My Early Oscar Memories

It might surprise some to know that I wasted something like the first 16 years of my life not keeping up with the Oscars. When I was a kid, my mom told me about a gross and disturbing movie called Silence of the Lambs — where people were eating people — and that pretty much sealed my disinterest for a while.

I didn’t watch an Oscars ceremony until late in high school. The first one I caught was the 2000/2001 broadcast, hosted by Steve Martin. Steven Soderbergh gave what I still consider the best Oscar speech of the night. I have no idea how he managed to escape the required laundry list of thank-yous — it was refreshingly direct and unpretentious.

I skipped the following year because the movies were straight-up horrible. On the blockbuster end, Rush Hour 2 and Swordfish felt cheap and unappealing, leaning on empty thrills and racial stereotypes. And the rest — The Man Who Wasn’t There, Vanilla Sky, The Shipping News, Mulholland Drive, A Beautiful Mind — just didn’t connect. I know some of these are considered masterpieces now, but a lot of them had endings that felt like a big f you to the audience. And can we admit in hindsight that Shrek, while fun, didn’t exactly scream Oscar-worthy?