Dec 5, 2006 12:58 PM
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Hollywood, 2:40 PM
Tue Feb 9
56 posts in the last 24 hours
It's been literally hours since we've considered the plight of the soul-searching/ hand-wringing/hair-tearing Academy voters who are trying to determine whether they should punish Mel Gibson for the paranoid, tequila-liberated thoughts about Jews he expressed on that fateful night in Malibu by withholding awards nominations for Apocalypto, or whether they should ignore such outside concerns and celebrate the directorial artistry necessary to movingly depict the graphic removal of ancient Mayans' faces. In today's NY Times, Sharon Waxman gives us a fresh opportunity to contemplate the Oscar dilemma, even getting a Actual Jewish Person to go on the record about the matter:
Murray Weissman, who has worked on Oscar campaigns for many years and is working for the Weinstein Company on its hopefuls this year, said some voters would not see the film on principle."There is still a lot of resentment out there among the Academy members, certainly the Jewish group of them, over the incident," he said. "There are a lot of people who are very unforgiving. I have run into some who say they will not see any more Mel Gibson movies."
Yet, Mr. Weissman added, those who saw the movie and believed it deserving would vote for it. "The movie academy is of full of professionals; they will respect a good movie," he said. "If the guy made a classic film and it's absolutely brilliant — hey, I'm Jewish — I'd probably embrace it. But going in, I'm shocked and dismayed at his behavior."
We might need a little more than this qualified willingness to "embrace" the movie if it's a "classic" and "absolutely brilliant" to upgrade the current status of Gibson's Oscar chances to "Pretty Much Fucked, With Glimmers of Hope" from yesterday's "Totally Fucked, With Jews In The Academy Running Screaming From Their Apocalypto Screeners," but we promise to closely monitor the situation for any possible changes.
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