Though "Crash," Paul Haggis' meditation on race relations in contemporary Los Angeles, pulled an upset win for Best Picture at the Academy Awards on March 5, the evening was filled with few surprises. The Taiwanese-born Ang Lee, as expected, became the first Asian person to win Best Director for his melancholic "Brokeback Mountain" about the doomed romance of two gay cowboys.
George Clooney won Best Supporting Actor for his role as a CIA agent in "Syriana," which led him to joke that his obituary would now read, "Oscar winner George Clooney, sexiest man alive 1997, Batman, died today in a freak accident." Clooney also had some serious words: "This group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the back of theaters." He neglected to say that McDaniel sat at the very back of the Academy Awards ceremony where she was so honored and won for playing a stereotypical black maid in the supremely racist masterpiece, "Gone With the Wind."
