Mag
gie Gyllenhaal. Up for Best Supporting for “Crazy Heart.” She said she’d call 4:30 p.m. She called exactly 4:30 p.m. The wind was whistling through her cell phone.
“Sorry for the crackling sounds,” she said. “I’m picking up my daughter at school.”
Through the howling winds, she laughingly recalled how she heard she was nominated.
“I was at my brother’s house in LA not watching it on TV. When the phone first rang, I vaguely thought maybe it was some small small chance that maybe this had to do with Oscar because my name was getting mentioned around the Golden Globes. At that time, my agent called to tell me I didn’t get it. So I thought, ‘Why wake me the f – – – up to tell me I didn’t get it?’ so this time I got an e-mail from my agent.
“What followed was a flurry of calls. It’s a pretty select group you hear from 5:30 in the morning. I was there with my husband and daughter and I didn’t want to keep my daughter up. Finally the phones stopped, and I said to my brother: ‘Maybe I should go to sleep.’ ”
“It’s really exciting and, you know, suddenly everybody wants to talk to you. And I was proud of my work but . . . well . . . I’ve been through the awards route before. When I was first nominated in ’99 I didn’t even know what the National Board of Review was. My next was a Golden Globe nomination for ‘SherryBaby,’ but my baby was tiny, and I was really only focusing on this infant.
“I’ve gone to the Academy Awards before. Once I presented the technical awards. And of course I was there when my brother was nominated. Last year I was doing the play ‘Uncle Vanya,’ and I made a huge bowl of cereal and sat up in bed, still with my period corset on, watching.
“This time I’m really even more into it. I’m thinking, well, maybe, these things really do mean something. But I did let go of the attachment because this time I seemed not to be getting any of the pre-Oscar nominations. I know I do want to go to the parties. I’m working with a couple of designers, and I’m still looking at dresses.”
TIME magazine wooing seniors. Offer ing yearly subscriptions at a fraction . . . Thanks to Joan Jedell and Nello’s for the chicken soup . . . The enigma of North Korea’s dictator and is he is or is he ain’t remains. All we know for sure is Kim Jong Il loves Hollywood movies, is infatuated with Jennifer Grey after seeing “Dirty Dancing” and wants to be a film director.
So what did they treat themselves to when they first made it? For Bruce Willis, it was a ’67 Corvette . . . So what did they do before they made it? Alan Arkin attended Bennington, an all-women’s college. Brought in as a drama student to play male roles in school plays, he did not graduate in a dispute over academic credits . . . So what did they do when they were kids? Carly Simon was an unofficial team mascot for the Dodgers . . . So how did they survive in those early days? Academy Award Best Actress nominee Sandra Bullock for “The Blind Side” was a dog beautician.
Ed Burns, who worked a landscaping job on this huge Wainscott, NY, estate for $100 a day: “It was awful, and I resented it. I ended up washing this guy’s cars, mowing his huge lawn and endless hours putting in his front and back walks. So after my first success, the movie I made, ‘The Brothers McMullen,’ I knew what I’d do. I got the house next door. But this guy didn’t ever recognize me. I’d been invisible to him. I was just a common landscaper. So every time I drove by I chucked an empty beer can on that lawn. I really resented his not remembering me and my not having that recognition of now being his equal. But was it his fault that I had been poor and he was rich?”
Clint
Eastwood, who directed “In victus” and the film’s two Oscar- nominated men Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman: “I have no choice but to look the way I am because they just don’t make enough shoe polish out there for my hair and so far nobody has a sander that could handle my face. So you know what? At some point you just have to look in the mirror and tell yourself, ‘Hey, this is who I am.’ ”
Jeweler Judith Ripka‘s daughter-in- law sent her this workout:
Stand on a comfortable surface. Plenty of room on each side. With a 5-pound potato bag in each hand, extend arms straight out from your sides. Hold one minute or as long as you can. Each day hold this position a bit longer. After a few weeks, move up to 10-pound potato bags. Then try 50-pound potato bags. Eventually try for a 100-pound potato bag in each hand and hold arms straight for more than a full minute.
After you feel confident at this level, put a potato in each bag.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.