Winners Put a Shine on Those Oscars

After directing an epic film set in 13th century Scotland and winning best picture over a slate of contenders that included heroic astronauts, a charming piglet, a bemusing postman and witty literary figures, Mel Gibson was calmly victorious backstage after the awards show.

There was just one thing he couldn’t do.

“I can’t do a sit-up yet, but I have some heavy people at the door in case anyone wants to burgle me,” quipped the “Braveheart” director, who recently had an emergency appendectomy.

“Though I miss my appendix, I’m better off without it.”

It seemed a fair enough trade for the big winner of the evening, who took home a statuette for best director in only his second turn behind the camera. Gibson said that it was particularly satisfying to win in the category since it’s a position in which he’s not a veteran. “You never know if it’ll work. . . . You’re terrified while you’re filming. While you’re directing, you’re kind of insane and don’t know if you’re deluding yourself.”

In no way would winning two Oscars preclude less prestigious fare such as a “Lethal Weapon 4,” the actor-director said. “I’ll just go where my nose takes me--and I’m not sure where that will be. And there’s art to making those kinds of films, too.”

As for winning over “Babe,” Gibson quipped: “That film didn’t do badly at the box office . . . it brought home the bacon. [“Babe” producer] George Miller is one of my mentors, but it still feels good to win. . . . I don’t care about his pain.”

Asked what he would do with his new statuettes, the actor joked: “I’m just going to carry them around awhile. A few days . . . months maybe.”

Best actress winner Susan Sarandon had been nominated four times before, but the Oscar for “Dead Man Walking” was worth waiting for, she said.

“I would rather have received it for this film because it meant so much to me--finding the book, finding the nun, taking it to Tim . . . it was a family affair. We hired family and friends and anyone else who’d work cheap and edited in the garage. It was very special.”

The Oscar win, she said, was an “out-of-body experience, completely surreal. I feel like I’m a druggie from the ‘60s. It was really moving for me that everyone stood,” the actress added. “And when Sean [Penn] and Tim [Robbins’] names were called out, there was strong applause so it felt like a win for the entire project. We made [the film] to make the death penalty real and make faith real, to make love absolute and encourage as much discussion as possible. I just hope we can find a non-violent way to deal with violence. [Capital punishment] just escalates it.”

Best actor winner Nicolas Cage said he has “terrible stage fright,” but being a presenter helped. “I woke up this morning in a good space and managed to go with it and relax,” said the actor who had previously swept all the critics awards. “Though people were using the term ‘frontrunner,’ I’m never one to assume anything. What would happen, I worried, if I got my hopes up and nothing happened because no one has seen the film?”

To prepare for the role of a suicidal alcoholic, Cage said, he engaged in some unorthodox methodology. “I ate a lot of junk food so that I would feel not well . . . I sort of trashed myself to look the part. And philosophically and emotionally, I looked at the concept of death and the abyss of pain.”

Cage praised the academy for going out on a limb. “The fact that the academy noticed me tonight is really brave of them,” he said. “And good for the industry and the future of alternative movies. This award encourages me to keep doing what I’ve been doing and continue to follow my heart.”

Emma Thompson, whose “Sense and Sensibility” script won best adapted screenplay, dedicated her award to Taiwanese director Ang Lee, who is out of town working on his next project.

“Ang’s sensibility was really in tune with [Jane] Austen,” she said. “The East understands the hierarchical nature of that society at the time very well. Ang also understands family, women, love--themes he’s done so well in his own films. A choice that originally seemed an odd one now seems completely natural.”

Kevin Spacey, winner of the best supporting actor Oscar for his role in “The Usual Suspects,” said that the award capped off a year in which he had some of his best acting assignments--as well as his feature film directorial debut with “Albino Alligator,” due out this fall.

“I’ve been working in this business for 15 years and now I feel like a member of the class,” he said, looking at his gold statuette. “They’ve given me a great gift. It was gratifying to look out at that audience and--when I didn’t see my life passing before my eyes--what I saw was a lot of my friends.”

As the nominees in his category were being read, Spacey said he was thinking about “what it was going to feel like to lose. I haven’t been nominated for that many awards in my life and you have to go into it thinking you’ll lose or you’ll have a terrible time. I’m glad it was announced early in the evening so it was all over quickly.”

Best supporting actress winner Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”) said that her Oscar win was even more exciting than recently completing her college education.

“Graduating from Harvard was fulfilling, but I knew that was coming--as long as I passed my [astronomy] course,” she said. “This was a surprise . . . and more of a family honor since my father [actor Paul Sorvino] taught me everything I know about acting. He’s never been nominated and he was happier for me than he would have been for himself. That’s the kind of generous person he is.

“In our family, we cry when we’re extremely happy,” Sorvino added, referring to her father’s tearful on-camera reaction to her win. “I have 25 to 30 close friends and relatives in from out of town, and we’ve had dinner together the last three nights. This [experience] has been the most amazing show of love I’ve ever felt--it wasn’t about winning and losing.”

Christopher McQuarrie, winner of the best original screenplay for “The Usual Suspects,” cited Paddy Chayefsky, David Mamet and Howard Koch among his influences. The idea for the film came quickly, he said, “so we could write it, sell it and eat.”

McQuarrie said his next scripts--including one for director Ed Zwick (“Legends of the Fall”)--still involve “a lot of crime and a lot of police, but I hope to get away from that. Eventually, I’d like to write about 300 BC.”

“Pocahontas” composer Alan Menken said he has an “awards cabinet” in his studio to accommodate statuettes for “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.” Still, he said, the Oscar for ooriginal music or comedy score was “not just another win. Each of my projects is like one of my children, very individual.”

Though he isn’t sure if “Pocahontas” is heading for the Great White Way, he said, the trend of Disney animated features heading for Broadway will continue.

Marleen Gorris, director of the best foreign language film “Antonia’s Line,” observed that her Dutch-made movie offered a wealth of meaty roles for women. “It’s usually the men who have the main roles and the women cast as supporters. In this case it happens to be the other way around.”

Christine Lahti, whose “Lieberman in Love” won the Oscar for best live action short film, said that one of the reasons she plunged into the project was because of the scarcity of good roles for older actresses.

“There aren’t a lot of great parts for women over 35,” the actress said. “They’re all earnest moms waiting at home while the guys are having these great adventures. They’re all two-dimensional roles, and I didn’t want to play these two-dimensional roles. As women, hopefully, direct more and more, they’ll give more parts to women.”

John Lasseter, winner of a special award for the first fully computer-animated film, “Toy Story,” said that advances made in animation would enhance rather than supplant the old.

“Animation is a new medium within the art form,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s going to replace anything. Whatever the new technology, the goal is still to make a real strong story.”

As for a “Toy Story” sequel, the course is still unclear. “Nothing has been decided yet,” he said. “I’m not sure what form it would take, whether it would be direct to video or a theatrical sequel.”

Animator Chuck Jones, winner of an honorary award, echoed Lasseter, maintaining that animation today is not so different from that in the past.

“It’s all going in the direction of the kind of ‘character’ animation we did,” he said. “A kind of animation that started with ‘The Three Little Pigs’ in which the personality of each character was determined by the way they moved. For the first time, each character acted differently.”

Asked whether the characters were like him, the animator smiled “They’re all like me,” he said. “There’s no other place to go to get a character.”