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THE ACADEMY AWARDS are tomorrow night and while there are many cinematic things to look out for, the potential for controversy is always around the corner too.
This controversy may be in the form of an actor not getting their dues, known in the parlance as being snubbed, or it may be something more unexpected, like an A-list audience member hitting the host (which is still pretty incredible every time you watch it but is unlikely to be repeated).
There’s also the question of who may ‘get political’ on the night, something which is nigh on impossible to ignore these days.
So to prepare you for whatever drama might unfold, here’s a quick rundown of the potential flashpoints and controversies heading into the ceremony.
The “known unknowns”, as a controversial wartime politician once said.
The Iran war
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or have been watching nothing but awards season movies of late, the United States is currently at war.
While US president Donald Trump might prefer to call it an ‘excursion’, the fact that the literal Secreary of War is comparing what’s happening to World War 2 suggests the word is appropriate.
What is undeniable is that a lot of people are dying. The vast majority of them in Iran, a number already into the thousands, with the number of US military personnel dying also increasing.
That’s before you even get into the horror of scores of schoolgirls being bombed to death at the start of the school week by what looks like an American bomb.
Speaking about glitzy awards and expensive dresses looks pretty crass by comparison but this is what will happen, and the Academy is aware that there is the potential for the reality to seep into the gaiety of the awards bash.
Last week, organisers were apparently scrambling to develop a back-up plan to the usual red carpet portion of the evening, just in case it seemed all a little frivolous in the context.
This week there was the more eyebrow-raising concern about the potential for a drone attack by Iran on Hollywood itself.
The concern was sparked by an unverified tip from the FBI to police in California that the west coast of the US might be at risk from a drone attack via a vessel at sea.
Even though the report has been somewhat rubbished by security experts and the FBI has distanced itself from it, the Academy has confirmed that it is taking additional security measures.
Might the war be an issue in a far less dramatic way? Yes, potentially.
There are three Iranian filmmakers nominated for Oscars this Sunday in three different categories.
Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident is nominated in two categories, Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay. The film’s plot is about political prisoners in Iran and it was filmed without the official permission of Iranian authorities.
Panahi himself has been jailed on a number of occasions, so should he win, it will absolutely be worth watching to see what he says on stage.
The other Iranian nominees are Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni who are nominated in the Best Documentary category for their film Cutting Through Rocks.
The documentary tells the story of Sara Shahverdi — a divorced, motorcycle-riding, former midwife who becomes first elected councilwoman of her deeply conservative Iranian village.
It is the first Oscar nomination for an Iranian documentary.
Of course, it need not be an Iranian winner who speaks about the war.
There have been some parallels made this week to the 2003 Oscars ceremony, which took place on the eve of the Iraq War.
Hollywood newspaper Variety looked back at that ceremony this week, telling the story of how Jack Nicholson even wanted to organise a boycott of the event by the Best Actor nominees, of which he was one.
The boycott didn’t materialise, but that ceremony did give us one of the most famous Academy Awards speeches of recent decades when Michael Moore won for Bowling for Columbine.
His anti-war, anti-George Bush speech on the eve of the Iraq War didn’t go down too well in the room and was roundly booed. How times have changed.
The shadow of Gaza
There are a number of nominations that give rise to the potential of the slaughter in Gaza being raised.
Readers might remember last year that Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film for No Other Land.
The film gives an account of life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and captures the destruction of the area of Masafer Yatta and the struggles of those living there.
In a cruel echo of the film, one of the people who helped make it, Palestinian teacher and activist Awdah Hathaleen was shot and killed by a fundamentalist Israeli settler only months after last year’s Oscars ceremony.
There will likely be pressure on the Academy to reference his killing, if not in the annual In Memoriam section then perhaps in some other way. If he’s not mentioned at all there will likely be some questions about this.
The focus comes after the Academy was criticised last year for not supporting by name Oscar-winner Hamdan Ballal, who was detained by Israeli settlers a matter of weeks after he had been on stage to accept the Oscar for No Other Land.
The Academy initially responded to the incident but did not refer to Ballal directly, prompting rebuke from some of Hollywood’s most outspoken stars, including Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem, Olivia Colman, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Thompson, Penélope Cruz and Richard Gere.
A true life Gaza-inspired film is among those nominated for an Oscar this year.
The Voice of Hind Rajab by French-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben is up for Best International Feature and is about the real-life killing of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab by Israeli forces while her family was trying to evacuate from Gaza.
The film incorporates real audio from Hind’s call to Red Crescent emergency workers.
One of the film’s main actors is Motaz Malhees, who plays a call operator taking the call, and the actor wrote on Instagram this week that he is unable to be there due to Trump’s travel ban on Palestine.
“I am not allowed to enter the United States because of my Palestinian citizenship,” he wrote, adding:
It hurts. But here is the truth. You can block a passport. You cannot block a voice.
Trump tuning in
The world is in such a perilous place at the moment that it seems almost quaint that, during Donald Trump’s first term, his personal hatred of the Oscars and his tweets about the show were news in itself.
There’s also been a bit of a running theme of the host mentioning Trump either by name or indirectly in recent years.
Jimmy Kimmel famously tweeted at Trump live on stage in 2017, whereas last year’s host Nikki Glaser needled the celebrity audience about being able to do anything “except tell the country who to vote for”.
The joke landed well at the time but a year into Trump 2.0 there’s certainly a sense the jokes are wearing a bit thin. At January’s Golden Globes the ‘Be Good’ pin worn by some attendees in memory of Renée Good probably got the tone right.
That pin remembered mother-of-three Reneé Good who was shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis – and since that awards show we’ve had the shooting dead of Alex Pretti in the same city.
It would be a surprise if the lethal immigration crackdown by the Trump administration was not mentioned on the night by anyone.
I don’t want no snubs
Aside from the politics, the traditional controversy around the Oscars usually comes from who actually does, or more importantly does not, win the awards.
There are a few potential controversies around snubs this year, but the main one revolves around the film that has the most nominations tomorrow night.
Sinners goes into awards show with 16 nominations, an all-time record for a film on Oscars night.
The vampire-inspired period film is a musical too, and among its 16 nominations are nods for Best Film, Best Director for Ryan Coogler, Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan and Best Supporting Actor for Delroy Lido.
The film features a majority Black cast and, if it were to be overlooked across a whole range of categories, this would likely provoke some backlash.
This year represents ten years since the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that forced the Academy to diversify its voting members. Since then there has been an uptick in the number of nominees from different backgrounds but the haul of Sinners nominations will be another test of the changes that were made.
A number of incidents have brought this into additional focus. One was the results of the Golden Globes, which saw Sinners nominated for seven awards and only winning two.
The actual number was less of an issue than the calibre of the wins, with wins only for Best Score and the much-derided and zeitgeist-tapping Box Office Achievement award.
The second issue that has fuelled the fire of potential Sinners controversy is the recent Bafta Awards.
The Baftas reached full scandal territory amid the fallout from the racial slur shouted aloud as Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented an award together.
The word was shouted by Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson, who later said he was “deeply mortified” by the whole incident.
Bafta has apologised for what happened but what’s been noticeable in the aftermath is how Hollywood has rallied around the two actors.
Michael B Jordan received a standing ovation as he took home the Best Actor award at the recent Actor Awards, significantly boosting his Oscar chances.
Any other titbits?
Well, we may as well mention a couple of the less important controversies that we’ve seen jump out ahead of the Oscars.
The first of course being our own Jessie Buckley, who has swept all the awards she’s been nominated for in the run-up to what’s hoped is Ireland’s first-ever Best Actress gong.
Buckley, however, was last week forced into a hurried (or furried?) clarification of her views on cats, after telling a podcast chat that she had asked her husband to get rid of his pedigree cat after it took a dislike to her.
Buckley went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and took it upon herself to clarify “to the cat lovers of the world” that she indeed “loves cats”.
As some had pointed out, the controversy broke on the final day of voting for Oscar members, so it was hopefully too late to have any meaningful impact.
Another case of an actor putting their foot in their mouth is Best Actor nominee Timothee Chalamet.
The 30-year-old Chalamet already has a glittering career but has yet to win an Oscar himself. He’s been at the centre of controversy this week and last after he said in a chat on CNN that ”no-one cares” about ballet or opera any more.
Even though he followed it up with, “all respect to the ballet and opera people out there,” the off-the-cuff remark has been used to haul him over the coals of opprobrium.
“He’s an absolute fool,” theatre critic and arts broadcaster Ian Brown earnestly told BBC Radio over the weekend.
One suspects it won’t be the thing that makes or breaks Chalamet’s Oscar chances, but there’s a fair chance host Conan O’Brien will give it a mention in his opening monologue.
One to watch for along with all the unexpected tomorrow evening.
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