After a movie year often light on crowds, the Academy Awards named an unabashed crowd-pleaser, the deaf family drama “CODA,” best picture Sunday, handing Hollywood’s top award to a streaming service for the first time.
Sian Heder’s “CODA,” which first premiered at a virtual Sundance Film Festival in winter 2021, started out as an underdog but gradually emerged as the Oscars’ feel-good favorite. It also had one very deep-pocketed backer in Apple TV+, which scored its first best picture Academy Award on Sunday, less than three years after launching the service.
It also handed another near-miss defeat to Netflix, the veteran streamer that for years has tried vainly to score best picture. Its best chance, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” came in with a leading 12 nominations.
But “CODA” rode a wave of goodwill driven by its cast, including Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant. It’s the first film with a largely deaf cast to win best picture. “CODA” managed that despite being one of the least-nominated films with only three coming into Sunday. Not since 1932’s “Grand Hotel” has a movie won best picture with fewer than four nods.
The victory capped a dramatic night at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where Will Smith won best actor for “King Richard” and Jessica Chastain won best actress for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” The ceremony was hosted by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes and broadcast via ABC.
Earlier in the night, the buoyant spirit of the evening was rocked by an unbelievable exchange after Smith took offense to a joke made by Chris Rock about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
After Rock joked to Smith that he was looking forward to a sequel to “G.I. Jane,” Smith stood up from his seat near the stage, strode up to Rock and slapped him. After sitting back down, Smith shouted at Rock to “keep my wife’s name out of your (expletive) mouth.” When Rock, who joked about Jada Pinkett Smith while hosting the Oscars in 2016, protested that it was just a “G.I. Jane” joke, Smith repeated the same line.
“That was the greatest night in the history of television,” Rock said, before awkwardly returning to presenting best documentary, which went to Questlove’s “Summer of Soul (…or When the Revolution Was Not Televised).”
The moment shocked the live audience and viewers at home. The broadcast and streaming on ABC paused and went silent momentarily, leaving viewers wondering what had happened. At the commercial break, presenter Daniel Kaluuya came up to hug Smith, and Denzel Washington escorted him to the side of the stage. The two talked and hugged and Tyler Perry came over to talk as well.
Smith, who won for his portrayal of Venus and Serena Williams’ father in “King Richard,” his first Oscar, again took the stage shortly after what seemed likely to be one of the most infamous moments in Academy Awards history.
Smith’s acceptance speech vacillated between defense and apology. “Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Smith said in his first remarks. He continued: “I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people.”
The win comes for his third nomination. Smith was previously nominated for “Ali” in 2002 and “The Pursuit of Happyness” in 2007.
Williams shared what Washington told him: “At your highest moment, be careful because that’s when the devil comes for you.”
Ultimately, Smith apologized to the academy and to his fellow nominees, but not to Rock. “Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father” Smith said. “But love will make you do crazy things.”
Up until that moment, the show had been running fairly smoothly. Ariana DeBose became the first Afro-Latina to win an Academy Award for supporting actress, while Troy Kotsur became the first male deaf actor to win an acting award.
Campion won the Oscar best director for “The Power of the Dog,” her open-plains psychodrama that twisted and upended Western conventions. Campion, who had been the first woman ever twice nominated in the category (previously for 1993’s “The Piano”), is only the third woman to win best director. It’s also the first time the directing award has ever gone to women in back-to-back years, after “Nomadland” filmmaker Chloé Zhao won last year.
After record-low ratings and a pandemic-marred 2021 show, producers this year turned to one of the biggest stars around — Beyonce’ — to kick off an Oscars intended to revive the awards’ place in pop culture. After an introduction from Venus and Serena Williams, Beyonce’ performed her “King Richard” nominated song, “Be Alive,” in an elaborately choreographed performance from a lime-colored, open-air stage in Compton, where the Williams sisters grew up.
At the opening, Sykes, Schumer and Hall breezily joked through prominent Hollywood issues like pay equity — they said three female hosts were “cheaper than one man” — as well as about the Lady Gaga drama that Sykes called “House of Random Accents,” the state of the Golden Globes (now relegated to the memoriam package, said Sykes) and Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends. Their most pointed political point came at the end of their routine, in which they promised a great night and then alluded to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
“And for you people in Florida, we’re going to have a gay night,” Sykes said.
The first broadcast award went, fittingly, to Ariana DeBose, who became the first openly LGBTQ actor and first Latina to win best supporting actress. Her win came 60 years after Rita Moreno won for the same role in the 1961 original “West Side Story.” DeBose thanked Moreno for leading the way for “tons of Anitas like me.”
“You see an openly queer woman of color, an Afro-Latina, who found her strength and life through art. And that is, I think, what we’re here to celebrate,” DeBose said. “So if anyone has ever questioned your identity or you find yourself living in the gray spaces, I promise you this — there is indeed a place for us.”
Later, Kotsur became the first male deaf actor to ever win an acting Oscar, and joined his “CODA” costar Marlee Matlin as the only deaf actors to win an Academy Award. He received a standing ovation while many in the Dolby gave the Deaf clap, waving both hands in the air.
“This is for the Deaf community, the CODA community and the disabled community,” said Kotsur, signing from the stage. “This is our moment.”
“Encanto,” the Disney hit propelled by its chart-topping soundtrack, won best animated film. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who penned the film’s hit songs, missed the ceremony after his wife tested positive for COVID-19. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour Japanese drama “Drive My Car,” one of the year’s most acclaimed films, won for best international film.
The Oscars leaned heavily on musical performances (Billie Eilish, Reba McEntire), film anniversaries (“The Godfather,” “Pulp Fiction,” “White Men Can’t Jump”) and as many mentions of the “Encanto” breakout song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” as possible. That made for an often buoyant ceremony that put less focus on the pandemic. The Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis led a 30-second moment of silence for Ukraine. Some stars, like Sean Penn, had lobbied the academy to have Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak at the ceremony.
Eilish and her brother Finneas, won for their Bond theme to “No Time to Die,” a song that was released before the pandemic began. The film was subsequently delayed several times.
Feel-good movies fared well. Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical “Belfast,” an affectionate family drama bathed in nostalgia and shot in black-and-white, took best original screenplay.
The Academy Awards got under way Sunday off-camera, with the first eight awards on the night being handed out at the Dolby Theatre before the start of the telecast. It was a controversial beginning to the first fully in-person Oscars in two years. Earlier this month, more than 70 Oscar winners, including James Cameron, Kathleen Kennedy and Guillermo del Toro, warned that the shift would turn some nominees into “second-class citizens.”
Best makeup and hairstyling went to Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram and Justin Raleigh for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” That film’s star and producer, Chastain, had been among the many academy members who thought all the awards should have been handed out live during the broadcast. Chastain hugged each winner as they took the stage. Her own win was her first Oscar in three nominations, the previous for “Zero Dark Thirty” in 2013 and “The Help” in 2012.
“I just hope that each and every day on set everyone takes a moment to just look around and look at all those talented people who work hard,” said Dowds, the make-up artist.
“The Queen of Basketball,” about the basketball great Lusia Harris, took best short documentary film. Its executive producers include Steph Curry and Shaquille O’Neal. Best animated short went to “The Windshield Wiper,” while “The Long Goodbye,” a blistering fictional short starring Riz Ahmed, took best fiction short.
“This is for everyone who feels like they’re stuck in No Man’s Land,” Ahmed said. “You’re not alone. We’ll meet you there.”
Winners of the 2022 Academy Awards
Presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; read Tribune reviews of the movies here.
Best picture: “CODA”
Best actor: Will Smith, “King Richard”
Best actress: Jessica Chastain, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”
Documentary feature: “Summer of Soul (Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”
Original song: “No Time to Die” from “No Time to Die,” music and lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell
Best director: Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”
Best supporting actor: Troy Kotsur, “CODA”
Best supporting actress: Ariana DeBose
Best international film: “Drive My Car,” Japan
Costume design: “Cruella”
Original screenplay: “Belfast”
Adapted screenplay: “CODA”
Cinematography: “Dune”
Visual effects: “Dune”
Best animated feature: “Encanto”
Sound: “Dune”
Documentary (short subject): “The Queen of Basketball”
Best animated short film: “The Windshield Wiper”
Live action short: “The Long Goodbye”
Music (original score): “Dune”
Film editing: “Dune”
Production design: “Dune”
Makeup and hairstyling: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”
Associated Press writers Lindsey Bahr, Jocelyn Noveck and Andrew Dalton contributed to this report.