another one year projectThis year we follow the words of Oprah Winfrey

This Sunday night is Hollywood’s main event, the 82nd Academy Awards, and on Monday they’ll have the after party event. When it comes to movies, one name stands out as a critic, Roger Ebert. He has given the thumbs up or down to over 10,000 movies. As you may have heard, Roger has been battling cancer for the last 8 years and he is here today with some big news.

He is TV’s most famous film critic, for over 40 years people have checked out his opinion before going to the movies. He started out with the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966, and one year later he was their film critic.. In 1975 he received a Pulitzer Prize for his work and debuted his TV show with Jean Siskel. Their signature move was such a hit they even trademarked their catchphrase, two thumbs up. For the next 24 years, they became household names, on top of the film world. But in 1998, Siskel was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died less than a year later. Ebert was devastated, but the show went on because that is what Siskel would have wanted. Another blow came in 2002 when Roger was diagnosed with thyroid cancer which spread to his salivary glands and jaw. He endured surgery after surgery. In 2006 the cancer had taken his voice, forcing Roger to leave his show after 30 years.

Even though cancer has changed the face that we know and love, and taken his voice says Oprah, Roger has not slowed down one bit. His reviews are still read worldwide. Earlier this week, Roger and his wife Chaz, invited the show into their home. They go see a movie in the morning, which is their usual routine. They see 2-4 movies a day. She needs to be nearby in case Roger needs anything. They have a variety of signals meaning I love you, tell them what you know or read the note, he needs the mens room. They watch the new Polanski movie, Ghost Writer. He then meets with TV execs to discuss the possibility of a new show. They head home. They eat lunch in separate rooms- his wife feels it is unfair for her to eat in front of him when he can no longer eat what he wishes. SInce he lost his jaw he lost the lower floor of his mouth, so if he ate there’s nothing to support it. He has his lunch private, it is in a gravity drip bag, suspended from a pole which goes into a port in his stomach. After the lunch they watch Alice in Wonderland in 3D. Then it’s home for dinner, writing and a little exercise. Then it’s back out for film number 3.

Oprah welcomes Roger to the studio. They hold hands, he does the sign for I love you. Roger is able to communicate by typing his words into a computer. He is feeling terrific. They have loaded in some answers. He doesn’t remember the last the words that he spoke aloud as he didn’t know they’d be his last words. They were probably to Chas as they wheeled him in and he hopes that they were I love you. On the other hand they may have been Good morning Doctor. Oprah says that the amazing article in Esquire Magazine said that he can talk in his dreams- yes he talks in them all the time, just like he did in real life. He remembers childhood memories, in his mind he would taste the root beer he had with his father. After he lost his sense of taste, he replays the taste of that root beer over and over. Oprah says wow, that’s beautiful. Oprah asks him to tell us what her brother in law says about this- he sais that he told his brother-in-law the story and that he was fixated on root beer. Johnny asked if he had thought of that memory in 60 years, and Roger hadn’t. Johnny said that it might be that when the Lord took away Roger’s drinking, he gave him back that memory. Oprah loves that story, the audience applaud.

In a new Oscar poll from Yahoo, 36% pick Jeff Bridges for best actor, 74% say Sandra Bullock will take home gold and 41% say the winner will be Avatar. Robert’s wife of 18 years Chaz is in the studio. 4 years ago he lost his voice and the ability to eat or drink due to complications from thyroid cancer. But today he is cancer free, the crowd applaud. Roger is using computer technology to speak to us with a generic voice, but a company in Scotland is using cutting-edge technology to use his actual voice. They take hours of Roger’s past movie commentaries and create a new, computerized voice from those clips. Chaz hasnt heard Roger’s real voice since July 2006. Chaz is excited to hear it. Though it won’t be perfect, Roger says he’s looking forward to sounding like his old self again. The voice says “It’s what they call a beta. It still needs improvement, but at least it sounds like me,” he says. “When I type anything, this voice will speak whatever I type. When I read something, it will read in my voice. I have got to say, in first grade they said I talked too much. And now I still can.”

Chaz is moved to tears. She thinks that it’s incredible that that’s his voice. She asks him what does he think? “Uncanny,” his voice answers. “A good feeling.”  Oprah says to Chaz as one woman to another, Chaz is incredible and makes her proud to spell her name Woman. She refused to let Roger die. Chaz called Oprah and said she refused to let him die, and she stood by him and has been with him and taken care of him and shown what true love is. Chaz says that it  has been intense. When she married Roger, she knew what an amazing man he was. He is smart. He’s funny. He’s very respectful of women. “He’s appreciative of other cultures,” she says. “It’s hard to find someone like him. And I didn’t want to lose him. I just refused to give up on him. If there was anything in my power to help him live, that’s what I was going to do.”

Chaz reads an extract from Roger’s journal; “I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and I am happy that I lived long enough to find it out.” Oprah says that’s beautiful and the crowd applaud.

Roger says that he is done with surgery, he is never going to eat or drink or talk again. Surgery would be just to patch his face back together, and he will not go through with that. This is the way he looks and his life is happy and productive, so why have more surgery? People ask if he minds that Esquire Magazine ran the photograph. He doesn’t mind at all, no one looks perfect, we have to make peace with the way we look and get on with life.

Oprah loves that, thank you. The crowd applaud. Oprah wants to ask this, does Roger  miss food? Roger nods and gesticulates. Oprah says that she read that in Esquire that he misses the socialising around food. Chaz says that he misses the camaraderie. Every now and then he’ll ask her to eat something that he used to enjoy and he’ll try and enjoy it vicariously. This Sunday is Oscar night, here is what we haven’t heard for years, Roger’s predictions in his voice.

“I can’t remember a year when it seemed easier to predict the Oscars,” he says. “Of course, those may be famous last words.”

Best Supporting Actress: “Mo’Nique will win for her powerful performance as the cruel and damaged mother in Precious.”

Best Supporting Actor: “Relative unknown Christoph Waltz won the Best Actor award at Cannes for Inglourious Basterds and has never looked back.”

Best Actress: “Few people saw this one coming, but Sandra Bullock made a dazzling comeback in the Blind Side. I think she’ll win.”

Best Actor: “I pick Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. His great performance swept the Critics’ Awards, and I think he has the momentum.”

Best Movie: “The only dicey category is Best Picture. Up in The Air was the early front-runner, and Avatar could win after its record-breaking profits. But I think it’s a win for Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.”

Best Director: “I also pick Kathryn Bigelow for best director. If you vote against her, you’ll be going against years of precedent that say the winner of the Directors Guild Award will win the Oscar. ”

Oprah says that she really wants to meet Kathryn Bigelow. Both Cbaz and Roger will be at the Academy Awards, Oprah says that they will see them there. She thanks them.

They show a clip of Morgan Freeman in Invictus. Oprah says wow, that was the best actor nominee, Morgan Freeman. This is Morgan’s fifth Oscar nomination. He received his first Oscar statuette in 2005 for his supporting role in Million Dollar Baby, as you may recall. He joins us by satellite from Malibu, California. They say hi. She asks what it means to be asked to play the great Nelson Mandela. ”I was anointed by him, so to speak, back in the mid-90s when he was asked, ‘If his book became a movie,who would he want to play him?’” Morgan says. “He said me. So I knew somewhere down the line that I would be playing Nelson Mandela, in something”. Morgan told him long ago that if he was going to play Nelson Mandela, then he would have to have access to him. Morgan said ‘Listen, if I’m going to play you, I need to have access to you,” he says. “So over the years, we became friends, and I watched him very carefully and learned how to be him a little bit.” They show a photo of the two of them together, Oprah says she loves that shot. Oprah remembers the first time she went to Nelson’s house; she was a nervous wreck. She asks if even he, the great Morgan Freeman was a little intimidated?  What do you say when you meet somebody like that, someone that great, someone world renowned and so high in your estimation of human beings? He says, all you can think of to say is, ‘I’m honored to meet you, sir.’ And then shut up. Oprah says that she learned that too, it’s better to sit and listen when you meet him.
Morgan has been nominated for five Oscars, 1987  Street Smart, 1989 Driving Miss Daisy, 1994 one of Oprah’s favorite movies of all time, Shawshank Redemption (the crowd cheer), 2004 Million Dollar Baby, which he won, and now Invictus.  Oprah hears that Morgan sat with Nelson while he watched the movie- was he scared? No, says Morgan, he was concerned. “If he didn’t like it, I didn’t think he would say anything, but if he did like it, he wouldn’t be able to hide it,” Morgan says. “And he wasn’t able to hide it.” Mandela didn’t say anything to Morgan at all about the film. Wow, says Oprah. There’s that sphinx thing about him, says Morgan. “But when I came onscreen, he leaned over and said, ‘I know that fellow.’ So I took that to mean he recognized himself in me, and that was a big plus.” Oprah asks if he got a hug or a well-done? Nothing, says Morgan. Morgan has the pledge with him, he will not text while driving and will use a handfree  headset if necessary. Oprah asks him to repeat the pledge after her in his Morgan Freeman voice. They thank each other.

We’re getting in the mood for the Oscars on Sunday night. Critics are calling Colin Firth’s performance in A Single Man a career-defining performance. Firth plays a gay college professor grieving the sudden death of his partner . Directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, A Single Man is a work of art. The film is set over the course of a single day in 1962 Los Angeles—the day Colin’s character, George, decides to kill himself. Facing his own suicide, George sees the world in a more wondrous light. Colin Firth’s performance is captivating and earned him his first Oscar nomination.

Welcome Colin Firth. The crowd go wild, he and Oprah hug. Oprah says that he should be so proud of himself, Yes says Colin, he’s proud of Tom. This was a lonely experience for an actor in a way, especially in Colin’s department because a lot of the film was spent alone. The days he had the help of the other actors were a wonderful ride. But of course then you become very intimate with your director because this is a very, very personal story. It’s very personal to Tom. Oprah says that the scene where he gets the phone call is brilliant, is what acting is all about. She doesn’t know where he went but she could watch it over and over and cry. The crowd applaud. Colin says that the movie was shot in just 21 days. Tom set up the shot and then got out the room. The cameras rolled and there was no editorializing, no words on a page, no shouting cut. He put the phone down and the cameras rolled over 11 minutes. Tom preferred letting Colin’s imagination take over, although Tom sculpted the scene in the cutting room.

Oprah say that she heard he was going to send an email. Yes says Colin, and then the fridge guy came. He wrote the email, he still has it in his outbox, he’ll show it to Tom one day. He says that he was fascinated by Tom. This is not a man you easily bet against. Everything he’s touched has turned to gold, really. And he just thought he didn’t want to disappoint Tom. This was clearly a very personal project put squarely on Colin’s shoulders. “There was all sorts of reasons in my life when I thought—you know, I was fatigued, I’d been working a lot—I wouldn’t go there. Then I suddenly thought: ‘What an incredible leap into the unknown this will be. There’s so many improbable things here. It’s not a conventional story.” The film deals with so many human issues. Oprah clarifies that this was just the script without the deliciousness. Colin says he was ready to send the email stepping down from the project when a repairman rang his doorbell to fix his refrigerator. “That was enough time for me to reconsider,” he says. “It was just that pause before pressing send which can prove critical.” Though A Single Man is a film about grieving, Colin says it is also about falling in love with life again. “It sounds like an almost absurd comparison, but one of the films it most makes me think of in terms of its subject matter is It’s a Wonderful Life,” he says. Yes, me too says Oprah. It couldn’t be more different, all the people were angels. Playing George given Colin a real sense of what he has to be grateful for in his own life. The present moment, for a start, which is really all we have, is something to be absolutely cherished. Even though George is so sad, the world he is presented with is so incredibly beautiful. It remains for Colin like a fragrance. A Tom Ford fragrance says Oprah.

Oprah says that the film is a sensual delicious delight that you want to spoon. It was directed, produced and paid  for by Tom Ford. He’s credited with reinventing Gucci during his 10-year reign as creative director with provocative collections and ad campaigns. Five years ago, he launched his own label, and today there are 21 Tom Ford stores around the globe, making him fashion’s billion-dollar man. Last year he made the leap from fashion to film and it is no surprise that critics say that there is no more visually arresting film to see this year. Come on out Tom Ford. The crowd applaud. He and Oprah hug, he shakes hands with Colin Firth. Oprah says that the film is delicious and yummy Tom says thank you. “Fashion is a reflection of where we are in contemporary culture, but it moves, moves, moves. It doesn’t last,” he says. “In film, you create a world that’s forever sealed. It lasts forever. You can put in an old movie from the ’30s and you’re emoting and living and breathing with these people. And if you’re someone who likes to design things, build things, create things, that’s as close as you get to, you know, being God in our world, and it’s permanent”. Oprah asks him how he knew he could do it? He says that if you want to do it, do it. Of course he was afraid of a lot of things but he never let that stop him. He had a vision. “I think that’s the most important thing is that you have to have something to say,” he says. “You have to feel that you have something you want to communicate, and then in both fashion and film you have to work with a team of people to help you do that.” He wrote the script and ended up with a role that was very hard to cast. Oprah says that she’d heard the film was autobiographical, but that Tom is here and is not depressed. “This was my midlife crisis on screen; I put it on the screen and was done with it” he says. “When I first read the book, I was 20 years old and I didn’t quite get the sort of—well, Christopher Isherwood who wrote the book was a student of Vedanta. He spent an enormous amount of time learning to be present, and I didn’t pick up on that at all, and I’d come to a point in my life where I left Gucci where maybe I had let the material side of the world pull me a bit away from my spiritual side, which has always been there. And this book is about living in the moment. It’s about appreciating the connections we have with other people and reminding ourselves that that’s what’s important in life. I needed to be reminded of that at this moment.”

Oprah says that watching the movie she was reminded of her friend who wrote The Power of Now; this is a wonderful way of teaching people. Tom says that he gave everyone on the set a copy of the book as it was so important to the film. Christopher Isherwood’s first line in the book, and in the film, is waking up begins with saying am and now. That was what the book was about in 1964.

Oprah has read that Tom’s a perfectionist and that he looks at people- she says that she really needs her eyebrows done. Tom says she’s fine. Colin says that happens whenever Tom walks into a room, people feel that they need to fix something about themselves.Oprah heard that Tom cut Colin’s hair because the stylist said that Colin didn’t want his hair cut so could Tom do it. Oprah asks what Tom looks like when he’s slumming it. Colin points at Tom in his immaculate suit. Tom says kind of the same but in a dirty t-shirt and jeans. Colin says that directors on a film set are almost morally obliged to fall apart. They are in their interior worlds, doing night shifts, getting up at 5am and getting grubby. They should be letting their beards grow out. Colin says that he was falling apart in front of the camera and Tom was behind the camera pristine. Oprah asks if fashion feels aah, now, Tom says that he loves both of them and hopes he’ll have a parallel career. “I’m working on my next film project, and I’m also about to start possibly designing women’s clothes and come back to that, and it’s wonderful to be able to bounce back and forth,” he says. Oprah asks how it feels now that the film is done.  ”I am the most proud of this of anything I’ve ever created in my life,” Tom says. “Other than personal relationships with people. That’s what I’m the most proud of.” Oprah  says that the movie will last forever and she wants to see it again and again. Thanks to Colin and Tom.

Tomorrow night tune in for the primetime oscar special, with Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz, Micahael Douglas, and Glenn Close, Big thank you to our friends at Sprint for making the Oscars possible. Sprint wants everyone to go home with a swag bag, the crowd stand up and are completely hysterical. They get 60 days of free Sprint service. Remember do not talk on your phone and drive, if you must, make sure that is hands free. Thanks everyone.

WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY:

Roger Ebert is never going to eat or drink or talk again.

He will not have any more surgeries- his life is happy and productive,

No one looks perfect, we have to make peace with the way we look and get on with life.

Nelson Mandela said that Morgan Freeman would play him in a film, and now he has.

Tom Ford always looks pristine, according to Colin Firth.

A VERY QUICK SUMMARY:

If ever you should find yourself in Nelson Mandela’s house, it is best to sit quietly and listen.