Dear Gossips,

Spending over 3 hours watching an award show often feels excruciating. Spending 5 hours watching a tennis match, and a grand slam final no less... well...

It’s exhilarating.

How can the Oscars be more like Djokovic vs Nadal at the Australian Open and less like... the Oscars? For starters, you can make it an actual race. And thanks to the Screen Actors Guild Awards last night, it looks like we just might have one. Three, actually. All last week the experts kept saying that this was George Clooney’s to lose. He lost last night. And with a solid 3 weeks to go before Academy members turn in their ballots, this sh-t is wide open now. Same goes for Meryl vs Michelle vs Viola. That I can live with. Happily. What I will have a very hard time living with, as I noted last week in this article, is The Help:

"There is nothing more terrifying to me than the thought of The Help pulling a Crash and upsetting the other 9 films being considered for Best Picture. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - honouring it is dangerous, dangerous because it gives us permission to be complacent when what really drives change is discomfort."

Remember when Crash defeated Brokeback Mountain?

Will The Help defeat The Artist?

So Hollywood can run around celebrating its “benevolence”? The fact that most people in Hollywood don’t have a problem with characterising it as “benevolence” is EXACTLY the f-cking problem.

It’ll be a long column today. Duana and I are recapping the best and worst at the SAG Awards. And we’re catching up on what else happened this weekend. Please refresh often, and click VIEW MORE at the bottom of the page if you’re joining us late and don’t want to miss any posts.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey