Sure, a lot of stuff happened at the Oscars last night, but clearly the biggest story was the denial of an Academy Award to fictional octogenarian Roderick Jaynes, editor of No Country for Old Men. (The Bourne Ultimatum’s unfictional Christopher Rouse won instead.) Though America was denied the sight of an exasperated Renée Zellweger being forced to read whatever the Coens’ made-up excuse for his absence was — we like to imagine her intoning, “Mr. Jaynes could not be here tonight, as he is recovering from male-enhancement surgery†— we did get a brief glance of Jaynes’s official publicity photo, apparently taken by the same nineteenth-century photographer who shot T. Herman Zweibel.
Earlier: Roderick Jaynes, Imaginary Oscar Nominee for ‘No Country’
Update: “How did the fictitious Jaynes, whom the Coens describe as a cranky British recluse in his 80s, take the loss? ‘We haven’t talked to him,’ Ethan Coen said backstage. ‘We know he’s elderly and unhappy, so probably not well.’†[AP via D-Day]
Earlier: Roderick Jaynes, Imaginary Oscar Nominee for ‘No Country’