Tag: palm springs international film festival

If you want to understand Hollywood, you have to understand its awards season. And if you want to understand its awards season, there are few events that better encapsulate all of its elements — among them showmanship, glamour, desperation and strategy — than the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s annual Awards Gala, the most recent edition of which took place on Saturday night.

The event is always held shortly after New Year’s Day in the cavernous Palm Springs Convention Center, with some 2,400 guests spread across 212 tables in front of a giant stage backed by three huge screens; a chipper TV personality serving as emcee (usually Mary Hart, but this year Nischelle Turner); and a constant din of disrespectful chatter and clanking throughout a three-hour ceremony, during which some 12 prenegotiated awards (“We want you to show up, so if you show up we’ll give you an award”) are accepted by Oscar hopefuls.

The Oscar hopefuls in the room — the people accepting the awards and also, more often than not, the people who they have asked to present them with the awards — do not trek three hours from Los Angeles out to the desert because it’s a beautiful place (although it certainly is). They don’t come for a free meal (although they receive one — beef, potatoes and veggies this year). And in some cases, they don’t even come because they want to be there (it’s a long ceremony, plus many of them have to rush back as soon as the show — or at least their portion of it — is over in order to be back in L.A. for other obligations, such as Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards).

Rather, they come because several hundred members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — also known as Oscar voters — have a home or second home or third home in the Coachella Valley, and quite a few of them attend the Awards Gala (or read coverage of it locally), and the Awards Gala takes place just days before voting to determine Oscar nominations commences (Jan. 12-16 this year).

In other words, someone who would like an Oscar nomination — and who wouldn’t? — would be silly not to.

And if you’re going to bother to show up to accept an award, the Oscar hopefuls — and the awards strategists behind their Oscar campaigns — reason, then why not make the very most of it?

Doing so entails, among other things, securing someone cool to present the award (often another person associated with and in Oscar contention for the same movie as the honoree); preparing a compelling montage that will make an Oscar voter want to vote for the honoree (or at least prioritize checking out the honoree’s film, one of hundreds available for their consideration); and scripting a speech, for the presenter and honoree, that will underscore the personal narrative of the Oscar hopeful (as in, the reasons to be impressed by that person — they don’t call it a “campaign” for nothing).

The purpose of this column is to assess which of this year’s Awards Gala honorees most achieved those aims. Here are my picks.

1. Hamnet

I think that everyone who was in the room — including rival Oscar hopefuls — would agree that the biggest “winner” of the night was Focus Features’ primary contender. It did not receive the most prestigious-sounding honor, but it did receive one (the Vanguard Award) that was shared by all of its principal talent (co-writer/director Chloé Zhao and stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal).

Even more importantly, it landed the rare sort of presenter who is even better than someone who worked with the honoree(s): a living legend who organically loved the film enough to schlep out to Palm Springs to endorse it, namely 88-year-old Jane Fonda.

After coming on stage to a longer standing ovation than any honoree received, Fonda devoted the next several minutes to giving Hamnet the sort of publicity that money cannot buy. She said that, at the urging of her son, she had ventured out to a movie theater to see it, and came away with the following feeling: “This is what film is supposed to be. This is a perfect film, in my opinion. It’s ironic that a film about Shakespeare or about his family has little to do with words; it’s beyond words. If you give yourself over to it, you can feel the scales falling off your heart as you watch. You feel yourself being taken down to bedrock; it’s a primal film that I believe could only have been made by a woman like Chloé… This was a great year for films — there are so many great films this year and so many great performances — but Hamnet is in a world of its own… Everyone in the theater where I was, like me, was sobbing. And I’m sure the others, like me, if you asked why, would not have been able to say. But I was taken somewhere that I have never been before. I feel so proud of being in the business of moviemaking when I see a film like Hamnet. And I am so thrilled and honored to have been asked to come here and honor this movie… a perfect film and a great, great piece of art.”

Fonda was an impossible act to follow, so it was somewhat understandable that after Zhao, Buckley and Mescal came onstage looking a bit stunned at what she had just said, and Buckley and Mescal stepped up to the mic (Zhao did not speak), virtually nobody could hear or understand them (I’m not sure if that was more because of their thick Irish brogue or the iffy sound system).

2. The leading men

Four best actor hopefuls received individual recognition at the Awards Gala — Blue Moon’s Ethan Hawke (Career Achievement Award), Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet (Spotlight Award), Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan (Icon Award – Actor) and One Battle After Another’s Leonardo DiCaprio — and each knocked it out of the park in different ways.

Hawke and his backers had a real sales job on their hands. After all, he’s an Oscar hopeful for a tiny indie in which he plays Lorenz Hart, the late songwriter who is not exactly a household name these days (having been dead since 1943), and while everyone who sees the film is blown away by Hawke’s performance, it’s not easy to get them in the door (or even to hit “play” on the streaming app that enables Academy members to watch every contender from the comfort of their home).

But the career-encompassing montage that followed Mahershala Ali’s introduction of Hawke and that preceded Hawke’s acceptance offered a reminder of just how long this guy has been around and just how great he has been in so many different sorts of films, from 1989’s Dead Poets Society to 2001’s Training Day to the Before trilogy (1995-2013). And that, along with a particularly eloquent speech by Hawke that name-checked past collaborators, including the late River Phoenix to Sidney Lumet, as people who “will always be a part of me,” may well have been enough to titillate a reluctant voter into taking a chance on Hawke’s latest offering.

Chalamet returned to the Awards Gala for the fourth time in a decade — having previously received the Rising Star Award – Actor for Call Me by Your Name in 2018, the Spotlight Award for Beautiful Boy in 2019 and the Chairman’s Award for A Complete Unknown just last year — and gave soft-spoken and thoughtful remarks. He devoted much of his time to talking up his film’s co-writer/director Josh Safdie, who had introduced him, and whose best director Oscar nomination prospects are more on-the-bubble than Chalamet’s best actor nomination prospects. It was savvy and effective.

As for Jordan, both his presenter, Colman Domingo, and his montage, hammered home what a challenge it was for the actor to have to play twins in Sinners. In the montage, Jordan’s film’s writer/director, Ryan Coogler, who has cast Jordan in every one of his films, declared, “I feel this is his best work.” When Jordan accepted his honor, he also radiated humility — even offering prayers to an attendee who had just been taken out of the venue by paramedics — and explained that his film, which some might dismiss as a zombie movie, was actually deeply serious and personal to him, as prior generations of his own family had lived through the Jim Crow era in the same part of the country in which the film takes place. “This is my tribute to their courage,” he said.

And then there was DiCaprio. When it came time for his award, the audience was audibly bummed to learn that he had not, in fact, been able to make it to the event. (Reports suggest that a no-fly-zone around Venezuela following the American operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro on Saturday morning — which nobody mentioned during the Awards Gala — prevented DiCaprio from flying to Palm Springs from his holiday vacation in St Barth’s.)

But DiCaprio’s costars, Chase Infiniti and Teyana Taylor, came out and charmingly delivered highly complimentary remarks about him. A very well-done montage reminded people of just how good he has been in so many films over so long a period of time. And then unspooled a video that DiCaprio had recorded earlier in the day, which included an apology for his absence and a powerful defense of the theatrical moviegoing experience of the sort provided by One Battle After Another. By the end of it all, DiCaprio had turned a potential backlash into a real boon for his cause.

3. Adam Sandler

The Sandman, who was feted with the Chairman’s Award for his career-best supporting turn in Jay Kelly, has a bit of a dilemma on his hands when it comes to awards season: he is primarily known for his comedies, which are so silly but beloved that they often cause people to overlook just how good he is in dramas or dramedies like Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Uncut Gems and Hustle. As a result, I believe, he has never received an Oscar nomination, and is in danger of being overlooked yet again for Jay Kelly.

But his costar Laura Dern, in presenting him with his award, very effectively argued that he should be appreciated for his work on both sides of the ledger. She asserted that he “has made the world more joyful.” But she also spoke about his “total fearlessness and absolute sincerity” in his dramatic work, and how, during Jay Kelly, she — an Oscar winner who has worked with so many revered actors and actresses — experienced something that she always hopes for but rarely finds when making films, which is to look into a costar’s eyes during a scene and totally believe them.

Sandler then proceeded to give an absolutely hilarious acceptance speech, discussing, among other things, his penis, which he claims can glow in the dark, and imagining what his life would have looked like if his acting career had not taken off and he had gone to work for his father, an electrical contractor. One would expect no less from him, but one also can’t help but wonder if such an approach slightly undercuts Dern’s argument that he should be taken seriously! Alas, one can ask the man to put on a suit and tie for an Awards Gala, as he did, but not to fully pretend to be someone who he is not, at least in real life. And for that he deserves respect too.

The Palm Springs International Film Festival, which kicks off Friday and runs through Jan. 12, has become an increasingly important stop on the film awards season circuit — to the point that much of the industry now cuts short its holiday break in order to rush to the Coachella Valley right after New Year’s Day.

Palm Springs, which is about a three-hour drive east of L.A., is believed to be home — or second home — to hundreds of members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (The Academy does not share exact statistics.) But the number of Oscar voters in town explodes each year once the fest kicks off, as hordes of actors, directors, writers, songwriters, executives, publicists and others descend on the city, which normally has a population of less than 45,000.

A centerpiece of the fest is its awards gala, a black-tie dinner ceremony at which a dozen honors are bestowed upon high-profile Oscar contenders (often by other high-profile Oscar contenders on behalf of the fest), who tend to accept with scripted stump speeches featuring talking points aimed at the many Academy members spread among the locals at the 212 tables seating 2,400 guests in the cavernous Palm Springs Convention Center.

This year’s roster of honorees includes A-listers like Timothée Chalamet, Miley Cyrus, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Hudson, Adam Sandler, Rose Byrne, Michael B. Jordan, Amanda Seyfried and Ethan Hawke, as well as the filmmakers and casts of Frankenstein, Hamnet and Sentimental Value.

For some — like Hawke, the star of a lower-profile indie gem called Blue Moon, in which he plays the late composer Lorenz Hart — the reason for showing up is surely to try to convince Academy members to prioritize watching their film before Oscar nomination voting (Jan. 12-16); after all, voters presumably won’t vote for something they haven’t seen. For others, it’s largely about optics; when some voters see someone like, say, Sandler accepting an award, it becomes easier to imagine that person as being worthy of their own vote.

For similar reasons, many of the talent in town for the awards gala also arrive a day early or stay a day late in order to participate in post-screening Q&As — for instance, on Saturday, I will moderate a convo after a showing of One Battle After Another with the film’s trio of principal actresses, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall.

Interestingly, the fest’s impact may be felt most of all in an area that includes precious few household names: the best international feature Oscar race. Because the fest takes place in early January, shortly after the announcement of that category’s Oscar shortlist of 15 titles (that came on Dec. 16), but shortly before Academy members whittle down that list to five nominees, it is a crucially important time for those films — and their filmmakers — to be visible to voters.

The fest’s screening lineup is locked in place before the shortlist announcement, but its programmers make a point of securing dozens of top non-English-language titles in their lineup. As a result, all 15 of this year’s shortlisted films were already set to screen at the fest before the shortlist was announced.

A related highlight of the fest each year, which also reaches voters both in-person and via recording, is the THR-moderated Best International Feature Film Panel, which this year will take place on Jan. 7. THR’s Kevin Cassidy and Mia Galuppo will interview the directors of 13 of the 15 shortlisted titles: All That’s Left of You, Belén, Homebound, It Was Just an Accident, Kokuho, Late Shift, Left-Handed Girl, Palestine 36, The President’s Cake, Sentimental Value, Sirat, Sound of Falling and The Voice of Hind Rajab. (The director of another, No Other Choice’s Park Chan-Wook, cannot make it on the 7th, but is at the fest today.)

One sad note about this year’s edition of the fest: It will be the first since the death last September of Harold Matzner, the gregarious businessman and philanthropist who helped to put the fest on the map. PSIFF was launched in 1990, but struggled during its first decade. In 2000, Matzner, a larger-than-life local known as “Mr. Palm Springs,” became the chair of the fest’s board, a capacity in which he served until 2023. Through his generosity (he personally donated $12 million to the fest) and showmanship (among other things, he lured top talent and also recruited Mary Hart to emcee the awards gala), he turned it into a world-class event.

The fest is now capably overseen by Nachhattar Singh Chandi, another successful businessman and longtime local who had served on the fest’s board under Matzner, with pivotal assistance from the fest’s longtime publicist and tireless champion Steven Wilson of Scenario PR.