Pre-Oscar Bash: Hurrah for Science at the Movies?

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It is hard to not get caught up each year in the Oscar business if you live in this town and care about film. If you care about film, you’re probably just mostly annoyed about the whole thing because the slate of nominations and eventual winners hardly represents the outcome of careful thought about relative merits and so forth. The trick is to forget being annoyed and either hide from the whole thing or embrace it as a fun silly thing that does not mean too much.

british_film_oscar_bash_smaller_05 This year since there has been a number of high profile films that help raise awareness of and interest in science and scientists, I have definitely not chosen the “hide away” option. Whatever one thinks of how good or bad “The Theory of Everything”, “The Imitation Game” and “Interstellar” might be, I think that is simply silly to ignore the fact that it is a net positive thing that they’ve got millions of people taking about science and science-related things while out on their movie night. That’s a good thing, and as I’ve been saying for the last several months (see e.g. here and here), good enough reason for people interested in science engagement to be at least broadly supportive of the films, because that’ll encourage more to be made, an the more such films are being made, the better the chances are that even better ones get made.

This is all a preface to admitting that I went to one of those fancy pre-Oscar parties last night. It was put on by the British Consul-General in Los Angeles (sort of a followup to the one I went to last month mentioned here) in celebration of the British Film industry and the large number of British Oscar nominees there are in various categories. I was there as one of the scientists they invited in view of the “Theory of Everything” and “The Imitation Game” films. (Yes, that’s a real Enigma machine I am standing next to in the photo above (click for larger).)

Just like last time (in that case it was Erik Verlinde), I was pleasantly surprised to encounter an old friend of 23 years there – David Gross! (For those of you who don’t know who that is, he’s one of the supergiants in my field – look up the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics.) Along with Maria Spiropulu we were the three (as far as I know) physicists assembled and we chatted amongst ourselves and others about science in film and so forth. I ran into documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker again (try to see her recent film on Huntingdon’s disease “The Lion’s Mouth Opens”), and through her I got to chatting with Anthony McCarten, the screenwriter of “The Theory of Everything”, who I then introduced to David since I imagined they’d have a lot to chat about. And they did. I also got to chat with Paul Franklin, the visual effects supervisor for Interstellar (and a whole bunch of other films I admire his work on) about his experience working with Kip Thorne on visualising the scientific (and science-inspired) aspects of the film. (Click photos for larger view – the group with David was taken by Maria, as well as the enigma one above – thanks!)

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I also chatted about science advising for film with Nick Hooper (from the Consulate’s office; he is the one who thought to bring a few scientists to this event – thanks Nick!) and Rick Loverd (the Program Director at the Science & Entertainment Exchange), tossing around some ideas we might explore in the future. So it was an interesting evening overall.

-cvj

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67 Responses to Pre-Oscar Bash: Hurrah for Science at the Movies?

  1. Clifford says:
    March 21, 2015 at 12:47 pm

    Thanks for your nice remarks robert!

    No, I’ve no idea. With the Oscars, there’s often a snowball effect, where one film pulls ahead in people’s minds in one major category and then it just sweeps up more and more awards in other categories automatically. So maybe this meant that IG ended up with little because this was happening to the other films in its category nominated for similar things. I doubt it was because of any substantial reason like careful consideration of the relation between the screenplay and the “truth” (whatever that is). That’s never seemed to be an issue before…

    -cvj

  2. robert says:
    March 17, 2015 at 11:07 am

    How cool can a boffin get? And the Enigmatic G&T is of Churchillian proportions. All told it looks like you had a great time.

    Do you have any insight into why the Imitation Game didn’t cop for more on the night? I think that it took an enormous liberty with the truth; Turing was gay and he was a patriot, in no way a traitor or susceptible to coercion. To mess with these facts in the way the film did smacks of a McCarthy era ‘all queers are commies – or is that commies are queers? – and not to be trusted’ mindset.

    Rant over – it looks like a top notch knees up.

  3. Clifford says:
    February 24, 2015 at 4:00 am

    Indeed! I’ve no clear idea what is being communicated in the arrangement. Perhaps it is intended as a trophy….captured in battle, etc. Also, less easy to acquire the more cumbersome counterpart decoding technology for a West Hollywood party…?

    -cvj

  4. Hamish says:
    February 24, 2015 at 2:16 am

    Err, isn’t the Enigma machine a shining example of German technology? In the photo it looks like it is being presented as British!