The big hullabaloo at the Oscars was that all of the best picture nominees but one were indy movies. Big deal, sniffed Cam.

“The English Patient” – I’m with Elaine Benes on this one.

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“Jerry Maguire” - I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I still love just about everything about “Jerry Maguire,” despite its clunky moments.

“Secrets & Lies” – Other than “Naked,” which I saw under the influence of…something…I never have cared for Mike Leigh’s movies. Nor do I hate any of his movies, or find him to be a hack. But his movies don’t illicit anything more than a “that didn’t suck” outta me.

“Shine” - Really never got all the fuss over this one, either. I kinda hate it, in fact.

“Fargo” - From the lie that it’s based on true events to every aspect of the execution — everything about “Fargo” screamed instant classic.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED:

“Tin Cup” – Yeah, tt’s fluff. But damn if isn’t rewatchable and entertaining. Costner is so on, after a string of misfires. What the hell ever happened to Ron Shelton?

“Sling Blade” – There are about a hundred lines in this movie that I use every chance I get. Complete with the Karl Childers voice. Throwaway lines, even, like when my kid says a cuss word, I poke out my bottom lip and growl, “You shouldn’t be tawlkin’ like’at, you jest a boy.”

“Swingers” – So good that they remade it with actors as bottom-feeding gangsters, and I still loved it.

“Trainspotting” - Marketed as a British “Pulp Fiction,” the film is actually more like “Good Fellas” with junkies. Its first half comes very close to glamorizing the lifestyle of heroin junkies, and then the baby dies, and the carefree tone shifts radically. Haven’t seen this in years, but it remains burned in my brain.

“Fargo” – I had always been a fan of the Coen Brothers, but with this one I finally decided they were geniuses.

WHAT SHOULDA WON

“Fargo” comes tantalizingly close to being a perfect movie. The genius of the movie: its tone. Its humor is both dark and folksy, sometimes both at the same time, and from the very first scene, in a smoky bar in snowy Fargo, North Dakota the Coens establish a tense, unshakable sense of dread: we know Jerry Lundegaard’s (William H. Macy) convoluted scheme will end badly.  Jerry hires two goons, the monosyllabic, chain smoking thug Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), and the wiry, talkative Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) to kidnap his wife in hopes that Jerry can convince his “well-off” father-in-law to overpay the ransom. Jerry will split the overage with Gaear and Carl, and give them a burnt umber Cutlass Ciera to boot. Right off the bat, Gaear and Carl have their doubts about the plan. “That’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul, Jerry, it doesn’t make any sense,” chirps Carl, who is unwilling to debate the subject any further.

But they go along with the plan and it goes bad when they’re pulled over by a State Trooper. Carl shows his hand, the Trooper suspects something, and Gaear takes it upon himself to kill the Trooper, after which he mocks Carl sarcastically, “You’re a real smooth smooth one.” So. Awesome. Oh, and then a passerby sees them dragging the trooper to the side of the road, so Gaear takes off for’em, kills them, and we think, “Goshdarn, what a mess, yah know?”

And then we meet Marge Gunderson (Francis McDormand), the Chief of Police in Brainerd, Minnesota, home of Paul Bunyon and Babe, the blue ox. She’s, oh, about fourteen months pregnant, married to Norm “Son of a” Gunderson, a painter. A nicer couple you shall not meet, but Marge doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the bad guys will face justice.

But it turns out that Marge is a pretty goshdarn good detective, albeit a bit naive to the darker side of human nature. She arrives at the scene of the crime and figures out what happened in about two seconds flat, “OK, so we got a trooper pulls someone over, we got a shooting, these folks drive by, there’s a high-speed pursuit, ends here and then this execution-type deal.”

I’m not the first to say it — this moment is a game changer. We know that bad things will happen, because we’re watching a Coen Brothers movie. But we also, in this moment, relax a bit, knowing that there will be some level of justice. Marge is on the case.

Marge Gunderson is one of my twenty favorite characters of all time. Laid back, friendly, smart but never smug; it’s impossible not to root for her. Francis McDormand walked away with an Oscar for the movie, and the Coen’s don’t so much direct her as turn her loose. She’s not introduced until thirty or so minutes in, but it’s her movie. The supporting cast also excels. Macy wrings empathy from a role that could have been just plain creepy, and the Coens never judge him or attempt to justify him. We sense he was at one time a decent guy, and hate that he has chosen to go down a very dark path. Buscemi is in typically motormouth, bizarro-Barney Fife form. Stormare’s Gaer is a monster, plain and simple, with a seemingly impenetrable dark heart. But, because they’re geniuses, the Coens include a scene in which a routine twist in a bland soap opera offers a brief glimpse at Gaer’s human side.

“Fargo” is, to me, a masterpiece. It’s one of those movies that make me say, “So, this is the best movie ever,” every time I watch it.

In Jerry Maguire, the key conflict was Jerry’s realization that he was putting a pretty facade on the moral deterioration within his profession, and was in fact complicit in it. It took an injured hockey player’s young son telling him to fuck off and a bad dream for Maguire to realize the true ugliness of who and what he had become, especially when measured against the high standards of his idol and mentor, agent Dicky Fox. Those troubling events created in Maguire a perfect storm of revulsion, introspection and a commitment to reaffirm the basic principles of his profession, which he laid out in his memo “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” In truth, he had me at hello. Tom’s a hottie!

Like Jerry Maguire, I too started out in my chosen profession with the highest of ideals, which were sparked by a boundless love of the great stories, writers and filmmakers that inspired me. Like the best of them, I am totally dedicated to the pure craft of storytelling in film. It is all about The Story, which is bigger than all of us. That treasured craft has been handed down to us throughout human history, from Homer to Shakespeare to General Lew Wallace, Jules Verne and L. Frank Baum.

It is no surprise that epic stories like Wallace’s Ben Hur and Baum’s Wizard of Oz were made into films, or that so many of us treasure those movies like they were our own. Over time the greatest film stories become a part of us, interwoven into the very fabric of our culture and society, even our very personalities. Today in Hollywood that pure craft, though thriving on many fronts, is in deep trouble on many others. Like Jerry Maguire, I am witnessing the progressive corruption of the highest ideal of what my profession should be all about: the pure craft of storytelling in commercial film and TV.

More and more that pure craft is being poisoned by ideology, propaganda and malicious intent to insult or denigrate audience members whom certain creative film artists vehemently dislike. Tells, ideological plot points that are dead giveaways as to exactly where the story is going, ruin the viewing experience by instantly killing all tension and suspension of disbelief. How about taking viewers and audiences where they’ve never been before? It’s called high concept. Look into it.

Be it left or right, politics is artistic and box office poison. The low ratings and receipts bear me out. Bathrooms and kitchens are separate for a reason. It’s not very smart to shit where you eat. In the long and glorious history of storytelling on film in Hollywood, these developments are both modern anomalies and creative pestilences which offend me to my very core as a pure apolitical storyteller dedicated heart and soul to my craft. Who would dare tell Picasso he has to put Green in Guernica?

And the only health care I want to see pushed on film is Nurse Ratched, Dr. Giggles and Batman giving Dr. Crane a dose of his own medicine! Writers are artists, too. So, as a screenwriter, I’ve drafted my own memo. I may not always succeed, but I will do my damndest to uphold the oaths I now put forward to the American people, my fellow creative film artists, and to film fanatics everywhere on 3 Rock. Consider this my Jerry Maguire Mission Statement for Hollywood:

1. I promise to adhere to the finest principles of pure storytelling which have riveted men, women and children around campfires since the dawn of time. Those principles have endured across the years, decades, centuries and millennia for very good reasons. They will endure long after we and Hollywood as we know it are gone. That is our great responsibility to our past, present and future.

2. I promise to proffer the greatest respect to my audiences and fellow film artists regardless of ethnicity, religion, creed, gender, sexuality or belief system. We all want the same thing: great film.

3. I promise to respect the intelligence, dignity and sensibilities of my audiences and fellow creative film artists in my work, regardless of how stupid, misguided or insensitive they may be in real life.

4. I promise to bring the best of my talents and abilities to bear in telling the greatest and most compelling four-quadrant stories with the widest possible appeal for all. Box office tells the tale.

5. I promise I will not write any script or work on any project with the intent to advance any race, creed, religion, ethnicity, belief system or non-violent ideology over any others. Basic moral themes and conflicts are universal. We are all ultimately human on the most basic and visceral of levels.

6. I promise I will not allow my personal ideological or political beliefs to infect my work. The story is bigger than I am. Where the story leads I must follow, irrespective of all other personal political or ideological considerations. It should always be about telling the best possible stories on film.

7. I will not allow others to infect my work or corrupt my pure storytelling with politics, ideology or propaganda, or to maliciously target for insult or denigration certain segments of my audiences.

8. I promise that I will do my utmost to work in harmony with those creative film artists who may not share my most righteous and ultimately correct core personal, political or ideological beliefs, but share in the dream of creating great stories for the screen. The story is bigger than all of us.

9. I will never blackball, or attempt to have blackballed, a fellow creative film artist based on his or her own personal beliefs. Film artists’ creative talents and merits, not their belief systems, should determine their place in film and TV. This is America. Besides, didn’t we go through all this already?

10. I promise I will never blame any audiences if a story I write is produced and bombs at the box office. We creative film artists alone are responsible for our celluloid failures. I will take full personal responsibility and blame only the writers, actors, directors, producers or studios that screwed it up.

These guidelines are not the be-all end-all, but I do believe they are a good start. There are, of course, notable exceptions to some of these rules in the arena of  satirical and political comedy, nonfiction and documentaries. I’m talking straight-up creative TV and feature film production here.

To be clear, I am not trying to impose restrictions here. Just the opposite. I am trying to unbridle creativity to whole new levels. Ideology is a straitjacket which suffocates artistic creativity. It’s killing the craft of storytelling and turning off a whole lot of audiences needlessly. Worst of all, it’s costing millions of viewers and truckloads of money. How self-destructive can you be?

Whether this mission statement is taken to heart in Tinseltown in the spirit in which I have presented it is not up to me. I can only take the Hollywood horses to water. I can’t make ‘em drink it. But sometimes you just gotta hang your balls out there, because doing nothing is not an option. Just as it wasn’t for Jerry Maguire. Many thanks to Cameron, Tom, Renee and Cuba for showing the way. Hell of a story, Jerry Maguire. Made a ton of dough too! And no politics. Get the Big Picture now?

And who knows? If studios and creative film artists remove politics from the celluloid equation, renew emphasis on the pure craft of compelling human storytelling, and open the doors to all with the brains and talent to be there, it may just spur a new Golden Age of Hollywood. Can’t be bad. Hope Springs Eternal on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I love Hollywood! Show me the money! End memo. Oh, and please don’t politicize SpongeBob and ruin it for me. I’d have to shoot you.

I mean, when someone like George Soros, who collaborated with the Nazis, compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, am I the only one who wondered if he meant it as a compliment?

Or take Janeane Garofalo, who says stupid things with such regularity you might take her for a sulky teenager even though she’s 44 years old.  Because she is an ignoramus and has the self-righteous attitude of an adolescent brat, she was a perfect fit for Air America, where she and Al Franken competed to see which of them could attract fewer listeners.

For those of you who have managed to go through life without ever having heard the nasty sound bites for which she’s best known, your good luck is about to run out. 

On one occasion, she said, “Our country is founded on a sham.  Our forefathers were slave-owning rich white guys who wanted it their way.  So when I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh, my god, you’re insulting me.’  That you can have a gay pride parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float, cheering, ‘We’re here and we’re queer!’ — that’s what makes my heart swell.  Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag.  I get choked up with pride.”

Another time, she announced, “The world would be better off with multiple superpowers.  When the Soviet Union was a superpower, the world was better off.”

I’m sure when she shared that thought with her fellow pinheads on New York’s upper Westside, there was a lot of solemn head nodding and people turning to one another, martini in hand, and saying, “That little girl has a damn good head on her shoulders.”

On the other hand, if she’d made such a moronic statement in Poland, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany or Hungary, I’d like to think she’d have gotten her block knocked off.

It’s usually difficult to figure out why anyone who grows up with all the advantages that go with being born in America and enjoying a moderately successful career, would hate the country as much as she does.  But, at the risk of being tossed out of the layman’s psychiatric association, it’s hard not to view her as someone who has devoted her life to rebelling against mommy and daddy.  After all, her mother worked as a secretary in the petrochemical industry and her father was an executive with Enron!

Not too surprisingly, Ms. Garofalo is a confirmed atheist, toured on behalf of Code Pink and campaigned for Howard Dean.  Take that, Mom and Dad!  For good measure, in the early 90s, she got married in a Vegas chapel.  Whether she and the groom, a fellow named Robert Cohen, were or weren’t drunk at the time, they soon separated, although, for reasons of their own, never bothered getting divorced.

Although she came to be fairly well known because of her role in “The Truth About Cats and Dogs,” she claims she despised the movie because she regards it as anti-feminist.  One wonders why, that being the case, she didn’t turn down the role after reading the script.  But, for someone who is so vehement in her opinions about those she regards as hypocrites, the lady manages to cut herself a great deal of slack.

Ms. Garofalo is barely five feet tall, which meant that in “Cats and Dogs,” because the star was Uma Thurman, she often had to stand on a soap box in scenes with the six-foot tall actress.  She must have enjoyed the experience, because in the 13 years since, she has rarely climbed down from her soap box.

Besides having had parents who worked in industries Ms. Garofalo hates, she isn’t too happy about the hand or, rather, the size and shape God dealt her.  As she says about prepping to be a stand-up comedienne, “I was a 36C or D and at 5′1″, I knew that being a small person with big boobs standing in front of an audience was not going to be easy.  It would be really hard to get people to pay attention to me without mocking me.  Getting a breast reduction to prepare for my career was no different from people who work to get good grades to get into a good college to get into a good graduate school to get a good job.  I went down to a B-cup, and it was the best thing in the world.”

Now, why would she assume people would mock her just because she was busty?  Obviously, it’s because if she were the one sitting in the audience, she’d be the one snickering and heckling.  On the other hand, it’s really just about impossible not to mock someone who compares studying hard in college and graduate school to going to a plastic surgeon one afternoon for a breast reduction procedure.  Funny, but when I think of something to compare it to, the first thing that comes to mind is a nose job.

She has directed much of her anger over the years at society for putting pressure on women to conform to body image ideals.  And yet in pursuit of a feature role in “Jerry Maguire,” she lost a good deal of weight, only to discover that Renee Zellweger had snagged the part.

One could almost feel sorry for her if she wasn’t such a nasty piece of work.  When speaking about Sarah Palin, Garofalo said, “There is definitely something wrong about her.”  I assumed she had something in mind aside from the governor’s being smart, attractive and happily married.  But when she got down to specifics, the best she could come up with was that Gov. Palin was small-minded and mean-spirited, whereas she, herself, is obviously open-minded and a real sweetie pie.

When it comes to right-wingers in general, she brayed, “The reason a person is a conservative Republican is because something is wrong with them.  That’s science — that’s neuroscience.  You cannot be well-adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a Republican.  It’s counter-intuitive.”  That’s sure a lot of big words wasted only to prove what a small and petty mind she possesses.

About the recent tea parties, the all-seeing, all-knowing Garofalo, who naturally didn’t attend one, says, “Let’s be very honest about what this is about.  This is not about bashing Democrats.  It’s not about taxes.  They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about.  They don’t know their history at all.  It’s about having a black man in the White House.  This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks.  There is no way around that.”

I can’t help thinking that when the surgeon reduced her breasts, he got carried away and also removed most of her heart. She’s also a sell-out.  How else to explain why she’d accept a role on “24,” portraying FBI Special Agent Janis Gold, whose mission is investigating terrorists?

But just maybe Janeane Garofalo isn’t quite as unaware of the sad truth about herself as she would have us believe.  After all, it isn’t as if her production company woke up one day and decided to name itself I Hate Myself Productions.

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com