Photo Illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Courtesy of AMPAS
(oscar), Getty Images (Schnabel)
As you probably know, Julian Schnabel did not win an Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night. In fact, he lost, to the bespectacled directors of a movie with “few sympathetic characters, brutal, unredeemable violence, and an ending in which the closest thing the story has to a protagonist is killed offstage.” The disappointment on Schnabel’s face when the verdict was issued was difficult for us to bear, even as it quickly turned to annoyance. Clearly, this was a political, polemical conspiracy, you could see him thinking. Javier Bardem! That hair! Gimmicky. But what did it mean? Does it mean that the world at large will never recognize Schnabel’s true magnificence? This we cannot believe. Though we are bowed by this defeat, we are not broken. The Schnabe comes from a long line of stout, hairy, strong souls, and he will emerge again, like, yes, a butterfly from a pupa. Until then, Schnabel, we Schalute thee.
Related: Julian Schnabel is My Cousin [Consent of the Governed]
