Bastard Nation Hits the Oscars

by Ron Morgan (rhyzome@best.com)

(This article first appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

SUNDAY, the day before the Oscars:

We arrive at the Shrine Auditorium, all dolled up in our Bastard Nation T-shirts, in the late afternoon. Everybody stares at us, which is the point, after all. We pass through the metal detectors and climb up to the bleachers, where some stalwarts have been camping out since the night before. We take some empty seats and peruse the scene. Giant TV monitors are set up, although nothing is being played on them. Techies race around, looking burnt out like techies always do. Ah, show business, where exhaustion, not cleanliness, is next to godliness.

Speaking of burnt out, there is a skinny, beaky guy wearing a Howard Stern wig yelling constantly at some poor guy from the E! Network, who is trying to tape some innocuous "Here we are with all the weirdoes camped out the night before the Oscars" story. The TV guy smiles sickly and waves at the burnout. After a time another Face in a Suit comes over and sits next to me.

He introduces himself as the Hollywood correspondent for CNN. He's looking for festive people to interview, for a "Here we are with all the weirdoes camped out the night before the Oscars" story, and thinks I fit the bill. I guess my snap brim pork pie hat attracted him. He asks me some questions, and seems moderately interested in the adoptee angle. He says he'll send someone over to get me at 7:00. He is on a first name basis with the weirdo, whom we found out was named Melrose Larry, bababooey! The CNN guy makes a firm yet cheerful point of declining Melrose Larry's suggestion that he appear on camera.

I wait pensively for my media moment. I bum a LemonHead from Diana Inch, to mask the miasmic cloud of raw onion vapor emanating from me, thanks to an earlier encounter with a BK Double Broiler. At about 7:20, I give up, resigned to being stood up by Babylon. Then a perky little PA comes over and asks if I am ready, and if I would turn my T-shirt around, please. After a slippery moment of conscience, I agree. After all, the back of my shirt reads "Sealed Records = Secrets and Lies".

The PA escorts me down to the security area, where we meet up with my interview mate, a rotund little lady with a Tom Cruise shirt. As we are about to embark across the plastic tarp-covered red carpet to the official dais, Security grabs the woman, who goes by the name Shirley Maguire. She is evidently an infamous bad-actor, because Security nixes her clearance with little ceremony. She disappears into god knows what Gulag, never to be seen again. The PA shrugs, then yells to Mr. CNN Hollywood that Shirley Maguire is a no show.

Once on the dais, the PA and Hairdo Man have a short head to head, the gist of which is Ms Perky has to troll the hoi polloi for another character to expose before the camera. I stand next to CNN Man, and we watch transfixed as she marches straight back, as if on a string, and chooses Melrose Larry from a crowd of hundreds of more appropriate revelers. The CNN guy puts on one of those smiles that effects only half your face, the kind you get when you know something really nasty is going to happen, but you know you're going to find it amusing later; when you're standing in the unemployment line, for instance. He beats his microphone against his thigh arhythmically. But you don't get to be Mr. CNN Hollywood without being a trooper, so by the time Melrose Larry arrives, waving his arms like voracious sea gull about to steal a toddler's hot-dog, the Talent has cooled to an acceptably tepid television glaze. I felt sorry for the PA, who with the aid of Mr. CNN would later discover orifices she never realized she possessed.

As the intro is shot, I feel a strong sense of rectitude. I am right where I want to be, about to appear before thirty million viewers in my Bastard Nation shirt and my snap brimmed pork pie hat. Melrose L and I are told to stand next to the Human HairDo. The cameraman motions for us to get closer to one another. Melrose Larry and I grin and put our arms around each other. As we wait for our cue, I experience a moment of doubt as to our new-found intimacy and try to disentangle myself. Then we are on.

Mr. CNN asks Larry, who is closest, which is his favorite for best picture. Melrose breaks out into a staccato burst of glossalalia, a bizarre imitation of the Shine guy. I squirm and make faces like Alfalfa. Then it's my turn.

"SECRETS AND LIES!", I shriek.

To his credit, at this point the CNN guy has the wherewithal to mention that I have a "special" reason for rooting for S&L. "That's right. I'm here with a group of adoptees. We're here demonstrating for adoption reform and open records for adult adoptees. And to support SECRETS AND LIES. IT'S A GREAT MOVIE!"

Mr. CNN asks for my favorite for best actor. This confuses me, and I spend a minor eternity trying to think of somebody, anybody, some name... other than Tom Cruise. I end up telling him my favorite, whom I find out later was a nominee two or three years previous. Ah, live TV.

I feel garrulous and giddy, like gramps after a long night at the VFW Hall. I am grinning in solidarity at Larry, who is now comparing Woodstock unfavorably with camping out in the Oscar bleachers. I feel like I've graduated from responsible familyman to head sideshow geek, and I love it. (Witnesses to the broadcast have subsequently informed me that next to Melrose Larry, I came off as suave as Noel Coward.)

Later, Sunday Night:

It's a minute to nine, and all the activity in the motel room (the picket sign manufacturing, the ceaseless cell phone communiqués) ceases. It's time to watch the X-Files. The Truth is Out There...

Monday morning, Oscar Day:

We stake out a spot on the sidewalk, to the right of the entrance where the Stars will enter the red carpet reception line. Roving video crews swarm in a frustrated feeding frenzy. Nothing is happening! We hand them press releases, and since we are the only story at that moment, they interview us. Michelle Hilbe, our crack media expert, tells us to ignore techs and PA's, we are to make sure that the press releases get directly to the talent, who will pass it on to the Producer, sitting somewhere in an unmarked van, who decides which stories get taped and which die on the vine. The Talent is always the best dressed. They are usually skinnier than everybody else, too.

The Academy Security, which consists of some middle-aged losers in blazers and a platoon of barely post-pubescent gum chewers in Pinkerton outfits inspired by U-Boat shore wear, is keyed to the max. They chew gum and smoke cigarettes with the ferocity of men waiting in line for their crack at the Florida electric chair. Their point man, dubbed Cancer Man by Shea Grimm because of his omnipresent Marlboros, sidles up and asks, "What do you think you are doing here?" Shea, our point person answers,

"We're demonstrating for open records for adoptees and in support of the film Secret and Lies."

CancerMan leans back and shows us his palms, "Don't spout your philosophy at me, I asked what you're doing here." I look at him and think, what a dumb thing to say. (I am reminded of the Dean of Boys at my high school, who was fond of telling us that our right to swing an ax stopped at his neck. We all longed to test his axiom, and his fortitude. The last I'd heard of him, a group of hooligans had surrounded him out by the softball diamond after school and had relieved him of his trousers.) Impatiently, we all pipe in,

"That's what she just told you."

We photograph and video him malevolently with equipment brought especially to document dicks like him. He retreats in alarm, poor bunny. He spends the next half hour trying to cajole other members of his security team to come over and give us hell, whispering in their ears and gesticulating in our direction. His authority is evidently limited, because they all smirk at him and walk away. Nobody molests us until the LAPD uniforms show up.

An old bearded dude in a scruffy bathrobe, a non-denominational kafiya, and sandals is haranguing the crowd. I envy him his picket sign, which is about ten feet tall and five feet wide. He really lets everybody have it, "Did you know you are all FORNICATORS!!!" Did you know you are all ADULTERERS!!" Michelle Nelson joins in, "That's right, I am a child of PASSION! I am a product of SIIINNN!!! I am a BAAAASTAAARD!!!"

The christers don't know what to make of us, they genuflect and mutter when they pass by. One stops long enough for Michelle N. to give him our spiel. He seems surprised that adoption records are closed, and wishes us good luck.

My daughter Reed and I had spent a couple of relaxing days before the Oscars action in the suburb where I grew up. Miles of pleasant houses, well kept lawns, a deep Prozacian sense of abiding order, all under a mud brown sky enveloped by a fatal ennui. On our morning walk down to breakfast at the eponymous "The Only Place In Town Cafe", Reed turned to me and said, "Dad, if I had to live here I'D KILL MYSELF!."

I looked down at her and smiled, "Why do you think I became a heroin addict, darling."

I was reminded of a scene from "The Fugitive Kind"; Marlon Brando is giving Joanne Woodward a lift and she asks him to pull over at the gate of a cemetery.

He mumbles, "You live here?" She says, "No, silly. This is the bone yard!"

Going back to my hometown has always been like that, like I'm stalking around a ghost town. Trouble is, I'm the head ghost. This dreadful epiphany lifts once we're downtown. I'm striding down Los Feliz, by Felix Chevrolet's acres and acres of new and used cars, Reed is skipping along beside. "This is more like it", she chirps.

Twenty or more LAPD cruisers sit clustered ahead like patient sharks waiting for the buffet to open. Reed and I take our seats in the bleachers. Halfway up we can read the rules of attendance, half of which seem to have been written specifically for us. No signs, no banners, no "noise making apparatus", the right of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to throw us out on our ear if they choose to. The Bastard attendees had read these rules weeks beforehand, had cut and pasted them off the official Oscar website and e-mailed them to each other in dread and defiance. We had originally planned to sit as close as possible to the Stars, waving our Proud Bastard signs, trying to milk as much press as we could out of the ensuing mayhem. Once I saw the Academy would brook no nonsense, I floated forth the idea of rolling a banner around one of our number's waist, my daughter for instance, waiting for the opportune moment, unfurling it with great fanfare, and then making a big deal about getting dragged limp from the bleachers by the pigs, man, TV crews trailing behind, the whole world is watching, man. This notion passed by pretty much without comment.

My daughter made me promise not to get arrested. I told her not to worry, my mother raised no idiot children. So, once we were ensconced high in the bleachers, and the final curfew rang, no more entering or exiting, my demonstration moment had ended.

We are joined by Karen Vedder, Eddie of Pearl Jam's mother, who is there in support of the Bastard Cause. Karen had relinquished a child when she was young, and is now a member of Concerned United Birthparents. She and I pass the hours before the Stars arrive trading parenting stories. She tells me how talented Eddie was when he was ten, the typical stuff. She is a Mom, I am a Dad, we get on famously.

There is a clutch of Nordic Orange County housewives directly in front of us. There are a dozen of them, my age, yet with the premature sun weathered and wind creviced faces of Navaho nonagenarians. Beware, ye feckless beach bunnies, yonder sits thy future. They are having a gay old time. This is the seventh or eighth consecutive Oscars they've attended, en masse, leaving their well heeled husbands standing flat footed in their Special Edition TopSiders next to a fridge full of frozen pre-cooked lunches and dinners covered in Post-Its reading, "Wednesday, micro 5 min high, don't serve to Jasmine, has PAPAYA!".

The entire bleachered throng, sitting beneath a broiling mid-day sun after two days and nights of "fun" filled urban camp-out, is so celebrity starved I wouldn't be surprised if the Academy trotted out some second-string sitcom character actors and threw them up into the bleachers, as they had done with miniature packets of Mint Milanos the night before. Suddenly, a recognizable face, and a murmer grows to a cheer, "MaryAnne! MaryAnne!" It is MaryAnne, from Gilligan's Island, or more properly, the actress Gwen Welles, who is in the red carpet area doing cut away shots for her local LA talkshow. The Orange County ladies in front of us start singing a memory impaired version of the Gilligan's Island theme song, complete with some long forgotten cheerleader hand-jive.

It is quiet once more after MaryAnne retires from the field, an eerie silence as a thousand rubber-neckers gaze at nothing, do nothing, wait. This caesura is broken by the racket of a helicopter, one of several which have been buzzing by all day. This one doesn't buzz, it stops dead in its atmospheric tracks and hovers. Five minutes later, it is joined by another, then another. Seven choppers ring the skies above the entrance of the Shrine Auditorium, in impossible immobility and I'm sweating bullets they're going to open fire on us.

A crew of red blazered ushers hits the street, which has been emptied. Limos arrive intermittently, depositing non-persons for the benefit of the camera persons, who focus and light check accordingly.

I pause in the narrative to intimately query the reader: Am I communicating how BORING this was? End of breakdown. Just now, the Stars begin to arrive in a trickle...

First, Jenny McCarthy from MTV, who is not really a star. She'll do, though, as transition to the real thing. She's wearing a lewd diaphanous shower curtain that looks stolen from her hotel bathroom, taped strategically to her nipples. We wave her away.

Helen Hunt, from Mad About You, stops right in front of us and turns. We are sitting above the main broadcast TV cameras, so as the celebs come in, they turn and display themselves to us. Julliette Binoche and Kristen Scot Thomas, from The English Patient, arrive together, both ravishing. Ravishing is a word reserved for Stars. I realize that movie stars, like the rich, are different than the rest of us. They are black holes for our gaze. I can't help staring at them, and the surrounding crowd of goggle-eyes multiplies the excitement. Ralph Fiennes, Dennis Hopper, Steve Martin escorting Diane Keaton, Bette Midler.

As the Stars wind their way toward the entrance, they are grabbed by the mummified corpse of Army Archer, perennial Oscar greeter, who gives interviews as quickly and efficiently as a Tenderloin whore dispenses handjobs. We in the bleachers get to hear this over the loudspeakers. He never fails to ask the women who designed their gowns, a question he invariably neglects to ask the men.

Jim Carrey steps from a limo and for the first time all weekend Reed stops slugging my bicep, which has been her antidote to boredom the past few days. She stares enraptured at the Cable Guy, dreaming, no doubt, of slugging his bicep. Billy Bobb Thornton has a ZZ Top baseball cap and Dwight Yoakum in tow. Dwight is bereft of his usual thirty gallon cowboy hat, and perversely enough, I recognize him because he's one of the few bald men present who is not wearing a toupee or sporting weaves. Mrs. Billy Bobb is wearing a dress that accentuates a cleavage only somewhat smaller in length, width, and depth of the Great Gorge. The Coen family, freres et femme, slide in non-descriptly, and slide out later with an Oscar apiece. The crew from Secrets and Lies arrive together in a clump, Mike Leigh, Brenda Blethyn and Jean-Marie Baptiste, who spies our Bastard T-shirts and waves and smiles. Ms Blethyn, who plays the complete wreck of a birthmother, is radiant. Again, I am reminded that charisma is Greek for touched by the gods. I make a note to engage a personal trainer when I return home.

In the stands there is a running contest to identify the stars, as some of them might be confused with the run of the mill producers, significant others, studio flacks and others flocking into the now claustrophobic VIP entrance. There is no mistaking James Woods' mother though, she looks just like him, or vice versa, poor woman.

One person whose entrance I missed was Milos Forman, who gets interviewed by Army. As he is engaging in happy talk, a row ensues in the bleachers across from us. A crowd of about two dozen youngsters has thrown off their over clothes, revealing T-shirts that say something like, "The Junior Anti-Sex League." They whip out Anti-Porn banners and rail against "The People vs Larry Flynt." They sing "Jesus Hates Porn, This I Know." They last about twenty seconds. Security is on them like an asbestos curtain.

They get no sympathy. No TV crews follow them out of the VIP area. Milos Forman turns tail as soon as the kids begin their nursery rhyme, and Army Archer excoriates them righteously, "Why don't you just SHUT UP!" Everybody on our side of the bleacher area boos them mightily, even the Orange County housewives, "BOOOOO!" They are universally hated. I am glad we decided not to use this strategy. It would have set our cause back ten years. I'm sorry I suggested it in the first place. OK? I said I was sorry.

Muhammad Ali is there, with Cuba Gooding Jr.. Will Smith from Independence Day. Dennis Rodman, a stone freak, in a purple Mad Hatter outfit, picks Reed's blue hair from the crowd and waves at her. Courtney Love sweeps in, and she looks fab-u-lous, sparkling with clarity (Later, I tell Michelle H. that I was surprised at how "clean" Courtney looked. Michelle, who has impeccable MTV connections, explains, "Oh, she has a GREAT PUBLICIST." Why didn't I think of that when I was detoxing?)

Then it's the Tiny Little Men with Big Heads, Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson. It's a testament to how contagious the Oscar excitement is that I am not trying to lob a gob on Cruise, whom I absolutely despise. No, I am hopping up and down like a chihuahua with a bladder infection, breathlessly exclaiming, "Look, look, it's that little asshole, TOM CRUISE."

Barbra Streisand, James Brolin, Goldie, Lauren Bacall, etcetera, etcetera, and then it's done. I am starving, as is Reed. We slink past Security one last time and slide back up Los Feliz toward the motel.

Editor's Note: Bastard Nation was interviewed by more than 60 media outlets during our picket of the Academy Awards. Mike Leigh, director of the film Secrets and Lies which was nominated for five Oscars, and inspired our Oscar appearance, has said of Bastard Nation "It isn't for us to do anything other than support them, because obviously it is a human right, which needs to be respected."

Ron Morgan discovered his adopted status late in life, and now compiles data, writes and lectures on the LDA (Late Discovery Adoptee) phenomenon. As BN's Events Chair, Ron spearheaded a recent anti UAA protest at the ABA conference in San Francisco and is working on the 1998 Bastards on the Bay conference to take place July 16 - 18, 1998, also in San Francisco. Ron is a writer, web designer and contractor who lives with his wife and three kids in (you guessed it!) San Francisco.

(This article first appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

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