A Few Words About the Oscars
Plus, a chat with "Damsel" author Evelyn Skye about writing through rejection and conquering her first red carpet.
Hello friends and new subscribers!
Welcome to another edition of You’ve Got Mail: The Newsletter. Did you watch the Oscars on Sunday night? I did and enjoyed them for the most part. I thought Jimmy Kimmel ran a tight ship and kept things moving like the seasoned pro that he is. The production values were high, from the warm gold lighting to the stage that appeared larger than life. The broadcast managed to feel formal yet also unstuffy — the awards show equivalent of Emma Stone’s acceptance speech. Mortified, Stone turned her back to the camera and revealed that her mint-green Vuitton gown had come unzipped. “I think it happened during ‘I’m Just Ken,’” she said.
I’m a journalist by trade and am never not taking notes. I take notes about taking notes. And now, I have a notebook half-filled with scattered thoughts and observations about the show. I am also an editor by trade and am never not tinkering with my words before I publish them. If I worked in the film industry, that would be my job: Editor. I’d sit in a darkened room for hours, editing scenes for clarity and coherence and narrative tempo. When Oppenheimer’s editor, Jennifer Lame, won her Oscar, giving off English-major energy, I raised my Diet Coke in solidarity. Behind every Great Man™ is often a Great Female Editor™ making sense of his artistic vision. I don’t know the real scoop, but I am pretending that Lame tried to cut the awkward sex scenes from Oppenheimer only to get major pushback.
Moving on! Here’s the Cliffs Notes of my notes, edited and condensed:
In his monologue, Kimmel directed attention to Bradley Cooper’s iconic mother, Gloria Campano, sitting beside her A-list son and looking like the Saturday Night Live character that Cheri Oteri never played. She wore big blue glasses, bright pink lipstick and a brassy soccer-mom bob. She seems like the kind of gal who will leave a lasagna on your doorstep for no reason whatsoever. Every few years, Cooper takes her to the Academy Awards. Kimmel noticed, joking “how many times can one bring his mom as his date before he is actually dating his mom?”
Sandra Hüller was another good sport when Kimmel introduced the Best Actress nominee to viewers back home who might not have seen her extraordinary work in the dramas Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, both nominated for Best Picture. “In Sandra’s native Germany, they’re called rom-coms,” he cracked.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Supporting Actress victory speech brought tears to my eyes, especially the line: "For so long, I've always wanted to be different, and now I realize I just need to be myself.” (Quote of the night — I mean, put that on a T-shirt. Or a Post-It note on the wall in Drew Barrymore’s meditation room. It’s my new mantra.) Then the camera panned to Paul Giamatti, her Holdovers co-star, crying like the rest of us. A perfect moment. And a well-deserved win for Randolph’s sublime performance in The Holdovers, one of those movies that shows up from time to time, parks itself inside my heart and stays there awhile.
Producers resurrected a format for introducing acting awards in which past winners lavish praise upon each nominee, one-by-one. Some people would call this exercise overly pompous and indulgent — yet another instance of Hollywood patting itself on the back. I tune out those people. I want more of these theatrics and I’m not alone. Real fans want to see Jamie Lee Curtis praise Jodie Foster’s gravitas, or Nicolas Cage bond with Giamatti over their shared commitment to The Craft. The latter wore a contact in only one eye while filming The Holdovers, intentionally blurring his vision. “Would I have done that? Hell yes,” Cage said. “But the point is, you did do it, Paul! And you were brilliant.” Good stuff, good stuff. I hope the Academy makes these mini-speeches tradition.
I liked what American Fiction writer-director Cord Jefferson had to say after winning Best Adapted Screenplay. “I understand that this is a risk-averse industry, I get it,” pleaded Jefferson, who shot his acclaimed film in 26 days on a low budget. “But $200 million movies are also a risk. And it doesn’t always work out, but you take the risk anyway. Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies. Or 50 $4 million movies.” Yes. Hollywood, please give me $10 million to pay Delia Ephron (Nora’s sister-collaborator) to write and direct a sequel to You’ve Got Mail.
My phone blew up when John Mulaney presented the award for Best Sound (winner: The Zone of Interest) and used his three minutes in the spotlight to test new comic material. His appearance felt like a very successful audition to be next year’s host. "Without sound, we wouldn't have been able to hear such classic lines as 'You're gonna need a bigger boat,' 'I'll have what she's having' and 'He was in the Amazon with my mother when she was researching spiders just before she died,’” he said, nodding to a much-mocked bit of dialogue from the Madame Web trailer. Then Mulaney described the plot of Field of Dreams — the second-best baseball movie of all time — and confessed that he, like me, thought The Boat Rocker was a real book up until his twenties. (He somehow neglected to mention the seismic news that his artist ex-wife Anna Marie Tendler will soon publish a hotly anticipated memoir in which he likely plays the villain. Eek!)
I am happy for Emma Stone … but bummed for Lily Gladstone, a revelation in Killers of the Flower Moon. I assumed she had Best Actress in the bag, given all the buzz and momentum surrounding her. She would’ve made history as the first Native American Oscar winner. But Gladstone has so much talent and a long, fulfilling career ahead of her. I’m excited to see what she does next.
About mid-way through the telecast, Ryan Gosling served a jolt of visual caffeine. He wore a hot-pink Gucci suit to perform “I’m Just Ken,” a nominated song, with assists from fellow Kens Simu Liu and Ncuti Gatwa and FREAKING SLASH ON GUITAR. The choreography referenced Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Madonna impersonating Marilyn in “Material Girl.” Gosling didn’t play it safe — he did Barbie justice. The live version of “I’m Just Ken” was pure theater. It was how legends are born and made. It was the Kenergy required to boost ratings and drive conversation; Kenergy isn’t serious enough to win Oscars, but it sure knows how to put on a show. As I proclaimed on Instagram Stories (where I make all my important public statements): “Gosling, you goof, you have me for life!!!”
In the end, Barbie took home just one Oscar for Best Song (the exquisite “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell). I had read a gazillion thinkpieces on the controversial snubbing of Barbie director Greta Gerwig and lead actress Margot Robbie. Many Extremely Online pundits reveled in Schadenfreude. They are the kind who write humorless, stream-of-conscious screeds about Stanley cups and don’t use proper capitalization. Don’t they know you’re supposed to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence? It’s like they’re an entire generation of Kerouacs. Of all the thinkpieces, the best argument came via Oscar Wars author Michael Schulman, who blamed the snubs on the Academy’s ambivalent attitude toward summer popcorn blockbusters. Voters remain “as confused as ever about what to do with a big, fun, smart, populist megahit,” he wrote in The New Yorker. They are much more comfortable and guilt-free voting for a megahit as sobering as Oppenheimer, which “looks a lot more like a traditional Oscar winner,” Schulman opined. “It’s about a real historical figure; it has obvious gravitas; and it’s made by and about men. In other words, it doesn’t have jokes, and it’s not pink.”
My pick for Best Dressed: Jennifer Lawrence in Dior. Polka dots never go out of style, but they’re a rare occurrence on the red carpet. I like that Lawrence made a bold statement without looking too fussy and “done.”
In her excellent fashion-centric newsletter Back Row, Amy Odell reports that the silk gown took a whopping 1,500 hours to make. Basically, it’s high-maintenance but thinks it’s low-maintenance.
Odell also credits Barbie, “the movie that made Oppenheimer seem fun,” with influencing the Oscars’ lighthearted vibe this year. She writes: “Barbie was always going to lose big. The Oscars may part with air time but they will not part with pretension. But overall, that movie’s success was a great reminder to the entertainment industry that people just want to enjoy themselves, laugh, and turn off their brains sometimes. And the Oscars embodied that very spirit.”
Who needs an Oscar when you’ve got Kenergy?
“Hi, I’m the author of the book”
While we’re on the subject of red carpets, last week the novelist Evelyn Skye told me about her out-of-body experience attending the glitzy premiere of Damsel in New York City. Netflix went all out for the occasion, which feted its new dark fantasy film, a nail-biter that began streaming last Friday. Millie Bobby Brown plays a noblewoman who marries a rich, handsome prince (classic fairytale move), then immediately after the ceremony, he ritually sacrifices her to a dragon. Trapped inside the beast’s cave, she must find a way to survive. Damsel had my full attention; I barely moved (or breathed) during the 90-minute run time. To accompany the film’s release, Netflix asked Evelyn to write a book based on Dan Mazeau’s screenplay. Here’s the badass new paperback cover:
This was Evelyn’s first big showbiz gig — and her first time braving the paparazzi. Her story below:
I had a mini-panic attack two nights before we left for New York. And I was saying to [my husband] Tom, “I don't think I can do this.” And I just felt like I didn't deserve it — this is a Hollywood party. What was I going to be doing there? But then my friend Betsy Franco [children’s book author, mother of Dave and mother-in-law to Alison Brie] told me, “Just go and have fun and talk to whoever you want.” It was simple permission [to] help me relax. And she gave me some lines that I could say — I kind of practiced them as if I were an actor. One of the lines was: “Hi, I'm the author of the book.” That's how frozen my brain was about going to this event. It did not occur to me that I should just introduce myself and say something like, “I am the author of the book,” which is just straight facts. When [Tom and I] picked up our tickets and we got to security, [the gatekeeper] said, “Are you doing the red carpet?” And I just froze. I was like, “Yes.” And then he looked at me [like], “Are you some weirdo off the street who somehow got a ticket? Are you lying about being able to do the red carpet?” And then I channeled Betsy and I said, “I'm the author of the book.” And his eyes changed. He's like, “Follow me.”
The red carpet. It's just nuts. It's absolutely nuts. It's exactly what you see in movies. They're shouting your name. There are just flashes going off everywhere. … Somehow it was like I was possessed by an actual movie star, and I was so confident for those few minutes.
You *might* have heard that “romantasy” — a hybrid of the romance and fantasy genres — is the hottest trend in fiction these days. Long before the hype, Evelyn was a disillusioned lawyer working on a YA novel that she hoped would launch a career in publishing. In that novel, The Crown’s Game, an otherworldly love story staged in 19th-century Russia, she fully harnessed her flair for building vivid worlds and characters, and writing with clear-eyes, full-heart, can’t-lose romanticism. It became a New York Times bestseller. But the road there was not easy. When I spoke with Evelyn, she made a strong case for, well, not giving up:
I am a bullheaded optimist. And I think that belief — that if I just kept going, I would eventually succeed — has really helped propel me through so many rejections. I mean, I wrote eight full manuscripts that never got published, and I was about to quit, but then my friends told me I shouldn't because I'd been getting better and better.
The other thing is, I'm really good at throwing things away or walking away from projects when I think that maybe [a manuscript] is not “the one.” And so that's why I could say, “I have eight manuscripts. I will write them, and I'll revise them, but if I get this gut feeling that it's just not working, I will move on.” … With each manuscript I wrote, I was also studying craft. I was reading. I'm a self-taught fiction writer. I've never taken a creative writing class in my life. I don't have an MFA. I think that anyone who thinks that you need an MFA — that's not necessarily true. I'm hungry to continue learning. And so, I was always trying to make myself a better writer.
When I decided not to quit, I wrote what I like to call my “spite manuscript.” It's, like, spite to the market, spite to everyone who was rejecting me. And I decided, “I'm just going to write something completely for myself.” My undergraduate degree is in Russian literature and Russian history and Imperial Russia in the 1800s — my favorite time period of Russian literature. … Tolstoy. Dostoevsky. I [was] all over their work, and I wanted to recreate that gorgeous sense of Imperial Russia … with the opulence in Saint Petersburg and beautiful architecture and the French balls and the aristocracy all spoke French at the time. Most of them didn't even know how to speak Russian or spoke it really badly. They wanted so badly to be cultured and French.
I also wanted to put in magic, but it would be beautiful and kind magic. It's not just lots of flash-bang kind of fantasy, and there were no dragons — although ironically, I later wrote a dragon book. So, I'm writing this beautiful, kindness-based magical duel [story] set in a time period that no one cares about. But I think because it was all me — and I loved it so, so much — that somehow it had soul in it.
I got a new agent, and she was able to get a book deal for it right away, and it was a six-figure deal with one of the Big five publishers, HarperCollins. And it was just this insane dream come true. When I look back, I'm like, “I worked for it. I wrote eight other manuscripts before that one.” So that is a really long way to say that I wrote what I wanted to, I put myself into it, and that's the one that actually caught fire.
You can follow Evelyn Skye on Instagram, check out her newsletter and get her self-described “anti-romantasy” Damsel here.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! Get ready to discuss: Lindsay Lohan’s Irish Wish.
Yours in bouquets of newly sharpened pencils,
Erin
And this is why I consider you the best writer on Substack!
Still haven't seen Barbie (I know, I live under a rock!), but thank you for my reminder to Google old Mickey Mouse Club performances with Ryan Gosling 😻