In Memoriam: Remembering Sarah Jones and the Forgotten Folk Below the Line

The annual In Memoriam segment of the Oscar broadcast is always poignant – and controversial. Emotions automatically swell when we’re reminded of the showbiz giants we’ve lost in the past year: Peter O’Toole, Shirley Temple, Harold Ramis, and so many others. Yet there are always complaints. The good people of Chicago are steamed that native son Dennis Farina was overlooked. My film noir pal Alan Rode laments the absence of Jonathan Winters. And I’ve heard gripes that Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t deserve the climactic spot at the very end of the segment. (I disagree: of all the people on that list, his loss perhaps made me the saddest, because he had so much more to give.) 

It’s tragic to lose a gifted individual because of his own bad choices. It’s even more tragic, though, to lose someone who falls victim to other people’s carelessness and bad policy decisions. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that going on in Greater Hollywood.

In the ramp-up to the Oscars, a young woman’s death on a movie set galvanized thousands of below-the-line folk who believe their well-being is often compromised by higher-ups more worried about keeping to their schedule than about basic safety concerns. Sarah Jones, a popular young camera assistant, was killed in rural Georgia on February 20 while working on an Allman Brothers biopic, Midnight Rider. The accident is still being investigated, but it involved a scene being shot on a railroad bridge. No trains were expected:  when one suddenly appeared, the crew scattered, with fatal results for Sarah, who was apparently struck by debris from a damaged prop.

Sarah’s grief-stricken co-workers launched a “Slates for Sarah” Facebook page, campaigning to have her death recognized as part of the Oscar ceremony. Though 58,000 people signed an online petition, her photo was ultimately not included in the ranks of the In Memoriam honorees. Still, Sarah got her own tiny moment. Just before the networks cut to commercial, there appeared at the bottom of my screen a small banner, mentioning Sarah and pointing the viewer toward a more complete list of passings on the Academy website, titled “Oscar Remembers.” (Sarah is represented by a full-color photograph; she’s #38 on a list of 112, tactfully arranged in alphabetical order.)

Sarah’s death has elicited grief, but also anger. Many who know the industry well are convinced that it was preventable. It seems those in charge of her set did not bother to take adequate precautions. I gather no representative of the railroad was present to oversee the filming, and just-in-case procedures were inadequate, at best. Years ago, I interviewed Haskell Wexler, the ace cinematographer who has won two Oscars for his work. Haskell, a firebrand from way back, self-financed a 2006 documentary called Who Needs Sleep?  It was a plea to his colleagues to limit a film crew’s work hours, in response to the death of a cameraman in a car crash after working 19-hour-days on the film Pleasantville. Haskell’s commonsense proposal of a 12 on/12 off work day was soundly rejected, both by movie producers worried about the bottom line and by his own union colleagues, unwilling to seem weak. Today a heart-sick Haskell blames Sarah’s death on “criminal negligence.” Footnote: this would never have happened to the film’s stars, who on a set are always beautifully protected from harm.

When Hollywood’s glitterati put on their designer duds and celebrate the magic of cinema, I hope they occasionally think about the crews who make their movies possibles. Those who work the long hours and get none of the glory.  And occasionally die doing what they love.

 Here, from an industry web site called Stage 32, is one producer's angry and anguished reaction to Sarah's death.

The Oscars as Block Party, or 3 Hours a Slave to the Tube

Well, another Oscar telecast down the tubes. Normally, I’m not a television watcher, but I always make a date with my TV set for that evening. Which means I saw plenty of gorgeous gowns, fast-paced film montages, lame jokes, heartfelt thank-yous, and weird mispronunciations. (Adele Dazeem, anybody? I don’t love Idina Menzel’s rendition of the yowling power-ballad from Frozen, but didn’t she deserve to have her name announced correctly? I’m speaking to you, John Travolta.) I also saw a disheartening display of old Hollywood royalty who looked embalmed, if not pickled: Kim Novak, Goldie Hawn, Liza Minnelli. I believe in honoring the past, but trying to resurrect and freeze in place the face you had at thirty is downright scary.

An Oscar broadcast, of course, rests on the shoulders of its host. I’m old enough to remember the Bob Hope era: he was professional and funny until suddenly, as the changing realities of American life caught up with him, he was neither. Billy Crystal was reliably impish; Seth (“I Saw Your Boobs”) MacFarlane was snarky and obnoxious; the pairing of James Franco and Anne Hathaway (an obvious bid to pull in young audiences) was just a head-scratcher.

This year, of course, the Academy went back to steering an amiable course with Ellen DeGeneres. Though Ellen’s good-natured humor didn’t always land, some of her out-in-the-audience stunts were memorable for capturing the odd sense of glamorous Oscar nominees as just plain folks. As the world knows by now, she placed an order for pizza, and had world-famous celebrities in designer togs scrambling to grab a triangle of pie. (And then scrambling again to cough up the dough to pay for it. “Where’s Harvey Weinstein?” asked Ellen, knowingly.) And of course she initiated the now-famous selfie in which Hollywood royalty like Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep appear to be as joyously silly as the rest of us when we pose for quickie cellphone shots with our pals.

But I’ve got to admit that the awards-giving was dull. Not that the winners didn’t deserve their prizes, but anyone who’d been paying attention during awards-season could guess (as I did) who would capture the major categories. Which made me realize how much more I enjoyed the Sochi Olympics, where the winners were in doubt until the heat of the moment, when someone posted the best score or crossed the finish line. Unlike a movie awards show, the Olympics occur in real-time (or tape delay, for most viewers), so the gold medal is won by an athlete fresh from the performance -- not an actor who has cleaned up, regained the lost weight, and donned fancy dress.

All this made me wish we could add suspense by rejiggering the Oscars into a you-are-there Olympic-style competition, maybe on skates. Instead of Meryl Davis and Charlie White, how about Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts as an ice dancing duo, vying against Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto? I’d love to see Bruce Dern tossing June Squibb around in the pairs free skate. Team short-track could be represented by the 12 Years a Slave contingent, trying to muscle out the Wolf of Wall Street guys and the wily foursome from American Hustle. (Jennifer Lawrence would doubtless take yet another tumble.)  

More ideas: the skinny and scary-looking Barkhad Abdi of Captain Phillips hydroplaning in the ski jump, or mixing cross-country with rifle-shooting in the biathlon. Or a hockey shootout between a determined Judi Dench on one side, an emotional Cate Blanchett on the other. And, yes, Sandra Bullock at center ice, doing spins and loop-de-loops in her underwear.

Philomena Meets Hands-On Harvey

Will a small British indie called Philomena take home any Oscars? If it does, its cast and crew will have Harvey Weinstein to thank. And they won’t be alone. Here’s a recent tidbit from the March 2014 issue of Harper’s:

Number of Academy Award winners in the past twenty years who thanked God in their acceptance speeches: 7  

Who thanked Harvey Weinstein: 30

Everyone who knows something about Hollywood has heard of Harvey Weinstein. He and his brother Bob started out circa 1970 as concert promoters. Soon, taking a tip from the Roger Corman playbook of that era, they formed a company called Miramax (named after their parents, Max and Miriam) and began importing challenging art-house flicks from Europe. The strategy worked. Looking for material closer to home, they soon had some major hits on their hands. These included Errol Morris’s powerful documentary, The Thin Blue Line, and Steven Soderbergh’s provocative chamber-piece, sex, lies, and videotape, which blew away audiences at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. By the time Miramax scored once again with The Crying Game, Disney was angling to buy the company for big bucks. Under the Disney umbrella, the brothers started producing as well as distributing, and the hits kept on coming. (Harvey and Bob eventually left Disney to form The Weinstein Company, though I've heard they’re now planning to buy Miramax back. But that’s another story.)

Harvey Weinstein, it goes without saying, is a control freak. It’s not unusual to see him yank a film off the distribution schedule seven weeks before its planned opening. That’s what he did in January with the Nicole Kidman starrer, Grace of Monaco, after feuding with the director over editing issues. But he’s a genius when it comes to promoting his films. Everyone in Hollywood believes it was his clever marketing that helped push Shakespeare in Love past Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan in the 1999 Oscar race.

Harvey’s films, which include the whole Quentin Tarantino canon, have continued to do well at the Oscars ever since. (He’s also been accused of trying to take down his rivals, for instance spreading rumors about some unsavory aspects of John Forbes Nash’s character when A Beautiful Mind was looking Oscar-bound.) This year, boosting Philomena along with August: Osage County and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, he has been particularly ingenious. When Philomena, the true story of an Irish mother looking for the son who was stolen from her by the Catholic Church, was rated R by the MPAA because of a few expletives dropped by Steve Coogan’s character, Harvey swung into action. He quickly persuaded the film’s star, Judi Dench, to assume her “M” role from the James Bond films to humorously threaten the MPAA in a video clip. It went viral, and soon Philomena was reclassified PG-13. That new rating made it a far more comfortable fit for the mature audiences who shy away from the sex and violence that an R-rating generally implies.

Next Harvey took advantage of opposition to the film by some Roman Catholic groups, placing enormous ads that boldly parried their complaints. But his real coup was getting the actual Philomena Lee, a charming and gutsy eighty-year-old, to show up at press events and help spread the word. Focusing on her own story rather than the film version, she has not run afoul of the Academy’s rules for Oscar campaigning. Still, her presence has its own sort of clout, and the undauntable Harvey is clearly positioning her as a potential spoiler in this year’s Oscar race.  

Bruce Dern: The Mouth that Roars

 Last week I had another Bruce Dern sighting. I was re-watching the 2003 film Monster, in which a de-glamorized Charlize Theron plays serial killer Aileen Wuornos. There was Dern, as a kindly Vietnam vet who doesn’t realize his gal-pal is capable of murder. As always, he was wholly convincing.

Bruce Dern has racked up 144 acting credits since he started out in live TV in 1960. He’s been directed by Elia Kazan (Wild River), Sydney Pollack (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), Alfred Hitchcock (Family Plot), and Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained). He earned a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for 1978’s Coming Home. And this year he’s reveling in his Best Actor nod for Nebraska, Alexander Payne’s well-observed indie about a cantankerous old man with quixotic dreams.

It couldn’t have happened to a more interesting guy. In contrast to Nebraska’s taciturn Woody Grant, Bruce Dern is a compulsive talker. A few years back, he and I spoke about film in the Sixties. Of course we touched on Roger Corman, who directed Bruce in The Wild Angels, The Trip, and Bloody Mama. Bruce still regrets that Roger stuck to formula, and “never really chose to direct a bigger budgeted movie with a great story.”  Instead, Roger’s directing career was “a continuation of the Sam Katzman drill. He became the master of it, but he’s better than what he did.”  

Reminiscing about his Hells Angels role for Corman, Bruce segued into a philosophical discussion of why he adores playing bad guy roles: “When I began acting, I realized that in American historical western culture, bad guys were more celebrated in one way or another than good guys or anybody else. And the bad guys had to be celebrated, because they had game. They had social skills. They were not just mf-ers. They could play cards. They could ride. They could obviously shoot. They could obviously womanize. They could gamble. They could do a multitude of things.”

Despite his appreciation for bad guys (he shot John Wayne in the back in The Cowboys), Bruce also has high regard for the man on the white horse. Such a man was his godfather, Adlai Stevenson, who twice was the Democratic nominee for president. Bruce once asked Stevenson (his father’s law partner and best friend) how he had changed as a candidate from 1952 to 1956.  Taking both his hands, Stevenson said, “Bruce, in 1952 I came in on what I thought was a fairly white horse.” Then Stevenson’s eyes filled with tears, as he continued, “In 1956, that horse was a lot greyer, and I realized I can’t do this anymore. . . . As long as you live, you can vote however you want, wherever you want, but don’t vote for that office unless you see somebody on a white horse.”  Bruce sums up this surprising conversation by noting, “I’ve never voted for president in my life. Can you blame me?”

My friend and fellow writer Diana Caldwell had her own Bruce Dern encounter not long ago. She was in a Brentwood stationery store, contemplating some fancy script covers, when a tall, guy with greying hair and a raspy voice engaged her in chat. Thirty minutes flew by as he emphasized how proud he was of his actress-daughter  Laura, and encouraged Diana to submit material to the writing staff of his show, Big Love. Diana insists it was no pick-up attempt: just a friendly chap who enjoyed connecting with others in the biz. At this year’s Telluride Festival, she barely missed the chance to say hello. Here’s hoping that, post-Oscars, Bruce Dern remains his approachable self.

99 Years a Maid: Remembering Juanita Moore and Imitation of Life

It’s Black History Month, and 12 Years A Slave is gaining momentum in this year’s Oscar derby. Which makes this a great time to salute Juanita Moore, a 1960 Oscar nominee who died in January at age 99. Moore nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the Douglas Sirk version of Imitation of Life, playing a housekeeper who is cruelly rejected by her light-skinned daughter. After her Oscar glory (she was beaten out by Shelley Winters in The Diary of Anne Frank), Moore hoped to have her pick of challenging roles. But since black actresses usually played domestics, her career essentially stalled, though she was still performing on TV as late as 2001.

Imitation of Life, based on a tear-jerking 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst, has been filmed by Hollywood twice. The 1934 production, starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers, fascinates me most. It’s the tale of two widows and their daughters. Colbert, needing help in making ends meet, joins forces with her housekeeper (Beavers) to open a pancake restaurant. Soon their packaged pancake mix becomes wildly popular, with Beavers functioning as an Aunt Jemima-like corporate symbol and earning a share of the profits. This progressive story of two women (one black, one white) successfully doing business together contrasts with more personal complications. While Colbert and her offspring melodramatically fall for the same man, Beavers grapples with the fact that her own daughter wants nothing to do with the black world, and is determined to pass for white. This daughter, Peola, is played by Fredi Washington, an African-American with fair skin and light eyes, whose unlikely looks and determination to stay true to her heritage cut her off from future opportunities in Hollywood, with studio bosses insisting she was not dark enough to be cast in “Negro” roles. (Washington later became an early civil rights activist and co-founder of the Negro Actors Guild of America.)

The 1934 Imitation of Life struggled to pass muster with the Hays Office, which opposed anything in Hollywood films that might smack of miscegenation. Though clearly the character of Peola has significant white as well as black ancestry, the issue is never addressed. And the big scene in which Peola ventures into the white world is all about being a cashier in a restaurant: there’s no sexual undercurrent, no confrontation with a white suitor newly aware of her past.

The 1959 film starring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore changes a lot. Now the leading white character is a glamorous actress, and Moore plays her maid and confidante. Adorable Sandra Dee is Turner’s daughter, while John Gavin is cast as the photographer for whom they vie. Once again, the black daughter (renamed Sarah Jane) rejects the facts of her birth in order to pass as white, appalling Moore, who intones, “It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are. . . . The Lord must have had his reasons for making some of us white and some of us black.” But the old taboo that barred scenes between a black woman and a white man is gone now, leading to the dramatically charged moment when Sarah Jane is beaten by her white boyfriend and left bleeding in the gutter. In any case, the taboo might not have mattered, because Sarah Jane is played by Susan Kohner, dark-eyed daughter of a Mexican mother (Lupita Tovar) and an Eastern European Jewish father (Hollywood superagent Paul Kohner). Susan Kohner is hardly African-American, but she, like Moore, was Oscar-nominated for her powerhouse performance. 

Happily for Lupita Nyong’o, today’s Hollywood can appreciate a black actress playing a black role.