The Oscars for the films of 2001— handed out on March 24, 2002— are now most famous for the history they made, with Halle Berry becoming the first woman of color to win the best-actress Oscar, Randy Newman breaking a 15-nomination losing streak to win for best original song, and former child star Ron Howard finally winning the Oscar he admitted in his speech that he’d imagined accepting “about 1,000 times.”
But revisiting that Oscar race, and the more than four-hour ceremony hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, can tell us plenty about where Hollywood was at the time, how much it’s changed, and how weird it still is that they had Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close backstage as the announcers. On this week’s Little Gold Men podcast, This Had Oscar Buzz cohosts Joe Reid and Chris Feil join Richard Lawson, Katey Rich, and Joanna Robinson for another Oscars-season flashback. (For our look back at the 2000 Oscar race, go here.) The topics include the series of controversies around A Beautiful Mind and the accusations of dirty campaigning against Miramax, how 9/11 affected the race and made for an incredibly sincere ceremony, and why Amélie got nominated for so many awards and won nothing.
Listen to the episode below, and subscribe to Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
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