My husband’s last words, as he rolled over into early morning Monday slumber, were, “that’s why they shouldn’t ask 80- year olds to do it.” By “it” he meant present the final awards of Hollywood’s biggest night. Okay, so Warren Beatty is only 79 and Faye Dunaway 76. And yes, they were quickly “absolved” of the colossal mistake watched by a billion people.
But the elephant in the room is—once again—aging.
Publicly, and blessedly, all fingers have pointed at the folks of Price Waterhouse. After all, they were the ones who handed Beatty the envelope, who then handed it to his former Bonnie Parker, who handed it to La La Land who handed it to Moonlight. But, privately, (well, nothing is really that anymore) the midnight shuffle was immediately accompanied by some nasty murmuring. Twitter was ablaze. (“Faye announced it. Poor girl. Go home. Go to bed.” “Maybe they should have gone to Spec Savers.” “If I recall, they did go down in a hail of bullets.”)
Mainstream media has largely resisted the “age thing,” but words like “confusion” are seeping into discussion of Beatty’s endless half-minute of silence. The New Yorker blamed his “vanity” for his not donning glasses. But I imagine his harshest sympathizers are those who, at the moment of the crime, immediately cringed with recognition. We went right to that place of not being able to read the lettering, of feeling lightheaded as anxiety crawls up the flesh, of wondering if balance is about to be lost. And literally sensing the brain thinking not fast but slow.
It is not unlike why many of us of a certain age had trouble putting our arms around the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. It is not that we didn’t agree with him and that we weren’t thrilled he was exciting our kids. It was that we couldn’t imagine ourselves putting in those kinds of days--at least without an afternoon nap. Let alone what would lie ahead if he made it to the White House.
Rather than listening to Bernie, I heard my interior dialogues screaming, “He’s going to get that reporter’s name wrong!” “He’s going to fall asleep at the podium!” He’s going to fall off the stage!” Shamefully, it turned out the kids were all right and showed more respect for the senior generation than we show ourselves.
Back to the Oscars: the uncomfortable bottom line is: would a Jennifer Aniston or Ryan Reynolds have acted more quickly when they realized there was something fishy about that envelope? Would their instincts have been sharper, would they have been less conscious about finding the right words and turning the situation around before it went further?
Probably, and I wish Warren Beatty would have done so as well. And I wish Faye Dunaway had read the entire card and not just the three words of the movie on the page. But hey, they made my favorite movie of the last 50 years, and my favorite one this year ended up coming in first, right after coming in second. So let’s stay positive, acknowledge the elephant, roll over and return to our afternoon naps.