LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — I always wince when people try to "explain" an Oscar with one simple reason. No one knows how the Academy votes. We don't even know if a given winner made it by one vote or if it was unanimous. Somehow though, you hear these pat rationales that presume everyone who voted had the same thing on their mind…and that it wasn't a matter of voting for what they thought was the best work. Going into this ceremony, we heard that Sean Penn would win because he had a body of fine work behind him so it was "his turn." We also heard that Bill Murray would win because Penn's politics or personal style had alienated some voters. Those are wonderful theories and of course, no one can ever prove them right or wrong. But isn't it possible that the guy who won just had more voters who thought he gave the best performance? And it could have been only one more than the second-place finisher.
Best Actor, Sean Penn. Okay, I'll be fifteen out of nineteen. I predicted Murray almost as a whim. And I can't help remember years ago when I heard an NBC exec saying how foolish it was to put the guy on Saturday Night Live because he had such bad skin, and you can't be a TV star (never mind, a movie star) with bad skin.
Penn's line about "no WMDs" seemed a bit gratuitous but he otherwise gave a good speech if only because it didn't sound written and wasn't a list of agents and lawyers.