Red, Silk Petticoat

Last night was Oscar night! If you didn't know already, Jeremie and I, along with our friend Joey, are watching every movie that has won best picture in order starting from the beginning!! It is a pretty daunting task and it is probably going to take us about 5 years to complete considering our schedules and the fact that there are over 80 movies!

I have been dreading last night's movie because I saw it in the movie theaters in a re-release about 10 years ago and was so bored that I wanted to gnaw my own hand off just to give me something to do. Since then I have done nothing but trash talk this movie which has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because, apparently, it's like EVERYONE's favorite movie EVER and people talk about it with a reverence usually reserved for scripture! You guessed it. The movie was...



This post may get a little long in the spirit of the movie. I spent 3 hours and 40 minutes watching this movie so you may spend the same time reading this blog post!!

The thing that amazed me most was the difference a decade makes when you watch a movie. This is true for better or worse. There are movies that I LOVED and would watch over and over and over and over as a child or a teenager that I can't even stomach 10 minutes of now. I was a very different person when I saw this movie for the first time so it was two different people that watched the movie. One that had already seen it whose mind was clouded with the judgement administered ages ago, and one that had learned at least a little patience and appreciate and other things that adults are supposed to be.

The company really helped. We were joined by our good friend Terre and two more of Joey's friends who LOVE this movie (see above). Terre is a MASSIVE fan of GWTW. He isn't participating in oscar night with us, but he works in Joey's salon so he is in the know. He has been eyeing last night ravenously as he declared months ago he was joining us and he would provide the movie as Joey got him this amazing, red velvet, 638 disk set for Christmas. He was so excited and such a fan of the movie that it was hard not to get wrapped up in his excitement!!

Normally, I hate it when people talk during a movie, but the crowd last night was one of those amazing groups of movie watchers that knows when it is okay to throw in a comment or two and knows when you should be quiet. Total side note.. but the best casts of actors I ever worked with had the same skill. Terre provided jokes and trivia aobut the movie throughout and I loved it! It was like Pop Up Video GWTW style. For instance... at the beginning of the movie we see Mammy tying Scarlet's corset super tight. Then she throws on this green dress and when you see it pulled down over Scarlett's head the bodice of the dress is magically sinched and perfect.



Let me give you some historical information about GWTW. It took over 3 years to make. No one had seen spectacle of this magnitude. It was rife with set backs. The first director quit. The second director had a nervous breakdown, was replaced, and then came back. The producer, David O. Selznick, had a highly publicised search for the actress to play the iconic role of Scarlett O'Hara. All this for the, then unheard of, bank-busting price of 4 million dollars!!! Gossip of the day called the movie "Selznick's Folly."

Gone With the Wind premiered on December 15, 1939, at Atlanta's Fox Theatre. The mayor gave all civic employees and school kids the day off and over 300,000 people showed up at the theatre. A gallop poll indicated that 56.5 million people were anticipating the release of this film. Let's put that into some perspective. The population of the US was, roughly, 130 million at the time so that means that OVER A THIRD OF THE ENTIRE COUNTRY WANTED TO SEE THIS MOVIE! The anticipation had reached such a fever pitch that New York Times' Frank S. Nugent wrote, "Anyway, 'it' has arrived at last, and we cannot get over the shock of not being disappointed; we had almost been looking forward to that." (Total side note.. what an egotistical douche. Sorry honey, only the queen should speak in terms of "we")

The New York Times weren't the only ones to gush. The movie was an overnight sensation and it received nearly unanimous, and magnanimous, praise from critics! The box office haul was an unprecedented $198,676,459. Perspective time again... the average movie ticket in 1939 was 23 CENTS!!! Adjusting for inflation moves that total to over 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS domestically! Eat your heart out Avatar! In the all time list of box office grosses that have been adjusted for inflation, Avatar is a paltry 21st place. More perspective, the movie came out in 1939 when the great depression still gripped the country.

And the love just kept rolling in! Come Oscar time, the movie had been nominated for Just about everything! It won Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Interior Decoration (that was a category back then), Best Cinematography Color (they split this into B/W and Color back then), Best Editing. It broke the record for nominations (13) and wins (8). Parallel history: GWTW beat, among others, the Wizard of Oz for best picture that year. At the Oscars, Judy Garland won a special award and miniature Oscar for best youth performer at 17 years old. Garland also treated the crowd to a performance of Over the Rainbow at the ceremonies. Now, the ceremonies that year were being filmed for a documentary and so everyone showed up dressed to the 9's! Apparently the female crowd was just dropping with ermine, mink, silk, and diamonds. So.. GWTW, Judy Garland, Bette Davis as another nominee, Spencer Tracy handing out awards,furs, bling.. complete homo overload and it's like Hollywood peaked in 1939 and the stars couldn't shine any brighter! (I'm breathless thinking about it all)

Interesting Oscar trivia: The winning screenwriter, Sidney Howard, was run over by a tractor on his farm in Massachusetts and became the first postumous Oscar winner. Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, was the first African American to win an Oscar! This was 1939 over 20 years before the climax of the civil rights movement. When her name was announced the guests heard a "hallelujah" shouted from the back of the room! Her speech; however, was pre-prepared by the studio but McDaniel was obviously touched and had to end her speech with a chocked "thank you," after which she rushed back to her table crying with her face buried in her hands. I get a bit chocked up when I think about the HISTORY of it all, because she gives a truly once-in-a-lifetime performance. Her performance was the ONLY think that enjoyed the first time around. I enjoyed it so much that I raved about it for days afterwards.



It would be over 20 years before another African American won an Oscar (Sidney Potier in Lilies of the Field) and another FIFTY years before another African American actress won an Oscar (Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost). Revolutionary!

McDaniel's co-star and fellow nominee Olivia de Haviland, quickly left her table (she was sitting in the front with the producer Selznik while McDaniel was sitting at the back of the room) and went to the kitchens to cry. The producers wife had to tell her to grow up and go congratulate McDaniel. Funny, de Haviland plays a selfless saint in GWTW, but couldn't muster the personal fortitude to suck it up and congratulate the monumental acheivement of her co-star. Silly Hollywood phonies. Who am I to talk though, if I was nominated for an oscar and didn't win I am sure that I would cry like a girl and actively try to destroy winner. =)

So, now that my inner trivia geek has been satiated, I can say that I loved the movie this time around. The most facinating part of this process is seeing the development of filmmaking as a craft. The stories have gotten better, the direction more clear, the acting more truthful, the cinemetography more dynamic. In short, "better!" Now with GWTW, and Wizard of Oz, etc. you throw color into the mix and this year Hollywood took a GIANT leap forward.

The first time I saw it, Vivienne Leigh was annoying to me. Scarlett O'Hara is NOT a likable woman and I didn't like Vivienne Leigh. Looking back, I think I didn't like her because it was like watching the version of myself then parading on the screen. I was so selfish, arrogant, and worldly but I didn't know it just like Scarlett. It is never fun to have a 40 foot mirror reflecting all of your flaws for the world to see. This time around, I enjoyed every minuted of her performance. She's in almost every single minute of the movie so that is a lot of enjoyment going on!! I think Terre summed it up best when he said "mmmmm... the world lives and dies on that eyebrow," after one of Scarlett's signature looks of judgement. I have that same eyebrow and have now embraced the ugly parts of me. Scarlett O'Hara and me, were the bitchy ones in the corner of a party that sit judging everything going on in front of us. We don't care if we mingle because we are having too much fun at your expense. Like I said... I have embraced the ugly side of me. =)

My emotional vocabulary is much deeper which helped me enjoy the movie even more. I know how it feels to be consumed by the idea of love for a person and the agonizing pangs of the heart that induces. I know what it is like to realize your mistakes to late. What I found annoying before, became resonant, touching, and sometimes painful. Like I said, what a difference a decade makes!

If you haven't seen Gone With the Wind, you really must. So much of the movie is in our pop culture lexicon that after watching it, you will realize that you finally get the punchline of jokes you have heard for 30 years!

So there is my oversized post for an oversized movie!



Clark Gable... VERY good in this movie.



Olivia de Havilland... good, but so sickeningly sweet and selfless that you want to slap her.



"I don't know nothin' bout birthin' no babies!" BEST MOVIE LINE EVER!