Canada at the Academy Awards

Gerry Flahive is executive director of the National Film Board’s Ontario Center.

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How can you become anonymous five minutes after speaking to one billion people? Win an Oscar for best animated short.

David Fine and Alison Snowden, winners in that category last month for their cartoon creation Bob’s Birthday, found themselves comfortably enjoying anonymity in the lobby of the Shrine Auditorium shortly after giving a gracious acceptance speech seen by a worldwide television audience. Seemingly every tenth person walking by was holding an Oscar.

(Ironically, their fame spread quickly back in Canada, perhaps the only place on the planet where tv viewers didn’t see them accept their Oscars. This may have been partially due to the fact that Bugs Bunny is apparently better known as a commercial spokesman than an Oscar presenter, which is what temporarily threw off the technicians at ctv.)

Fleeting fame and the pursuit of it are well-known obsessions in l.a., and the Oscars are merely the Himalayas in that department.

Oscars weekend is one long series of screenings, logo-ridden cocktail napkins, parking chits and recycled anecdotes, and as partners in the nominated film (with Snowden Fine Animation and Channel 4 in the u.k.), the National Film Board got to share in the self-esteem of it all.

For the filmmakers, it began a few days earlier with a special screening of Bob’s Birthday at the Disney Animation Studios – the first film ever to be shown in the new screening room there – for an enthusiastic crowd of 75 animators.

On Friday came what is now a tradition, the annual reception at the Canadian Consul-General’s residence (hosted this year by Dennis Browne), which is usually marked by one or more forms of natural phenomena: earth tremors, someone falling into the swimming pool, or, as was the case this year, frigid temperatures and a high-decibel frog living in the garden who punctuated the official speeches with frequent belches.

Part of the event’s charm is the announcement of the Annual Missing Canadian Oscar Nominee: this time it was Douglas Ganton, who shared best sound nomination with three others for Legends of the Fall, and whose Canadian origins weren’t detected until several weeks after the nominations were announced. We’re everywhere, I tell you.

One of the most notable speeches was given by the brother of Steve Williams, a Canadian nominated for his extraordinary special effects work on The Mask.

When his brother mentioned fond memories of eating Swiss Chalet chicken and Tim Horton donuts back in Toronto, I thought half the crowd was going to burst into tears. And he defined his brother as Torontosaurus Rex, naming Steve as the one responsible (because of his work on Jurassic Park) for causing children to fear nature and hence wanting to destroy it. ‘Thanks for wrecking the world, Steve.’

Canadian Vanessa Schwartz, who made her Oscar-nominated animated film The Janitor at Cal Arts, told me, ‘I want to keep my connection with CanadaÉand plan to work there one month a year.’ She recently worked at International Rocketship Animation in Vancouver on the cbs special based on Gary Larson’s Far Side; she wants to continue working in short animation, commercial animation and in fine arts.

Geoff Gilmore, programmer for the Sundance Festival, introduced producer Niv Fichman and director Francois Girard (nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards for Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould) by saying that ‘Canadian cinema is sometimes not respected in its own countryÉ Girard is one of the most important directors internationally for the next decade.’

We got an early sign of our good chances for an Oscar win when June Foray, a much-respected member of the short films branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – and the voice of Rocky the Squirrel from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons – told me she’d voted for Bob’s Birthday. How could we lose?

The guest list was nothing if not eclectic: watching expatriate Canadians James Cameron (Aliens, Terminator 2) and John Kricfalusi (Ren and Stimpy) talking together, I briefly considered offering my services on any collaboration they might be discussing, but I was distracted by my complimentary Roots business card holder and Northern Telecom mug.

Things got a bit showier the next afternoon at the Independent Spirit Awards, the annual celebration of films with an attitude, presented under a huge tent on the beach in Santa Monica by the Independent Feature Project/West.

As Manohla Dargis wrote in Filmmaker magazine, ‘the nominations for the 1995 Spirit Awards prove that more than ever before the very definition of independent film is up for grabs’ with studio-supported films like Bullets Over Broadway, Pulp Fiction, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and I Like It Like That in contention.

Dargis also objected to the event’s new eligibility rules, which allow films that have been screened at one of six designated festivals – including the Toronto International Film Festival – to qualify, finding it ‘curiousÉthat a Canadian festival would be judged as one of the elect showcases for u.s. indies – as opposed to, say, San Francisco.’ Finally – we get to be imperialists too!

As I enter the tent I overhear Linda Fiorentino, lead in The Last Seduction (which didn’t qualify for the Academy Awards because it aired on tv before its theatrical run) say to a journalist wondering if she’s bitter: ‘Oscar is just another naked man, and I’ve had plenty of those.’

This year, for the first time, two Canadian films were nominated for Best Foreign Film: The Boys of St. Vincent and the aforementioned Thirty-two Short Films about Glenn Gould.

The nfb’s Sam Grana, cowriter, coproducer and featured performer in The Boys of St. Vincent, found his long-lost soul brother (separated at birth?) at the awards: the patron saint of independent film, Harvey Keitel, who had seen Boys and gave a passionate speech to the assembled crowd about the industry’s responsibility to remember the audience – and not just the profits – when making films.

The lunch menu at the Spirit Awards included my first-ever exposure to an art-directed dessert: ‘Raspberry Creme Brulee presented on a rust stage’ – the latter a euphemism for a rusting square of metal perched on top of a picnic crate at each place setting. Who could concentrate on mere awards with that kind of catering complexity?

And the punishment for being too obvious a wannabe? Your business card is left crumpled on the floor at the Spirit Awards, at least if it reads ‘Simon D. * Movie Producer.’ But then, as one producer put it, the Spirit Awards are ‘the Supreme Soviet of Self-Congratulatory Awards.’

Independent film legend Samuel Goldwyn Jr. (‘born with a golden rolodex’ and the only man in Hollywood ‘who still calls movies pictures’) received the Findie Award (Friend of Independents), and in his acceptance speech he predicted a short-lived boom for independent films supported by major studios if they don’t do well (a la Pulp Fiction). He expects that the Hollywood establishment will go after interactive media, since all they can do is copy what others have already created.

If you were wondering why Pulp Fiction director/co-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino gave a short acceptance speech at the Oscars, it’s because he gave a long one at the Spirit Awards (where his film picked up best film nod and a few others) – and promised not to repeat himself. He was hardly a wallflower under the tent though, loping around in a bright fire-engine red jacket throughout the ceremony, scratching himself.

Although they didn’t win (Red did), Boys and Thirty-two Short Films drew spontaneous applause when announced as nominated films. And another Canadian film great was remembered, as presenter Bruce Davison offered a brief tribute to the late Phillip Borsos.

The Big Show came two days later. The class system at the Oscars begins about half a mile away, as the limo and non-limo traffic are separated. If you aren’t in a limo (we weren’t) you don’t get to drive up to the front of the red carpet, but are directed to the back entrance. This didn’t stop us from rubber-necking, however, and once we discovered that one could simply walk around to the front entrance and walk in with the stars, we did soÉseveral times.

The red-carpet parade is a well-coifed scrum (although it seemed as though half of the photographers were taking pictures of the local news anchors while they interviewed each other).

It’s there I saw the World’s Toughest Publicist (working for the Academy), who kicked photographers out of an unauthorized area (‘now!!!’) and yelled at an Entertainment Tonight crew who were perched up on a platform draped with a huge banner promoting their program: ‘This is the Academy Awards, not the e.t. show!!!!’

There is a pecking order amongst the media as well: while waiting to go in I stood on the sidewalk surveying the limousine logjam (Sylvester Stallone had to get out and walk half a block), and was interviewed by a somewhat desperate freelance correspondent for German radio, whose bottom-of-the-food-chain press credentials obviously didn’t get her any further than the curb.

Inside, a few surprises: people in the upper balcony eating box lunches while watching the show; empty rows of seats; and an opening (remember Tim Curry dancing?) which was almost completely prerecorded – the audience sat there in stunned silence watching an empty stage and the monitors.

While the much-maligned Genies are criticized for having too many inside industry jokes, what do people in Kansas or Belgium make of the references to Miramax’s Weinstein brothers?

Aiming for press coverage, I had rented a cellular phone for post-Oscar interviews with Canadian media. Laden with enough spare batteries to power a klieg light, I limped around the Shrine Auditorium vainly trying to make calls: no one’s cell phone worked amidst the electronic cacophony.

So when David and Alison won, we had to battle for one of the four pay phones to call journalists back home. When I appealed to the person in line ahead of us: ‘David’s just won an Oscar – could we please use the phone before you?’ he replied, ‘I just won one too.’ Oh.

The rest of the night was a blur of telephone and television interviews, including a 4 a.m. trip to a distant studio so that Barrie Maclean, executive producer of the nfb’s English Animation Studio, could appear live on Canada A.M.

As we examined David’s Oscar statuette, I noticed an engraving error – the one read ‘Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.’ The day before the New York Times said it only happened once before, when Spencer Tracy’s Oscar was labeled ‘Dick Tracy.’

And after all that, I still haven’t seen the whole show. Could someone lend me a tape?

Editor’s note: Famous Players will be playing Astral Distribution’s Bob’s Birthday preceding the Alliance Releasing feature Don Juan De Marco, which opens April 7.