Chris Rock: It's Fatburger or the Oscars
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — There are routine Hollywood brunches — and then there are the ones Chris Rock attends.
On Sunday morning, stars including Julianne Moore, Steve Carell and Rosamund Pike donned their sunglasses and gathered at Variety's annual brunch at the Parker Palm Springs, along with director Rob Marshall, who was honored with Variety's Creative Impact Award for Into the Woods. "I never believed the genre was dead," said Marshall. "It's a true American art form, the musical."
The awards brunch, sponsored by Mercedes-Benz, is a tradition in the desert, where omelet stations, mimosas and lobster ceviche await Hollywood's finest.
And while the speeches were lovely — Carell, given the Creative Impact Acting Award, reminisced about a grade-school teacher whose support of him miming a canoe led to acting ("And now for a rambling, off-the-cuff anecdote") — it was Rock who brought the house down.
Boyhood director Richard Linklater presented Rock with the Variety Creative Impact in Comedy Award, adding that Rock's Top Five "is in my top five." Linklater added, "Chris and I go way back … to the old days," he joked, like "1992 …old Hollywood."
But when Rock took the podium to accept his Dale Chihuly-designed glass prize (a "weird bong-ish type thing. But I'm honored! I don't have a bong this lovely"), the comic/director cut right through the polite applause.
"We're here for the — Variety Creative Impact Awards," he said, turning around to look at the sign hanging on a green hedge behind him. "But, you know. We're trolling for Oscar votes! Come on — just to be honest," said Rock to laughter. "I'm going to blatantly appeal to the voters: February 22nd is my mother's 70th birthday. If I'm nominated, I will take her to the Oscars. If not, I will take her to Fatburger."
Variety also honored 10 Directors to Watch, including Sean Baker (Tangerine), Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Spring), Ava DuVernay (Selma), Shlomi Elkabetz and Ronit Elkabetz (Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem), Jeremy Garelick (The Wedding Ringer), Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler), Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl), Ruben Ostlund (Force Majeure), Damian Szifron (Wild Tales) and Leigh Whannell (Insidious: Chapter 3).
But wait — isn't Selma on every critic's best director and best picture list? DuVernay seems an odd choice for the freshman notice. As the brunch began, she smiled and shrugged. "I'm happy to be here," she told Paste BN. "It's lovely." Until Selma, which hits theaters nationwide Friday, she added, "I made small films that no one saw. Before (this), I've never had a film released in more than 20 theaters at one time."