The BAH!scars #2: Supporting Brah

I currently feel as if my entire life is in purgatory (or antepurgatory, to use Dante Alighieri’s model of the afterlife). I’m waiting. Waiting for the weather to get warmer. Waiting for grad programs to get back to me. Waiting for the Academy to announce their nominations.

Yes, I could speculate endlessly on what they’ll nominate, but I feel that everyone’s already done that and that I really can’t add anything all that new or interesting to the mix. So instead, I’m going to go on about the one category that, barring us shifting into alternate reality or something else that would have to change the odds on the most cosmic of levels, is already in the bag. Hell, it’s already in the bag and the bag has been thrown into the car, driven home, brought into the kitchen, and unpacked into the cupboard. Christoph Waltz is undoubtedly going to win Best Supporting Actor.

The buzz already was circling around him like flies around a dropped ice cream cone since Inglourious Basterds first premiered. Since then, there has yet to be a winners list that is devoid of his name. According to IMDB (as of January 31), the only awards he has only been nominated for have not yet announced their winners. At this rate, I think he’ll only miss the NAACP and GLAAD awards (and his camp performance might even give him a chance in the latter’s eyes).

Never has there been an actor more guaranteed of an award since, well, last year’s Best Supporting Actor, Heath Ledger. Is there some weird type of curse around this category that prevents it from being a real contest? Did Dumbledore refuse Voldemort the award years ago (or maybe the Riddle just really wanted to present it)? I mean, Waltz didn’t even have to go through the whole inconvenience of dying, which I’ve heard really quite an encumbrance to getting things done.

So, before we continue, let’s just acknowledge the indisputable feeling of impending anticlimax every other nominee must feel as he finds out that he is indeed a nominee and thus is to lose to Waltz in a month. Let us also the pay heed to the quick curse of fate that must emancipate itself from each mouth as to why he had to give his great performance the same year that Inglourious Basterds debuted.

Now let me ask the real question of this entry: how must it feel to be Christoph Waltz on Oscar Night? I imagine for the majority of actors, Oscar nights are exciting, tense, and a plethora of other emotions. They either are anxious if they will take home a statue, or possibly acknowledge that they are the fifth nominee and just enjoying the thrill of being there. But very rarely does someone walk in assured that he will be a winner. Like, I said, the last time that a victory was so certain that actor was a bit too inanimate to really consider the situation.

Is there any doubt in Waltz’s mind? Does he still have jitters over the night, that a fluke will turn his category in the very quintessence of “upset?” Or is he going to spend the first hour or so of the show making last minute changes to his acceptance speech? Has he run out of things to say and people to thank? Is winning “Best Supporting Actor” even exciting after going through the routine so many times or does the prestige of the Oscars somehow make reinvigorate everything?

The only way I can even think to relate is to think of when I was taking a math class to fill a requirement in college. It was essentially “Math for Drama Majors and Kids Who Got into Tufts Since They Were From North Dakota.” We spent the first day going over “y = mx + b” and by the end of the semester, we had successfully reviewed my first two years of high school math. I imagine the absolute dearth of nervousness with the most Lilliputian pinch of “I better not screw this up” in my head as I walked in to take a test is probably the closest I have ever felt to how Waltz will feel on March 7. Of course, I was filling a BS distribution requirement whereas Waltz is about to get one of the (justified or not) most prestigious accolades that can be bestowed upon a thespian of film.

In short, as Judgment Day Part 1 rolls around, at least we can all rest assured that the biggest question of the Supporting Actor category is not “Who will be nominated?” or even “Who will win?” but instead, “How awesome is it to be Christoph Waltz right now?”