Yes, Jimmy Kimmel Will Tackle #MeToo on Oscar Night
It’s the Friday of Oscar weekend, and I’m feeling more jittery than Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s teleprompter operator.
Hello from Los Angeles, where we’re quizzing Jimmy Kimmel on his monologue plans, getting the scoop on Timothée Chalamet’s awards-season bestie, and welcoming Feras Fayyad to the big show.
THE GREATEST SHOW?
Of all the jobs on Oscar night—wrangling the limos, handing off the envelopes, serving the Governors Ball feast—perhaps the person with the toughest gig is host Jimmy Kimmel. On Thursday, I spoke to Kimmel about his plans, and how he’ll handle the tricky task of creating a warm, entertaining environment in the Dolby Theatre amid this charged #MeToo awards season. I asked Kimmel specifically whether he planned to include the anti-harassment movement Time’s Up in his monologue. “I do, yes,” Kimmel told me in this interview. “It’s very tricky because when people are scared they don’t laugh, and when there’s a camera in their face they behave differently than they do in a comedy club or in the audience on a talk show. When you’re put in that position, those in the audience become a little bit of a deer in the headlights. That’s the part [where] you have to rely on experience and the knowledge of your medium.”
I also spoke to Oscar producers Jennifer Todd and Michael De Luca this week about how they’re managing the show in this most unusual year, and Todd told me they had reached out to some of the Time’s Up organizers for guidance. “We’re very supportive of the movement and all it’s doing to create equality and safety in the workplace,” Todd told me, “but we know that the show is about entertainment, and people are coming to have fun and enjoy and celebrate the movies. We think we’ve figured out a way to do it all.” Time’s Up confirmed to V.F.’s Nicole Sperling that there will be a moment dedicated to the organization built into the Academy Awards telecast. They declined to elaborate on what that moment will look like, but one source told Sperling it will be live and will happen in the room.
SEASONAL FRIENDSHIPS
For actors in an Oscar movie, awards season is a long ride, and it helps to have traveling companions you enjoy. For Call Me by Your Name best-actor nominee Timothée Chalamet, that person is Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya. “Daniel has been the one person that I can consistently look at, lock eyes with, and ask, ‘What the fuck is happening right now?’ Because these are totally surreal environments to be in,” Chalamet told V.F.’s Julie Miller Wednesday night at a party for the film co-hosted by Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones and Barneys New York C.E.O. Daniella Vitale at the Chateau Marmont.
That sense of camaraderie unfolded up in Coldwater Canyon, too, where Diane von Furstenberg hosted her annual luncheon for female Oscar nominees. “When I first arrived in Hollywood, I was so alone,” event co-host Salma Hayek said, speaking to guests like Dee Rees, Rachel Morrison, Rashida Jones, and Laura Dern. “There were no other Mexican actresses and very few women in the industry. And look at us today. We could not even bring our friends or spouses today because there are just too many of us for this mansion.” You can read Miller’s full write-up of the event here.
THE TRUTH-TELLERS
Getting an Oscar nomination is one major feat. Actually getting to the ceremony when you’re a documentarian with a subject that rankles both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is yet another. Last Man in Aleppo director Feras Fayyad spoke to V.F.’s Mary Alice Miller about his film on Syria’s civilian first responders, the White Helmets, and his producer Kareem Abeed’s efforts to secure a visa. Fayyad said he himself will definitely attend the ceremony, despite news reports that he would skip it in protest. “This is how powerful people ban the truth,” Fayyad said. “They try to ban the truth-tellers. I’m in the position where I’m seeing this; and this is the thing I can do. I don’t want to turn away.”
BEYOND THE HASHTAG
What on earth does Frederick Douglass have to do with the Oscars? In a compelling piece in V.F.’s latest awards special issue, Black List creator Franklin Leonard draws a direct line between the abolitionist’s belief in the power of photographs to define reality—he was the most photographed person in the 19th century—and the drive for greater representation in Hollywood. “If Douglass believed so deeply in the power of the single frame,” Leonard writes, “one can only imagine the potential he would have seen in the motion picture, stories projected high and transmitted with a single keystroke.”
The power of the image was on April Reign’s mind on the fateful 2015 day when she created the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. Also in our awards issue, Reign weighs the impact of the movement she started with a simple hashtag.
That’s the news for this week on the Hollywood and awards beat. Tell me what you’re seeing out there. Send tips, comments, valet-line gossip, big deals you overheard at the Polo Lounge, bad vibes you picked up on at Craft, and a foot massage to Rebecca_Keegan@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca.
