherwise, Trump minds very much about his A-List Resistance.
As a man who has always hungered for celebrity approval, he would have relished the same kind of relationship Obama enjoyed with Hollywood: to be asked to contribute to Oscar clip packages, as the former president was in 2011, and to have his wife make surprise appearances like Michelle’s in 2013, when she was asked to present the Best Picture award.
Also – to speak the language that Trump best understands – as an industry responsible for more than $500 billion of the nation’s GDP, Hollywood cannot be ignored. What its members think and say matters.
All of which is sure to make the 89th Academy Awards memorable, but how entertaining will it be for us, the viewers? Streep may have given the Golden Globes viewing figures an 8 per cent bump with her impromptu attack on Trump, but she is in a class of her own. Chris Rock tackling racism at last year’s Oscars, amid the #OscarsSoWhite outcry, for example, lost exactly the same percentage of viewers worldwide. “And what is sure to kill the Oscars dead,” maintains one Hollywood agent, “is if they all get up there one after another and start preaching to the choir.”
As each presenter and nominee tries to outdo the last in anti-Trump fervour, the “spontaneity” De Luca so rightly welcomes could all too easily become monotony. Unless, of course, something truly outlandish should break the stalemate, send viewing figures skyrocketing and social media into meltdown: say, Ryan Gosling, accepting his Best Actor award for La La Land, adding as a postscript: “You know what? I’ve always liked Donald Trump. That guy’s going to make America great again. And his hair rocks.”
‘What will kill the Oscars dead is if, one after the other, they preach to the choir’ Trump minds very much about his ‘A-List Resistance’