- guardian.co.uk, Friday March 17 2000 01.58 GMT
- The Guardian, Friday March 17 2000
Sunday week is Oscar night, an evening for long, stupid speeches, long, stupid dresses and short, ugly film producers. How should one get through Sunday night's ludicrous but somehow compelling farce? Judicious use of your telly's off switch and an early night, you may well be suggesting? Just a little more enthusiasm, if you don't mind.
Hollywood producer Julia Phillips recommends a careful blend of stimulants and depressants to make the evening tolerable, which makes good sense if Gwyneth Paltrow gets near the podium with a speech in her hand.
In her memoir You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town again, Phillips described the cocktail that got her in the right mood for the evening in 1973 when her film The Sting was nominated: "a diet pill, a small amount of coke, two joints, six halves of Valium, which makes three, and a glass-and-a-half of wine."
If the drugs don't work, though, try the Friday Review's guide to the Oscars past and, in a very real sense, present. It will get you in the right frame of mind and answers all the vital questions. Just how syntactically challenged is Tom Hanks? Who the hell was Sacheen Littlefeather and what did she want?
