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Books Won Big on Hollywood’s Biggest Night
Hollywood’s biggest, glitziest, and longest night of the year has come and gone. Chris Rock went there at an Academy Awards® show that didn’t shy away from politics. Rather than avoiding or ignoring the #OscarsSoWhite controversy over the lack of diversity among this year’s nominees, Rock took the stage and spent virtually his entire monologue taking on the subject. That wasn’t all: Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise appearance to introduce Lady Gaga’s emotional performance of the nominated song “Til It Happens to You,” from a documentary about campus sexual assault. Sam Smith, who took home an award for his song “Writing’s On The Wall” from the recent James Bond movie, Spectre, dedicated his award to the LGBTQ community; and Leo DiCaprio used his time at the podium to discuss climate change. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” played over the closing credits. Whether or not the politics are your thing, it was a brisk show (if three-and-a-half hours could ever be considered “brisk”) that was sometimes uncomfortable but rarely boring.
Though there were, as always, a few surprises—Mad Max: Fury Road didn’t win Best Picture , but it did take home the most awards of the night; Mark Rylance beat several bigger-name actors in taking home a Supporting Actor award for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies; Spotlight was the upset choice for Best Picture—the night’s biggest winner was, as expected, book lovers, who watched a host of great adaptations compete for big screen laurels, including film versions of Andy Weir’s The Martian, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (brought to the screen as Carol), and Bruce Cook’s Trumbo. Things even got slightly naughty with The Weeknd’s song “Earned It” from the adaption of Fifty Shades of Grey. Those were the nominees, but which book-based films took home prizes?
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Michael Lewis’ bestseller The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, about the growth of the housing bubble that burst so spectacularly in 2008, was adapted for the screen by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, who also directed. McKay made his reputation with Will Ferrell comedies like Anchorman and Talladega Nights, so it’s all the more impressive that he helmed a film with Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor nominations, among others. While the film missed out on those awards, McKay and Randolph still took home the statuette for turning a non-fiction work about global finance into a successful film.
Actress in a Supporting Role
Swedish actor Alicia Vikander starred as Ava in Visual Effects winner Ex Machina, but took home an Oscar® for her performance as Gerda Wegener in The Danish Girl. Vikander’s character is a fictionalized version of the real-life Wegener, a portrait artist in the 1920s whose husband would become the first recipient of gender reassignment surgery. The 2000 novel by David Ebershoff was a bestseller and itself won several major awards. Vikander’s next role is in a forthcoming adaptation of M.L. Steadman’s World War I-era novel The Light Between Oceans.
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Actress in a Leading Role
Brie Larson won one of the two big acting awards for her performance in Room, adapted from the book by Emma Donoghue. The book is a heartbreaking, but inspiring, bestseller about a young woman and her son who must adapt to the outside world after having been held captive in one small room by an abusive man for seven years. Donoghue wrote the screenplay to the movie version, and was herself nominated in the Writing (Adapted Screenplay) category.
Directing/Actor in a Leading Role
Alejandro G. Iñárritu took home his second consecutive Academy Award, following last year’s win for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). This year he won for The Revenant, based on Michael Punke’s fictionalized take on the life of nineteenth-century fur trapper Hugh Glass. Though the gritty story of man and bear lost out in several other major categories for which it was nominated, including best picture, it also earned environmental activist and soulful vaper Leonardo DiCaprio his first trophy after six prior nominations.
What did you think of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony?