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In interviews, Smith would dismiss the Oscar nomination as \u201ca freakish accident\u201d\u2014something he went along with only because it made his friends happy, because it made his mother proud. \u201cFor all those years, she\u2019d been faced with her friends going, \u2018Well, my son\u2019s a lawyer,\u2019 or \u2018a businessman,\u2019 or some occupation that has a name,\u201d he said. \u201cThen, all of a sudden, she could say: \u2018Did you see the Academy Awards?\u2019\u00a0\u201d It was like a joke to him at first; when \u201cMiss Misery\u201d started playing on the radio, his friend Larry Crane remembers, he ran out with Smith to his rental car in the Sunset Sound lot to listen. They thought it was hilarious.<\/p>\n
When Smith\u2019s friend Marc Swanson called to congratulate him, Smith sounded dismissive. \u201cI don\u2019t mean to sound like he was unappreciative, but I think he was a little embarrassed in a certain way,\u201d Swanson says. \u201cLike, \u2018I\u2019m not the kind of guy who gets nominated for an Academy Award.\u2019 But they campaign like it\u2019s an election. I remember him telling me that it might happen because they were trying to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
To some extent, this was true. Years before he became infamous for far more repugnant practices, Harvey Weinstein was once referred to by the New York Times as \u201cthe Sun Tzu of Oscar warfare<\/a>.\u201d He invented the modern awards campaign in the late 1980s with his brother, Bob, and brought a special brutality to it. Marketing veteran Terry Press described the Miramax style of campaigning\u2014with its phone banks of young assistants calling voters at home, mass\u2011mailed VHS screeners, and constant publicity through awards season\u2014as \u201ca blood sport<\/a>.\u201d The studio had an unbroken run of Best Picture nominations, from 1992\u2019s The Crying Game to 2002\u2019s Chicago. Good Will Hunting was part of that run. Weinstein fought hard for nominations in every possible category, ultimately getting nine, including Smith\u2019s. It was Weinstein who had pushed for an original song in the first place. They were \u201csecretly hoping that there was some way outside chance that they could add another nomination to the ones they thought they were going to get anyway,\u201d as Smith put it later.<\/p>\n At the same time, Smith\u2019s friends and family remember that he seemed to take a real joy in the proceedings. His sister Ashley remembers him explaining that he wanted to wear a white sport coat with a pink carnation for the ceremony, after the country song by Marty Robbins<\/a>. \u201cThere were things about it that he made so special for himself,\u201d his friend and publicist Dorien Garry says. His A&R exec at DreamWorks, Luke Wood, still remembers the phone call where he made arrangements with Prada. When Ross Harris shot the \u201cMiss Misery\u201d video a few days after the nomination was announced, Smith showed up on set in his white suit, beaming. \u201cI was so happy for him,\u201d Harris says.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as he was nominated, he called me right away,\u201d Smith\u2019s longtime girlfriend Joanna Bolme says. \u201cDo you want to go to the Oscars with me?\u201d he asked. She can\u2019t remember whether they were together at the time, but it never felt like a surprise. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s so great that he asked me,\u2019\u00a0\u201d she says. \u201cIt was like, \u2018No, of course he asked me. Of course I\u2019m the one that\u2019s going.\u2019\u00a0\u201d \u201cWe talked a lot about it, obviously,\u201d his sister Rachel told me. \u201cI remember him getting really excited about his white suit and Joanna being really excited about her dress. It was like, \u2018If I\u2019m going to do this thing, I\u2019m going to do it. I\u2019m going to wear an outfit I\u2019ll never, ever be able to wear under any other circumstances anywhere.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Sometimes he described it as a tribute to John Lennon.<\/p>\n Part of the joy of watching Smith respond to interviewers, before and after the Oscars, is something like the joy of the white suit. The way he talked about the nomination, about the show, makes you feel how acutely absurd the whole thing was, the world he had found himself in.<\/p>\n \u201cSupposedly, if you\u2019re nominated, then people who make clothes sometimes want you to wear their clothes,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was like I was playing a really weird show that consisted of one song,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n How much is the Academy Awards about music, anyway? a reporter asked him.<\/p>\n \u201cNone,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBut how much is it about movies<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing celebrity through the eyes of somebody like him, you see how ridiculous it all is,\u201d Rachel says. \u201cHe shows it to you. That\u2019s one thing people love about Kurt Cobain too. He was really good at showing people, Look, this is nuts. But also, I think people in that position often do end up really suffering because they end up feeling like they\u2019re shouting into a void. Because they\u2019re like, \u2018This is nothing!\u2019 And people are like, \u2018You\u2019re amazing!\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018This is nothing!\u2019 And people are like, \u2018You\u2019re amazing!\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n Everything means nothing to me<\/a>, I say.<\/p>\n \n \u201cHow much is the Academy Awards about music, anyway?\u201d a reporter asked Elliott Smith. \u201cNone,\u201d he said. \u201cBut how much is it about\u00a0movies?\u201d<\/b>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThere you go,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Harris made the \u201cMiss Misery\u201d video<\/a> because he had bumped into Smith in Los Angeles. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Hey, I have to do another music video. I know they\u2019re a hassle, but do you mind doing it?\u2019\u00a0\u201d Harris says. \u201cAnd it was like someone was asking you to help them move a couch. That was his same tone of voice. So I go, \u2018Well, what\u2019s it for?\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, they put my song in some movie.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n Harris didn\u2019t want to put shots from the movie in the video, whose plotline revolves around Smith being tailed by a traffic cop who happened to be on set. At first, he thought he wouldn\u2019t have to. \u201cIt never makes any sense,\u201d he says. \u201cLike, this is a beautiful song that Elliott wrote, then also now Matt Damon and Robin Williams are hugging? I don\u2019t get it. I mean, I told them, \u2018It seems like it\u2019s gonna be homoerotic to me. And I\u2019m not against that, but\u00a0\u2026\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n In the end, Harris says, \u201cthey just stuck it all in there anyway. I don\u2019t know how much of that relates to Elliott. But my main point is, these people did not want me to make that video. They wanted a big\u2011time director to make that video. And Elliott was like, \u2018No, my friend Ross that made my other videos is gonna make it.\u2019 And he didn\u2019t have to do that. Believe me, no one wanted him to do that.\u201d At the end of the video, Smith stuffs quarters into someone\u2019s parking meter, which one of his friends described to me as a metaphor for what Smith always tried to do with the people he loved. \u201cHe was very much like, \u2018I\u2019m getting this opportunity. I want to give that opportunity to them too,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Harris says.<\/p>\n Smith was in the room when Harris finished the edit. \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d Harris asked, and Smith pointed out a shot where the camera came in close while he stood in the doorway. It was too close, he said nervously. It wasn\u2019t flattering. \u201cElliott, you\u2019re such a hunk,\u201d Harris told him. \u201cYou got to get over it, man. You\u2019re a really fucking good\u2011looking dude.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m really glad you said that to him, I say, because I know he felt sensitive about the way he looked, and I think he was beautiful.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt the same way,\u201d Harris says. \u201cI was like, \u2018I\u2019ll take it out if you\u2019re really against it, but I just got to tell you, like, you\u2019re a hunk. You just got to accept that you\u2019re just a fucking good\u2011looking dude.\u2019 And he just laughed and was like, \u2018OK, you can leave it in.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n The pageantry around the nomination, the flood of press attention, was battering for Smith. \u201cOh my God, everything\u2019s going nuts over here,\u201d Garry told the drummer Bob Bert when he called to set up an interview for his zine, BB Gun. He joked that Smith had turned down Regis and Kathie Lee, which wasn\u2019t true, but it wasn\u2019t much of a stretch.<\/p>\n Before the Oscars, Smith had been coping uncomfortably with fame, enough that he could sing on Either\/Or about perceptions of him that were \u201ccompletely wrong<\/a>,\u201d but it was nothing compared to this. \u201cAll of a sudden, he had to do interviews for Us and People and all these magazines that wouldn\u2019t have touched him,\u201d Mittleman said later. \u201cWe were trying to focus on recording XO, but my memory of that time is all about just getting him to sit down in the lounge of Sunset Sound to do interviews.\u201d He went on Late Night With Conan O\u2019Brien<\/a>. He talked to a painfully uninterested Carson Daly<\/a>. When he spoke with Bert for his zine, or when his friend Barbara Rushkoff interviewed him for People, he expressed relief just to be talking with a normal person. \u201cHe was like, \u2018It\u2019s so funny, my mother will finally think I made it now because I\u2019m in People,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Rushkoff says, laughing.<\/p>\n He was seen holding hands with Minnie Driver, and then everyone wanted to know if they were dating. \u201cIt didn\u2019t make my girlfriend really happy,\u201d he said. In his interview for BB Gun, Smith mentioned Bolme, and Bert said, \u201cI thought you were fathering Minnie Driver\u2019s child.\u201d Smith snorted. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like that at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n They did spend time together. \u201cWhenever I think of Minnie Driver, it just cracks me up, because I remember Smith having a conversation with me in which he said he felt like Sonny Bono next to Cher,\u201d his sister Ashley says. \u201cLike, a little bit self\u2011conscious about his height and stature.\u201d Their romantic involvement is less of a tabloid invention than Smith made it seem; the musician Mary Lou Lord thought they were dating, and told people as much. Years after Smith died, Driver recorded a cover of \u201cWaltz #2.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n More than anything, people kept asking Smith about being discovered by Gus Van Sant while playing in a coffeehouse. \u201cWhich, you know, we used to laugh about because obviously Elliott was doing very well,\u201d Swanson says. Crane remembers hearing Smith explain repeatedly in phone interviews that he had six albums out already. \u201cPeople want this other story,\u201d he says. \u201cThey want the rags to riches or the overnight success. It\u2019s just these stupid stories that people want to hear played out over and over.\u201d It happened often enough that Swanson made a plaster sculpture called Rescued From Obscurity. \u201cThey said during the press for Good Will Hunting that Van Sant had rescued Elliott from obscurity,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so this was a comment on that.\u201d He shows it to me in his studio: a python wrapped around a squirrel, strangling it.<\/p>\n Garry quit her job as Smith\u2019s publicist not long after the nomination. \u201cI didn\u2019t quit because of Elliott,\u201d she says, but it felt good, in the end, not to be part of the thing that was crushing him. \u201cIt really was like\u00a0\u2026 he was right,\u201d she says. \u201cEverybody was so stupid.\u201d She laughs. \u201cThey\u2019re projecting all of this on him, and he can get through an interview and be cordial and patient, answer stupid questions. But then afterward he\u2019d just be fucked up from it, you know? And it was like, \u2018At what cost?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot to bring up any personal things or anything,\u201d Bert said, interviewing Smith before the Oscars, \u201cbut it\u2019s like, just last year you canceled a bunch of shows due to your personal demons and everything. Is it going to be a real drag? I mean, after this all happens, you know? Because you\u2019re going to be, like, recognized everywhere. You think it\u2019s going to drive you crazy, or\u00a0\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to be recognized everywhere,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI mean, the Academy Awards are going to be over in a month, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then\u2014and then I\u2019ll be back to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n But nothing was ever normal again. He had lost his anonymity, his ability to walk absently through the streets or write quietly in bars, undisturbed. It took something from him. He couldn\u2019t be alone anymore, not even in his head. He was used to that world being \u201cunpeopled,\u201d he said later, \u201cand for a while there were lots of people camping out in there.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t realize how petty people can be,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize that Entertainment Weekly would say I was a \u2018sedate Beck impersonator\u2019 because I wore a white suit.\u201d The \u201cMiss Misery\u201d video was featured on MTV\u2019s 12 Angry Viewers, and it \u201cdid my head in,\u201d he said. He watched them tear it apart.<\/p>\n Those first few months of 1998 would prove to be a turning point. As Smith took calls from the Sunset Sound lounge, he was working on his major-label debut, with all the new touring and publicity demands that would come with it\u2014repetitive interviews where journalists wanted to know if he was depressed, if his songs were about drugs, if he was on drugs. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to pigeonhole you into this sad guy, this Tom Waits kind of bar-sad guy,\u201d Bolme remembers warning him at one photo shoot. \u201cDon\u2019t let them do that to you.\u201d But this image would prove hard for music writers to resist. For a long time, when Smith went to visit his father, he would head straight downstairs to look up his press on the computer. It had swallowed and distorted him, like a fun-house mirror.<\/p>\n Considering the Oscars in hindsight, he said, \u201cThat kind of derailed my train, although it took quite a while for it to fully derail.\u201d In some ways, he felt it wasn\u2019t back on track until the year he died.<\/p>\n For years after the Oscars, Smith talked about how they wouldn\u2019t give him a chair. \u201cThe rehearsal day, they didn\u2019t really know what to do with him, performance\u2011wise,\u201d Bolme says. \u201cHe wanted to sit down like he usually does. And that just didn\u2019t go the way they had envisioned the production to go\u2014like, you can\u2019t just bring out a stool.\u201d They asked him to sit down on the steps in front. \u201cAnd this was another situation I had to step in on his behalf,\u201d she says. \u201cI was like, \u2018You can\u2019t do that. It looks like Sesame Street.\u2019 You know, every single person here is nominated for the same thing. Why is he not being treated with respect?\u201d<\/p>\n They offered other solutions. \u201cI would have to sit behind this moving panel during the Trisha Yearwood song,\u201d he said, \u201cand then it would dramatically raise up to reveal that I\u2019d been sitting here all that time.\u201d In the end, he agreed to stand. A reporter who was present remembers him asking, in some distress, if he could have a monitor.<\/p>\n The night before the Oscars, Smith stayed up until dawn, drinking with Mark Flanagan at his club Largo. He was dreading it. \u201cYou\u2019ve fucking got to go!\u201d Flanagan told him. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be great! You\u2019re going to be up there between Harry Belafonte and David Hasselhoff!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not making it any better,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n Smith arrived in a limo with his producer Rob Schnapf, Mittleman, and Bolme, who wore a black dress designed by Storm Tharp. Standing outside the Shrine Auditorium, Van Sant\u2019s then boyfriend, D\u2011J Haanraadts, asked, \u201cHow are you feeling about this? A billion people in the world are going to see you perform.\u201d Smith looked at him in terror. Out of guilt, Haanraadts complimented him on his suit.<\/p>\n At rehearsals, someone had told Smith and Bolme hopefully that they could come in through the back. \u201cAnd we were like, \u2018Pfft, we\u2019re walking the red carpet,\u2019 \u201d Bolme says. They were surprised by how highly choreographed it was. \u201cEverybody\u2019s got their team with them, and their team is jockeying to get them a good spot on the red carpet,\u201d she says. They were stuck until Cuba Gooding Jr. offered to let them in, which seemed like a kindness until they realized it meant they were left walking behind Madonna, and then they wondered if it was a strategy. Smith followed her down the walkway, trying not to step on her white train. There\u2019s a picture of that moment. Bolme looks lovely, with her dark eyes and dark dress, holding Smith\u2019s hand, both of them smiling like they\u2019re getting away with something.<\/p>\n Later, Smith talked about what it was like there, the surreal mundanity of it. He had a trailer across from Michael Bolton\u2019s; he was given a gift basket that included first\u2011class upgrades on United. He slipped in his new Prada loafers backstage, and Robin Williams asked him for a Tic Tac. If you got up to go to the bathroom, Smith explained, a seat filler would step in, so you would come back to \u201csome guy sitting there with your girlfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n He performed sandwiched between Aaliyah, Bolton, Yearwood, and C\u00e9line Dion, who had been nominated for the powerhouse \u201cMy Heart Will Go On.\u201d He was standing at the side of the stage, discreetly trying to scuff up his loafers so he wouldn\u2019t slip again, when Dion asked him if he was nervous. From her seat, Bolme could see that she was being kind to him. \u201cShe was very expressive,\u201d Bolme says, \u201ctouching him and looking at him\u201d in a very French Canadian way.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was really, really sweet,\u201d Smith said years later. \u201cIt made it impossible for me to not like C\u00e9line Dion anymore.\u201d She hugged him, and he sounded moved still when he talked about it. \u201cIt was simply too human to be dismissed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Then he walked onstage.<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s friends Garry and Josh were watching at home, with little candles shaped like the Oscars statuette scattered around the living room. \u201cWe were also like, \u2018Elliott would be so mortified if he knew we were doing this,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Garry says, cracking up. \u201cHe\u2019d much rather we be at Max Fish, ignoring it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really a beautiful thing to see,\u201d Josh says. \u201cIt felt like a bit of a coup or something.\u201d People around the country felt that longing, hearts in their throats. As Slate\u2019s own music critic Carl Wilson wrote years after, the moment of the C\u00e9line\u2013Elliott matchup seemed to define a divide in pop music, but also promise, just for a night, that it might be overturned. \u201cI was enough of a populist even then to dream that love might move mountains<\/a>,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know about you, Josh, but I had this bad feeling,\u201d Garry says. \u201cIt was this moment of \u2018Holy shit, this is unreal, that this is happening,\u2019 then also like, \u2018Oh God, is he going to survive this?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were cheering when we saw him perform, but\u00a0\u2026 it was so \u2018What\u2019s gonna come after this?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n If you watch the performance now, Smith looks like a vision onstage, an apparition, his suit a hallucinatory white. There\u2019s a blurry sheen on him, like looking at a star. He plays his song for 90 seconds, one stanza short, his coat bunched up at the shoulders. It was like he had gone to the moon, a friend tells me. He was here in his astronaut\u2019s suit, and he\u2019d gone to the moon.<\/p>\n When I was working on this book, everyone kept asking me if I\u2019d seen Smith \u201cwith the puppet\u201d\u2014a clip had surfaced from Smith\u2019s appearance on a defunct morning show in 1995<\/a>, with its scraggly puppet co-host, everyone treating Smith like a joke until the moment they shut up and let him play, and then they are completely silenced by it. And the way people asked me, with disgust or delight, drawn to the strange ludicrousness of it, made me wonder if that was how people asked back then: Did you see Elliott on the Oscars? Did you see Elliott in this world that never knew what to do with him?<\/p>\n I thought about what his sister Rachel said about Cobain revealing the frailty of the construction he participated in; his mere presence, with his knowing smile, dismantled it. This means nothing, he was saying. Smith made it look ridiculous. But he also stood apart and above it. There\u2019s something so lovely about the ugly puppet stunned into silence when Smith plays \u201cClementine,\u201d about the spotlight falling softly on his shoulders in the Shrine as he peers out at the audience of celebrities from behind his bangs. This means nothing, he said, and his somethingness felt so overwhelming in comparison.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was never under any sort of illusion that he could win,\u201d Rachel says. \u201cWhen they opened the envelope, for just a split second, I thought, Oh, what if\u00a0\u2026? But then of course it was C\u00e9line Dion.\u201d<\/p>\n
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