By GUEST COMMENTARY BY BILL CESSATO
This weekend, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will host the 78th annual Oscars ceremony.
As usual, fashion-conscious reporters will pepper celebrities with inane questions on the way down the red carpet into the Kodak Theatre.
Once inside, Jon Stewart will, with any hope, offer up a good dose of humor during the epic journey to Best Picture winner.
Glitterati of Academy Awards past will present the statuettes, recognizing the talents of the stars, directors, writers, and other filmmaking folk. And the winners will command the stage to thank everyone — from dearly departed Aunt Gertrude to the coffeemaker on the set.
And what are we, the viewers, going to do to pass the hours? Naturally, we will hang on each and every word.
People take stars’ remarks very seriously. Look at January’s Golden Globes. George Clooney took a jab at embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The next thing you know, Clooney, a star of “Syriana” and director of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” entered Larry King’s CNN confessional and defended his “joke.”
Such candid behavior from Hollywood’s heavenly bodies forms the fodder for awards show apocrypha and legends.
Take Sally Field and her Oscars acceptance speech for best actress in the 1984 movie “Places in the Heart.” Popular — and distorted — memory will always have her effusively chirping, “You like me. You really like me.” (If you even care to know the actual quote, simply Google it.) We relish these candid moments with the stars. At those rare times, we see our favorite celebrities’ humanity. Really, they seem just like us.
They call out sick: Joan Crawford accepted her best actress Oscar in bed for “Mildred Pierce.” They protest when angry: Marlon Brando, through Sacheen Littlefeather, refused his best actor award for “The Godfather” because of discrimination against Native Americans. They suffer with hubris: James Cameron, winner of best director for “Titanic,” exclaimed, “I’m the king of the world.”
We cannot get enough — on and off the screen. We feel joy at their personal and professional triumphs. We empathize with their failures. Minus the money and other luxurious trappings of fame, we know exactly what they must go through. Everything they do magnifies the ups and downs of our own existence.
However, their lives appear not nearly as dull as ours. Therein, lies our love.
Do you recall the universal excitement when handsome movie star Brad Pitt married pretty actress Jennifer Aniston in July 2000? “How perfect,” we thought. “Not quite,” we learned. Enter the new players in the thespians’ own melodrama: Angelina Jolie and Vince Vaughan.
The denouement: a whopping multimillion dollar divorce settlement. Like at a B-horror movie, we cringe. But we can’t stop watching. Beautiful people split to be with other beautiful people. Does it get any better?
The publicity machine never stops. Neither does our desire to be one step closer to our stars and their magic. We even purchase their costumes.
Just this February, for example, the shirts off of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s not-so-broke backs sold for more than $100,000 on an eBay auction. What next? True-to-life cowboy action figures under the Christmas tree?
Indeed, the stars hold a mesmerizing power over many of us. We shell out money to watch their movies on the big screen or at home. We pour over magazines and online blogs to discover the most up-to-date news about their lives. We write them fan letters and sport similar clothing.
But we should always remember that we — the mere mortals — harness a special power, too. Our money helps pay the stars’ salaries. The support fans giveth, they could easily taketh away. Oh dear, no more expensive cars, no more talk show appearances, no more lamenting over paparazzi, no more box office success, and, sadly, no Academy Award.
Yes, without us — “those wonderful people out there in the dark,” as Gloria Swanson says in “Sunset Boulevard” — the stars would implode. (Bill Cessato won best actor in high school. No one cared. Now he’s a writer in Washington, D.C. He)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 4, 2006. Read the original PDF.