When I Win The Academy Award...
"You know," he began, helping himself to another handful of cheesies while keeping one eye on the television set, "When I win the Academy Award..."
Steve! Come on! You're a fifty-year old man living in a basement apartment. Your acting career is more of a rat's nest than this room: a government sponsored take on Top Gun to teach pilots not to leave things on the wing...a guest shot on a kids' TV series that took an Ed Woodian one hour to shoot...you even played a warlock one Halloween at a "haunted" mini-putt. You show up at auditions in Salvation Army shoes and a suit jacket with a burn in the lapel the size of a D.W. Griffith iris; thank God it's black so you can cover it up - when you remember to - with the same shoe polish you don't bother to apply to your footwear.
"...no speeches like hers " - he pointed to the doll-sized image that was clutching the Best Supporting Actress statuette. "Short and sweet, that's the way what I'll do."
Like the endless waves of thank you's rushing forth from the stretched faces of the next few winners, Steve's words ring with the flat music of over familiarity. Every Oscar night, whether it's been at my place or his, he drags out some variation on this age-old prophecy. Well tonight, I'm shattering the protocol. No head nod of approval from me. "For Heaven's Sake, Steve!", I'm going to yell, " Do you honestly think that by this time, at your age...!"
And yet....
The mind floods with winners of all kinds, circumventors of age, pedigree and circumstance.
John Houseman, 70, for The Paper Chase. He had been a bankrupt businessman, a middling producer, and an acting teacher.
Miyoshi Umeki, Brando's love interest in Sayanora. She had been a nightclub songstress known only in Japan.
Frank Sinatra, washed-up teen idol, who, with a little help from his broken-nosed "friends", took home the hardware for </>From Here To Eternity."
"You looked like you were trying to say something just then", says Steve, his fifty-year old belly hanging over his belt like the prospect of next month's rent hanging over his head.
"Hey Steve...just make sure you fill in that hole in your lapel before you go up."
