Ernest Borgnine: Lifetime Achievement and 'Brokeback Mountain'

Last week, it was announced that the Screen Actors Guild will be honoring Ernest Borgnine with a lifetime achievement award.

Ernest Borgnine will receive a lifetime achievement honor during the Screen Actors Guild's annual awards on January 30, the union said Wednesday.

Borgnine, who won a best actor Oscar for 1955's "Marty," has appeared in nearly 200 films and TV shows, including "From Here to Eternity" and the series "McHale's Navy."

"Whether portraying brutish villains, sympathetic everymen, complex leaders or hapless heroes, Ernest Borgnine has brought a boundless energy which, at 93, is still a hallmark of his remarkably busy life and career," SAG president Ken Howard said.

Borgnine has had an incredible career and is certainly worthy of recognition.

However, not everyone is pleased with giving Borgnine the honor. The problem is his "personal politics." Some SAG members don't like Borgnine's views and are making noise about bestowing the award on him.

The Los Angeles Times asks: "Should SAG be honoring Ernest Borgnine?"

While Borgnine's work ethic is admirable — he has three films due out this year — his personal politics are less than laudable. Four years ago, he waded into the discussion about the merits of the movie "Brokeback Mountain," the first film to feature A-list talent in a gay love story. As Borgnine told Entertainment Weekly, "I didn’t see it and I don’t care to see it. I know they say it’s a good picture, but I don’t care to see it." Then he added, "If John Wayne were alive, he’d be rolling over in his grave!"

Such sentiments were widespread enough in Hollywood to cause "Brokeback Mountain" to stumble in the home stretch of the awards derby. The film was the front-runner after having been named the best picture of the year by 23 award groups, including the Producers Guild, BAFTA, Indie Spirits, Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., New York Film Critics Circle, the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. and the Golden Globes (where "Crash" wasn't even nominated).

...While academy voters rewarded "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee and screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana as well as composer Gustavo Santaolalla, they could not award this breakthrough film the best picture prize. How many of them were like Borgnine and didn't even watch it?

This is nuts.

Brokeback Mountain didn't win the Best Picture Oscar and somehow that makes Borgnine a poor choice for a lifetime achievement award?

Years ago, he expressed his opinion. He has the right to do that even if some in Hollywood don't like what his opinion is.

John Nolte, Big Hollywood, discusses the blacklisters at the LA Times.

If nothing else, you have to give the entertainment media credit for its inability to hit bottom. There is no low low enough for these people and just when you think they can’t possibly sink any lower, somehow they always manage to summon up that little something necessary to go the extra mile in the department of outright cruelty.

Last week the Screen Actors Guild announced that Ernest Borgnine will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at next years awards ceremony. Obviously this decision is a no-brainer. The 93 year-old Oscar-winner’s been making films since 1951 and is still active today, including a role in the upcoming Bruce Willis blockbuster “Red.” But now, no less than the L.A. Times is suggesting that SAG reconsider their decision to honor the man because of — their words, not mine — “his personal politics.”

...Yes, someone’s still childishly stoking their outrage over ”Brokeback Mountain’s” loss to “Crash” at that year’s Academy Awards, and that someone has a spirit mean enough to want to see Borgnine pay for the “homophobic snub.” And you can bet that for all these years these vicious cultural enforcers have been sitting on Borgnine’s comment, just waiting for the opportunity to strike back. And not just for the cheap thrill found in petty revenge either, but to put the entire industry on notice with a very intimidating and chilling warning that says, ”No one gets a pass. No one. Not even 93 year-old legends. You will conform, or you will pay a heavy price.”

What kind of bastard gets off on the idea of making miserable a man in his 90s by labeling him a bigot on a site read by everyone in the industry — you know, because he wasn’t interested in watching two men have explicit big-screen sex? Just how hateful and intolerant do you have to be to publicly float the suggestion that the rug be pulled out from under someone because he wasn’t interested in seeing the movie you wanted to win the Oscar?

Nolte goes on ripping the LA Times, concluding that justice would be served if the paper folded and Borgnine would be the "Grand Marshall leading the miles-long parade made up of many thousands of decent people from all over the country who have gathered to piss on its grave."

Obviously, Nolte is livid over the attack on Borgnine.

I think his anger is justified.

The attempt to blacklist Borgnine because his personal politics aren't in line with some in Hollywood is chilling. He didn't see Brokeback Mountain. He didn't want to. That was his choice. So what?

Does Borgnine need to watch the 5-year-old movie and apologize for his previous remarks to make him worthy of a lifetime achievement award?

Is there a litmus test for recognition by SAG?

The LA Times is making Borgnine out to be a bigot and a homophobe. Good grief. The man has worked in Hollywood for 60 years. He certainly has worked with homosexuals. How did he manage to keep his career alive if he's truly homophobic and a hater, as the LA Times suggests? It would have been impossible.

Borgnine isn't responsible for Brokeback Mountain losing out to Crash. The outcome of the Oscars in 2006 has nothing to do with Borgnine's contributions to American culture and his achievements in his field.

Hollywood is really a close-minded little community. If you don't march in lock-step with the prevailing political agenda of the elite, you're tossed aside. Actually, it's worse than being tossed aside. You're pummeled and kicked around and demeaned before being discarded. Even a 93-year-old man and legendary actor is shown no mercy simply because he voiced a truth, that he didn't "care to see" Brokeback Mountain.

Hollywood is full of hypocrites. The holier-than-thou Hollywood crowd has a history of bigotry and condemning people while it deserves condemnation.

For example, members of the Hollywood elite, including some that were very young or weren't alive during the proceedings of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, have acted as if they themselves were victims.

In 1999, when Elia Kazan received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, some Hollywood royalty reacted with outrage, not ready to forgive Kazan for "naming names" decades earlier during the era of the Red Scare and blacklisting.

I can still remember Amy Madigan and Ed Harris sitting in the front row, refusing to applaud, and glaring at Kazan when he received his award. It was a childish display.

In the early morning hours of March 21, 1999, Hollywood was completing the final preparations for its annual celebration of itself. Workers were laying red carpet and polishing huge statues. Cameramen and reporters jockeyed for position to catch glimpses of Hollywood’s royalty as they arrived at the Academy Awards. Over these images we hear news reports that set the stage for what promised to be a uniquely controversial evening.

There was the normal buzz about Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Outfit. But this year, along with the manufactured glitz and glamour, there was an anger and vitriol nearly fifty years old. Elia Kazan, one of America’s great directors, was to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, and this honor had divided Hollywood.

Now eighty-nine years old, Kazan’s impressive body of work includes such late 1940s and early 50s films as ON THE WATERFRONT, EAST OF EDEN, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, and A FACE IN THE CROWD. On the surface, the controversy is straightforward. In 1952, Kazan appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and named eight of his old friends from the Group Theater who in the 1930s, along with him, had been members of the American Communist Party.

Many in Hollywood are still outraged about that time in U.S. history when people who were blacklisted by the studios-writers, directors, and actors-never worked again, fled the country, worked under aliases, or even, in one extreme case, committed suicide.

Five hundred protesters gather outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with placards that read “Elia Kazan: Nominated for Benedict Arnold Award,” “Don’t Whitewash the Blacklist,” and “Kazan-the Linda Tripp of the 50s.”

...One of Kazan’s defenders is Arthur Miller, much to the disappointment of many on the left. Miller is one of the heroes of the McCarthy Era. He defied the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1956, and refused, unlike Kazan, to name those whom he knew to be “fellow travelers.” For this he was held in contempt of Congress, fined, and sentenced to jail time.

And yet, Miller sided with those who believed Kazan should be honored. “My feelings toward that terrible era are unchanged,” he wrote in The Guardian, “but at the same time history ought not to be rewritten. Elia Kazan did sufficient extraordinary work in theater and film to merit acknowledgement.”

Lives were ruined by the blacklisting, yet today's Hollywood elite have no problem engaging in blacklisting themselves.

Hypocrites.

Will Borgnine, like Kazan, face protesters when he arrives at the SAG awards? Will he, like Kazan, be greeted with hostility by his colleagues?

I hope not, but I don't have faith in the Hollywood Leftists to behave in a civil fashion.

Forget it, Ernie. It's Hollywood.
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Mark Levin comments on the trashing of Ernest Borgnine.