Rourke’s Best Actor loss causes right wing conspiracy theories to take flight

Something was eating away at my insides the minute I learned that Sean Penn, and not Mickey Rourke, had won Best Actor at the 81st Annual Academy Awards Feb. 22 for his performance as the late political gay activist Harvey Milk in the biopic, “Milk.”

I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was troubling me. I suppose it could have been my stomach telling me it wanted to be fed.

Ok, which was part of it, but that was not the main issue at the time. The first thought that came to mind upon hearing Penn’s name and given that the lead character he plays is homosexual, was didn’t the gay community and AIDS sufferers get their day in the sun already at the 1994 Oscars when Tom Hanks won for his performance in “Philadelphia” (1993) playing an AIDS stricken lawyer fired by a conservative law firm?

“Was that not enough,” I asked myself.

It was really irritating me that I couldn’t figure out why Rourke, whom I and most everyone else who has seen him in his tragic comeback role as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler, and whom most believed would win Best Actor, lost to Penn.

In an Entertainment Weekly readers’ poll taken the week after the ceremony, 46 percent say Rourke should have won over the 37 percent who were for Penn, while 26 percent say the biggest surprise of Oscar night was Penn winning.

I got my answers a day later when I came across bighollywood.breitbart.com, a conservative website that gives readers the right-wing perspective on what liberal Tinseltown stands for. From there, the conspiracy theories flew, and I cannot say they were not illogical.

“Hmmm…why did Mickey Rourke win Best Actor in every other award ceremony besides this one,” wrote Brett Joshpe on the site. “As I said, the Academy punished Mickey for his gratitude towards President Bush for keeping our country safe from Islamofascism/terrorism. Instead, it chose to award its biggest donkey, Sean Penn.” Another writer on the site named “Mr. Wrestling IV” wrote how he knew already there was no way Rourke would win the Oscar.

“I knew this was never going to happen, that the Academy would never vote for a guy who said he was “not one of those who blames Bush for everything,” and that they vote for Sean Penn because of his political stances, not in spite of them, as Penn likes to pretend,” Mr. Wrestling IV wrote.

Rourke, who, at one point, left acting to pursue a boxing career, has always been one to not shy away from his opinion, even if it means ticking off everyone in Hollywood.

“Actors should shut up about politics because they tend to be ill-informed finger-pointers who just cozy up to some flavor-of-the-month liberal, you know,” he once said.

I am not going to argue with him on that one, after all look at who we now have as president.

As early as 2006, Rourke defended Dubya for the war on terror.

"George is doing a hell of a job during very difficult times, more power to him. Screw all them people who don't like him," Rourke said.

He came to Dubya’s defense again during the former president’s remaining days in office in January this year.

"President Bush was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don't know how anyone could have handled this situation," the actor said in an interview with GQ magazine on dealing with the 9/11 and terrorism. "I don't give a (expletive) who's in office, Bush or whoever, there is no simple solution to this problem. I am not one of those who blames Bush for everything. This (expletive) between Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, does not it. It is too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I do not think that anyone really knows quite what to do."

I would find it rather ironic, no, strike that. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the reason Rourke lost to Penn had more to do with his defense of “Dubya” than spending the last 20 years burning all his bridges with everyone in Hollywood.

I was really looking forward to Rourke’s acceptance speech on Oscar night if he had won, which most likely would have been filled with some colorful language that would have had ABC censors worried. I shed no emotion unlike everyone else in the audience who had tears in their eyes when the late Heath Ledger’s name was announced winning as expected, his best supporting actor nomination as The Joker in “The Dark Knight” posthumously. I cannot say the same if Rourke had won and dedicated the gold statue to his 18-year-old pet Chihuahua, Loki, who had just recently passed away and who he credits for saving his life. I understand where Rourke is coming from, being a dog owner myself who is also caring for a sick pet with heart disease and was just told by my vet that my 12-year-old Lhasa Apso named “Mad” Max, has maybe six to eight months to live, give or take if the medications he is on work.

Instead of awarding an actor who had been through the depths of hell, much of it his own making contemplating suicide and going through a divorce among them, and made a comeback, “Hollyweird” not only chose to award an actor who had already won once, but at the same time, made it into a political issue when it came to California’s Proposition 8 and how the state restricted the definition of marriage to only opposite-sex couples and eliminating same-sex couples’ right to marry.

To quote Sean Penn, thank you “you commie, homo-loving sons of guns.”

I am not going to argue that Penn didn’t deserve the award. If this had been a different year and both actors were not competing in the same category, I would have been all for Penn winning. By the same token, I am a little displeased that “Milk” has not been released in the Mesquite and Garland area theaters close to home and is only showing at art house theaters to where I got to drive 30 minutes out of the way just to see a two-hour film. For all I know, perhaps Mesquite residents don’t want a movie about a gay activist playing in the same theater where “Friday the 13th” is showing.

My problem with Penn winning is, like Michael Moore’s acceptance speech for “Bowling for Columbine” (2002) bashing President Bush at the 2003 Oscars, instead of having the win be about awarding the performance or the movie, it was about the individual promoting their own cause and personal agenda.

“For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time that for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes as they continue that way of support,” Penn said. “We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”

It is bad enough that the Academy Awards are no longer about American films getting top recognition and that we have no Titanic’s, no Godfather’s, no Star Wars, no Schindler’s List’s, to root for on Oscar night. Whatever happened to giving an Oscar to an actor or actress because of their performance? I thought Oscar loves comeback stories when it comes to out of sight stars returning to the spotlight with a critically praised performance.

As far as who the real winner was on Oscar night, there is only one and that is the actor who didn’t win.

I have always believed that awards are not everything. They may be accomplishments, but they are material things at most. You do not take that stuff with you to the grave when you die, you know.

Rourke summed it up best to Barbara Walters about what winning the Oscar would mean if he won.

“Personally, it would mean a great deal to me,” he said. “It would be a tremendous honor. It would sum up a whole comeback thing I guess in a material kind of way. But in the big picture, you cannot eat it, you cannot (expletive) it, and it will not get me into Heaven.”

Thank you, Mickey Rourke!

©3/2/09