Jon Stewart hosts the 78th Annual Academy Awards.
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, host of the 78th Annual Academy Awards (airing Sunday at 9 pm/ET on ABC) answers TVGuide.com readers' burning questions!
What can you tell me about your Oscar-hosting gig? — Paul Strouse, Pittsburgh, Pa.Jon Stewart: This may be the most devastating, controversial, powerful, dangerous awards show ever.... No, I'm looking to have fun with it. If people are kind enough to spend four hours watching this damn show, I'm hoping to give them something other than a numb ass. And I won't sing; I want them to be happy.
Will you have The Daily Show's Rob Corddry or Ed Helms on hand to help on the red carpet with some impromptu interviews? Or Stephen Colbert —
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Question: I'm really confused by the fact that Syriana was nominated in the Original Screenplay category — am I crazy, or wasn't it based on a book by someone who used to be in the CIA?
I recently noticed that Gladiator was nominated for best original screenplay, when in fact it was virtually a scene-by-scene remake of The Fall of the Roman Empire, starring Stephen Boyd and Christopher Plummer. Why did it qualify as an original script? — Sami
Answer: The on-screen credit for writer-director Stephen Gaghan's Syriana screenplay says that it was "suggested by the book See No Evil by Robert Baer." Baer was a high-level, Middle East-based CIA officer, and his 2002 nonfiction book generated a lot of controversy by ta
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Geena Davis, Commander in Chief
After the shell-shocked winners step off stage at the Golden Globe Awards, they go backstage to meet the press. When they find us reporters camped out in the Wilshire Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the stars are granted a second chance of sorts: They can either address the world with more eloquence than they mustered onstage, or simply make bigger fools of themselves! Once this TVGuide.com reporter got past surly security guards at the door, I took my seat and watched a parade of Lost thespians, Desperate Housewives and Brokeback Mountaineers take their shots. Read on to see how they fared in the media frenzy.
5:15 pm/PT What will Syriana scene-stealer George Clooney do with his best-supporting-actor trophy? "I'm going to put this on the hood of my car," he quipped. "Is that too much?" Everybody's a joker, George. But this time it's a plus: While Mr. Clooney couldn't resist making that Jack Abramoff crack onstage, at
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Before the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild award nominations come out today, let's quickly recap all of the kudos handed out on Wednesday by two other biggies. The Producers Guild of America has Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, Crash, and Walk the Line vying for best-picture honors, while the Writers Guild gave nods to Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck, Cinderella Man, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and The Squid and the Whale in the original-screenplay category, and Brokeback, Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, and Syriana in the adapted-screenplay competition.
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Cry Havoc: Anne Hathaway and Bijou Phillips
Question: I just saw a direct-to-video movie called Havoc that was dedicated to Jessica Kaplan (1979-2003). Who was she and why is the movie dedicated to her?
Answer: When Los Angeles-born Jessica Kaplan was a 17-year-old high-school student at Santa Monica's famous Crossroads School, she sold a screenplay called The Powers that Be — about privileged white California kids who were into gangbanging ghetto culture until they run into the real thing — to New Line Cinema for a cool $150,000. This happened a full three years before 13-year-old Nikki Reed wrote a screenplay called Thirteen about her experiences as a wayward child of privilege, but Reed got far more publicity because her script was quickly produced and she costarred in the movie. Kaplan
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As expected, King Kong lorded over the box office in its opening weekend, besting all others with a $51.15 million take — the fourth-best December premiere ever. Rounding out the Top 5 were The Chronicles of Narnia (with $31.2 mil), The Family Stone ($12.7 mil), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($5.9 mil) and Syriana ($5.5 mil).
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Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
The box office went ape for King Kong over the weekend... oh, right — that's next Monday's news. (Hey, I didn't want to be the last hack to make a lame joke about people being driven bananas by Peter Jackson's instaclassic.) This weekend, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe dominated the cineplex, conjuring up $67.1 million in receipts. Expanding nationwide after two weeks, George Clooney's muy political Syriana took in $12 million for a second-place finish. But the big story — no, I'm not going to make another pathetic Kong crack — is the performance of two flicks in limited release: Memoirs of a Geisha, playing on only eight screens, made a stunning $674,000; and Brokeback Mountain — the movie of the year according to the L.A. Film Critics Association and the Boston Society of Film Critics — wrangled $544,549 in just five theaters. Its $108,910 take per screen
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