by Patrice Downing, Contributing Writer
Can you name the person who has taken home the most Oscar statuettes over the years? While only a handful of actors have stacked up three performance wins, Katharine Hepburn alone won four. Alan Menken, half of the duo responsible for creating music that sparked the Disney Renaissance, collected eight, for original songs and scores, but he still falls one shy of Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren’s nine. And speaking of Disney, in 1954, Walt himself won four of his six nominations, adding to a lifetime total of 22 wins. As incredible as that may seem, they all pale in comparison to an unusual night back in 2000, when Willie Fulgear took 52 shiny new Oscar statuettes home to his California bungalow in the back of a 1989 Cadillac DeVille.
Okay, so you probably guessed by now that good ole Willie didn’t exactly “win” all that glorious golden hardware, and the tale of how the 61-year-old junk scrapper actually came into possession of 52 of the 55 missing statuettes that night is pretty wild. I mean, we are talking about a full 500-pound pallet, packed with 10 cases of wrapped and stacked, custom cast statuettes, destined for Hollywood’s biggest night, that he claims to have “found” in a Koreatown dumpster. Even though at the time, our buddy Willie was rewarded for finding the purloined prizes with seats at that year’s awards ceremony, he was later questioned by police and brought in as a suspect in the theft.
Now, you might be wondering how a casual interest in the design of the Oscar statue connects to this futile attempt to hijack a literal ton of the most recognizable trophies on the planet? Well that’s a bit of a journey that started with several links from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s official site, to a variety of Turner Classic Movies’ video shorts made for pregaming the ceremony over the years which include all kinds of vintage footage from years gone by. This, then, led to the appropriately titled 2020 Vanity Fair article, “THE OSCARS ARE F–CKING MISSING!” What a fun article — it even has pictures of Fulgear and includes a couple of deliciously salty quotes. But that’s not quite the end of the trip down the Oscar theft rabbit hole, as a February 2023 episode of the fabulously factual podcast Ridiculous Crime, titled “Hollywood’s Biggest Fright: Stolen Oscars,” dives even deeper into the baffling series of events that landed the missing statuettes in a dumpster.
At this point, if you’ve never been here before, you might be asking yourself, “Why am I reading about stolen statuettes” and “What does any of this have to do with Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy?” Good questions, and I’ve got some answers. As a lifetime lover of all things nonfiction and true to life, I have an insatiable thirst for drinking in as many documentaries as possible. When Oscar time rolled around this year, I was curious about the history of the iconic awards, how they’re made, and where they come from… I mean the academy doesn’t just have a production assistant show up at the local trophy shop, give a list of names to the engraver, and then bust out a fresh box of glue sticks and start slapping plaques on some AmazonBasics golden statues (wouldn’t it be weird if they did?). During the investigative journey, I found the videos mentioned before, as well as ones of Shirley Temple presenting Walt Disney with a very cool custom Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,and even watched a mini doc covering EGOT winners over the years (I had no idea Audrey Hepburn won a Grammy for a spoken word album). Along the way, Vanity Fair’s article popped up, and here we are, because even the most creative of minds would be hard-pressed to conceive of a more convoluted way to lose an entire pallet of prizes. Reality is just so much crazier than fabrication, and that’s why we’re here, to unearth the truth, sift through the details of days gone by, and ultimately find the Fact on Fiction.
This time around, we are talking (in our best attempt at a British accent possible) about the latest edition to the now 24 year old rom-com franchise, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. For those unaware, the Bridget Jones character and films are based on source material by writer Helen Fielding. What started as a comedic column first published in The Independent developed into a book series, and from there has evolved into some of the most profitable rom-coms of all time.
Fortunately for us, back in 2020, BBC Studios put out a fact-filled documentary featuring not only Fielding herself, but both the actors and real-life inspirations for characters of the Bridget films. Being Bridget Jones features Fielding as she tells the origins of the “anxious, calorie-obsessed, usually pissed singleton in her 30s.” Fielding is by all accounts just as comical and quirky as the character she created. A collection of her friends, including Tracey McLeod, Daniel Wood, and Reverend Richard Coles (who provided inspiration for some of the literary and film characters), share stories and insight into Fielding’s life during the time period before and during the writing of the Bridget Jones articles. In addition, we get a bit of a glimpse behind the scenes of the making of the films through interviews with Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant. My favorite tidbit was finally getting confirmation from the writer herself that the Mark Darcy character was indeed inspired by Colin Firth’s portrayal of Fitzwilliam Darcy in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice. It was also interestingly insightful to hear both Grant and Firth talk about how the choreography for their famous fight scene came about in Bridget Jones’s Diary, as well as how a Texan became Britain’s most iconic single lady.
But it’s not all interviews and reminiscing — this is 59 minutes densely packed with Fielding’s own pictures, videos, and diary excerpts. Even though the Bridget articles were created as a lampooning look at single life at the time, you can’t help but laugh at the crossover with Fielding’s own experiences as she reads out of her actual college diary. From on-camera anxieties and being described as looking like a sausage in a pink dress to her friends confirming the blue soup incident, hearing in their own words about the reality that inspired famous scenes is a lot of laughs.
And with that we’ve come to the end of our investigative journey into the origins of the diary-keeping demoiselle who we all like very much, just as she is. I hope you learned a little something (whether it be Oscar trivia or what was actually in the famous diary), and that you’ll join me again next time to explore the exploits that inspired another new release. Until then, keep following the clues, exploring rabbit holes, and continue on the journey to find the Fact On Fiction.
You can read more from Patrice Downing, and follow her on Serializd and Letterboxd