By Lynn Elber, Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Jordan Peele had to dig deep to get the horror-satire "Get Out" to the screen, and his reward was the first original screenplay Oscar for an African-American.
"This means so much to me," Peele said as he accepted the trophy Sunday. "I stopped writing this movie about 20 times because I thought it was impossible. I thought it wasn't going to work. I thought no one is ever going to make this movie.
"But I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it," he said.
The film's lead character, played by best actor nominee Daniel Kaluuya, is a young black man plunged into a nightmare suburb where African-Americans' bodies are stolen for use by whites.
"Get Out" is Peele's big-screen directorial debut, but he's been honing his skills as an actor, writer, director and producer for more than a dozen years.
He started getting awards notice in 2008, when he shared in an Emmy nomination for a sketch he wrote for MADtv. He was nominated seven more times for his contributions to "Key & Peele," the hit Comedy Central sketch show he created with Keegan-Michael Key. Peele also co-wrote and co-starred (with Key) in the 2016 action-comedy "Keanu."
His upcoming projects include "The Last O.G.," a TV comedy series starring Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish.
He emerged into a backstage interview room after his win to a group of holding up numbered signs as they waited to ask him questions. He joked, "Am I about to be auctioned off right now?"
He acknowledged his win was a heady experience for a young man who once contemplated abandoning his dreams of a film career.
"I almost never became a director because there was such a shortage of role models," he said, adding that childhood heroes like Spike Lee and John Singleton appeared to be "exceptions to the rule."
He made "Get Out" on a tight 23-day shooting schedule and for $4.5 million, and he recognized many people who helped him along the way.
"I had people who I shouldn't have been able to afford because they believed in it and they put their trust in my vision," he said. "I felt like I had the privilege of being a pirate captain with a real swarthy group of bad-asses."
More Oscar history was made with the original screenplay award, as 89-year-old James Ivory became the oldest winner in any category for "Call Me by Your Name," a story about young love adapted from Andre Aciman's 2007 novel.
It was the first writing Oscar for Ivory, who was half of one of the most acclaimed independent filmmaking duos in movie history. He and Ismail Merchant, his partner and producer, made up Merchant Ivory Productions, which came to embody refined period dramas including "Remains of the Day," ''Howard's End," ''Maurice," ''A Room With a View." Their regular screenwriter was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
Ivory acknowledged his late colleagues in his acceptance speech.
"Working with them for 50 years led me to this award," he said.
He lauded Aciman's story, about the romance between two young men, as a story familiar to most people, "whether gay or straight or somewhere in between."
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More