Extras

Each year The Academy attempts to examine the medium of film and find new ways to celebrate the geniuses and auteurs that make up our industry. That’s why we’re proud to announce that starting this year we will be honoring films that were conceptualized by excited talkative children. Here are the inaugural nominees for Best Film Pitched By a Child, as presented by their directors.

Godzilla vs T-Rex vs Spider-Man

So there are researchers and scientists and they go to the island because the island is big—the BIGGEST BIGGEST monster area in the world. And so they are trying to do their work like “we have experiments to do” but Godzilla and a t-rex are fighting the whole time. They are like “BAH! BAH!” and the researchers say “we need to leave, NOW!” but they know that this is a once and a life chance so they try to stay and take DNA samples but they get eaten by both monsters till two people are left and they leave on a part submarine, part boat. And the twist is he looks at her and he says “I am Spider-Man.”

Cookies

Five princesses and queens live in the royal bakery and everyone is trying to make the best cookies but the queens are mean to the princesses by taking their chairs so they can’t take breaks or anything. And one of the queens is named Diamond and one of the princesses is named Diamond too and they don’t like each other. There are no Kings. There is a dog that lives in the bakery and he goes “Arf! Arf! Woof! Woof!” and he teaches the princesses how to defeat the queens because he ACTUALLY is a dog baker and makes dog things. When they make the best cookie at the end because everyone helps it, the dog gets married to his best friend dog and they share the cookie like “yum!!!” and the queens go “I told you! Not to come in here!” and they lock them out and have a DANCE PARTY.

Kyle Can Fly

A kid in 2nd grade is sitting at lunch one day and he goes “oh I bet you ONE MILLION DOLLARS you can’t fly or beat up bad guys” and he says “you’re wrong and I’ll prove it.” So they go outside and the teacher is mad because it’s cold and it’s school time but he starts powering up anyway. All his friends are like “I know Kyle can do this” but the principal comes out and says “he’s not going to fly” and music gets really loud and he starts to glow and everyone is scared. The police come to see what he’s doing and the girls start crying like “don’t hurt Kyle he’s going to fly.” and then after about like a long pause he says “I am Kyle and I told you I can fly!” and he goes ZOOM! SHOOO!!! ZOOM and he leaves the school and he hangs out with Toothless the dragon from How To Train Your Dragon. The teacher cries and then Kyle comes back and he buys the school and everyone learns to fly. Zoom!

Hospital Jones  

In 1929 there is a big hospital and they make everyone feel better and the best doctor is Doctor Maria Jones. Doctor Jones says “hand me the knife!” and then she cuts into the body of the president of America and she knows that if she makes a wrong move that it could stop the United States of America so she is very serious. The nurses are all the doctor’s kids so they all know who Doctor Jones is and they all live at the hospital in a big room with bunk beds. The doctor goes “We’re gonna lose him!” and then her kids come help bring him back to life. When the president is alive he invites Doctor Jones to the White House and he gives her a medal and he gives her a golden wheelchair to keep forever even though she is healthy because it means that he thanks her for saving him because he is in a regular wheelchair.

Baseball Everyday!!!

There are a hundred baseball teams that play baseball everyday and they don’t know who the best one is. So one day Dan tells his wife he is going to start the BIGGEST BASEBALL TOURNAMENT EVER and she says “you should.” Each baseball game is crazy and extra innings and everyone can hit home runs and the baseball teams are tired but they have to keep going because only the best team can make it. In the last game Dan is batting and it’s three balls and two strikes and the bases are loaded and his wife is standing and she says “go Dan” and then the pitcher throws it in slow motion and Dan hits the longest home run from all of the tournament and he wins cars and a pool and a Xbox one because his team was better than the world.

On New Year’s Eve of 1989, I saw a man who was a little short, and a little wide, and a little anxious, enter a party through the side door with a six pack of beer and a bright green coat. He asked me if this was Allison Mercer’s house or if he was at the wrong party. I was a little tipsy, I was a little distracted, I was a little obsessed with some other guy at the party, but I still remember that moment. 

I officially met John Richards about a half an hour before the ball dropped, introduced through about three layers of friends. We sat talking on Ally’s ugly blue futon. I don’t remember what we talked about for all that time, I don’t remember what we talked about in the hours after, and I don’t remember the name of the man I had come to that party intending to kiss at midnight. But when the clock struck twelve and everyone yelled “Happy New Year!” I leaned forward and I planted a big, gross, red lipstick kiss a little to the right of his mouth. 

The next morning, I didn’t remember much, but I remembered that moment. 

I forget what happened on the first date. I forget what happened on most of the dates. I do remember that John wasn’t very good at dating. He was going through college and I was going through jobs. He would call me on the payphone in the parking lot before he drove home. He would always forget my birthday. He would bring me ice cream on his way home if he knew I’d had a bad day. He would forget to call for days at a time when he was busy. He would argue with me when I got angry about it. 

I remember that there were problems, and arguments, But I also remember that he had blue eyes and he had a great laugh. I remember that he had a way of talking that I could just listen for hours and never get bored. I remember that the more time I spent with him, the more moments I had. 

There was the moment I let him stay at my apartment and he tried to make me pancakes to say thank you, and ended up paying for a new stove burner. There was the moment I asked him if he wanted to move in with me and his face lit up like I had never seen it. There was the moment when we were at a rooftop party and he stood on the edge of the roof and howled at the moon like a wolf, and I laughed until I cried. There was the moment when I met his parents, and when I accidentally swore in front of his mother she threw a wooden spoon at me. There was the moment when we went to Central Park in midsummer, and he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, and then we lay on the summer grass until it was dark out, just loving each other as much as we could. 

I remember all of it. I remember each precious moment from those years as though it’s still happening right now. But I also remember when I realized how long it had been since there had been anything to remember. Time had made us faded. 

We moved into a new apartment when we were married, a more expensive one. John went to work every day early, and every day he came back late. I got pregnant four times, but I only had one baby. John couldn’t get to the hospital because of traffic and by the time he arrived, I was asleep and his mother was holding the baby. 

John was fired because his company was failing, so I started working again: as a waitress, a substitute teacher, an assistant. We sold the apartment, lived with John’s mother for ten days, and moved into a smaller apartment in the Bronx. Madison started school there. 

In our first year living in the Bronx, John got HPV. I didn’t have HPV. We didn’t talk about it if we could avoid it. That February, when Madison was playing in her room, and John and I were on the couch watching the Food Network, he turned to me in the middle of a commercial break and asked me if I hated him. 

“I don’t hate you,” I said. “Why would you ask something like that?” 

“You know why,” he said. 

There was a feeling in my stomach, something strange that felt as though it had been stewing a while and was itching to come out.

“I don’t hate you, John,” I said. 

Food Network was back on, but neither of us were watching it. We were staring at each other, and it struck me then how long it had been since I had looked my husband in the eyes. 

“Well, I think I hate myself,” he said.

I don’t remember a single moment in eight years before that one, but I sure as hell remember that one. John went to therapy once a week, then once every two, and then he got a new job. Madison went to play with chalk on the sidewalk one day and came back in having learned three swear words. That same summer we moved upstate. We celebrated her eighth birthday four days after the move, and invited all the new neighbors. 

When Madison was twelve, she died her hair blue with Kool-Aid without telling us she was going to. When John came home that day, and found Madison with patchy, grayish-blue hair and me standing over her looking panicked holding a shampoo bottle, he laughed for twenty minutes. Then he went back out to the store, and bought a pack of real hair dye, and helped Madison dye her hair blue. 

That was a moment to remember. That was the moment when the moments began to come back. 

There were never as many as in those years in the city, when we went to parties and howled at the moon. There was never a moment to rival that one in the Central Park in summer, when I had just agreed to marry him. But there was a moment when he called me walking from his office to his car just to talk to me, and I was twenty again. There was a moment when he came home from work early one summer’s day with three water guns and a mischievous smile. There was the moment when Madison went South to college and he leaned on my shoulder and cried. I leaned into his ear and whispered, “I love you.” I said it so quietly he might not have heard, but I needed to say it more than I needed him to hear it. John Richards, I love you. 

Life is long, and it’s boring, and it’s barely half over. I remember the moments. Everything I’ll never forget. Every second with a million meanings. That’s what makes a life a life. Mine are so small, and so simple. They’re moments that happen every day to everyone. But to me, to John, to the little life we built and broke and built again, they’re enough.

’Twas a delicate day

of sepulchral decay,

the mold spores just starting to bloom.

When Miss Agatha Wight

first took in the sight

of her unwitting, soon-to-be groom.

He stood straight and tall

as he carried the pall,

conducting his victim to ground.

She marveled to witness

his necrotic fitness

and swooned as he tidied the mound.

“Quelle joie!” she exclaimed,

all her passions enflamed,

to think of him in her possession.

But just how to go

in securing this beau?

Artifice, truth, or discretion?

For weeks she observed

as he gently preserved

each corpse of his quarry du jour.

Then struck on a scheme

to realize her dream

of securing this death connoisseur.

Under waning moonlight,

to lure her grim knight,

she strolled his habitual course.

She’d donned a disguise

meant to capture his eyes

as she posed ’twixt the hawthorn and gorse.

She’d not waited long

before hearing the song

he sang as he hunted his prey.

She stifled a giggle

and tried not to wiggle,

lest she give her deception away.

She let him draw near

and pretended to fear

as he crooned his demonic intention.

Then blew in his face

perfume with a trace

of poison of her own invention.

He fell then and there

to awake in his lair,

surrounded by those he had slain.

They’d all been arrayed

as footman or maid.

He struggled, alas, but in vain.

He lay on a shrine

set with candles and wine,

both bound and unable to speak.

From hunter to hunted

his rank had been shunted,

with prospects decidedly bleak.

“Rest easy, mon coeur,”

she said with a purr.

“I had to exhume all your dead.

It just wouldn’t be right,

eloping at night.

They’ll properly witness us wed.”

“Oh, how we shall cherish

the moment you perish!”

she crooned as she lay by his side.

He started to sweat,

comprehending the threat,

from his heretofore unperceived bride.

What a breathtaking rite

performed there that night!

And not a dry eye in the house.

Securing forever

her handsome and clever,

abiding, exsanguinous spouse.

Now she visits him often

to dust off his coffin,

none of her duties forsaking.

And ponders the truth

for both aged and youth:

true love is a grim undertaking.

With just a few additions to your home bar, you can make these on-trend cocktails for you and your friends... but probably just for you.

Impending Doom

• 2 ounces cask-strength Scotch 

• 1 teaspoon Demerara or raw sugar 

• 1 piece lemon peel

Mix first two ingredients in a mug (metal is best, to prevent general immolation). Add lemon peel as garnish. Carefully ignite. Watch it burn. When it is done, you have nothing.

Ante-Revolution Fizz 

• 1 shiny penny 

• 1 bottle Cristal champagne 

• 1 whole lobster

Flip coin 100 times. If it is either heads or tails 99 times, serve yourself the Cristal in the finest stemware, garnished with the whole lobster. If not, live in a tent under an overpass.

Pacific Garbage Patch

• One Long Island iced tea 

• 117 plastic straws

Serve Long Island iced tea with battery of straws. Discard straw after each sip.

#metoo

• 1½  oz. vodka 

• ¼ oz. cranberry juice 

• ¼ oz. triple sec 

• ¼ oz. lime juice 

• 1 lime wedge 

With first four ingredients, prepare Cosmopolitan. Garnish with lime. Throw against wall. Call lawyer, therapist, Mom.

Get Woke

• 1 pint of your city’s most difficult-to-obtain boutique craft beer 

• Sanctimony

Drink slowly, preferably in overpriced urban outdoor beer garden, while patiently yet passive-aggressively explaining exactly what is wrong with the outlook of those around you. Repeat until you “feel seen.”

He Who Shall Not Be Named

• Misc. liquor/liqueur 

• One large bag Cheetos

Initiate news blackout. Pour an inch or two (or three) of each available liquor/liqueur into pint glass, jar, or any other receptacle. Lack wherewithal to stir, much less shake. Drink accompanied by Netflix and entire bag of Cheetos, eaten one by one while studiously avoiding looking at them, lest any be anthropomorphic.

Climate Change

• One large ice cube, carved into sphere 

• 18 oz. gin

Set ice aside. Drink room-temperature gin slowly while feeling helpless. Try not to picture a polar bear swimming and swimming and swimming because there is nowhere to go.

The WWIII

• 1 nation, divided 

• 1 ascendant demagogue 

• 1 fresh alliance of dictators 

• Sprinkling of military parades

Shake first three ingredients well. Garnish with militarism. Serve in a pit of despair.