Ebert’s obsession with Brittany Murphy

Mike pointed to Ebert’s review of “Little Black Book” today, pointing out an entertaining anecdote about actress Brittany Murphy.

As for Brittany Murphy, for me it goes back to the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards, held the day before the Oscars in a big tent on the beach at Santa Monica. Murphy was assigned to present one of the awards. Her task was to read the names of the five nominees, open an envelope and reveal the name of the winner. This she turned into an opportunity for screwball improvisational comedy, by pretending she could not follow this sequence, not even after the audience shouted instructions and the stage manager came out to whisper in her ear not once but twice. There were those in the audience who were dumbfounded by her stupidity. I was dumbfounded by her brilliance. I had a front-row seat, and was convinced her timing was too good, her double-takes too perfect, her pauses too wicked, to even possibly be authentic. She was taking a routine task and turning it into the opportunity to steal a scene and leave everybody in the tent chattering about her performance. You can’t screw up that entertainingly by accident. You have to know exactly what you’re doing.

After reading it, I was a little curious as to whether any video footage of the event might be floating around the ‘net, and started Googling for ‘brittany murphy independent spirit awards’. As it turns out, this is at least the third time Ebert has mentioned Brittany’s pseudo-stumble.

From his April 4, 2003 review of “Spun”:

Murphy made quite an impact at the Independent Spirit Awards by being unable to master the concept of reading the five nominees before opening the envelope, despite two helpful visits from the stage manager and lots of suggestions from the audience, but with Murphy, you always kind of wonder if she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing.

And from his August 15, 2003 review of “Updown Girls”:

The theory is that Brittany Murphy is trying to channel Marilyn Monroe, but as I watched “Uptown Girls,” another name came to mind: Lucille Ball. Murphy has a kind of divine ineptitude that moves beyond Marilyn’s helplessness into Lucy’s dizzy lovability. She is like a magnet for whoops! moments.

I remember her as a presenter at the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards, where her assignment was to read the names of five nominees, open an envelope and read the winner. This she was unable to do, despite two visits by a stage manager who whispered helpful suggestions into her ear. She kept trying to read every nominee as the winner, and when she finally arrived triumphantly at the real winner, she inspired no confidence that she had it right.

Some thought she was completely clueless, or worse. I studied her timing and speculated that she knew exactly what she was doing, and that while it took no skill at all to get it right, it took a certain genius to get it so perfectly wrong. She succeeded in capturing the attention of every person in that distracted and chattering crowd, and I recalled “Lucy” shows where everyone in a restaurant would suddenly be looking at her.

Something tells me she made an impression on Ebert. ;)

I’d still like to see a video clip of this at some point, though I had no luck digging one up. I’m also a bit more curious about Brittany, who I’d never (to my memory) actually heard of before now.

iTunes: “Nighttrain” by Public Enemy from the album Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Black (1991, 3:27).