LOS ANGELES — On Monday morning, as Daniel Ojari left home for lunch for this year’s Oscar nominees, his 4-year-old son surprised him with a handwritten card.
“Good luck at the Oscars,” it said.
Ojari, who has been nominated for his animated short ‘Robin Robin’, burst into a big grin. Then he turned the card over and saw that it was not addressed to him, but to Lin-Manuel Miranda, a nominee for the best original song for the animated musical ‘Encanto’.
“Can you give it to Lin-Manuel?” his son asked.
It’s the same with the annual Oscar nominees lunch, the kind of event where sound mixers can tuck their shoulders with superstars. Held this year at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel and reserved solely for the nominees and their guests, lunchtime is usually a joyous affair as everyone dresses up and no one loses.
For Jonathan Fawkner, who has been nominated three times for the Visual Effects Oscar and is in the running again this year for “No Time to Die,” the highlight of lunch is usually the “class photo,” which shows the year’s nominees. called on stage one by one to pose together as a huge, egalitarian group.
“The best part is they could say ‘Clint Eastwood’ in the same breath, and everyone claps, and then ‘Jonathan Fawkner’ — However? — but everyone’s still clapping,” Fawkner said. “It’s brilliant!”
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This year it was all a little different. Although attendees had to be tested for Covid-19 within 48 hours of the event, the class photo was still split into small, socially distancing groups of about a dozen nominees each, which would later be digitally combined into a traditional photo.
But for the hours of smoozing that preceded the photo, no such digital trickery was necessary.
The guests were all too happy to hug at one of the first major awards ceremonies held in person since the Omicron variant sank the winter campaigns. An enthusiastic Will Smith, considered the best actor for ‘King Richard’, gave a high five to Jessica Chastain and Maggie Gyllenhaal, while supporting role nominee Troy Kotsur (“CODA”) shook hands and fisted Denzel Washington. – bumped into “Summer of Soul” director Questlove.
Elsewhere in the ballroom, Steven Spielberg dined on gluten-free chickpea panisse at a star-studded table that included Kotsur’s “CODA” co-star Emilia Jones and Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, one of two married couples to score matching Oscar nominations this year. (The other couple, “Power of the Dog” co-stars Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, had to skip lunch due to filming commitments.) And at the table next to mine, Best Actress nominee Kristen Stewart and her fiancé Dylan Meyer , in conversation with Finneas O’Connell, nominated to co-write the title track of “No Time to Die” with his singer sister, Billie Eilish.
Will Packer, the producer of this year’s Oscar broadcast, took the stage to encourage the potential winners to keep their acceptance speech short, though he made no mention of the academy’s controversial plan to make them even shorter: in attempting to land the show under three hours, eight awards are handed out in the hour before the Oscars are televised, then intertwined into a climax that airs later in the show.
Past Oscar winners such as Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro have spoken out against the plan, which prompted Oscar-winning sound engineer Tom Fleischman to cancel his academy membership last week. Some of the nominees have talked about boycotting the show, but even those who attended the lunch had a lot to say about it.
“I’m angry and disappointed,” said Joe Walker, who has been nominated for this year’s “Dune” montage. His race is among the eight presented for the show. “I think it’s a mistake,” he said.
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“I think a lot of people at the academy, in other industries, don’t understand what editing is,” said Walker’s guest, Mary Sweeney, who edited the films “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive.”
Though the academy shortens the show in an effort to bring in younger viewers, Sweeney and Walker suggested that the TikTok and YouTube generations may be more adept at editing than they have the credit for.
“Interest in editing is growing all over the world,” Walker says. “I mean, the most inspiring cut I saw last year was in a TikTok!”
Since most of the best-known Oscar nominees will still be walking the red carpet when those eight categories are announced on March 27, Monday’s lunch this season may have provided the only real opportunity for some of the honored guests to get to know each other. with famous names. Luckily, when Ojari walked into the event, the very first person he saw was Miranda, his son’s idol.
He walked over to explain the note and Miranda encouraged Ojari to keep it for himself as a keepsake. But Ojari knew his son would want him to complete the mission. When I spoke to him towards the end of lunch, he scanned the room for Miranda, a note in hand.
“I still have to try and put it in his top pocket,” he said.