Six months. Well over 100 films. Dozens of interviews, more parties, I don’t know how many awards shows, substantial dry-cleaner bills for the tuxedo alone.
And now it's over. We have a winner (the one I saw coming at the beginning of all this), and it's time to look back, and come up with 10 things I'll remember about this awards season.
In no particular order:
1. The Toronto Film Festival's gala screening of "The King's Speech"
The word out of the Telluride film festival had been positive, and an early-September Toronto screening sealed the deal: Tom Hooper's film went over like gangbusters in the huge Roy Thomson Hall, drawing applause at the end of the climactic speech and an ovation when it ended.
The screening took place on Colin Firth's 50th birthday, and also marked the first time I heard Hooper tell the story of his film, using anecdotes that I'd be hearing again and again over the next six months. They worked that night, and they worked all the way up to his Oscar acceptance speech on Sunday.
And since a few days earlier I'd picked "The King's Speech" as the 2010 Best Picture Oscar winner sight unseen, Toronto was a sign that I just might have gotten lucky two years in a row.
2. "The Social Network" taking over Spago
Within a few days of getting back from Toronto, I saw a screening of the film that would provide the main competition to "The King's Speech": David Fincher's "The Social Network," his virtuosic look at Mark Zuckerberg's founding of Facebook and its legal and personal repercussions.
The film would go on to win just about every critics' award on the planet, building up such momentum that it surged to Oscar frontrunner status in the eyes of most observers. And in early January, in the midst of all the attention and awards and at a time when "The Social Network" seemed to sit unassailably at the top of the heap, Sony bought out Spago in Beverly Hills for a DVD-release party for the film. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
The entire cast attended, as did Fincher (rarely present on the campaign trail) and producer Scott Rudin; the room buzzed with the certainty that not only was "The Social Network" the year's best movie, but it would be Sony's first Best Picture winner in more than two decades.
The food was great, the vibe was exhilarating, and the film would enjoy another couple of weeks on top, winning Golden Globes and Critics Choice Movie Awards. But then, less than three weeks after the Spago shindig, the Producers Guild would give its top honor to "The King's Speech," and the game would shift dramatically.
3. Banksy!
No other Oscar nominee was this much fun to watch.
