Demi Moore has already won

From the ages of about 13 to 30, I made a point to see all of the Oscar nominees I could before Hollywood’s Biggest Night. Now, at my big age of 36, I only watch the movies I am genuinely curious about, or movies that look awful if one of my friends wants to share a pre-roll and maybe 2-4 beers ahead of the picture (I’m looking at you, Darkest Hour).

This year and last year, mercifully, most of the best picture nominees are inoffensive to me, and the movies that are winning the so-called precursor awards are for the most part good to very good. I shudder to think of how this karmic debt will be balanced next year.

I did not see I’m Still Here, due to a lack of interest, but of the 9 best picture nominees I did see, they range for me from the uneven but ultimately fine (Emilia Pérez¹, Wicked) to the good (The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave) to the great (Anora, Dune: Part Two, The Substance), to the transcendent (Nickel Boys).

How I feel every day of my life

Of these films, there is one in particular which has come up in every single conversation I have had about the Oscar nominations, sometimes brought up by me, sometimes brought up by others. It is a film which has caused more than one middle-aged woman to interject into a private conversation I was having near her just to chime in: “I LOVED The Substance.”

I do not think The Substance is the single best film of the year, but it is in my top five. But in my anecdotal evidence of people being compelled to talk to me about it because they heard my lilting fag voice screeching about it from across the Paramount Pictures annual Christmas tree lighting party, or across the bar at Hollywood’s legendary Musso and Frank’s, The Substance is the stickiest of this year’s best picture nominees.²

There has been a noted intensity to the way that these multiple strangers have expressed themselves, a profound urgency with which they feel like they need to share this common ground with me. And then there are the people who, with equal intensity, want to tell me that The Substance is overrated, that it’s stupid, that Demi Moore’s thunderous work is overrated, that people are only voting for her out of sympathy that she has never received artistic recognition before this point.

And I am here to tell you, Demi Moore does not need to win an Academy Award. You can feel it in her energy with every speech: she would love to have it, she’s going after it with everything she’s got, but she’s going to be fine on Monday morning if Mikey Madison wins.

The idea that anyone is voting for Moore for some reason other than her talent is preposterous. Actually, I will modify that, because the Academy Award in every category is as much about commercial success as it is about artistic success. But this is not a Sandra Bullock situation where people are voting pretty much entirely because the performer has brought so much money into the industry that they need to be rewarded, although that is true of Moore’s remarkable run of hits in the 90s.

People feel something when they watch The Substance, whether it is positive or negative, and that’s real. The film has struck a real nerve.³ You cannot claim that the film does not have a lasting effect on the people who have seen it. Last Sunday night on the Screen Actors Guild Awards, when they showed merely a 10-second clip while reading the names of the Lead Female Actor nominees, you could hear a pin drop in the Shrine Auditorium. Moore has commanded the eyes and ears of the entire industry with this film—the eyes and ears of the world.

Demi Moore does not need an Oscar: she is Demi Moore, for God’s sake.

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My predictions btw:

Picture: Anora
Director: Sean Baker, Anora
Actress: Demi Moore, The Substance
Actor: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Original Screenplay: Anora
Adapted Screenplay: Conclave
Cinematography: Maria⁴
Editing: Anora
Production Design: Wicked
Costume Design: Wicked
Makeup and Hairstyling: The Substance
Sound: Dune: Part Two
Original Score: The Brutalist
Original Song: “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez
Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two
Documentary Feature: No Other Land⁵
International Feature: I’m Still Here
Animated Feature: The Wild Robot
I don’t have opinions on the short films, which is not to denigrate the form, but I do not know anything about any of them. I’m busy.

1. I can’t help but feel like if you cannot admit that the acting is strong, the cinematography is handsome, and the choreography is brilliant, that you have been influenced by the manipulative PR campaign run by Fernanda Torres herself. Thank God Karla will be showing up at the Oscars—we need the star power.

2. Even my primary care physician noticed I was wearing shorts that proclaimed “Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth” and was like “I have watched The Substance four times already.”

3. You can read my review here.

4. My Big Swing prediction of the year is bunking the conventional wisdom that The Brutalist has this on lock and that Ed Lachman will receive his first Academy Award this year—he won the ASC Award

5. It’s actually brutally offensive to me that this may win the Academy Award, as opposed to there being any substantive political action from Hollywood’s elite to end the genocide in Gaza, but I don’t have time to get into that today.