Jamie Foxx | ‘Friends’ at Sundance
Oscar Now, Grammy Later for Jamie Foxx
Unless something really strange happens, Jamie Foxx is headed toward an Oscar nomination on Tuesday and, in all likelihood, a win on Feb. 27 for his portrayal of Ray Charles.
But I think I told you this was all coming last year — exactly 11 months ago.
That’s when Jamie stole the show from big music superstars at Clive Davis‘ annual pre-Grammy celebration. Foxx put on such a superior performance that the audience, which was on its feet and dancing, was stunned.
Davis, however, knew the truth. He was already in negotiations to sign Foxx to a recording contract.
Now, as Foxx gets ready to do his Oscar victory dance, Davis is helping him put the finishing touches on his first album.
Foxx will unveil some of those tracks on Feb. 12 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, when he reprises his triumph at Davis’ 2005 party.
Foxx told me a little bit about what he’s planning for that night when I ran into him on Monday night at the Four Seasons Hotel in West Hollywood.
I can’t tell you what he’ll do — I was sworn to secrecy — but it should be memorable and exciting if it all works out.
Just to give us a little taste, Foxx sang a cappella in the bar, just as he had played the piano and sung the previous night, right after the Golden Globes.
My prediction? An Oscar for Jamie Foxx in 2005, and a Grammy — or rather a bunch of them — in 2006.
We’re in for two years of the making of a superstar. And not a reluctant one either.
The good news is that Foxx is still so unpretentious and “real” that fame doesn’t look like it will claim him as a victim.
By the way, Davis may have Foxx under contract, but it’s Sean “P. Diddy” Combs who’s courting him for something. Combs came to the Golden Globes just to support Foxx, and will likely do the same at Davis’s party and at the Oscars.
If Combs knows one thing it’s talent, and in Foxx he sees a multitude of it.
Everyone’s talking about Jennifer Aniston, thanks to her broken marriage. But two other ex-Friends are making headlines at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Last night, Lisa Kudrow opened the festival with the premiere of a new film called “Happy Endings.” Like “The Opposite of Sex,” a film that Kudrow had a lot of success with a few years ago, “Endings” was written and directed by Don Roos.
Unfortunately, the film is the opposite of “Opposite” — kind of a mixed bag with a lot of characters and a rambling narrative.
Kudrow is excellent as a lost soul of a woman, so if the movie had just been confined to her storyline — with the terrific Bobby Cannavale and Jesse Bradford supporting —”Endings” might have been something more than what it turned out to be.
The film has so many storylines, in a sort of Robert Altman mixed with “Magnolia” sort of way, that it’s easy to get lost or simply not care at times about what’s going on. And it features something no one ever would have thought could be committed to cinema: a sex scene between Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tom Arnold.
That’s right, you read that correctly. The movie also kind of squanders the talents of Jason Ritter, son of the late John Ritter, and several other good actors, including Steve Coogan and Laura Dern.
The only actor who maybe gets anything out of it is David Sutcliffe, whose status as TV player on “Gilmore Girls” is automatically elevated.
But this is what Sundance is about: lots of hype, hit or miss, trial and error. The stars are already flooding in.
Maggie Gyllenhaal was on my plane in from Los Angeles; Keanu Reeves and some pals took a shuttle van in from the airport yesterday; novelist Walter Mosley was spotted at the premiere screening and festival founder Robert Redford introduced “Happy Endings” to the first audience.
I’m told that Creative Artists Agency has no fewer than 20 agents crawling all over town, and I’m sure the other agencies have similar teams all scouring the festival for bright new talent and hot new releases.
And what of another “Friends” star? David Schwimmer is coming to Sundance later this weekend to debut his own new film, called “Duane Hopwood.”
Early buzz, which can almost never be trusted, is that this is Schwimmer’s breakthrough performance — his “Leaving Las Vegas.”
Of course, just being a graduate of “Friends” is no guarantee of success at Sundance.
Two years ago, Courteney Cox was here with “November,” a film that never found a distributor and ultimately vanished into the very thin air above Park City.
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