"Hi, I'm Clint Eastwood. I make Very Serious American Movies About Very Serious American Things, including but not limited to murder, death, wrongful death, homicide, and old guys in space. Who probably die. And while that's great and all, this year I was nominated not just for Best Director for Million Dollar Baby, but also for Best Actor, knocking out either Liam Neeson or Paul Giamatti. (Look, you can't blame me for both of 'em. Cheadle's gotta take some responsibility here--hey! What do you mean, "He actually does more than squint gruffly"?) But you should vote for me because--hey, I've been squinting gruffly for something like two hundred years now, and I'm not gonna stop until I get an acting award. And while we're at it, I should clearly win Best Director (again), because I managed to pull a Best Actor performance from myself."

Spielberg and Eastwood are watching him with--well, Clint is wearing an inscrutable look, tongue (literally) in his cheek. Spielberg's expression is just pleasant. I remember how two years ago word was going around that what Eastwood really wanted was to win Best Actor, and I always think of that whenever he appears in the context of acting awards.

 Why do I hate Clint Eastwood? You know, Clint Eastwood is a bit like John Wayne for me: I had to see the movies where he was really young to get his appeal. And Clint Eastwood, Actor, doesn't bother me, except for the fact that he uses the mumblesquint as a bit of a crutch these days. No, it's Clint Eastwood, Director, and his Cinema of Bleak that turns me off, and it's what I perceive to be blatant award-whoring that annoys the hell out of me. Lord of the Rings steps on Mystic River, and he smarms (he did? Sean Penn did? Someone associated with that movie did) at some awards show that their movie doesn't have to rely on special effects. Because, you know, it's the special effects that made everyone cry through the fifteen endings, I'm sure. Million Dollar Baby is taking Scorsese's Oscar, but Eastwood says that what he's really always wanted was to win for Best Actor. Flags of Our Fathers dropped off the awards radar? Let's push Letters from Iwo Jima up two months and squeak it in under the December deadline! And I'm not even going to touch the issue of Letters winning BEST FOREIGN FILM, for chrissakes, because the rules were recently changed to allow movies in languages that are not their country's official language to compete, and that's a good thing. It just... didn't work out as well as it might have. Look, I'm not saying that Clint Eastwood is an empirical dick. You don't have to hate him. I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying, he gets on my second-to-last nerve. Jamie Foxx gets on the last one.