Oscar Goes to War

On a Sunday when 16 Americans were killed in action and another 5 were captured and paraded about by the Iraqi military, Hollywood was nearly indifferent to the peril endured by those whose job it is to make the world safe for movie stars to play in it.

There was anticipation that celebrities would turn the Oscar telecast into an antiwar rally based, in large part, on what transpired at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday night. At that ceremony, Michael Moore claimed that the United States is committing “terrorism” in Iraq. Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal announced that the current war was about “oil and imperialism.” During her acceptance speech, Oscar nominee Julianne Moore fretted that, “We’re parents and we teach our children not to fight. Fighting’s not the answer.” Indy filmmaker Mike White, exhorted the crowd by saying, “Let’s use a little more spirit this year to get Bush out of office.”

And, unearthing a lost clause from the Bill of Rights, Don Cheadle protested that “We have a right to voice our concerns without being called anti-American.”

On top of this posturing, the celebrity anti-war group Artists United to Win Without War announced that numerous stars, including Dustin Hoffman, Jim Carrey, Ben Affleck, and Salma Hayek would wear a special “peace sign pin” at the Oscars. The pin would act as “a silent statement of opposition to this unnecessary and inappropriate war.”

Still, some were convinced that, in the end, our brave celebrity artists would bow to the tyrannical forces of capitalism. As one Hollywood writer told me dismissively, “They’re not going to risk their careers to make a political statement. They’re really spooked by the Dixie Chicks.”

MY FRIEND was half right. The peace pins were out in force, displayed on heavies such as Harvey Weinstein and Susan Sarandon and lesser stars, such as Ethan Hawke, Colin Farrell, Chris Cooper, Daniel Day Lewis, Richard Gere, Rob Marshall, and Brendan Fraser. Some of the Artists United supporters, most notably Ben Affleck and Dustin Hoffman, bailed out on the gesture and went pin-less.

And much of the “protest” voiced during the Oscars was the kind of mewling, 8th-grade-English peace mongering that is so silly as to be wholly benign. In his acceptance speech, Chris Cooper blubbered “In light of all the troubles in this world, I wish us all peace.” Presenter Matthew McConaughey, full of either purpose or quaaludes, solemnly opened by wishing “A healthy evening to all of you.” Ethan Van der Ryn, winner for Best Sound Effects Editing in “The Twin Towers” worried that “There’s so much insanity in the world today.” And Nicole Kidman, echoing Tom’s “Now . . . more . . . than . . . ever!” monologue from last year’s ceremony, asked, “Why do you come to the Academy Awards when the world is in so much turmoil? Because art is important.”

Make no mistake, in each of these cases, the sentiments expressed, while wrongheaded, were quite sweet. If we are to have dopey artists, as every society must, they might as well be sentimental softies and not radical Jacobins. But by tiptoeing up to the edge of political commentary, they opened the floodgates.

Asked (as a sop to NAFTA, one imagines) to introduce the Best Song nominee from the movie “Frida,” young Mexican actor Gael García Bernal informed us that “The necessity for world peace is not a dream, it is a reality. And we are not alone. If Frida [Kahlo] was alive, she would be on our side, against war.” Convinced that one more unibrowed Communist could have derailed the Bush-Cheney war machine, the auditorium erupted in raucous applause.

(Bernal’s next role is in a movie called “The Motorcycle Diaries.” He plays a young Che Guevara. I couldn’t make this up.)

Also a winner of thunderous applause was Barbra Streisand who, cribbing from Don Cheadle, announced that “Songs are amazing things. They allow us to raise our voices in pain, in passion, in praise, and in protest. I’m very proud to live in a country that guarantees every citizen, including artists, the right to sing and to say what we believe.”

When Michael Moore won his Oscar for Best Documentary, he clambered onstage with a phalanx of non-beautiful people. His remarks are worth reproducing in full:

“I’ve invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage. We would like to–they’re here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it’s the fictition [sic] of duct tape, or the fictitious [sic] of orange alert. We are against this war Mr. Bush! Shame on you Mr. Bush! Shame on you! And any time you’ve got the pope and Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up! Thank you very much!!!”

While Moore’s tirade isn’t worth dissection, the crowd’s reaction is. The first section, about the 2000 election, received loud applause. The section on duct tape and orange alert received a mix of cheering and jeering and by the time he finished with his references to the Vatican and the Dixie Chicks, he was drowned in a chorus of boos.

During most of this the camera showed not Moore, but the audience. In a move that must have tied up Gil Cates and ICM in negotiations for a week, the producers went out of their way to show America that the stars weren’t clapping. Harrison Ford sat with his arms folded, Calista Flockhart angrily pursed her lips, and Adrian Brody looked on condescendingly. For the most part, those seated in the orchestra level sat on their hands.

So who was booing Michael Moore? The people in the balconies. At the Oscars, the orchestra level is reserved for the glitterati and the upper tiers for the riff-raff. So only “normal” people were booing Moore. Which leaves unanswered the question, why didn’t the stars boo him? Why simply sit there, the equivalent of voting “present” on a resolution in Congress? Clearly, the answer is that they wanted to cheer. Just not as much as they want that seventh house in Maui.

AS OUTRAGEOUS as Moore’s behavior might seem, it isn’t so bad: He was just playing to his audience. The people who pay to see Moore’s movies and buy his books would have been upset with him if he hadn’t caused a scene. For him not to have made a spectacle of himself would have been like Halle Berry showing up to the Awards in a trench coat–in show business you have to display your assets.

The two worst moments belonged to Pedro Almodóvar and Frank Pierson. Almodóvar, who won for Best Screenplay, said, “I also want to dedicate this award to all the people that are raising their voices in favor of peace, in respect of human rights, democracy, and international legality.” On a day when the Iraqi government was violating the Geneva Conventions with American POWs at the same time that allied soldiers were bringing relief to Iraqi citizens, Almodóvar had nothing to offer but the language of moral equivalence.

Pierson, the president of the Academy, addressed the Iraqi people directly during his brief remarks: “And to the Iraqi people I say, let’s have peace soon, and let you live without war.”

Pierson is not a dopey actor. He is, by Hollywood standards at least, a grownup. Yet he had the gall to wish that Iraqis could live not in freedom, but without war. He is oblivious to the Iraqi civilians who have cheered as pictures of Saddam are torn down, who have embraced American troops as liberators. He objects to the war not on ontological grounds or because he fears American unipolarity but because it’s for the Iraqi people’s own good.

One shudders to think of what Mr. Pierson would have told Germany’s Jews.

Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.