Winslet joked that she had to do a Holocaust movie to win an Oscar

by on February 24, 2009 25
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Note that the same day Edward Rothstein has his pious Holocaust-is-with-us piece in the Times, Haaretz publishes this excerpt from the British comedy show "Extras," 2005:
[Ricky] Gervais: You doing this, it's so commendable, using your profile to keep the message alive about the Holocaust.
Winslet: God, I'm not doing it for that. We definitely don't need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? You know, we get it. It was grim. Move on.
I'm doing it because I noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar. I've been nominated four times. Never won. The whole world is going, 'Why hasn't Winslet won one?' ... That's why I'm doing it. Schindler's bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming outta their ass ...
Gervais: It's a good plan.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Israel/Palestine, US Politics

{ 25 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. David says:
    February 24, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Yeah, I was surprised you didn't do a "will Kate Winslet win her Holocaust Oscar" post before the ceremony. I should've put some money on that one.

  2. Susie Kneedler says:
    February 24, 2009 at 11:45 am

    And this exchange comes in the FIRST episode of a brilliant satire of power in the movie-tv business.

    We should also make the point that Winslet was playing a grotesque pastiche of herself–as all the guest stars did–which makes the routine even funnier and more telling. A couple of scenes later, after messing up a lowly extra's lovelife with her public vulgarity, she adds that "you are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a 'mental'."

    Thanks for posting this, Phil, because I've been chuckling about this joke ever since Winslett's Oscar nomination was announced.

  3. Susie Kneedler says:
    February 24, 2009 at 11:49 am

    We should also thank Gervais and Stephen Merchant for their great script.

    That episode is hilarious in many ways about religion, politics, sex, dating, as well as the movie business.

  4. Todd says:
    February 24, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    This is pretty funny. My wife and I joked about Winslet doing a holocaust movie several months ago when we first saw the previews for the movie. We even joked about writing a script ourselves. It has to be pretty bad when even the plebs get it!

  5. Suzanne says:
    February 24, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    This is moving beyond Israel. Phil's subtext about Jews is getting more and more hateful by the day.

    I predict that soon he will blog about how 99.9% of his friends have severed ties.

    He will sob and say it's about his introversion.

    When he does, I will laugh and remark that introversion is about how you process information and get your energy from within, rather than from external conditions.

    It has nothing to do with hateful proclivities.

    Bookmark that day! :-)

  6. Suzanne says:
    February 24, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    BTW–I suspect Winslet was poking fun of whiners who complain that everything is about the Holocaust…but like I've said before–some people can't smell their own stank.

  7. ahmed says:
    February 24, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Suzanne, Phil just posted a link to a BBC/HBO production… go whine at them.

    Susie, I loved that episode too, and it popped into my head when she was nominated. A bit ironic.

  8. Sam the Man says:
    February 24, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    I keep overestimating Phil's intelligence.
    Phil and his most dedicated have totally fucking missed the joke. She said it on Ricky Gervais, Phil! That's like an article in The Onion.
    SHE'S MAKING FUN OF YOU!

  9. Todd says:
    February 24, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    Suzanne, who cares what Winlet's intent was? It is still a funny bit that contains largely unspoken truth. My guess is that Winslet wasn't completely serious. Had she been serious, she would have gotten the Mel Gibson treatment.

  10. ahmed says:
    February 24, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    Sam the man, if you had read Phil's intro, it says British COMEDY show.

    So tell us, what is the joke?

  11. roGER says:
    February 24, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    The sketch is making fun of Hollywood and how the Holocaust has become a sort of symbol of earnest seriousness and high art.

    Kate Winslett didn't write it – she simply does her job (brilliantly, as usual) and says the lines.

  12. LanceThruster says:
    February 24, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    You should check out the documentary called "The Producers" and see what they felt about the rise of the Thrid Reich in their production, "Springtime for Hitler."

    It is worth seeing for the production values alone.

    "Don't be stupid, be a smarty…"

  13. Suzanne says:
    February 24, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    "I keep overestimating Phil's intelligence.
    Phil and his most dedicated have totally fucking missed the joke. She said it on Ricky Gervais, Phil! That's like an article in The Onion.
    SHE'S MAKING FUN OF YOU!"

    Like I said, they can't smell themselves and they think no one else can either. Let them believe what they want, everybody else got the joke.

  14. Duscany says:
    February 24, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    Holocaust movies are good for one's career, and a lot of other things as well. Roman Polanski made "The Pianist" in part to win Hollywood support for what he hoped would be the successful appeal of his conviction for having sexual relations with a 13 year old girl.

    The court apparently isn't much of a movie fan, recently saying that that if Polanski wants to appeal the decision he has to come stand before the court in person, something Polanski is understandably reluctant to do.

  15. Citizen says:
    February 24, 2009 at 6:40 pm

    @ Suzanne

    "This is moving beyond Israel. Phil's subtext about Jews is getting more and more hateful by the day."

    Seems to others ("Phil's klan"–why not his "cabal"?)) Phil's main text is getting more and more objective by the day. And the inability to be objective about the grand scheme of events, pointed out continually by Phil to offset the standard MSM
    slant, which keeps killing babies with USA weapons as a fact the world beyond the USA sees, seduces some commenters on this blog, such as Suzanne, to project their own mindset onto Phil.

  16. chris berel says:
    February 24, 2009 at 7:30 pm

    I see, the new slant is that Hamas is trying to kill Jewish babies with weapons supplied by Iran. Interesting twist in your panties.

  17. Susie Kneedler says:
    February 24, 2009 at 7:30 pm

    See
    link to counterpunch.org

    'And the Winner is … the American People!
    The Oscar for Denial

    By JAMES McENTEER

    Kate Winslet’s Academy Award for Best Actress in The Reader surely disappointed and outraged Ron Rosenbaum. Amid the torrent of nonsense glutting U.S. media since the movie award nominations were announced, Rosenbaum’s objections to The Reader were far more substantive and accusatory.

    In his Slate column, Rosenbaum attacked the “essential metaphorical thrust” of the film, which he said aimed “to exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution.” Rosenbaum decried the notion of honoring “a film that asks us to empathize with an unrepentant mass murderer and intimates that ‘ordinary Germans’ were ignorant of the extermination until after the war…”

    Rosenbaum indicted “the Kate Winslet character’s ‘illiteracy’: She’s a stand-in for the German people and their supposed inability to ‘read’ the signs that mass murder was being done in their name, by their fellow citizens. To which one can only say: What a crock!”

    In fact it is a crock, a willful misreading of The Reader to lump it in with a genre of films which exploit the Holocaust (e.g., Life is Beautiful, winner of several Academy Awards). Bernard Schlink, author of the novel on which the film of The Reader is based, told an interviewer in December: “It’s definitely not a movie about the Holocaust. It’s about a generation trying to come to terms with what they had to learn about their parents’ generation.” ….

    Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy has laid out The Case for a Truth Commission (Time, Feb 20). As Leahy says: “For much of this decade, we have read about and witnessed such abuses as the scandal at Abu Ghraib, the disclosure of torture memos and the revelations about the warrantless surveillance of Americans. We need to get to the bottom of what happened–and why–to make sure it never happens again… to find the truth….

    “But to repair the damage of the past eight years and restore America's reputation and standing in the world, we should not simply turn the page without being able first to read it…. We need to get to the bottom of what went wrong after a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American law and values. The American people have a right to know what their government has done in their names.”

    It’s not just our right. It’s a fundamental need. German society is still – and may always be – in recovery, not just from the atrocities committed in its name, by its leaders, but from the silent acquiescence of the millions who lacked the will to speak up against what they knew was wrong. To sweep the crimes and excesses of the Bush-Cheney years under the rug would destroy the American soul. The world needs the American sense of justice now more than ever. But we forfeit our moral authority if we do not take responsibility for the crimes of the Bush-Cheney years. Karl Rove continues to flaunt congressional subpoenas to testify. He figures he can stonewall indefinitely, that there will be no day of reckoning for lawless U.S. officials. We must do everything in our power to prove him wrong.'

  18. chris berel says:
    February 24, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    Funny, I thought "best Actress" was an award for acting, not because the movie was good or not. Just like Fonda's oscar in an antiwar film. The film sucked, but her acting was great.

    By the way, the atrocities were comitted by numerous, possibly 100's of thousands of Germans with the willful avoidance of millions of Germans.

    "silent acquiescence of the millions who lacked the will to speak up against what they knew was wrong"? Bullshit. Millions were upset with the degree of violence but not that it was wrong.

  19. Dan Kelly says:
    February 24, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    Bullshit. Millions were upset with the degree of violence but not that it was wrong.

    Objection. Your honor, the witness can't possibly expect us to believe that he can see into the minds of millions of people, most of them now dead, and ascertain what they were thinking and feeling over 60 years ago…

    Objection sustained. Mr. berel, please limit the discussion to your own thoughts and don't project your own biases onto others who aren't present.

  20. Anonymous says:
    February 24, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    The "essential metaphorical thrust" was to provide the false excuse "illiteracy" for the fact that there is no written record of the presence of the greatest part of the interned which "oficially" were at the gazan fields, I mean, concentration camps.

  21. chris berel says:
    February 24, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    Too bad Kelly hasn't read any books on the subject.

  22. Citizen says:
    February 25, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    @ Suzanne

    "SHE'S MAKING FUN OF YOU!"

    Like I said, they can't smell themselves and they think no one else can either. Let them believe what they want, everybody else got the joke."

    When I discuss Onion articles with people, they often have divergent views of what and whom were the intended targets of the satire. Which reminds of when SNL at that old Jewish couple skit not so long ago–certainly from the outrage in the MSM, there were two points of view on the implied target of the skit.

    and @ LanceThruster:

    You should check out the documentary called "The Producers" and see what they felt about the rise of the Thrid Reich in their production, "Springtime for Hitler."

    Well, it's a bit of a stretch to call that film a "documentary," no?

    "It is worth seeing for the production values alone."

    I agree.

    "Don't be stupid, be a smarty…"

    Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the plot concern a conspiracy to scam money by creating
    a show that the producers believe will flop at the box office because it may be seen as crudely glorifying
    Hitler?

    Isn't that why they picked the uneducated German with the Nazi helmet as the script writer?

    The obvious irony is that the show was a hit in the USA within the film itself. And a further irony is
    that the movie itself was also a box office hit in reality.

    Anyway you look at the movie it depicts yiddish-toned scam artists, who at least knew how to cater to the aesthetics
    of German uniforms and beautiful shiksas.

    And the catalyst and key actor was Mel Brooks, a yiddish style American citizen.

    Compare the movie to the propaganda movie staring Charlie Chaplin, the gentile. If memory serves, it was called The Great Dictator. That movie was clearly a slam against NAZI Germany. In comparison,
    Brooks's production both relies on that POV, and yet exploits a more conflicted understanding of
    both the allure of Nazism in some aspects, especially considering those times, and a contempt for
    both Jewish and Gentile Americans' ability to understand anything–and he made a bundle proving his point. I am reminded of Madoff. Now there is the latest version of The Producers.

  23. chris berel says:
    February 25, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    Mel Brooks was not the Key Actor in either productions. But as Citizen makes most of his stuff up from half remembered lessons on a stormfronter's knee, it is to be expected.

  24. Suzanne says:
    February 25, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Citizen is definitely a stormfront grad. No doubt about it. Which makes it all the more creepy that he pseudonames as "Suzanne's mentor." *shudder*

  25. LanceThruster says:
    February 25, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    Citizen – Sorry, I was being facetious in keeping with the tone of the Winslet thread (I know it was no documentary). Mel Brooks was a key 'player' (writer and producer) in "The Producers" and was in the dance number for "Springtime for Hitler" in full SS regalia (he actually did the line, "don't be stupid, be a smarty…").

    I didn't even think of the Madoff connection to the Max Bialystock character, though Max Bialystock needed everything to go south to pull off their con whereas that is specifically what brought Madoff's house of cards to come down. It never occurred to me, but if the economy didn't tank so dramatically, it isn't that Madoff's scam would have never been exposed, but that he would have been able to buy a little more time, right? A ponzi scheme always has to go bust no matter what, doesn't it?

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