Andy Serkis and Patton Oswalt, who were passed over when the Academy handed out its nominations, stole the show on Friday night at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which honored Serkis, Oswalt, Shailene Woodley and three Oscar nominees with its annual Virtuoso Awards.
Nominees Demian Bichir, Rooney Mara and Melissa McCarthy were the three Virtuoso honorees also saluted by the Academy, but Oswalt and Serkis, who were passed over for their work in "Young Adult" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," prompted the biggest crowd reaction.
Partly, that might have been because the popular McCarthy was a casualty of awards season, sidelined by laryngitis and unable to attend.
But it's unlikely that the "Bridesmaids" star, if she'd been healthy, could have topped the moment when Serkis stripped off his jacket and shirt and did his entire onstage interview at the Arlington Theater wearing only his pants and shoes.
And it made Serkis the only honoree to disrobe in a 10-day festival that has also presented salutes to actors Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer, director Martin Scorsese and, on Saturday night, "The Artist" actors Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo.
Serkis' antics were prompted when Oswalt, the night's third honoree, was called to the stage by moderator Dave Karger. Award-winners were seated in the audience at the Arlington, and had to walk to the stage by going up a set of stairs, and then traveling through an alcove in the wings of the stage.
After navigating the path, Oswalt pointed at the alcove. "I feel like I should have gone in there wearing one outfit and come out wearing something different," he said. "That would have been a real virtuoso."
In the audience, Serkis took that comment as a challenge. "Patton set me up," he said to TheWrap afterwards. "So I started thinking, what can I do?"
His solution was simple: go into the alcove, strip off his shirt and jacket (he'd already undone a couple of buttons), hand them to a surprised SBIFF staffer, and walk onto the stage shirtless.
It left the audience in stitches, though it also made it hard to concentrate on the actor's comments, in which he talked passionately about performance capture – the technique of which he is the acknowledged master, after his work in "The Lord of the Rings," "King Kong," "The Adventures of Tintin" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."
"I've never ever drawn any distinction between playing a performance-capture role and doing acting on screen or onstage," he said. "It's exactly the same thing."
But he did admit that his career has taken an odd path. "I met ["Lord of the Rings" director] Peter Jackson, he put me in a bunch of dots, and 12 years later I'm still doing that," he said.
Oswalt, for his part, was both very funny and very thoughtful during his onstage interview.
