Gold Derby contributing writers Charlie Bright and Tony Ruiz co-hosted the new weekly podcast “Gold Derby Roundtable with Charlie and Tony” over the holiday weekend, featuring guests Rob Licuria (a longtime Gold Derby contributor and expert) and the site’s news and featured editor Ray Richmond. Their animated talk covered a wealth of subjects throughout the entertainment spectrum, from Bruce Willis’ tragic dementia diagnosis to Tina Fey’s and Amy Poehler’s launch of a comedy appearance tour, to the 2017 “Moonlight”/”La La Land” Best Picture envelope fiasco as described in the new Oscar book “Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears” by New Yorker staffer Michael Schulman, to debating this coming weekend’s Producers Guild Awards (Saturday the 25th) and Screen Actors Guild Awards (Sunday the 26th). Watch the video above or the audio below.
The Schulman book publishes Tuesday the 26th and features a lengthy description of, and investigation into, the initial misidentification of the proper 2017 winner for the top Academy Awards prize. Bright admitted early on “Gold Derby Roundtable,” “I have watched that clip like it’s the damn Zapruder film,” further calling it, “One of the great moments of live television that I have ever seen…It surprises me how many people still don’t understand that the (film) academy did nothing wrong here. This was all on (the accounting firm) PricewaterhouseCoopers.” This led into a mention of Harvey Weinstein’s prison sentence and Ruiz’s assertion, “The only way he’s coming out of jail is in a hearse.”
The podcast news segment wrapped with a celebration of last week’s overdue announcement of when the third season of the Apple TV+ series smash “Ted Lasso” would premiere (March 15). “Everybody stop crying, stop wailing, stop throwing yourself on the rocks,” asserted Licuria from his Sydney, Australia home. “It’s happening.”
That was followed by a discussion of the forthcoming PGA (Producers Guild of America) Awards, specifically the race for the top feature film and its potential impact on the Oscars (March 12). Richmond said that at the moment he was sticking with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” but that he was wavering after the hero’s welcome that greeted Tom Cruise at last week’s Oscars luncheon and the seeming ascendance of “Top Gun: Maverick.” “I also don’t know anyone who has seen ‘Elvis’ that didn’t love it and didn’t love Austin Butler’s performance. So there’s that.”
Added Licuria: “I think ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is probably the safe bet for now, but I am very much in the camp that ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ could actually do this and even win the Oscar. (Steven) Spielberg came out the other day and and said Tom Cruise basically saved the world of cinema and life as we know it as human beings.” Chimed in Bright: “The only thing I strive for in my predictions is to beat Rob.”
Ruiz continued the reassessment of “Maverick” by noting, “I just think you guys are sitting on it too long, because I’ve already put ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ as number one. I just think that this is a big hug to (Cruise) and to the film that basically brought people back to the cinema in a big, unprecedented way. He sat on this movie for a year and and a half and, despite facing all sorts of pressure to put it on streaming, he said no. I’m giving the edge to ‘Top Gun’ because I think it’s peaking at just the right time.”
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