The hours following the Oscar nominations are typically given over to checking in with all the various nominees, so that we may find out whether they are honored to be nominated and consider their competition worthy and humbling, and also to learn the mundane circumstances under which they were informed, so that we may see them as regular human beings just like us. And so today has seen an endless procession of obligatory expressions of gratitude from the honorees—Viola Davis saying how proud she is of The Help, Glenn Close calling Albert Nobbs her “baby,” Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close giving a shout-out to "my bro, 9/11" for making it all possible, etc. But whither the snubs? Most of the time the people whom Oscar overlooks are way more fun to talk to, and yet they so rarely get the chance. Fortunately for us, a) there is Twitter, and b) two of the more prominent snubs are professional comedians who use it.
One of those is Albert Brooks, who lost out on being recognized for Drive so that the Academy could recognize surprise nominee Max Von Sydow’s mostly pantomimed performance in Extremely Loud, as well as the fact that he is old and they still haven’t given him anything. Anyway, naturally Brooks responded to being shut out with typical self-deprecating humor, first joking, “I got ROBBED. I don’t mean the Oscars, I mean literally. My pants and shoes have been stolen,” then following it up with the more direct, “And to the Academy: ‘You don’t like me. You really don’t like me.’” This prompted Patton Oswalt—similarly overlooked for Young Adult—to invite Brooks to a fanciful pity party in which Oscar’s ostracized could huddle together in commiseration, boozing, and playing with Legos:
Join me for a drink at The Drawing Room, @AlbertBrooks? Me and Serkis have been here since 6am.
See you later tonight. Might be out of booze — Serkis has Pogues on the jukebox & Fassbender just showed up in a pirate hat.
Oh shit — we're DEFINITELY going to run out of booze. Charlize & Tilda just pulled up in a stolen police car.
Dude, GET DOWN HERE. Gosling is doing keg stands and Olsen & Dunst LITERALLY just emerged from a shower of rose petals.
Nolte & Plummer just drove past, mooning us. Serkis & Tilda are singing "Is There Life on Mars?"
Oops — Von Trier just pulled up in a pass van dressed as Goering. "Let's go to Legoland!" With a boozy hurrah, we're out!
Oh. My. God. Just pulled up to Legoland. DiCaprio's rented the park for the day. Dibs on the Duplo Gardens! #andscene
Apparently fellow major snub Steven Spielberg didn’t make the invite list. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hang out with Lars Von Trier for some reason.