Sense of rumor

By Netnet Camomot

MARILYN Monroe once said, “If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.”

That’s probably why I love Conan O’Brien.

It’s awards season again in Hollywood. Last Monday morning (Sunday night in the US), it was the turn of the Golden Globes to have its annual award-giving to winning actors who would now have better chances at the Oscars on Feb. 24.

The show’s highlight was of course Jodie Foster’s coming-out speech. She was there to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Award but it was that particular part of her speech which echoed throughout the universe. It has to be the universe—remember her movie “Contact”?

Foster said that “While I’m here being all confessional, I just have the sudden urge to say something I’ve never been able to air in public. A declaration that I’m a little nervous about. Not quite as nervous as my publicist, huh, Jennifer? But uh, you know, I’m just going to put it out there. Loud and proud. I’m going to need your support. I am—single!”

I guess Foster knows that if you’re single, people would conclude you’re gay. She got serious after that, though. “I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age. In those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends, and family, coworkers and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her.”

It was during those years that she would be seen and even photographed with the woman she’s in a relationship with. I hope her coming out would encourage many others, who are in same-sex relationships which have lasted much longer than some heterosexual marriages, to come out, too. It’s about time.

Foster is 50 now, we’re kind of batchmates but we were too young to watch her movies like “Taxi Driver.” Tatum O’Neal was also popular then and she still appears occasionally in showbiz projects.

For Foster to receive a Cecil B. DeMille award at her age, after 47 years in the showbiz industry, makes us happy and proud, too. There are times when we feel we’re ignored and forgotten, our contributions not acknowledged despite the many sacrifices we’ve been through, all these have inspired me to adopt the mantra, “If you never expect anything from anyone, you will never be disappointed.”

“Saturday Night Live” alumni Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted this year’s Globes. They’re considered as two of the funniest women in Hollywood. Poehler’s comment on Anne Hathaway’s performance in “Les Miserables”: “I have not seen someone so totally alone and abandoned since you were on stage with James Franco at the Oscars.” Hathaway and Franco were the Oscars’ hosts in 2011.

Bill Clinton got a standing ovation when he introduced a clip from the movie “Lincoln.” Very apt—a former US president introducing a movie about another former US president. Afterwards, Poehler said, “Wow! What an exciting special guest! That was Hillary Clinton’s husband!” Fey added, “Bill Rodham Clinton!”

For “Lincoln’s” Daniel Day-Lewis, Fey commented, “He also played ET. Yes, young Daniel Day-Lewis was ET.” She then asked Day-Lewis to “Do the finger thing!”

Meryl Streep was absent from the awards show and Poehler said, “Meryl Streep is not here tonight. She has the flu—and I hear she’s amazing in it.”  Streep has been a favorite nominee and winner in all awards shows, her performance in any movie is always expected to be amazing, thus, the joke.

Ricky Gervais hosted the Globes for three consecutive years and I laughed more often that time. But critics were not happy with his no-holds-barred jokes that last year included this: “Jodie Foster’s Beaver. I haven’t seen it myself. I’ve spoken to a lot of guys here, they haven’t seen it either.” At that time, Foster co-starred with Mel Gibson in the film “The Beaver.” But Gervais was referring to a woman’s intimate part, with hints on Foster’s sexual orientation, when he delivered that line.

Hollywood must have heaved a deep sigh relief with Fey and Poehler who of course joked during their opening monologue that “Ricky Gervais couldn’t be here tonight, because he’s technically no longer in show business.”

But what made Gervais’s hosting unique was the way Hollywood responded to his lines. Last year, he told Madonna that her “Like A Virgin” is not right for her very active lovelife. She replied with, “Ricky, if I am just like a virgin, why don’t you come over here and do something about it?”