February 24th, 2013
Meryl Streep cleared her throat
"...and the Academy Award for Best Picture goes to... After Watchmen!"
There was a second, one sharp second where no one made a sound. No one. James Cameron remembered having one thought in that tortuously second, that if a pin was dropped in the back of the theater, the whole place would have heard (and even in that tense second he knew how cliche that sounded). Mark Hamill wondered if all of the hundred-million-plus people viewing at home were as stunned as he was right then.
Then the applause hit. Waves and waves of thunderous applause. To producers James Cameron, Joel Silver, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as they walked up on the stage, it was the most glorious applause applause they had heard in their entire lives. This was the first Oscar win for all three, even Cameron. And oh God, Cameron savored every last step as he walked up that stage, right up to grab his gold. He'd be damned if he wasn't snubbed for his Tsutomu Yamaguchi biopic back in '98, and he'd be goddamned if he wasn't snubbed for the Best Director statue earlier that night (fuck you Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck!)... but this made it all worth the trouble. He finally got the recognition he deserved. Finally.
He even said as much when it was his turn to give the speech, though all three men were aware enough to keep their remarks mercifully short after the long, tense night. "After all these years, this feels so, so good!", Cameron exclaimed.
Schwarzenegger only uttered a single sentence. "To the Academy, to the cast and crew of this wonderful picture, to the wonderful audiences across the world, and to this country and the crazy, wonderful American Dream - danke schoen."
Joel Silver said the most of the three, thanking his family, friends, the studio, you know, the usual suspects.
But perhaps the man who felt the most... emotional about this whole affair (if in his own eccentric and intensely private way) was Alan Moore, the author of this whole fucking affair, really. He surprised the comic book world by agreeing to attend the Oscars that year. Moore wouldn't admit as much to anyone, but he was oddly proud to have been responsible for the whole thing. And he got it. It was pretty obvious that the After Watchmen movie was starting a "New Superhero Craze", which was fitting since Watchmen started the first one.
Recently, Moore found himself thinking a lot recently, thinking of all the things that had happened because of him and David Gibbons getting together and working on this crazy little project. It all started with a comic book...
Meryl Streep cleared her throat
"...and the Academy Award for Best Picture goes to... After Watchmen!"
There was a second, one sharp second where no one made a sound. No one. James Cameron remembered having one thought in that tortuously second, that if a pin was dropped in the back of the theater, the whole place would have heard (and even in that tense second he knew how cliche that sounded). Mark Hamill wondered if all of the hundred-million-plus people viewing at home were as stunned as he was right then.
Then the applause hit. Waves and waves of thunderous applause. To producers James Cameron, Joel Silver, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as they walked up on the stage, it was the most glorious applause applause they had heard in their entire lives. This was the first Oscar win for all three, even Cameron. And oh God, Cameron savored every last step as he walked up that stage, right up to grab his gold. He'd be damned if he wasn't snubbed for his Tsutomu Yamaguchi biopic back in '98, and he'd be goddamned if he wasn't snubbed for the Best Director statue earlier that night (fuck you Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck!)... but this made it all worth the trouble. He finally got the recognition he deserved. Finally.
He even said as much when it was his turn to give the speech, though all three men were aware enough to keep their remarks mercifully short after the long, tense night. "After all these years, this feels so, so good!", Cameron exclaimed.
Schwarzenegger only uttered a single sentence. "To the Academy, to the cast and crew of this wonderful picture, to the wonderful audiences across the world, and to this country and the crazy, wonderful American Dream - danke schoen."
Joel Silver said the most of the three, thanking his family, friends, the studio, you know, the usual suspects.
But perhaps the man who felt the most... emotional about this whole affair (if in his own eccentric and intensely private way) was Alan Moore, the author of this whole fucking affair, really. He surprised the comic book world by agreeing to attend the Oscars that year. Moore wouldn't admit as much to anyone, but he was oddly proud to have been responsible for the whole thing. And he got it. It was pretty obvious that the After Watchmen movie was starting a "New Superhero Craze", which was fitting since Watchmen started the first one.
Recently, Moore found himself thinking a lot recently, thinking of all the things that had happened because of him and David Gibbons getting together and working on this crazy little project. It all started with a comic book...
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