It’s Oscars Time

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NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

The Academy Awards ceremony will be broadcast (ABC) on Sunday, March 27 (8 p.m.). There have been major changes this year. Oscar ceremony viewership has been down in recent years, and ABC successfully leaned on the Academy to virtually drop eight “lesser” categories from the main ceremony.

ABC put a sugary spin on the change. They said fewer “live awards” will allow more time for musical and comedic bits and, overall, reduce the time of the broadcast.

This year, the presentation and acceptance of “lesser” category Oscars will take place an hour before the main ceremony. An edited-for-time tape of the presentation of these Oscars will be worked-into the main, live ceremony broadcast. The “lesser” categories are Documentary Short Subject, Film Editing, Live Action Short Film, Animated Short Film, Make-up and Hairstyling, Original Score, Production Design and Sound.

Dozens of major Hollywood figures, including Steven Spielberg, 75, protested this change. They said it was “demeaning and threatened the future of the Academy.”

This year marks the return of official Oscars’ ceremony host(s). In 2018, the Academy selected comedian Kevin Hart to host, but dropped him when old homophobic tweets of his surfaced. For the last three years, the Academy tried “no host” Oscars awards, and that was a critical and ratings fiasco.

What viewers want is a host or hosts who are funny and can ad lib “funny”

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BY MARIO SANTOR

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when the moment arises. So, it’s great that Amy Schumer, 40, is one of the trio of women who are hosting this year. Joining her are African American comedians Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall.

Schumer is really fast on her feet. Back in 2011, she was an unknown comedian when she “brought down the house” at a Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen. Her prepared material was first-rate. Her ad-libbed “take-downs” of famous people on the Roast dais was deadly and smart. She wasn’t “just” a funny woman. She was great, period.

In my opinion, the Academy shouldn’t ignore diversity, but the paramount hosting criteria should be talent. Talent knows no boundaries — sex, age, country, etc.

It isn’t a great year for Jewish nominees, but I think you’ll be surprised that there are more than reported in articles like this.

The best picture Oscar goes to the film’s principal producers. Ten films are nominated for best film. All the other Oscar categories have five nominees. Three films have a Jewish producer:

Emile Sherman is the (co-producer) of Power of the Dog, a Western set in the 1920s. Sherman, 48, has long been one of the top Australian producers. He won an Oscar (2011) as a producer of The King’s Speech. He produces “tasteful” movies, which makes sense when you learn he has a masters’ degree in literature. Emile was 5 when his family left South Africa for Australia. His father arrived with little but became a wealthy man over time and, at last report, was a major philanthropist in the Australian Jewish community.

Patrick Wachsberger is the co-producer of Coda, a film about a family that is deaf, except for one teen daughter. (Marlee Matlin co-stars). Wachsberger, 70, has been associated with dozens of films since 1974, either as a producer or production executive. His Jewish father, Nat Wachsberger (1916-1992), was a minor film producer who was born in Belgium and came to the States in the 1930s. Nat cajoled (c. 1971) Jerry Lewis to star in The Day the Clown Cried, a Holocaust film. Nat didn’t have the money to finish the film, but Lewis paid for the unpaid costs, himself. Clown turned out to be so bad that Lewis didn’t allow its release until 2013 — and critics hated it. Wachsberger’s mother, a French actress, wasn’t Jewish. Steven Spielberg is one of the producers of West Side Story.

Andrew Garfield, 38, is nominated for playing composer Jonathan Larson (19601966) in the quasi-bio-pic Tick,Tick … Boom!. It features many songs by Larson, who is best known as the composer of the musical Rent.

Garfield was raised secular, in England, by a non-Jewish English mother and an American father. Garfield has talked several times about his Jewish background,

essentially always saying that he is proud of his “Jewish heritage,” but not labeling himself, unequivocally as Jewish (“I identify most as Jewish,” is the farthest he “has gone.”)

The Jewish Chronicle, the leading UK Jewish paper, recently interviewed Garfield about “all things Jewish” (Dec. 30, 2021; free online). This Garfield reply, about Larson supporting LGBTQ people, caught my eye: “Jon didn’t have firsthand experience of being a homosexual man, but maybe through his Jewishness he had this ability to know exactly what that feeling was through his ancestry, and that awareness of having to fight for one’s life.”

My response: Well, it might have been “nice” if Larson was clearly identified as Jewish in the film. It might be nice if the world knew, as Garfield knows, that being Jewish very often makes one empathize with others.

Kristen Stewart, 31, is nominated for playing Princess Diana, in the bio-pic Spencer. Like many critics, I thought the

film was not great, but Stewart was outstanding as Diana. Only recently has a fairly complete picture of Stewart’s Jewish background emerged (thanks to a 2021 interview with Howard Stern).

Her father isn’t Jewish. Her mother was adopted by a Jewish couple. What Jewish background her mother grew up with is still unknown. All we know about Kristen’s childhood Jewish “learning” is that she knew “The Dreidel Song.” She did tell Stern that she took a DNA test, and she is 25% Ashkenazi Jewish. I am virtually sure her mother’s mother was Jewish. I say this based on my knowledge

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BY GEORGES BIARD

of adoption agency policies.

Stewart is engaged to marry screenwriter Dina Meyer, the daughter of novelist, screenwriter and director Nicholas Meyer, 76. He’s best known for writing three Star Trek movies and adapting two Philip Roth novels for the screen. I don’t believe Dina’s mother is Jewish.

Steven Spielberg, West Side Story. Spielberg has been nominated for best director for at least one film in each of the last six decades (1970s through 2010s).

Zach Baylin, 41, King Richard. This film focuses on the (not rich) father of the great African American tennis players Serena and Venus Williams. Will Smith gives a great performance as “King” Richard Williams, the first, and most important tennis coach his daughters had.

King Richard is Baylin’s first feature film screenplay. Bio sources are scarce, but I was able to find out his father is Jewish, and his mother is not. After graduating from Johns Hopkins, Baylin worked in film-production jobs until a chance conversation with a film producer at a tennis tournament led him to write the King Richard script.

David Sirota, 46, co-wrote Don’t Look Now. It is a political comedy that obliquely satirizes the public figures who oppose taking action to mitigate climate change. Sirota is best known as a political journalist and political activist. He was a senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign. His wife, Ohio native Emily Lipp Sirota, 43, is a Colorado state senator. By the way, Sirota is not a Sephardi name, as I long thought. It is Ashkenazi— and derives from a Slavic word for “orphan.”

Eric Roth, 76, is one of four writers nominated for writing Dune, a film based on a classic sci-fi novel (starring Timothee Chalamet). Roth has been nominated six times in this category, winning once (Forrest Gump).

Maggie Gyllenhaal, 44, wrote the script for The Lost Daughter, which was based on a novel about the meeting of two women at a resort. Gyllenhaal also made her directing debut with this film. A recent Esquire profile of Maggie’s brother, actor Jake Gyllenhaal, 41, reports that Maggie gave Jake a lovely mezuzah at a 2021 family Chanukah party hosted by their mother, Naomi Foner, 75. Foner was Oscarnominated for her original script for Running Empty (1988).

Osnat Shurer, 51, is nominated as the producer of Raya and the Last Dragon, a Disney film. Shurer was born and raised in Israel and is an IDF veteran. She was previously nominated for producing Moana (2017).

Luca, a huge hit, is also nominated in this category. Animated film writers aren’t eligible for an Oscar nomination, but it’s worth noting that Jesse Andrews, 39, co-wrote Luca. His big-selling novel, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, featured many Jewish characters and was made into a 2015 film.

Jon Shenk, 57, is nominated as the co-director and co-producer of Lead Me Home, a film about the homeless,

which is now streaming on Netflix. His wife, Bonni Cohen, is also a documentary maker. They co-directed and co-produced Athlete A (2020), an acclaimed Netflix film about sexual abuse of young female gymnasts by Dr. Larry Nasser, a Michigan State faculty member.

Jay Rosenblatt, 66, is the director/writer of When We Were Bullies. The film follows Rosenblatt as he tracks down his fifth grade teacher and questions him about a brutal bullying incident some 50 years before. 16 times for best song and has never won. For years, I’ve wrote that this might be “her year.” I don’t think that 2022 is her year. Maybe writing that will bring her mazel.

Hans Zimmer (Dune) and Nicholas Britell (Don’t Look Up), vie for the best score Oscar. Zimmer, 64, has received 14 nominations for his scores, winning once (The Lion King). Britell, 41,

has been nominated three times before.

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Diane Warren, 65, for writing the original song Somehow You Do for the film Four Good Years. She has been nominated

Finally, the “Honorary Oscars.” Years ago, the Honorary Oscars were moved from the “live event” to a pre-Oscar ceremonies banquet. A minute or so of taped footage of the Honorary Oscar presentations is always shown during the “live” Oscars.

On March 25, Samuel Jackson, Liv Ullmann, and Elaine May, 89, received honorary Oscars. May’s award certificate said, in part: “For Elaine May’s bold, uncompromising approach to filmmaking, as a writer, director and actress.”