• I would have lost the Oscar pool this year. Even though I switched to Chris Cooper for Adaptation, I’m still somewhat surprised by Catherine Zeta-Jones’s award.
• Anybody who had Adrien Brody cleaned up big.
• Steve Martin? Pretty damn funny. I’d have him back.
• Not that it’s any of my business or anything, but, uh…was Jack Nicholson’s date Nicolas Cage?
• “Every time they give out an Oscar, an agent gets his wings.”
• You know, it dawns on me only now I should have done a real-time blogging commentary on the Oscars à la The Agonist’s Iraq summary, but a)Sean Paul rocks and b)we TiVo’d the Oscars so we wouldn’t have to watch the whole damn thing.
• Did they skip Eminem’s song? Or did we fast-forward over that?
• Whatever induces actors to participate in the roundup of former Oscar winners? Do they get special goodie bags or something?
• “I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The one word they didn’t change was on page 87.”
• Trust me, no screenwriters are sitting around debating which is more difficult, an original screenplay or an adaptation. They’re much more concerned about free rewrites and the possessory credit.
• Well, I missed that one. But I’ve been saying that all night, so who cares. I didn’t have money on this.
• Wow! Pedro Almodovar! No sop to My Big Fat Greek Wedding! Well, good for him. And good that the Academy is branching out a little.
• How stoned was Harrison Ford?
• ROMAN POLANSKI? Oh, that wacky, wacky Academy. And two major awards for The Pianist. Very surprising.
• You realize this means Michael Douglas can’t scream, “But I’m the one with the Oscar!” in fights any more?

Last night Darin, Mary, Mike, and I went to hear a Conversation with William Goldman at the Egyptian Theater, down in Hollywood. It was entertaining, except for one deadly detail: the seats in the orchestra section of the Egyptian are tilted backward so you’re looking up at the stage. You end up leaning backward to get comfortable…and if you’re at all sleepy, you might just nod off. Both Mary and I were fighting it the whole way through the evening.

Goldman obviously knows how to spin a good story, even when he was telling stories I already knew (because they were almost verbatim from one of his books—Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?). The funniest one was in response to a question about getting “notes,” which are the comments development execs give everyone—including William Goldman—on scripts. He told a story about working on the script for Maverick, in which he got the note, “We’d like the script to be funnier and more exciting.” To which Goldman said, “Fuck you! I’d like it to be funnier and more exciting too. Tell me how.”

One maxim he repeated a few times was, “The second you think you know what you’re doing, you’re finished.” The funny-strange thing about Goldman (as opposed to funny-ha ha) is how amazingly insecure he says he is. He’s a writer, I guess writers are insecure, but…wouldn’t you think William Goldman might think he has a handle on what he’s doing by now? I mean, the guy’s synonymous with the word “screenwriter.”

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A week or so ago—time passage is not my strong suit these days—Michele and I went to a special panel put on by the Writers Guild of the writers nominated for WGA Awards and Academy Awards, in both the Original and Adapted Screenplay categories.

The lineup they had was great: Steve Zaillian (Gangs of New York), Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz (About A Boy), Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine), Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation), Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), David Hare (The Hours), and Bill Condon (Chicago). And the moderator was Owen Wilson, who is of course a screenwriter when he’s not being a movie star.

The panel was far more entertaining than it was informative, but that’s why you go to these things, to hear the bon mots, not to learn anything.

On working habits:

            CHRIS WEITZ
      I spend a lot of time at Starbucks
      hoping that after this triple
      mocha I'll be ready.
            MICHAEL MOORE
      I spend most of my time trying
      not to get shot...My process is, 
      number one, stay alive, try not
      to get my ass kicked, and deal
      with lawsuits from Dick Clark.
            CHARLIE KAUFMAN
      Talking into a tape recorder is
      a little more cinematic than the
      real thing I do, which is nothing.

On Bowling For Columbine:

            DAVID HARE
      I was lucky enough to see Michael's
      film in Paris --
            OWEN WILSON
      -- I saw it in Hawaii --
   Audience LAUGHS.
            DAVID HARE
      Ah. Ideological laughter. I understand
      US-French relations are at a low
      and Michael's film did very 
      little to heal that.

On various aspects of writing:

            CHARLIE KAUFMAN
      I had a two hundred-and-sixty page 
      draft. But I didn't turn that in.
      I'm not that ballsy.
            DAVID HARE
      Directors are protective of their
      genius because, I think, they're 
      not quite convinced it's a real job.
            MICHAEL MOORE
      The best ideas come from someone 
      saying, "Let's get a Star Map."
            STEVE ZAILLIAN
      I enjoy the part before I've
      started and I imagine it's going
      to be great.
            BILL CONDON
      Be on to the next one as you're
      finishing the current one.

I also get inspired by panels like this or like the one with Goldman last night. Because, you know, these people have made a career of screenwriting, they’ve reached the high points of their profession (and, undoubtedly, the low points) and they’re still going.

And it’s been extremely inspirational to have Mary here too. She has two little kids, she lives in Seattle, and she’s a working screenwriter. She sold a pitch without ever having sold a script, and she’s got a juggernaut going during this visit as well. Seeing how she’s approached developing her pitches and ideas has taught me a lot, in ways that just hearing about it at USC never did. (One major complaint about USC: not enough practical information, like “how to pitch.”)

Good movie? No. Funny? In places. Charming? Pretty much. Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan go to England for some reason or other—yadda yadda Chinese Imperial seal yadda yadda becoming the English king yadda yadda Strangers on a Train meets Laurel and Hardy yadda—and the movie manages to hit every quasi-Victorian cliché, up to and including hanging off of Big Ben.

Aidan Gillen, as the British bad guy who would be king, is the sneering genetic splicing of Jeremy Northam and a generic Baldwin brother; Donnie Yen plays the Chinese bad guy who would be emperor. They do stuff to further one another’s evil ambitions; Jackie and Owen foil them. You really don’t need to know the plot. Trust me, in a movie where the plot involves a pillow fight with whores in a Whitechapel bordello as part of a male bonding ritual, you don’t need to know the plot. Just go and enjoy the jokes.

I had a good time. Shanghai Knights is a B-movie and should be treated as such.

§

The absolutely hilarious thing about the movie wasn’t the movie, it was the teenagers in the audience behind us. They clapped excitedly at all the right places (“Ooh, they got the bad guy! Yay!”), and the girls squealed when Owen Wilson and the chick kissed. No, I’m not kidding.