“This is better than any All-Star Game I was ever in,” said Kobe Bryant, a first-time Oscar nominee (for the animated short Dear Basketball), as he dropped by my table at the annual Oscar Nominees Luncheon today to say hello to Netflix’s Ted Sarandos. In a room full of heavyweights from Streep to Spielberg, Kobe was perhaps the one who turned the most heads, and when Laura Dern announced his name to come up and join in the class photo of this year’s Oscar-nominated crop, he got perhaps the biggest applause of any of the nominees who headed to those risers.
Dern made a point of prefacing it by saying, “I am a Los Angeles native,” emphasizing why she was so excited to announce his name. Best Actor nominee Timothee Chalamet came by to take a selfie with the Lakers great. It pretty much went that way for Bryant all afternoon. Smartly, Academy officials seated him in front to the right of the giant Oscar statuette in the official photo. Otherwise, he might have covered many of the other nominees.
As usual, the lunch was a feel-good affair that has no losers, only winners, very good turnout (estimated at more than 175 of the 205 members of Oscar’s Class of 2017). Academy President John Bailey kept his opening remarks in line with the spirit of the event, describing the history behind what this select group now finds itself a part of. But he also briefly mentioned the elephant in the room in terms of the sexual harassment scandals that have rocked the industry over the past year, saying “the fossilized bedrock of many of Hollywood’s worst abuses are being jack-hammered into oblivion.”
The Academy in fact recently put forth their own document of expected rules of conduct for members and famously expelled Harvey Weinstein in October.
He noted it is a time of great change and told me afterwards that, despite the celebratory nature of this occasion, he knew he had to say something in his remarks. You can likely expect to hear more on the March 4 Oscar show itself, to be sure. “Basically, this is a time for women to be heard,” he told me.Oscar producers Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd, returning for a second year in a row after last year’s infamous envelope debacle for which obviously the Academy’s accounting firm Price Waterhouse was completely to blame, have big plans for the 90th-anniversary show with Jimmy Kimmel as host, but kept those plans to themselves while letting comedian Patton Oswalt deliver some tips to nominees who might get the opportunity to make that fabled 45-second Oscar speech. Considering what has been happening in the industry, this was his best piece of advice: “This is a little tricky area, but maybe think twice before you mention your agents and managers. I don’t know if you have been paying attention to what has been going on in Hollywood this past year, but…
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