After the Academy Awards aired last week, a lot of folks commented to me about how ABC failed to cut away to Annie Proulx when Diana Ossana mentioned her during the acceptance speech for the best adapted screenplay Oscar. Well, if you want proof Proulx was in the house, look no further than her recap of the evening for the Guardian. She’ll understand if you consider it a “Sour Grapes Rant,” because, let’s face it, she’s obviously pretty pissed about Brokeback Mountain losing out to Crash, which she dismisses as a “home team” favorite because of its Los Angeles setting (as if Brokeback were some radical outsider film by comparison?) and “a safe pick of ‘controversial film’ for the heffalumps.” Which seems rather more like a disparaging term that Brits would use, but there’s certainly no mistaking Proulx’s condescension when she “mistakenly” refers to the film that beat hers out as Trash. Nor in her sneering attitude towards Philip Seymour Hoffman’s best actor nod:
“Which takes more skill, acting a person who strolled the boulevard a few decades ago and who left behind tapes, film, photographs, voice recordings and friends with strong memories, or the construction of characters from imagination and a few cold words on the page? I don’t know. The subject never comes up. Cheers to David Strathairn, Joaquin Phoenix and Hoffman, but what about actors who start in the dark?”
Like, one supposes, Heath Ledger? Beyond her personal gripes, though, Proulx also has some glaringly trite and obvious observations of the ceremony itself, which she considered to have “a kind of provincial flavour to the proceedings reminiscent of a small-town talent-show night.” Wow, like nobody’s ever pointed out the tackiness of Oscar night before…