Who Wants an Oscar Anyway?
Article #12
“I can't wait, it's driving me insane. And your impossible impatience, tearing at my brain.” When Will I Be Famous? Bros
Ever heard of a fella called Laurence Olivier?
Well, he was an actor. And regarded by many in Britain and beyond as the greatest English-speaking actor of the twentieth century.
Now, I never saw Larry tread the boards myself. But he made a plethora of films, getting nominated for a couple of Oscars for his troubles. On stage, he was considered peerless, even if he did get a woeful bout of stage fright for a spell.
I’ve heard about a dozen versions of this story. And the person opposite Larry in this yarn has varied from the stage manager to a cab driver to that hell-raiser from Limerick, the one and only, Richard Harris.
But it goes a little something like this.
Olivier gives this performance for the ages on a London stage. The great unwashed are hopping out of their seats, gushing forth an endless wave of adulation and applause. So much so, that Larry is out and back for more curtain calls than Mick Jagger.
On the umpteenth curtain call, Larry storms backstage, into his dressing room and slams the door behind him.
His fellow cast are taken aback. Why did he storm off? On approach to the dressing room, the stage manager (we’re going with the stage manager in this version) hears clatters and thuds from inside. All the while the thunderous applause continues unabated, an adoring public desperate for one more glimpse of the great man.
Stage Manager knocks gingerly.
No reply. Just continued clatters and thuds.
She clenches her knuckles and knocks again.
Larry: What is it?!
Stage Manager: Can I come in?
Larry: Come in, damn you!
Stage Manager: What’s the matter Laurence? They loved you. You were magnificent.
Larry: I know – I just don’t bloody know how I did it!
Curtain Call: Larry in his pomp.
The Kerryman
I was having dinner with a friend just off the West End last week, in one of my favourite places in London – The Delaunay in Covent Garden. I still struggle to pronounce it, so I just call it Delaney’s.
I said I’d splash out as I’d just come off the back of filming down in Hastings for a TV series. Anytime I book a gig, and get through it without knocking over any lights and getting my lines out, it feels like a victory. And this victory was particularly sweet. It was my first acting job in a year. Granted, there was an actors strike on, but I went 32 auditions without landing anything – close on a few, mind you, but no cigar. My previous record was 37 and no cigar.
And my time working on this show reminded me that it’s the best job in the world.
So, back to Delaney’s. One of the reasons I like it is the vibe of the place always makes me feel like I’m in a movie, like Goodfellas or The Untouchables. The mahogany décor, the prohibition era lighting, the pristine white tablecloths, the clickity clack of cutlery and finely cut glass, and the chitter-chatter of those huddled around tables like the mob. I still half expect to see Tony Soprano or Sinatra in there, nestled safely in a booth in the corner.
On this occasion, I’ve got good company. He’s not a Mafia man but he is a Kerry man - the difference can be tricky to spot. If you don’t know someone from Kerry, I suggest you befriend one as soon as possible. They are a tribe of people that defy description. Suffice to say, I knew the craic and conversation would be good.
And he also happens to be my first paid subscriber for Minutes of a Monday. And this swanky joint is exactly the kind of swanky joint I take a paid subscriber. Just so you know (wink, wink).
Anyway, about two thirds of the way in, just when I thought I was safe, he lands this haymaker on me:
The Kerryman: So, Bish, Cillian Murphy looks like he’ll land the Oscar. Is that something you aspire to? Leading from the front on something like that?
Now, the secretary that lives in my head (I call her Margaret) is like:
Margaret: Now you know the answer here now Niall. Of course we’re going for the big time, so give it to him straight between the eyes with that.
I could blame it on the fact I had a mouthful of creamy mash (to die for) but that’s not what I said.
What I said was:
Me: Ah… well… ah.
As that great philosopher and knock-out machine, Mike Tyson, once lamented: everyone steps into the ring with a plan until someone throws a punch.
The Douglas Diamond
The kid from Douglas, County Cork, Cillian Murphy, did indeed land the big one last Sunday night at the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles. The first Irish born actor to win the Best Actor award. The last with an Irish passport was Daniel Day Lewis, thirty-five years ago, for My Left Foot. But you see, Daniel was born in London. Now, I know that’s only a stones throw from the ‘oul sod, but a detail like where a man is born is important for us Paddy’s – and it could be a right good tiebreaker in a table quiz.
Anyway, I digress. On the same night Danny boy landed the big one, the peerless Brenda Fricker took a Best Supporting Actress statuette across the pond also for My Left Foot. Before that, the legendary Barry Fitzgerald won a Best Supporting Actor in 1944 for Going My Way – even though most people remember him for driving a horse and cart with John Wayne on the back in A Quiet Man.
Sure, the Oscars have lost some of their allure in recent years, but not as much as some doomsdayers would like you to think. It has lost viewer numbers, but what hasn’t? I mean, it’s not exactly Ali-Frazier is it? "(“Down goes Frazier!”). It’s a bunch of famous people dressed to the nines, sitting in a room for nearly four hours acting like they don’t care when their name’s not called out.
Next time we land on the moon, there’ll be some dickhead on his YouTube channel going: “Sure, nobody watches Moon landings anymore and sure, it’s fake anyway.”
Ask anyone who’s not an actor, or film buff, who won the Best Actor, or Best Film or Best Actress award a year ago and they’ll throw in the towel.
The Oscars have been around for nearly a century. Moving pictures for just over a century. Who knows what cinema will look like in 2124. But just think about how much has changed in not only the last hundred years, but the last twenty, or even ten years.
Bringing it Home: Danny Day and Brenda Fricker bringing home the bacon.
, writing in his Indulging a Second Look substack, nails it for me:“Audiences have far more choices of movies to see, far less interest in that genre or epic play lengths anymore, and cinema itself has far less sway over popular culture and imagination. There are no monolithic movies anymore because there’s no monocultural film production anymore.”
The only thing anyone under 30 could tell you about the Oscars is probably Will Smith slappin’ the face off Chris Rock (“Down goes Rock!”) - the slap that went around the world. And those anxiety laden Gen Z’s didn’t catch it on broadcast TV and certainly didn’t sit through a couple of hours waiting for it.
Also, what more do you want the Oscars do? The shindig is effectively part fashion show, part cabaret night, part Eurovision that runs for 3-4 hours, interspersed with a lot of speeches that all sound the same after a while. And the occasional slap.
I know guys that haven’t watched their wedding film back, never mind the Oscars.
How is that supposed to survive in today’s attention-fragmented media landscape? It can’t. But does that mean they should be scrapped? We all respond to incentives. An Oscar is a huge carrot for anyone involved in film. It’s recognition of a certain production quality and artistic achievement on a commercial scale.
The fact it doesn’t have the sway that it used to have is like saying calculators should be scrapped because we’ve got Excel.
For me, my favourite Oscar moment was this interview with one of those bucks off One Direction (I could only pick Niall Horan out in a lineup) saying he can’t talk about that slap, but proceeds to do exactly that for two whole minutes.
Now that’s talent baby.
The Right Hook: The fight of the century and the slap of the century.
The Haymaker
Anyway, back to that haymaker of a question from my Kerry compatriot: So, what if I don’t win an Oscar – does that mean I lack ambition or I’m not thinking big enough?
Or, maybe another way of framing that question is: If you let other people or things define your success, how will you ever become one?
They say you have to be careful what you wish for. Especially in the business of show.
American playwright, author and screenwriter, David Mamet, himself an Oscar nominee, has another name for the business: “a depraved carnival”.
In his book, True and False, he pulls no punches: “Just as it attracts the dedicated, it attracts the rapacious and exploitative, and these parasites can never be pleased, they can only be submitted to.”
But an Oscar is the pinnacle, even for the parasites too, right?
That depends.
There are those who say it’s pretty much downhill after you clutch that gold statue in your hands. There’s been a slew of actors who have won an Oscar and blended back into anonymity very soon after. And there’s one or two with Oscars who are either in jail or have the tatts to prove it.
There are close to 10,000 people who vote for the Oscars. They are collectively known as “the Academy” or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). They all work in the film industry across multiple disciplines. Many are former winners or nominees. They are based all over the world and it’s their vote you need in order to get a chance of a nomination.
When a film like Irish language feature, An Cailín Ciúin, nominated under the Best International Film category in 2023, gets the nod it was like a minor miracle. But it didn’t happen just by the luck of the Irish. Cleona Ní Chrualaoi and Colm Bairéad, who produced and directed the movie, fought tooth and nail for that nomination.
I’d wager when Cleona and Colm were bringing the idea for An Cailín Ciúin to life, they couldn’t have, in a million years, thought they’d end up an envelope away from an Oscar. But once they got traction, they went all in. And they punched well and truly above their weight in the process.
Matt Damon won an Oscar young, at twenty-seven, alongside Ben Afleck, himself only out of short pants at twenty-five. They won Best Original screenplay for Good Will Hunting in 1998. The late great Robin Williams took home the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in that film the same night. And it’s not a stretch to say that Damon has done alright since.
But he had an interesting take on his win when speaking to Graham Norton in 2016. On the night of his win, in the wee small hours, alone with the statuette, he looked at it and thought:
“Thank God I didn’t f*ck anybody over for this. And I suddenly had this thing wash over me where I thought… imagine chasing that [the Oscar] and not getting it, and getting it finally in your 80’s or 90’s, with all of life behind you and realising what an unbelievable waste of your… you know what I mean?” He went on to surmise: “If that’s a hole that you have, that [the Oscar] won’t fill it. I felt so blessed to have that awareness at twenty-seven.”
The Search
Matt Damon could have been echoing the words of Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning: “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”
I was in rehearsal for a play involving a large cast years ago. It was one of my first plays after moving to London. During a rehearsal break I was within earshot of the following conversation:
Actor 1: So, this guy you’re seeing, he’s an actor right?
Actor 2: Oh, he’s not just an actor.
Actor 1: No? What is he then?
Actor 2: He’s ambitious. He wants the Oscars man.
And I remember thinking: Isn’t that like putting the cart before the horse?
If you start out wanting an Oscar, doesn’t that mean you’re after recognition first? But recognition is a consequence of excellence and the excellence bit comes first, no?
And that takes time, mastery even. It means surrendering yourself to the pursuit of a craft, as opposed to a career path, putting your faith in a compass as opposed to a well-worn map.
Now, having said all that, if I ever end up on a stage and someone is laying an Oscar into my paw, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a speech half prepared.
But that’s just knowing ones lines like, you know, just in case. That’s what Margaret keeps telling me anyway.
All Hail
I punched the air on Monday morning when Cillian Murphy landed his Oscar. It feels like something bigger is happening in Irish film and TV and, in many ways, he represents that. He’s standing on the shoulders of giants and he knows it.
For me, it’s not so much that he won, but how he won. I used to live around the corner from him in North London once upon a time, but I’ve never met the man. Yet it seems to me he is true to who he is, who he belongs to and where he’s from. He’s risen to the very top of that ‘depraved carnival’ but never drank the kool aid. And he’s being doing what he’s doing year in, year out for almost thirty years. And, who knows, maybe the best has yet to come for him.
Meanwhile, back in Delaney’s. The Kerryman and I have sat toe to toe for almost the full twelve rounds. We’ve traded blows on life, love, death and everything else in between. The final round sees us talking about what only men in their mid-forties looking for cosmic specialness talk about. His is different to mine. Different but the same.
It feels like we want the same thing. To do something that’s worthwhile, that has some sort of bigger meaning and connects with people. Most of all, that it connects with people.
“We’re all selling something”, he says, and he’s right again (see… what did I tell ya about Kerry people?)
That diamond from Douglas sold the masses his version of the father of the atomic bomb and they bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Upon his head the crown rests light and easy.
The once and future king.
Long live the depraved carnival.
And long live King Cillian.