Whither Rene Russo?

We have forgotten about her. Or maybe she doesn't want to be remembered. Featureless for three years now, and with no projects on the horizon, Rene Russo, you think, may just be another heap of 50-something female flotsam in the unforgiving, ageist waters of Hollywood. Bullshit. Bullshit! She's married to screenwriter Dan Gilroy, who is the younger brother of recent double Oscar nominee Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton). Hey, bros, get something cooking, will you?

And why the hell is she not in the remake of The Women? And she could be popping up in cheap, good, independent movies. God knows she's already had a reliable string of quality, popcorny blockbusters in the 1990s: the Lethal Weapon movies, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Get Shorty, Ransom, The Thomas Crown Affair. She's terrific at comedy, compelling with drama and has a definite movie-star aura. She's a female George Clooney. Come to think of: George! Why wasn't she in the Ocean's movies (instead of that insufferable Julia Roberts)? She's one of the boys, one of the few actors who actually deserves comparison to Rosalind Russell. Russo has sparred with Mel, Travolta, Costner and Clint -- why not you? Cast Rene in one of your movies. Have her play a shrink, you play a master gardener, go to her for therapy and fall in love with her. Call it Couch Tomatoes. Done. I'm happy.

P.S. Still, though, it seems the paparazzi remember her. She says to them, justifiably, "Why aren't you with Nicole Richie?" in this YouTube clip, which seems recent. And the unofficial fan site has photos of her at recent events. But why no work?

Broads bilk the script at the '68 Oscars

While trolling through YouTube doing research for my Triple Crowners series, I came across this clip. Watch and be stunned:

This is Natalie Wood, Ingrid Bergman, Jane Fonda, Diahann Carroll and Rosalind Russell at the 1968 Academy Awards (which was the first year the ceremony was broadcast globally). They presented the best director Oscar, but not before admonishing the nominated directors for doing their best "to make female stars obsolete." Bergman starts off the patter with, "We are assembled here somewhat reluctantly..." and the quintet proceeds to mock the directors -- except Anthony Harvey, who had a female lead in Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter -- for stacking their casts with men exclusively. (Bergman herself disqualifies Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet in nominee Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare adaptation, by brushing her off as "a teenaged newcomer" in a tone that is mischievous at best, contemptuous at worst.) Fonda and Russell in particular appear to be reveling in their own rebellion.

I've devoured my share of Oscar-related books, and I've never heard of this bit of unscripted subterfuge. After finding this clip, I tried to Google my way to answers: Whose idea was it? It must've been planned and rehearsed -- how else could it have been executed so flawlessly? What was the general reaction at the time, besides a surprised smattering of laughter in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion? How come the winner, Carol Reed, didn't respond during his acceptance speech? I found no answers online. The quintet of women aren't even listed as presenting the 1968 best director Oscar in the "Self" section of their IMDb filmographies. I scoured my Oscar books and found no mention of the incident. And yet here these women are, plain as day on YouTube, sticking it to the men and then politely giving the Oscar to one of them.

Has anyone heard of this before? Is this old news? And do you think these women's stunt was purposeful or tactless? Either way, it's one of the few Oscar clips that the Academy has not pulled selfishly and unreasonably from YouTube. Watch it while you can, if only to hear Russell dismiss HAL 9000 as "girlish."