Being a doc-obsessed human being I was watching Academy Awards tonight to find out who won in the Documentary categories. (Well, and for the fashion, and the mindless entertainment value).
It was “The Cove” for Best Feature Doc. No surprise there. “The Cove” just broke new ground in its stylistic presentation and story structure. It was an action film documentary and it was so compelling and scary and amazing.
The surprise of the night came during the Best Short Doc. The winner was “Music by Prudence.” Nominees were Director Roger Ross Williams and Producer Elinor Burkett. The award was announced and gracefully Mr. Williams, the film’s director, begins his speech “I never dreamed, when I got on a plane to Zimbabwe…” and then in a Kanye-style bitch slap, suddenly was CUT OFF by the red-headed producer who hoists herself onstage and swan dives in front of the microphone. Dude, what?!
You can see the video at Mediaite
Rumors abound, some say that she and Williams had agreed earlier that he would give the speech, some say they raced each other for the stage. It sure appears there was some kind of personal issue between the two of them. But it might have worked out of the best. Whatever happened there’s probably more press about the Doc Short Film category due to Kanyeish controversy than anyone would have expected. I mean, when else would MTV blog about a doc that isn’t even about MTV?
See who Roger Ross Williams would have thanked if he had had the chance:
More blogs about here:
Salon.com got the behind the scenes story. – Wow.
Lehigh Valley gets some comments from Williams’ sister, who refers to Ms. Burkett as “Ms. Pain-in-the-Ass”
Nowpublic pulls in some of the twitteryammer about it.
Doc & a Drink 
I watched this last night with my girlfriend and we thought it was a Kanye West move too. The look on the guy’s face is pretty funny. Also, the speech given by Sandy Powell (she won for best costume design) was pretty hilarious in how arrogant and derogatory she was, also very Kanye.
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I agree that Ms. Powell’s speech came off pretty derisive. I mean, it basically sounded like “Yeah, I know I’m great, quit making me stand up about it, this staute’s so heavy.” But in her defense, she actually won the award and was supposed to give a speech, she didn’t jump in front of somebody in the middle of a sentence. (And upon review it seems like what she was saying was “I only win these awards because I work on big movies, you guys should look at people on the smaller movies too.” – it just came out wrong.)
But the real question is what did you think of the poppin’ fresh dance number? – cause you know, the score from “The Hurt Locker” always makes me want to break dance.
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