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Greenfield at Large

Roger Ebert on the Oscar Nominees

Aired February 12, 2002 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEFF GREENFIELD, HOST: Politics, big bucks, backstabbing, back office deals. That's right, we're talking about the Oscars tonight with Roger Ebert. And by putting Iran in the axis of evil, is the U.S. going to make things better or worse? Tonight on GREENFIELD AT LARGE.

Five months ago, the day after Americans knew the world had changed. It was a world where there'd be new allies, new adversaries. In a few minutes, we will ask why the president spoke so harshly about the nation of Iran, a nation that just a few months ago, was looked a with some optimism by the same administration that loudly denounced it some two weeks ago.

But first, five months ago it may also have seemed that America would never again be quite so obsessed by diversions and entertainments. Well, today's wall-to-wall coverage of the Oscar nominations suggest that we've just about fully recovered our appetite.

Although "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings" got 13 nominations, took in more than a quarter of a billion dollars, it is by no means the clear front runner for best picture. "A Beautiful Mind" with last year's winning actor, Russell Crowe, also picked up nominations for actor, director, supporting actress and four more. And the sleeper from last summer, a rare entry from the music category, "Moulin Rouge," also got eight nominations.

And those are just the best picture nominations. There are, of course, many other intriguing match-ups to consider. So who better? We've asked author and TV show host Roger Ebert of "The Chicago Sun- Times" and "Ebert and Roper" and one of my oldest friends in the world, to help us make sense of the rest.

Roger, thanks for joining us. We begin with the lightning round. I want quick answers. What pictures --

ROGER EBERT, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES MOVIE CRITIC: I'll try.

GREENFIELD: All right. What picture should've been nominated for best picture that wasn't?

EBERT: Can I answer in the animation category? I was shocked that a movie called "Jimmy Neutron" was nominated for best animation in that new category. And they passed over "Waking Life," which is the most innovative and important and influential animated picture in several years.

GREENFIELD: OK.

EBERT: OK, and then I'll answer the question you really asked.

GREENFIELD: Sure.

EBERT: "Shrek" should've been nominated for best picture and didn't because of that new animation category.

GREENFIELD: Ah, so in other words, it was kind of like the Cy Young Award. Pitchers don't get nominated for MVP anymore, because they got a separate award for them?

EBERT: Yes.

GREENFIELD: OK. In the best actress category, any particular surprise for you, either by omission or?

EBERT: I think that the surprise, and I don't think it's undeserved, was the nomination to Renee Zelwiger for "Brigitte Jones' Diary," because that movie came out last April. And the Academy has a record of really nominating films that are still in theaters or not yet on DVD. They can't remember eight months ago because those pictures are ancient history, but she was very good. She put on 25 pounds. She got a perfect British accent, despite the fact that everybody in England thought she could never play international heroine Brigitte Jones. She did a good job. So that was an unexpected, but good nomination.

GREENFIELD: And then...

EBERT: I don't think I'm talking fast enough.

GREENFIELD: That's OK, Rog, it's -- your Chicago's a little slower. Best actor nomination, surprise as to who was in or who was out?

EBERT: I was kind of astonished that Sean Penn was nominated for "I Am Sam." And I was surprised, but not displeased about Will Smith for "Ali." Will Smith was good in "Ali." The movie was a disappointment. It was shapeless, unformed. It didn't deliver, but he delivered.

On the other hand, I thought Sean Penn's performance was quite bad in a movie that didn't work at all. He's a very good actor. He's maybe the best actor we have in his generation. But why not Billy Bob Thornton or Gene Hackman for a couple of those slots?

GREENFIELD: "The Royal Tanenbaums" or "Monster's Ball."

EBERT: Yes.

GREENFIELD: Any Oscar that you think is an absolute lock, that you don't even have to count the votes, this is a sure thing?

EBERT: No.

GREENFIELD: OK. So we should stay up late...

EBERT: No, in fact, there are frontrunners. There are a couple of horse races. I think that Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are going to fight it out in best actor. I think that Sissy Spacek and Halle Barry will fight it out for best actress, but I don't think there's a lock.

GREENFIELD: Now we enter the essay portion of this interview, where you can...

EBERT: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

GREENFIELD: ...be thoughtful as opposed to quick. A few months ago, I was actually talking to a couple movie critics who are friends of mine, and they were all saying this is just a horrible year for movies.

EBERT: Yes.

GREENFIELD: I don't think I can even get to a 10 best list. Now that the year is done and you've seen all the pictures, did it -- is it still stuck out for you as a lousy year for movies?

EBERT: No, it wasn't a lousy year at all. But what we have this year, what we saw, was an even more exaggerated version of what's been happening for several years. And that is that after Labor Day, Oscar season opens, and especially in terms of the Christmas pictures, Hollywood opens films that are really designed to deserve and win Academy Awards.

The rest of the year, they're really after the teenage male demographic group. They want to win the weekend. They want to open up "USA Today" on Monday morning or tune into CNN and find out that a given picture won the weekend or it's at second week in the number one spot. And the people who are available to race out of the house and go to that 6:00 show on Friday night to open these pictures strong are teenage boys.

GREENFIELD: So that's why --

EBERT: I mean, the teenage girls, who a little slower. They have to make plans and decide what to wear and so forth.

GREENFIELD: Hence "Rush Hour 2," "American Pie 2," "The Mummy Returns," and other...

EBERT: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

GREENFIELD: ...Oscar worthies.

EBERT: And on and on and on and on. "Tomb Raider."

GREENFIELD: Right.

EBERT: And you can just -- you can find one every weekend.

GREENFIELD: Are there any...

EBERT: This weekend, it's the new Britney Spears picture, for example. "Crossroad."

GREENFIELD: And me having to work Friday night, darn.

EBERT: Yes, isn't that tough, you know?

GREENFIELD: Any trends that strike you? I remember a couple of years ago, we were -- many of you critics were struck by the fact that four of the five best pictures came from independent studios, rather than (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Anything along those lines that strikes you about...

EBERT: Well, one of kind of amusing piece of Oscar trivia, I guess, is that the Academy, which is mostly based in Los Angeles, with a lot of members in New York, tends to be absolutely in love with British actors. And this year, of the 20 nominees for acting, seven went to British actors. Another went to an American actress playing a British character. And yet another one went to a British actor playing an American character. That would be Tom Wilkinson. So in one way or another, nine of the 20 nominations were -- came with the Union Jack flying from it.

GREENFIELD: OK, well, I don't know. And "The Patriot" was a big movie last year. Maybe they're getting...

EBERT: Yes.

GREENFIELD: Maybe they're trying to make it up. One of the things -- I don't know that there's any meaning to this, but you had two movies, live action movies, based on very popular books of fantasy.

EBERT: Yes.

GREENFIELD: "Harry Potter" gets three nominations. "Lord of the Rings" gets 13. Should we surprised by that disparity?

EBERT: No, because despite the great popularity of the "Potter" books, basically their audience is high school and below. And people have been reading "Lord of the Rings" for 40 years. So that just about everybody alive now has had a chance to read "Lord of the Rings." And a lot of people seem to have. And a lot of them went to the movie, and they found that it was pretty faithful to the book. And it was very ambitious with a kind of old-fashioned, big scale, ambitious, expensive $297 million epic that Hollywood used to have the nerve to make in the days that people like David Lean.

And recently, with all of these Friday night specials, as I call them, Hollywood hasn't been thinking big like that. So "Lord of the Rings," which I was moderate in my praise of, nevertheless, is the kind of picture that I think Hollywood rightly honors as representing the best craft that the industry can turn out.

GREENFIELD: A couple of wrap-up questions. One way that I think the movies are like the Olympics is that it -- you don't have a chance, if you haven't overcome some horrible burden, illness or injury.

EBERT: Yes. Well, especially mental illness. This year three nominations.

GREENFIELD: Well, OK, here's my point. Best actress, Halle Barry, husband is executed. Sissy Spacek, son is murdered. Judy Densch, her character gets Alzheimer's. Nicole Kidman dies of consumption. Renee Zelweger is battling a weight problem. Does that tell me that she has not a chance in hell of a snowball because she doesn't have a serious enough problem?

EBERT: Well, I think that -- from my experience, Jeff, Renee Zelweger's character has the most desirable problem of those five.

GREENFIELD: OK. The other area that really is intriguing. Here you got the -- the first year you've got best animated feature. You've got "Shrek" up against "Monsters, Incorporated.

EBERT: Yes.

GREENFIELD: How much de shrine, how much pain and suffering will there be at Disney if the first Oscar for an animated, full length feature, does not go to Disney?

EBERT: Well, they'll be disappointed. They'll be disappointed. And they do have a picture that would've won that category in another year, but "Shrek" is a very strong picture. And...

GREENFIELD: Yes?

EBERT: It's probably the frontrunner.

GREENFIELD: OK. Well, that's spoken from a man who's show is distributed by Buena Vista, that's a very honest appraisal. And one other key area, before we end. And I think this probably is the question that all Americans are anxiously waiting to hear your opinion about. Whoopie Goldberg as Oscar host, thumbs up or thumbs down?

EBERT: I thought she did a good job. I enjoy her entrance the last time as Elizabeth. I thought that was one of the images that stays in the Oscar memory book, along with the streaker and the one- armed push-up and so forth. You know, it's a job that increasingly people don't want.

GREENFIELD: What do you mean?

EBERT: Well, they just don't want to do it. It's just -- there's too much -- it takes three months out of your life. The pay is lousy. Everybody criticizes you. It's an almost impossible job. The show goes on forever. Until when you finally drag yourself out there for those last categories, your energy is gone and your freshness is gone.

It's a very tough job. And as you look at it year after year, you realize that people who did it well, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, people like that, and Billy Crystal really deserve a lot of praise because it's just not easy to do.

GREENFIELD: OK. Roger Ebert, always good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Your special's on I think March 16 and 17? I don't want to forget that. And when we come back, no reference to Ebert here, the axis of evil charge. Is this any way to win friends or influence militants in Iran? And later, who needs campaign finance reform? My solution to get out the vote. The envelope, please.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: Maybe it's inevitable that the United States should once again be casting a wary glance in the direction of Iran. This was, after all, the first place where an Islamic uprising put in power declared adversaries of America. It was the place where the seizure of American hostages helped unseat an American president. It symbolized a recurring new threat against the U.S., what some in Iran still label "the great Satan."

As for the notion that September 11 opened the possibility for a new understanding between Washington and Tehran, you sure couldn't tell it from recent words and images.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): It seemed like old times yesterday in Tehran. Millions of Iranians rallying to denounce the United States, chanting "death to America." This rally was a response to the sharp words spoken by President Bush at last month's State of the Union.

GEORGE W. BUSH: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction.

GREENFIELD: It is a far cry from the hopes of some five months ago. After the September 11 attack on America, some Iranians marched in sympathy with the U.S. Officials there promised help to downed American flyers, reflecting Iran's longstanding hatred of the Taliban, who followed a branch of Islam hostile to the Shi'ites of Iran.

Secretary of State Powell shook hands with Iran's foreign minister at the U.N., the first such gesture since the hostage crisis back in 1979.

But Israel's capture last month of a ship load of arms bound for Palestinians, arms almost certainly supplied by Iran, was a sharp reminder that Iran has long backed terrorism against Israel, and for that matter, against the U.S. in the form of acts committed by Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based party of god that is fueled by Iranian money.

More broadly, for every word of moderation spoken by reformist President Mohammed Khatamey (ph) is the fact that real power clearly lies in the hands of hard-line clerics, led by Ayotollah Khomeni, who want nothing at all to do with the United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Clearly, President Bush's words help put the mobs in the streets of Tehran, stirred more criticism from some of America's European allies. Just as clearly, the administration had to know that these consequences were coming. So what was behind the president's challenge to Iran? What, if anything, might it portend in the way the U.S. might act?

Joining us now, from Washington, Richard Perle, former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. Among other things, he now chairs the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon Advisory Panel. Here in New York, the editor of "Newsweek International," Fareed Zakaria.

Mr. Perle to you first. The reason I had said what I said is it, you know, sometimes journalists think they're smarter than everybody else, which is usually not true. If the administration knew that there were consequences to the words the president used, who was that specifically aimed at? What were they trying to say and to whom?

RICHARD PERLE, FMR. ASST. SECY. OF DEFENSE: What I think the president was trying to say to the people of Iraq is that we understand that a small number of clerics over the objections passively expressed of the overwhelming majority of Iranian people, are ruling that country and not in the interests of the people or the development of Democratic institutions.

He was expressing the sympathy of the United States with the plight of the Iranian people. And I believe that's an investment that will pay off in increased pressure on the real movers and shakers in the Iranian regime, which are not the elected officials.

GREENFIELD: But the president said something else in the State of the Union speech. He said, you know, the time is not on our side. We will not wait until nations like Iran develop weapons of mass destruction. We will not permit the most dangerous nations in the world to seek the most destructive weaponry. That suggests a lot more than encouraging pro-democracy movements in Iran?

PERLE: Well, he talked about an axis of evil that involved three countries of which Iran was one. In fact, the elaboration with respect to Iran was barely a sentence. And the same for North Korea. The real focus of that speech in this regard was on Iraq. And about Iraq, he had a great deal more to say. He went on at some length about Iraq.

GREENFIELD: Indeed, but Fareed Zakaria, that I think is exactly why people reacted the way they did. I think that the -- the understanding that Iraq is in, and I'll put it this way, the crosshairs of the United States has been known for some time. What did you take from the president's pointing the finger at Iran?

FAREED ZAKARIA, "NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL": I don't know what I take. I mean, at some level, he's entirely right, of course. These are all three very nasty regimes. Whether they're actually terrorist regimes or supporting terrorism is a more complex problem. I mean, North Korea is not really supporting terrorism anywhere.

But I think that the mistake here lies particularly with Iran, because it strikes me that on Iraq, the president is 100 percent right. On Iran, I think you have two problems. One, whatever you may think of a regime like this, and it is deeply unpopular. It is nasty. It has not proved to allow its reformers any leeway and any power. The one card that this regime has, the one card of legitimacy is its nationalism. It claims to speak for the Iranian people. It claims to have deposed an American lackey, the Shah of Iran.

So what -- the one thing you can do by criticizing them from the outside is have this kind of rally around the flag effect, which is what's happened. So my fear is just a practical one. I entirely agree with the president's goal. But I think in doing this, you have given this regime the only source of -- you've strengthened the only source of support this regime has.

GREENFIELD: To focus for a second on what Mr. Perle talked about earlier, does that suggest to you that the administration is, in effect, saying the reformist president -- we just -- he's a figurehead. He has no power. We have no confidence at all in his ability to do anything there?

ZAKARIA: I think the analysis behind this is that Iran is an pre-revolutionary situation and that it's about to blow. And that if you put the pressure on it from the outside, you will get, you know, transformation of the regime, a complete collapse.

I think that's slightly wrong, that Iran is -- the regime is unpopular. But that what's likely to happen in Iran is somewhat more like what happened in eastern Europe, a kind of -- what Timothy Garden Ash called "refolution," a combination of reform and revolution.

Now in that situation, it seems to me you want to have a lot of pressure on the regime, but you also want to have some engagement. I mean, we engaged with the Soviet Union, even when we fighting a Cold War with them. And I think that, you know, that model of putting a lot of pressure on the Iranian regime, but still being open to seeing whether or not there are ways in which we can deal with them.

GREENFIELD: Of course, it was also President Reagan who called the Soviet Union an evil empire, while he was negotiating with them.

Mr. Perle, I want to raise a very specific question that is in the minds of some people. In focusing on those three regimes, Iraq, North Korea and Iran, and their goal, as the president described it, of developing weapons of mass destruction, I know there was some people who heard in that message something else. And that was a kind of subtle making of the case for a national missile defense program. Was that any part, you think, of the president's message? PERLE: No, I don't think so. I think he was very much focused on where we are going next in the war on terrorism. And he understands that the combination of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction poses such an enormous threat to the United States, that we have to deal with that decisively and pre-emptively.

The fact is that he was moving the debate from whether we were justified in acting with respect to September 11, in cases where there was no connection to September 11, to whether we are justified in acting pre-emptively to protect this country. And I think he has put a marker down for what is going to be a policy of preemptive strike.

GREENFIELD: I know you were pointing us more toward Iraq than to Iran. And Secretary Powell today was saying pretty clearly that we weren't talking about a war with Iran. But when you say acting pre- emptively, I mean, I'm looking for some meat on the bones with respect to the nation of Iran. Does it mean funding democracy elements? Does it mean -- well, you tell me what you think it means.

PERLE: Well, I would hope that we would funding democratic elements, covertly assisting with broadcasting, with publications, with political organizations within Iran. I disagree with Fareed on a basic proposition. It was indeed the evil empire speech of Ronald Reagan that set in motion an ideological war that went after the legitimacy of the Soviet leadership, and that encouraged reformers in the Soviet Union and dissidents in the Soviet Union to take courage and ultimately to reshape their countries.

I think he was trying to encourage this pre-revolutionary mentality in Iran, particularly the young people of Iran, who have suffered terribly under this regime, who want nothing to do with the clerics and need to know that they have support somewhere in the world. And they have support in the United States.

GREENFIELD: Fareed, I mean, it worked -- the way Mr. Perle describes it, worked in the Soviet Union. Why not in a country like Iran?

ZAKARIA: Well, I advocate the Soviet model. I mean, I think that pressure, denunciation, absolutely, all that combined with some engagement. After all, I mean, I don't think Richard Perle would argue that Reagan should never have met Gorbachev, that there should've been -- you know, we don't even exchange ambassadors with Iran. We have no diplomatic relations.

So the Soviet model, it seems to me, is one where you have pressure, moral, political diplomatic, combined with some engagement. There is a model of only pressure with no engagement. And that's Cuba. And I think, and I think most reasonable minded people feel that nine presidents have called Fidel Castro many more names than evil. And he's still in power, and you know, and seems strong.

It seems to me that if you go down that route, you have really no historical models of success.

GREENFIELD: All right. PERLE: Well, the problem with engagement in this case is that you're engaging with an empty shell. The Khatami government has really no effective authority over the things that mattered. In the case of the Soviet Union, when you dealt with Gorbachev, you were dealing with the power and authority in that country.

I think the time will come for engagement. It just isn't quite yet. I think we need to turn up the temperature a bit and let the pot simmer a little longer, let it get close to the boiling point, and then a clever policy of engagement might consummate the revolution.

GREENFIELD: Well, to mix the metaphor, we'll let Mr. Perle and Mr. Zakaria come back and debate the temperature on the international stove of geo politics. And having completely muddled that metaphor, my thanks to the afore-mentioned Richard Perle and Fareed Zakaria.

When we come back, how Hollywood can save our political process.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: And another thing, who are the front runners, the dark horse candidates? Familiar questions to an old political junkie, but as you have heard, all questions swirling about the Oscar nominations. In fact, hard as it is to admit it, there's almost certainly more passion, more fervor about the Academy Awards than just about any election and a whole lot more people, tens of millions more, watch the Oscars than tune into a convention or an election.

And therein, maybe, lies a reform that just might increase the voter turnout. What if Americans, all of us, got the chance to vote for the Oscar nominations, but only as part of our election ballot? What of this fall, you could vote for Tom Hanks or Nicole Kidman or Robert Dinero or Susan Sarandon at the same time you are picking your governor, senator, alderman?

I'll tell you what would happen. The voter turnout would surge. At last, an election that voters really cared about. Maybe you'd even have cross endorsements. You know, movies and candidates running together. John McCain and "Blackhawk Down," Bill Clinton and "In the Bedroom." OK, we'd have to change the date of either the Oscars or elections, but what a small price to pay for an engaged, informed electorate.

I'm Jeff Greenfield. Thank you for watching.

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