It has been a good run of late for the celebrity political activist. Barack Obama — who enjoyed high-wattage support and Web video paeans from most of the Hollywood A-list — made it to the White House. And just this month, judges at the International Criminal Court decided to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Bashir, a victory of sorts for Hollywood Darfur crusaders George Clooney and Don Cheadle. So what red-carpet manifestos or acceptance-speech politicking are we in for this Oscar?
Well, it could be kind of a lean year.
“I think it will be toned down politically because their guy won,” says Jim Piazza, co-author of “The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History.” “They won’t want to have a lot of Bush-bashing because that’s over with.” Piazza predicts that if Sean Penn takes home an award for his portrayal of Harvey Milk, he is likely to make a statement about California’s Proposition 8. But other than that, no real fireworks. At least nothing that approaches this random sampling of the politics of Oscars past:
1973: A woman known as Sacheen Littlefeather, clad in traditional Native American dress, came onstage to “refuse” Marlon Brando’s Best Actor award for “The Godfather.” On his behalf, she called the motion picture industry “as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character.” Littlefeather herself, it was eventually reported, was actually an aspiring actress named Maria Cruz.
“Clint Eastwood got up afterward and said he didn’t know if he should accept the following award on behalf of all the cowboys shot in John Wayne Westerns over the years,” says Piazza.
1978: Accepting the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Julia,” Vanessa Redgrave confronted the controversy over her support for Palestinian causes, commending the Academy for refusing “to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”
1993: Presenting the award for Best Art Direction, Richard Gere went a little off-script. “I was wondering if something miraculous and really kind of movielike could happen here, where we could all kind of send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping now in Beijing that he will take his troops and take the Chinese Army away from Tibet and allow these people to live as free, independent people again.”
2003: Michael Moore’s Best Documentary Feature acceptance speech railed against “fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president” and climaxed, amid somewhat high-volume heckling, with: “Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you!”
2006: The best justification for blending Oscar night glitz with earnest political pronouncements was offered by Clooney. When he accepted a supporting actor award for “Syriana,” the star rose in defense of Hollywood’s collective political sensibilities.
“We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while ... We are the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this academy. Proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.”
