We now know the stats for Monday’s Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon: according to an Academy press release, 14 acting nominees and all five Best Director contenders are expected to attend the annual soiree.
It’ll be a full house in the Best Actor category: Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman and Jeremy Renner have all confirmed their attendance, with only Helen Mirren missing among Best Actress nominees Sandra Bullock, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sidibe and Meryl Streep.
Vera Farmiga, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Anna Kendrick will have to represent the Supporting Actress category without Penelope Cruz and Mo’Nique (is another Internet fuss coming over that diva’s absence?), while Woody Harrelson and Christoph Waltz are the only confirmed Supporting Actor nominees.
That means that Matt Damon, Christopher Plummer and Stanley Tucci won’t have the opportunity to pick up their certificates of nomination, or to receive the oddest and most charming AMPAS gift, the Academy’s official Oscar nominee sweatshirt.
In the past week I’ve mentioned the sweatshirt – which sports a little Oscar statuette with “NOMINEE” discreetly emblazoned below – to Mulligan and to “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, both of whom had the same excited reaction: “Really???”
Yep, really. (Assuming the shirts arrive on time, which after some dicey moments it now appears they will.) That’s one of the fun parts of the Nominees Luncheon, which is certainly one of the most collegial, stress-free events on the Oscar calendar. It’s an event where seating arrangements are shuffled so that you don’t sit with anybody from your film, or anybody from your category; where a Best Actor nominee could end up at the same table with a documentarian, a cinematographer, a special effects whiz and the maker of an animated short.
It’s where everybody mingles and poses for the annual “class photo” (last year’s included Sean Penn, Penelope Cruz, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway and Viola Davis, above) and tries to enjoy the company instead of worrying about the competition.
It’s where nominees with names that fall near the end of the alphabet (Renee Zellweger in the past, Hans Zimmer this year) need to make sure they wear comfortable shoes – since after everyone goes to a set of risers for the photo, they remain standing until their names are called (alphabetically) to receive their certificates and sweatshirts.
It’s where life-of-the-party Catherine Keener, when she was nominated for “Capote,” spent so much time table-hopping that she never actually got around to eating her lunch; at the end, Keener, who’d donned her nominee sweatshirt because she was cold, announced, “I’m starving! I’m going to In ‘N’ Out Burger!”
It’s where, in 2000, “South Park” creator and Best Song nominee Trey Parker showed up after spending the weekend in Las Vegas. “I was in a strip club in Vegas at four o’clock this morning,” he told me. “I do remember looking up at a stripper and yelling, ‘Hey, you wanna go with me to the Academy Award Nominees Luncheon tomorrow?’ And she looked down and yelled, ‘Sure!’” (He opted for his more presentable assistant instead.)
