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From: brent@ucsbcsl.UUCP ( )
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Movies -- Dave Berry
Message-ID: <260@ucsbcsl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Apr-85 23:47:50 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsbcsl.260
Posted: Mon Apr  1 23:47:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Apr-85 08:02:10 EST
Organization: U.C. Santa Barbara
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Taken from The Fresno Bee ... reprinted without permission ... 

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE by Dave Berry

I think we can all agree that the highlight of the cultural year is
when the film industry just gets carried away with its own wonderfulness and
gathers together via limousine for the annual Oscar awards
ceremony, named for the little statue that resembles the repulsive
semiformed Pod Creature whos skull Donald Sutherland caves in with a shovel
in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", a scene that won him the
award for Best Use of a Common Garden Implement to Destroy a Humanoid
Creature in a Domestic Color Film lasting Over an Hour.

You can bet that, even as you read these words, Sutherland is sitting
someplace, probably his den, and coveting his award.  The Oscar is
the most coveted award you can get in the film industry, because
it serves as proof that, in the view of your peers, you have
achieved a significant achievement of motion-picture excellence,
or you are almost dead.

See, you have certain film industry legends, who, for one
reason or another, usually a lack of talent, never have their
excellence recognized while they are active professionally, so
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invents a special award
for them with a name like the Extremely Humongous Lifetime
Accomplishment Award, because they can't very well call it the
Let's Give Him Something Before He Goes Into Cardiac Arrest
Award. But everybody knows that's what it means, and as you can
imagine it's a horrible shock for a decaying film legend to be notified
that he or she has been chosen to receive it ("No! Please! There
must be some mistake!").

This year it's unusually difficult for me to predict the Oscar
winners, because the only nominated movie I saw was "A Passage to India",
and even then I was sitting in front of one of those couples that has
that tragic brain disease where the only way you can comprehend anything
you see is by saying it out loud to your spouse. Like, if one
of the movie characters pulls out a gun, and the camera zooms in on the
gun for a closeup, so we're all looking at this 62-foot-long
gun up on the screen, one member of the couple has to say
in the kind of whisper you might use to herd cattle:
"He has a gun". And then the other member of the couple
has to say "What?" This is indeed a tragic disease and I just hope
the police don't start finding  the bodies of these unfortunate
people shoved underneath the seats with their breathing passages
blocked by wads of extremely adhesive move-theater refreshment
compounds such as "Chuckles," "Goobers" and especially "Dots".

Anyway, from what I could hear, I would say "A Passage to India"
is a Major Film, the kind of film Pauline Kael writes reviews
longer than the Space Shuttle Operations Manual about, although
I personally felt it lacked a certain undefinable quality that,
for want of a better term, I will call "car crashes".

This is probably because they couldn't get Burt Reynolds, who was
committed to doing "Smokey and the Bandit Run Over an Elderly
Couple," so they had to use all these English people and, in some
cases, Indians, who mainly just talk.

There can be no question, however, that "A Passage to India" is
far superior to the film "My Dinner With Andre", which I
am strongly opposed to giving any kind of Oscar to this
year, and not just because it came out in 1980.
No, my major criticism of "My Dinner With Andre" is that when I
placed it on top of my car outside the videocassette movie rental place
so I could get the keys out of my pocket, and drove home, and
looked back up on top of the car, it was gone, which cost me
$69.95 plus tax. I am sure that I speak for the entire membership
of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Such As
Entomology when I say that we are not in the business of granting
coveted awards to films that cannot withstand a simple five-mile
trip on a car roof.

These days, we watch most of our movies on our home videocassette
machine, which means we have to settle for older movies, or movies
that did not recieve widespread critical acclaim, such as
"Atomic Hunchbacks from Beyond the Grave".

We rarely get out to current movies because of the worldwide
babysitter shortage, which is much more tragic and serious
than anything you have read in all these whiny artticles about
the plight of the American farmer.

Anyway, before we can watch our movie, we have to put Robert to
bed, which can take anywhere up to two days, because first
you have to brush his teeth, and then you have to fill the
sink with water and put the plastic stegosaurus in there to
see if it floats because God forbid you should attempt
to put a child to bed when this child just has to know,
right then and there, if his stegosaurus floats, which leads to
the obvious question, which is, well, what about the
triceratops?

And what about Moss Man, which is of course an action figure belonging
to the enormous and growing He-Man family of action figures, all
of them, believe me when I tell you this, sold separately? And
we have to explain that no, you can't put Moss Man in the water,
because his moss will come off. And then we have to discuss how
we know this, how we would presume to know more about
moss man than a 4-year-old child, and anyway what would be so
awful about having Moss man lose this moss? Which is
a valid point, one that we have to discuss, because we are
sensative, '80s-style parents, and all this takes place
before we have begun to address the question of whether
we are going to be allowed to wear our Spider man T-shirt
to bed for the 80th consecutive night. the upshot being that,
when we get around to watching our movie, I generall fall
asleep while they are still showing the openig credits, which
actually isn't too bad because - you may have noticed this -
the opening credits on movies have gotten so lengthy that often
you get to see several major characters killed before the director's
name appears.

So there you have it, an "insider's" look at the glitter
and glamour that makes Oscar night what it is (the night they
give out the Oscars). And although I, like most of you,
will not be able to atten the cerimonies in person because of
a slight cold, I wouldn't think of doing anything else in the
world Monday night except dozing fitfully in front of my
television screen while some minor film-industry
pustule accepts the award for best Use of A Forklift
to Move Marlon Brando Around in a Dramatic Role.