The Academy Awards.

I thought I wrote about the Academy Awards last year but not so; so here we go.

To start off if I went out of my front door I could be at The Kodak Theatre, where they have the show and present the awards, in five minutes; walking.

The streets around here will be very busy as Hollywood Boulevard will be blocked off and made into a pedestrian precinct and why they don't make that permanent is beyond me.

They build a bridge across the street to enable ABC Television to put their cameras on and they also interview people on it.

Over the street from the Kodak Theatre is a Belfast type security fence where you have to be searched or patted down just to walk along the street; the footpath is unavailable to pedestrians and the Kodak Theatre is not in view from anywhere across any street or building; it's all be blocked off.

So when people ask me if I go down to watch the arrivals the answer is no.

Now don't get me wrong I really do enjoy the show and I see nothing wrong with it but the winners are not always the best; there will be a big shock if Colin Firth doesn't win for best actor because he has been in the frame from the time he opened his mouth on the first day of shooting The King's Speech; it seems to be a forgone conclusion as it is every year.

The strongest voting block in the Academy are the actors and they will also be the ones to choose the best film.

Everybody is only allowed a vote in their own category and everybody votes for the film and that's why the actors are so powerful.

Let me get one thing out of the way; if anybody tells you they know the winner of any of the Academy Awards they are mistaken. It is the one award where it never leaks out. The reason? Only two people know so if it leaks out the one that did not do the leaking will know the other guy did it – and here in the USA you can't bet on it. In fact I don't think you can get a bet on anywhere after the voting papers have gone in; if you don't believe me and think the winner gets leaked take it up with Price Waterhouse!

I know an actor who lives here, and gets plenty of work, who goes out to Santa Monica on Academy Award day and reads his book in a place where the awards are not on; the rest of us are eating pizza or going to Oscar parties – and there must be thousands of Oscar parties here.

In the afternoon before the show starts it's very hard to park at Rock and Roll Ralphs – the local supermarket – as people are in their buying booze, finger food, pizza, ready made party feast and lashings and lashings of ginger beer. I put that last one in as you can't buy it here but I love it.

Living down the street within eye sight of my balcony is Helen Mirren; on the year she won for The Queen I was in London so didn't see the limo arrive to pick her up; but she goes to loads of award ceremonies and I haven't seen a limo yet. I might have done if I'd been looking through the window I suppose.

Now who is that above?

That is the great Randy Newman; singer songwriter, composer of film music. He is the nephew of Alfred Newman who scored over 200 films; he was nominated for 45 Academy Awards and won 9.

His nephew, Randy, gets nominated nearly every year and never gets nervous because he knows, sometimes, that he doesn't stand a chance; he has been nominated for 19 Academy Awards and won 1; he was the one winner that the orchestra would not drown out for going over his allotted time in his acceptance speech; he looked at them and said “some of these guys sometimes work for me” - he was only kidding, of course, but would you want to upset him?

I have always liked Randy Newman and his songs which I think are very clever; read this from Wikipedia - Newman often writes lyrics from the perspective of a character far removed from Newman's own experiences. For example, the 1972 song “Sail Away” is written as a slave trader's sales pitch to attract slaves, while the narrator of “Political Science” is a U.S. nationalist who complains of worldwide ingratitude toward America and proposes a brutally ironic final solution. One of his biggest hits, “Short People” was written from the perspective of "a lunatic" who hates short people.

He is nominated this year for the song in Toy Story 3 and was on the radio today being interviewed.

On one of the movies (Air Force One) he scored, the director changed his mind about the music at the last minute and asked Jerry Goldsmith to do the music and he (Newman) was asked today how he felt about such things. I mean it takes a long time to compose, score, arrange and record music for a full length feature film.

He said he accepted it; he said in other departments, such as costumes, the costume designer would approach the director to see if a hat is suitable for one of the characters and the director would be the one to choose with no consultation. It was as if the director - who could be just a few months out of college – was suddenly an expert on hats. He said the rejection of his music was exactly the same!!

I like Randy Newman.