I've Angered The Cillian Murphy Hive

Some quick pre-Oscars updates as we root for Pauly G(iamatti).

Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since the aughts. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.

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Focus Features

It’s Oscars night, people! Okay, so it’s not exactly emergency post-worthy, but I wanted to blast out a couple Oscars-related pieces I wrote for GQ before the ceremony. The basic format my editor pitched was “So-and-so is nominated for X movie this year, but they really should’ve won for this movie.”

Sadly I have a lot of thoughts in that exact vein, so I wrote two pieces: one about how Paul Giamatti is nominated for The Holdovers this year, but he really should’ve won for American Splendor in 2003 (and Sideways the next year, but who’s counting). And then another about how Greta Gerwig is nominated for best adapted screenplay this year for Barbie, but she really should’ve won it in 2019 for Little Women (she lost to Jojo Rabbit, and I’m terribly sorry if you love that movie, but Little Women is much better than Jojo Rabbit). I’m a dude who drinks beer and watches MMA and still listens to punk rock, so I’m pretty sure I’m not the stereotypical audience for Little Women, but that was a good ass movie. Greta Gerwig is the real deal.

Funny post-script about that Giamatti piece. In it, I argue that I’d love to see Giamatti win the Oscars for The Holdovers, even though he’s currently running a pretty heavy underdog (+600 to -1200*) to Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. Here’s what I wrote about that:

The reason Giamatti is such a heavy underdog this year and the reason he’s never won before are probably one and the same: The Academy loves a hero, and Paul Giamatti doesn’t play heroes. Cillian Murphy isn’t favored because his performance is so much better (although he was great, and usually is). He’s favored because he’s a beautiful blue-eyed boy who played a historic figure in a slim suit and a big hat. The Oscars love that.

It goes on from there, quoting David Simon and William Goldman (sheesh, pretentious much?) but my basic point was that Cillian Murphy’s performance was great, but also the kind of performance the Oscars traditionally rewards, while Giamatti played, as he often does, a weird little guy. And I’d like to see the Academy buck the trend this year.

And for this, I’ve been getting hate tweets all damn day from deranged Cillian Murphy fans.

https://x.com/mereen_art/status/1766910211795681480?s=20

https://x.com/AVAFields31/status/1766550873805840514?s=20

https://x.com/TClaudia_W/status/1766755320700051500?s=20

https://x.com/SIRHC2860/status/1766858770699722975?s=20

https://twitter.com/effoff1988/status/1766625323708248517

(I don’t know why tweets don’t embed here, but suffice it to say there is now a “#FireVinceMancini” hashtag). (Incidentally, GQ can’t fire me, I’m not on staff). (I’d also never heard the phrase “slap the stud” before this weekend, but in any case I’m pretty sure that’s not a real thing).

I never write things to piss people off on purpose, but there are times when I’m aware that it’s probably going to happen. This time, in all honestly, caught me completely by surprise. I never imagined that I’d find two or three new tweets begging GQ to fire me or calling me a moron every time I checked twitter for three days running. And all for the crime of calling Cillian Murphy (*checks notes*)… handsome and a good actor. It really brought me back to the old days of FilmDrunk when I’d wake up to discover that I’d made dozens of fans of Tom Cruise or Hugh Jackman all over the world very angry. That’s that old internet magic. I’ve started to get a little thrill every time I block a new person.

*+600 means that if you bet $100, you’d win $600, and -1200 means that you’d have to bet $1200 to win $100.

Additionally!

-I created an Oscars drinking game! Don’t take it too seriously if too many of my predictions turn out correct, I don’t need alcohol poisoning on my conscious on top of how unfair I was to Cillian Murphy.

-We recorded a new Frotcast this week! We reviewed Adam Sandler’s Spaceman (good!) and brainstormed the Oscars drinking game.

-New Pod Yourself the Wire! We talked “The Dickensian Aspect” with Norah Barrows-Friedman.

That’s it for now! From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all of the paid subscribers. I wasn’t entirely sure what this newsletter would become, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised the whole time. I love you all.