Fresh Loaf

The Screen Actors Guild presented its 2006 awards last night, which seem to solidify Helen Mirren�s lock on the Academy Award for Best Actress, confirm Forest Whitaker�s frontrunner status for Best Actor, and indicate, via its Best Ensemble win, that Little Miss Sunshine may be a dark horse contender for the Best Picture Oscar. (The film won a Best Picture award from the Producers Guild recently, too.)

The thing that always bugs me about the SAGs is the nickname for the little gold Oscar-style statuette holding the masks of comedy and tragedy. They call it “The Actor.”

Could the name be any lamer? Couldn�t they have named it after some beloved, legendary bit player? Now, I have several friends who are current or former actors and I hold them in high esteem, but to me “The Actor” confirms every stereotype there is about actors being airheads. I can just imagine the SAG meeting when they decide to give an award, and what they’ll nickname it: “We need to call it something actory, something that sums up what acting is all about, something that really says ‘actor.’” “I know! How about…”

It’s like “The Simpsons” episode when the big greeting card company is trying to come up with a lucrative new holiday for the July/August slump (”We had great penetration with Christmas 2!”) and the CEO says “No, make it something like ‘Love Day,’ only not so lame.” Cut to Marge: “Happy Love Day, everybody!”

Bookmark It

Posted in Randomly Noted | Add a comment