At this year’s Oscars Best Picture went to “12 Years a Slave”. The night’s other big winner was Gravity, which managed to draw in 7 Oscars. Ellen DeGeneres returned to host again and put on a show that was full of pizza parties, selfies a-plenty, and a good dose of jibes.
Jared Leto was the first winner of the evening, earning the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance in “Dallas Buyers Club”. Fresh off the win backstage Leto sent his Oscar crowd surfing through the Press as he fielded questions in high spirits and showered his collaborators with praise.
“They had a budget of $250. I’m not joking. That’s the truth. And they worked the hardest out of anyone on the entire set. Makeup, hair, they’re always the first to set in the morning.” Crediting them them as, “Essential to the building of these characters and performances.”
“You can make it about yourself or you can hold up a mirror and shine a light, and that’s what I chose to do tonight.”
When asked how he would be celebrating his win he shot a sly smile.
“Oh, I’m going to be celebrating to the break of dawn. Trust me. Look me in the eyes and see that I will revel tonight.“
Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews also won for their work in Makeup and Hairstyling on “Dallas Buyers Club”. They told the story of their experience of meeting Jared in character as Rayon.
“He was already in high heels, clothes, a skirt, and he had some makeup on,” said Lee.
“We never met him as Jared.” Mathews adds, “He came to the makeup chair and sat down. He was sizing the both of us up, trying to figure out if he trusted us, I’m sorry she, if she trusted us. And so I said, ‘Hey, what do you think about waxing off all your eyebrows?’ And she goes, ‘Yeah, I just waxed my entire body, so why not go for broke.’”
The film was a lock out for the male performance awards categories seizing both with Best Actor in a Leading Role going to Matthew McConaughey for his portrayal of an AIDS patient.
“When we did the film, it was also on my desk five years ago, that we finally got made two years ago, it sort of feels like a bit of a culmination. Not really a destination as far as work goes, but the movie, the script, no one wanted to make it for 20 years. It got turned down 137 times. And then it came across my desk, I jumped on with the team that was trying to get it made and we somehow got it made and got it across the line. That was a minor miracle in itself, so that felt great.”
McConaughey compared his experience with working in his role on the well regarded TV show “True Detective”.
“That was basically like a six-month film. It was one director, eight episodes, 450 pages, basically a 450-page script. Six months’ shooting on film. Very considerate. Much more considerate than ‘Dallas Buyers Club’. We shot that with one camera, no lights, and a tiny crew in 25 days. I was going for the quality and the experience.”
The opulent “Great Gatsby” won twice as Catherine Martin scored both Oscars for Costume Design and Production Design, which she shared with Set Decorator Beverley Dunn.
Catherine Martin has been working with the same group of women for nearly 25 years.
“The one is a tailor, Gloria Bava, one is a principal cutter called Cheryl Pike, and I also have a milliner that I’ve worked with since I got out of school, her name’s Rosie Boylan.”
When asked how she knows how much is too much she answered simply.
“In a Baz Luhrmann world, there’s never too much!”
Martin talked about how her two realms collide.
“I think that the language of clothes and the language of environment work hand-in-hand as story-telling tools in what is a visual medium, filmmaking, and it’s certainly something that Baz considers down to the very last detail. One has to remember that actors are saying about 30 percent of a film are usually close-ups; in my husband’s movies, sometimes more. So what you’re looking at are clothes and they become an indicator of who the person is, what they’re doing, how they’re feeling and where they are, and I think the most successful visual interpretations of ones that are collaborative, so I think it’s quite good to be the same person. Even though it can be schizophrenic at times, you’re arguing with yourself.”
