Oscar 2007 Poster

© A.M.P.A.S.

Chico—Diane—Heaven!

Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young.

I vant to be alohhhn.

None of the above quotes, all three from movies nominated for a best picture Academy Award — the last quote actually comes from an Oscar-winning film — are to be found in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' poster celebrating the 2007 Academy Awards. You will, however, find no less than two quotes from the dreary 1996 comedy-drama Jerry Maguire.

Jerry Maguire, after all, was directed by Cameron Crowe, and it stars Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger, all three, for better or for worse, still very much in evidence. Indeed, even today you can hear people at dinner parties quoting that film's most famous line, "Show me the money!" (After which display of movie cliché knowledge, they should be summarily kicked out of said party, never to be invited back.)

As so often happens with anything celebrating American movie history, the focus is on more recent and better-known films. The oldest movie represented on the Oscar 07 poster is the 1936 Oscar winner The Great Ziegfeld (curiously, not by its most famous line, "Hello, Flo!"), while the last three decades get the bulk of the quotes.

"They are the unforgettable lines," says Academy president Sid Ganis, "that you hear in everyday conversations, in meetings, at parties, or walking down the street."

In fact, I do remember sitting at a dinner party and hearing a man desperately yell "Stellaaaaaagh!" He was choking on an olive and needed his girlfriend's urgent assistance. I've also heard "Rosebud" being whispered, but the drunken guy drooling over a girl young enough to be his great-granddaughter didn't have Citizen Kane in mind. And I'm sorry to report I also hear "You can't handle the truth" all the time — though never within the context of A Few Good Men.

But really, how many people have heard anyone anywhere quote "No, a golf course is nothing but a pool room moved outdoors," or "You can break a man's skull. You can arrest him. You can throw him into a dungeon. But how do you control what's up here? How do you fight an idea?" or "My name is Gladiator." (Did anyone actually pay any attention to the dialogue in that 2000 Ridley Scott-Russell Crowe atrocity? Academy voters who chose it as the best picture of the year sure didn't.)

Now, forgettable quotes aside, the Oscar 07 poster is a handsome work of art. As per the Academy's press release:

"The concept and design for the poster was created for the Academy by TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles. Photographer Albert Watson captured the Oscar statuette featured on the poster.

"The 27×40 poster, printed on premium recycled paper, uses a black canvas and highlights the quotes in gold metallic ink, each in a distinctive typeface to reflect the movie it represents.

"Starting today, more than 65,000 posters will be distributed worldwide. The poster will be available for purchase through March 12, 2007, on the Academy's Web site at http://www.oscars.org/publications/ or by calling 1-800-554-1814."

I should add that according to the press release, only one of the quotes found on the poster comes from a film that was not nominated for best picture or for any of the screenplay categories. There are actually two: one from Wall Street and one from Pretty Woman.

Oh, yes, the three quotes mentioned at the beginning of this article are uttered by Janet Gaynor (via intertitles) in 7th Heaven (1927), Eve Arden in Mildred Pierce (1945), and Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel (1932).