I'm also tired.
It was a day of talking with Richard Dreyfuss about why Steven Speilberg's work endures. It was Gary Busey being, well, Gary Busey, and intense, brilliant, wild man who I'm supposed to buy drinks for after I blog this. It was Shirley Jones and her husband Marty Ingels, who brought Ms. Jones, was his wacky self, waving the Oscar from 1960 that Jones won for Elmer Gantry. I could go on, and there's a lot more..
But here's the backstage interview transcript for Melissa Leo:
Q. Hey, Melissa. Congratulations, I'm right down here in front.
A. Thank you.
Q. I wanted you to win for FROZEN WINTER so it's awesome to see you back here. And I applaud you for taking your character from the movie on stage, dropping what I think is the first ever F bomb in the Oscars. How does that feel?
A. I had no idea. Those words, I apologize to anyone that they offend. There's a great deal of the English language that is in my vernacular.
Q. I thought it was wonderful.
A. I really don't mean to offend, and probably a very inappropriate place to use that particular word in particular.
Q. Congratulations.
A. Oh, hi, 157.
Q. Congratulations.
A. Thank you.
Q. Well, I just wanted to ask you if you were in touch with the real life Alice Ward, and I know your character had a very extensive wardrobe. Did you take anything with you fashion wise from that character?
A. Well, the dress I'm wearing tonight I'd like to think that Alice would have liked it, and that was part of the choosing for it. She is a manager of her sons, was caught on camera quite a lot at the edges of the boxing ring, and I noticed a lot of the footage of Alice at the fights had her in white. Might not be so true anymore, but I think back in the days of black and white, it showed up well on camera. So that was some of the thought into it and into being here tonight. Alice, I did have the opportunity to meet. I could not have played her without having met her. I wouldn't have even know where to begin in many ways. The external part of Alice was Mark Bridges, the costume designer, and David O'Russell encouraging the hair department to cut my hair shorter and shorter and dye it and all of that. But no, I don't know that Alice's sense of style and my sense of style are too similar in too many ways.
Q. Melissa, over here. To your right.
A. You say over here...okay, I got it. There you go, okay, good.
Q. What was it like for you when Kirk Douglas kept stretching and stretching and stretching?
A. You know, it's really funny, you know, because he's an old actor. If anybody is an actor, he's an actor, right? And actually, he was doing us all this huge favor, because the longer he strung it out, the calmer I got to be. I got to take more than one glance over at Amy, who was sitting just in front of me away from where he was, I wanted to watch him because he was delightful to watch and I wanted to peek at Amy, so he strung it out in a rather delightful way for me and actually allowed a heart rate that had gotten fairly high as the category was announced to settle a little bit and wait and see what the envelope said.
Q. Hi, right in front. From WEBN in Boston. I was wondering about your experiences working in Lowell and with the Massachusetts people?
A. I've worked in the Massachusetts area on a number of films, and it's a great place to shoot, and I don't know if that's what you're asking about. If you're asking particularly about being in Lowell, because THE FIGHTER, it's not just a story based on the lives of real people, but it's their story. It most definitely is, and we were shooting it with the Wards around us at all times, I would have to say one or another of them. And it was an extraordinarily wonderful experience and I think a lot of what makes THE FIGHTER such an incredible film is that we were there in Lowell with the actual people, and cross referencing, you know, when somebody might say something about somebody and somebody else might say something else about that same somebody. And we were right there in the town hearing the gossip and hearing the language and the dialect and all, and it was very, very helpful to the process.
Q. Melissa, AFP. I was wondering if you felt vindicated about the campaign now that you've won?
A. There's nothing to vindicate, and there was no campaign. It was a photograph in a magazine; I wanted a pretty photograph in a magazine, that's all it was.
I am so sorry, I heard that was the last one, but I have a lot of other people in the films that are up for nominations as well, and I want to run back and see them. I thank you so much, right? Thank you.
Stay tuned for more...
