Whoopi, Steve, Brad, Where Were You?

COMMENTS (34)

• Not only was Brad Renfro hugely talented, he appeared in multiple big-budget Hollywood films. That’s enough for me. He may have gone out a heroin addict and a total mess, but he was still a human being who embodied the talent that keeps this town chugging along.

  Yet again, this omission proves that the Academy and the H’wood establishment are totally out-of-touch and tone-deaf — which might explain why these ceremonies suck uncontrollably and tend to make odd and forgettable choices.

  Comment by Tim — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 9:16am PST  Reply to this post

• There were some goofs in the Grammy montage last year as well.
  But Renfro being a victim of “editing” – that’s just as unforgivable as Whoopi being left out. Smells political to me. (not in the presidential sense though. PAUUULEASE.)

  Comment by shelly — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 9:27am PST  Reply to this post

• At least there were a handful audience close ups on Gil Cates’ wife, Dr. Judith Reichman.

  Comment by Cyd — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 10:23am PST  Reply to this post

• For “Voyeur”

  River Phoenix was included in the Obits in 1994 (imagens from “Running on Empty”). Actually, that was the first year they had the “In Memorian”. Introduced by Glenn Cloose.

  Comment by Nuno Antunes — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 11:19am PST  Reply to this post

• The Whoopi thing is WAY overblown. They showed her in the montage of oscar WINNERS – is it so horrible that they realized that she was covered and didn’t think it necessary to show her in TWO montages? And to make matters worse, some news reports on this get it wrong and make it sound like she wasn’t shown in any of the montages.

  Renfro definitely is an oversight, they botched that one. But they did put a range of dates on it (which I don’t ever remember seeing before), they said they’ll show Scheider next year, now they just need to remember do it.

  Comment by milo — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 11:40am PST  Reply to this post

• While Brad Renfro’s movies may have been small of late (though he did pop up in THE JACKET alongside Kiera Knightley and Adrien Brody), he’d just finished the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation THE INFORMERS alongside Kim Basinger, Billy Bob Thornton, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke and Jon Foster so I don’t believe any of this talk about him not being include because he wasn’t a big enough star. He’s been in plenty of well known movies.

  The fact that the Oscar people are now backpedaling and trotting out multiple reasons now that the first excuse (not enough time) was obvious bullshit says it all.

  I mean, they had plenty of time to show clips of people waking up from bad dreams but they couldn’t give three seconds to Renfro?

  I’m apalled.

  Someone suggested that perhaps Renfro’s drug habit may have led to him being omitted from the obit montage. Bullshit! If they didn’t include drug users, there wouldn’t be more than a handful of people included in the montage each year. Heath Ledger died of a drug overdose a week after Renfro but was included and do you think Robert Downey Jr. won’t be included when it’s his turn?

  AMPAS ought to be ashamed of themselves.

  Comment by Francine Fishpaw — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 11:42am PST  Reply to this post

• If they were to do a montage of everyone who’s ever been in a movie who also kicked the bucket the past year, the show would last forever, as opposed to merely feeling like it lasted forever. They can’t pay tribute to every B-list actor, and they certainly can’t honor those, like Charles Nelson Reilly, Marcel Marceau, Merv Griffin, who didn’t have an impact on film. It’s tragic that Renfro died young, but more tragic that, unlike Heath Ledger, he didn’t accomplish all that much in his brief life in his chosen trade.

  Comment by Steve Smith — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 9:13pm PST  Reply to this post

• Cates phoned it in. It was an obvious clip show; they assembled all those montages during the WGA strike to cover their asses, and rather than buckle down with the same old tired writers and actually work hard to do a real show, they went with what they had, and didn’t have the sense or the commitment to talent to recognize Roy Scheider (a two time nominee, FGS!, and the others already mentioned.

  Tired old people doing a tired old show. And a director who wants the job so much he keeps cutting to a non-pro whose only qualifications for preferential seating are her celebrity gynecological practice and the fact that her husband’s producing the show, and hires the director.

  Comment by Elrod Stroop — Tuesday February 26, 2008 @ 10:01pm PST  Reply to this post

• Steve, Renfro was in 25 movies (some of them major) which is far more movies than Ledger ever did. He just finished a movie with two Oscar winners to be released this year.

  It’s not a case of including everybody in the biz who has died in the past year. It’s about the glaring omission of a young actor who was well-known and should have been included instead of agents and execs who nobody outside of the biz would know if they fell over them.

  You may think Renfro is a B-list actor but just wait until an actor you admire dies and the Oscar fogies decide for whatever reason that said actor doesn’t deserve a three second mention in a three and a half hour show.

  For a lot of people, this was the final straw. I know I won’t be watching the Oscars ever again. It’s become irrelevant.

  Comment by Francine Fishpaw — Wednesday February 27, 2008 @ 8:18am PST  Reply to this post