“Birdman,” the drum-beat-driven drama about a former blockbuster actor trying to rebuild his career on Broadway, won the Oscar for best picture, along with a best-director prize for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and a pair of other statuettes.
The film’s Michael Keaton was passed over Sunday for best actor in favor of Eddie Redmayne for “The Theory of Everything,” while Julianne Moore won her first career Oscar for “Finding Alice.”
In a ceremony in which three of the acting awards were essentially pre-decided, “Birdman” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” each collected four prizes. The one-time front-runner, “Boyhood” — the innovative family drama filmed over 12 years with the same cast — collected only one, a supporting actress Oscar for Patricia Arquette.
In addition to best picture and best director, Inarritu also shared the original screenplay award for “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” and the film won a cinematography honor for Emmanuel Lubezki, who also won last year for “Gravity.”
“All the people that were behind this film was really heroes, because the idea was really crazy,” Inarritu said during the 87th Oscars at the Dolby Theatre. “A script that starts with a middle-aged man, interior dressing room, cross-legged, floating — … and we are here. I don’t know how that happened, but it happened.”
Inarritu also took advantage of the Oscar pulpit to make a statement on immigration, saying he prays that Mexican immigrants in America “can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones that came before and built this incredible, immigrant nation.”
Redmayne, 33, celebrated his first Oscar win on his first nomination for his spot-on turn as physicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.”
“I am fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man,” he said. “This Oscar — wow — this Oscar, this belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS.”
He dedicated the honor to Hawking and his family, but said he will be the statuette’s “custodian.”
Moore, 54, who celebrated a win on her fifth career nomination, was honored for her portrayal of a linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in “Still Alice.”
“I read an article that said that winning an Oscar could lead to living five years longer,” the 54-year-old actress said. “If that’s true I’d really like to thank the Academy because my husband is younger than me.”
She also praised the filmmakers for shining a light on the scourge of Alzheimer’s.
Meanwhile, J.K. Simmons and Arquette capped their awards-season success stories by claiming Oscars for their supporting roles in “Whiplash” and “Boyhood.”
Simmons, 60, a longtime character actor many TV viewers probably recognize for his Farmers Insurance commercials, collected his first career Oscar — on his first nomination — for his role as a hard-driving music instructor who pushes a student (Miles Teller) to the brink.
Simmons used his acceptance speech at the 87th Oscars to heap praise on his wife, Michelle Schumacher, and two children, while making a plea to the audience to respect their parents.
“Call your mom. Call your dad,” the Detroit native said on stage at the Dolby Theatre. “If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call them. Don’t text, don’t email. Call them on the phone. Tell them you love them and thank them and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, mom and dad.”
Arquette, 46, in addition to thanking her family and the cast and crew of “Boyhood,” brought many in the crowd to their feet when she made an impassioned call for equal rights for women.
“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation — we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” she said. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights (for) women in the United States of America.”
The Oscar was also the first win and nomination for Arquette.
Moore, Simmons and Arquette essentially swept most of the pre-Oscar ceremony awards, including winning Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards. The best-actor prize was less clear heading into the ceremony, with Keaton and Redmayne — both Golden Globe winners — considered neck-and-neck.
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” collected four Oscars, including the first career win in eight nominations for Alexandre Desplat for his original score.
“Wes, you’re a genius, which is good,” Desplat said from the stage to director Wes Anderson.
The film’s costume designer, Milena Canonero, won her fourth career Oscar for her work on the quirky period film. She previously won Oscars for “Barry Lyndon,” “Chariots of Fire” and “Marie Antoinette.”
Anderson’s film also claimed Oscars for production design for Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock, as well as for Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier for makeup and hairstyling. Coulier previously won for “The Iron Lady.”
Canonero dedicated her Oscar to Anderson, saying, “You are like a conductor. You are like a composer.”
“If it wasn’t for you, this movie, you know, I couldn’t have done it this way,” she said.
Graham Moore won the award for best adapted screenplay for “The Imitation Game,” the story of British code-breaker Alan Turing, who is credited with saving millions of lives but committed suicide after being convicted of sexual indecency because he was gay.
“Alan Turing never got to stand on a stage like this …. and I do, and that’s the most unfair thing I’ve ever heard,” Moore said. “… When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I did not belong. … I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different and then when it’s your turn and you are standing on this stage, please pass the same message.”
John Legend and Common won the Oscar for best original song for their anthem “Glory” from the civil-rights film “Selma.”
Disney’s “Big Hero 6” — about a robotics prodigy who teams with his colleagues to take on a villain — won the Oscar for best animated film, marking the first Academy Awards for producers Don Hall, Chris Williams and Roy Conli.
The win was a bit of an upset over “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” which won the top prize from the International Animated Film Society.
Meanwhile, “Feast,” a Disney-produced short about a junk-food-loving dog that was shown in theaters alongside “Big Hero 6” won the animated-short Oscar, for producers Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed.
“Ida,” a Polish movie about a young would-be nun who embarks on a journey with her aunt to delve into their family history, was named best foreign-language film.
Mat Kirkby and James Lucas won the Oscar for live action short film for “The Phone Call,” about a help-line call center worker who fields a call from a suicidal man; while Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry won for documentary short subject for “Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1,” about counselors who work for the 24-hour Veterans’ Crisis Line.
“CitizenFour,” the film portrait of Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal, was awarded the Oscar for documentary feature. Laura Poitras, who accepted the award along with co-producers Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky, thanked the organizations that backed the film and Snowden for his “courage.”
“The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself,” she said. “When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control.”
The Oscar for sound mixing went to Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley for “Whiplash,” which also earned a film-editing prize for first-time winner Tom Cross. The award for sound editing went to Alan Robert Murray and Bob Asman for “American Sniper.”
For visual effects, the Oscar was claimed by Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher for “Interstellar.”
— City News Service