musings for momma
by Sharon Rosen

oscar envy

My Oscar envy began while I was listening to National Public Radio. I heard a voice with a familiar, laid-back Palos Verdes inflection talking about a movie he’d produced and co-written with George Clooney called “Good Night and Good Luck.”

The interviewer broke in to introduce her subject, Grant Heslov. “No way!” I thought to myself. Grant Heslov was a year behind me at Palos Verdes High School. Grant’s father, Art Heslov, was a Jewish dentist in Palos Verdes, as was mine. Of course we knew each other. I knew that Grant had gone into acting because I’d seen him in bit parts in some sitcoms. But this just seemed too much.

“Life just isn’t fair!” I muttered to myself in the car. As if I, the struggling writer, mother of three, driving a mini-van around the suburbs would ever have a shot at producing a movie. But still! I continued my grousing when my husband came home from work. “Who said anything about life being fair? Maybe you’ll at least get your book published. Why not focus on that?”

He had a point. The competitive spirit arose in me. If Grant could produce a movie, I could finish my book and get it published!

“We’ll have to see the movie as soon as it makes it down here,” I told my husband. A few weeks later, after more jealous rumination from me, we headed to Del Mar to see “Good Night and Good Luck.” We enjoyed it, particularly David Strathairn’s performance as legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. Honestly, we weren’t blown away by the film but sensed it was a good, serious message movie that would appeal to Hollywood insiders.

“I just know Grant will be nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay,” I told my husband, my guts churning in envy. Sure enough, when the Academy’s nominations were released, Grant was nominated, along with Clooney, for Best Original Screenplay, and (GASP) Best Picture, as sole producer. If the film won Best Picture (which I doubted), Grant would be up on the Kodak Theatre stage accepting that award all by himself. Needless to say, tons of envy.

I railed on. “Just goes to show you, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know!” My sister, a bit of a Hollywood gossip maven, told me that Grant met George Clooney in an acting class about 20 years ago when both were struggling actors. Supposedly Grant once loaned Clooney a hundred bucks so that Clooney could get head shots taken. Probably one of the best investments he ever made.

I decided there was a teachable friendship lesson in all this for my kids. Despite Shakespeare’s famous maxim, “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be,” sometimes loaning money to a friend in need for a good cause was not only a menschy thing to do, but could result in a huge karma payoff down the road.

When the Academy Awards showed in early March, I was glued to the television set. I had to see whether Grant would pull down an Oscar. Clooney sat in the front row and got lots of camera. But when the best Original Screenplay award rolled around, I still hadn’t glimpsed Grant on screen. Where was he?

Much to my surprise, I actually began hoping Grant would win the screenplay award. After all, he’d been a decent, likable Jewish boy in high school, one of the few amongst all the Palos Verdes goyim. And if memory served me right, he’d actually been a talented actor.

Plus, how cool would it be to say I went to high school with Academy Award winner Grant Heslov and that his father was a Jewish dentist just like mine?

Alas, Grant did not win for Best Original Screenplay or Best Picture, losing both awards to “Crash.” My Oscar envy dissipated as I imagined Grant muttering to himself, “Life just isn’t fair,” bemoaning his lost Oscar.

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