If you think the Oscar telecast is weird (or worse ), you should get a load of the scene backstage. Melissa Leo thanked Kirk Douglas for dragging out the suspense! A winner gave a shout-out to James Franco for bravery! And Christian Bale? He used his Terminator meltdown to conjure compassion.
Some of the interview-room doings at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards:
7 p.m. PT: Here's a twist: Bale has a question for the press. He meant to thank his Fighter costars in his acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor. "Did I mention them?" he asks. When told that, yes, he did, he's pleased. ("Good.")
- Bale isn't judging Leo, his Fighter mom, for dropping the F-bomb. "I've laid down many of them myself," he says, scratching his head and getting a laugh as his Terminator meltdown echoes in our heads. " I've laid down many of them myself before so I think I know what it was about."
- A reporter, apparently unfamiliar with the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, asks Bale if his new status as an Oscar winner means "no more Batman." Bale assures him that after his current film wraps, he's "straight into Batman--so much more Batman."
- Hope you liked seeing the emaciated Bale of The Mechanic, because while he's not done with Batman he's sounds done with getting emaciated for a role. "I don't have the mentality I did even just a few years back when I thought I was invincible," he says.
- By the by, Leo couldn't thank Bale to his face during her acceptance speech because she couldn't find him. Bale had gone out into the lobby not realizing he wouldn't be able to get back in until a commercial break. "I was literally banking on the doors, saying, 'Let me in,' " he says.
- The official Oscar transcript of Leo's acceptance speech has arrived--and, like the broadcast, it's been sanitized for our protection. Here's how Leo's speech looks on paper, per the Academy: "When I watched Kate two years ago, it looked so [EXPLETIVE DELETED]."
- Like I said, I can't read lips, but I'm pretty positive Leo didn't say "expletive deleted."
- Not sure how he looked on the telecast, but back here Toy Story 3 winner Lee Unkrich looks an awful lot like Ed Helms.
- Boy, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg must be ticked that The Social Network is having a good night, huh? Aaron Sorkin isn't be so sure. "I think he's been an extremely good sport," the Adapted Screenplay winner says.
5:45 p.m.: Well, I can read lips probably about as well as you, so I make out some of what Leo says during her Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech, but I don't hear the unedited R-rated version: The audio on our TV feed was dropped out just the same as yours at home.
- When Leo arrives back here, our own Ted Casablanca is the first to congratulate her for dropping the F-bomb. Leo is not quite chagrined, but definitely not proud of the moment, either. "I had no idea. I have no words," she says. "I apologize to anyone [I offended]...That is part of the English language that is part of my vernacular. It was probably a very inappropriate [place for it]."
- Here's what I really wanted to know: Did Leo appreciate Douglas taking his own sweet ninetysomething time to announce her category? Surprisingly, I think, she did. "He's an old actor, [and] he was doing us this huge favor," she says. "The longer he strung it out, the calmer I got to be...He sturng it out in a rather delightful way for me."
- What was that thing Robert Stromberg, the art-direction winner from Alice in Wonderland, put on top of his Oscar during his acceptance speech? "A little mad-hatter's hat," he tells me, then asks, "Could you not see it?" (Um, not really. Although it shows up much better in person--and, yes, his Oscar was still wearing its Lewis Carroll chapeau back here.)
- Wally Pfister, the cinematography winner for Inception, was doing his press conference when Franco's Marilyn Monroe number stopped him cold: "James Franco's in drag right now? Wow? Gutsy."
- Did you think it odd that Pfister wore his glasses on the top of his head during his big TV moment? I think it's weirder he wears them regular-style while kicking back back here.
- One point for you if you guessed Pfister was making a statement by thanking his "union" crew on the telecast. "I think what's going on in Wisconsin right now is madness," he says.
- A preview of tonight's reviews from the mainstream press? There weren't a lot of laughs for Franco's and Anne Hathaway's opening.