For a show built around a room full of out-sized egos, the Screen Actors Guild Awards is the friendliest and sanest of TV awards show. The SAGs have only been broadcast for a few years now, but so far, they’ve managed to keep the show low-key and very much a celebration of all things union, although it could be said that handing the stage over to a ham like Mickey Rooney (bless him) was not the best of ideas…
The SAG Awards is the only show in town that reveres the elderly, and god love ‘em for that. The lifetime achievement presentation to the great Charles Durning was SAG at its best — the Academy would never stoop to honor a character actor — and it got me all teary. What a beautiful career. (They should give it to Ned Beatty next.) Durning looked so frail trying to make it up the stage stairs (why is there never a ramp?), and then he gets up there and turns out to be slyer than anyone in the room. It was nice too to see Burt Reynolds doing such a non-jokey, heartfelt presentation. Old school rascals, those two. I think that going out to dinner with Charles Durning and Burt Reynolds (and their buddy Charles Nelson Reilly too, before his passing) would be one joyous, laugh-filled night. (Why hasn’t Burt Reynolds written a memoir? There’s a man with a trunk-full of great stories. Remember him on Johnny Carson? So sexy and crazy. He had more life in him then than Johnny Deep, Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington combined. Today's movie stars, let’s face it, are just no fun.)
Loving the aging masters extended to Ruby Dee, who won supporting actress for providing American Gangster with its one moment of real emotion, but they shut out Into the Wild’s Hal Holbrook, who didn't look surprised and who smiled gamely as Durning and Dee won prizes after his loss. There’s no question that Javier Bardem deserves to win awards for No Country for Old Men — it’s a classic performance — but Holbrook’s work in Into the Wild is transcendent. Bardem is a gifted and genuinely soulful actor — he should have won an Oscar (not even nominated) for his devastating work in The Sea Inside — but he’s young still and handsome as all get out and will have many more chances at prizes. Not so Mr. Holbrook, who brought a lifetime's worth of craft to that magnificent pickup truck scene with Emile Hirsch. It’s up to you, Academy.
Julie Christie is a fine actress and Hollywood royalty, but not naming Marion Cotillard Best Actress for her blistering and downright terrifying performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose is incomprehensible. Imagine if Meryl Streep hadn’t won the Oscar for Sophie’s Choice or DeNiro for Raging Bull. Snubbing Cotillard is on that level. (Cotillard’s mistake was in not hiring a decent publicist.) Which isn’t to say that Christie isn’t superb in Away from Her, but I get the feeling that all these awards to her have less to do with the performance and more to do with the fact that Christie holds Hollywood at bay. She dared to abandon her career and go off and get an actual life — the great Hollywood dream— and now that she's back, ever so briefly, they don’t want to miss the chance to reel her back in, to make her as greedy for gold as the rest of us. More beautiful than ever, she looked amazing tonight — love that vest — but for me, the telling moment came when she thanked a Lions Gate exec for forcing her to attend tonight’s show. Damn right. I can almost hear the poor bastard, pacing back and forth, cell phone jammed to his aching ear: “Julie, you must attend the SAGs. If you don’t show up to accept the award you won’t win the Oscar!” And so, lo and behold, there she was. Funny how that works.
P.S.: I felt kinda sorry for Tom Cruise. What a lukewarm reception he got when he came out to present the final award. He’s a nut, but he’s also one of the last great movie stars, and good grief, he hasn’t killed anyone. (Far as we know…)
-Chuck Wilson
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