But I'm no Hollywood insider--though I think I am. I read my Vanity Fair every month and the theatre section of the Wall Street Journal and our local paper once a week. And I watched last Sunday's Academy Awards, except for when I took a shower and blew dry my hair. Okay, those awards are boring most of the time, but today I applaud it.
I appaud and applaud because Sunday was truly an historic breakthrough.
Congratulations Kathy Bigelow! It was wonderful—truly grand—that a woman finally won for best director and film of the year.
Except, and I regret to say this...
It was like Andre Agassi playing tennis with his fourteen year old daughter, who might be great at the game with powerful shots and professional potential, but the kid's no match for the old man. Of course every doting dad wants to offer his child a chance for a solid future, a foundation to build her self-esteem, and maybe the possibility for the other younger generation coming behind her.
So Andre loses an easy shot, allowing his daughter to bask in the glory, and the whole world cheers.
YEAH!!!!
That's what I was thinking when I saw Kathy Bigelow fisting the Oscar beside her.
She won, yet something was missing.
After endless parties and interviews that night, the sun crept over the horizon. (Not that I was there, but I imagined that the sun dawns daily in California). Two things suggest this conclusion. Oprah came on Monday morning, and serious filmmakers awoke and offered their opinions.
Like Jeffrey Katzenberg, who announced that the far reaching trend toward highly detailed 3D films--films that will closely resemble Avatar--the $300 million production that Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron had not invented but made so spectacular, other movie makers can barely wait to begin their own creations.
So Bigelow carried home the golden statuette, but who was the real winner?
A year from now I bet more than half the people in Peoria watching the onslaught of state-of-the-art 3D productions will probably think that Avatar won best film and would have to be reminded that The Hurt Locker, that little independent flick about IED's in Iraq, stole the award that evening.
Yet this accomplishment needed to be achieved.
The Academy finally bent its knobby knees and recognized women running the show.
Look what happened when they noticed black actors.
Sure Hattie McDaniels won in 1939 and Sidney Poitier in 1963, and then it all stopped. But when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry picked up the Oscar for best actor and actress in 2002, the white code of "white on white" cracked faster than the Berlin Wall snorting coke. Talented people of every tint rushed forward to snap up the emotional energy.
And the diversity has done us wonders.
Today women everywhere are proud of Kathy Bigelow. When she reached for the award, they should've played our national anthem.
Still I can't forget that tickle of truth. To paraphrase a Reuter's reporter, Bigelow may have cracked one of Hollywood’s glass ceilings but truly shattering that odious thing will take some time.
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