The Baldwins: the Oscars minus the budget

More than any event on campus, the Baldwin Awards ooze with swank. With a red carpet - albeit one rented from the dry cleaners - a swinging cello-trumpet-drums pit band, suits and tuxes, and deliberately cheesy jokes, Boston College's fourth annual film awards ceremony seeped with the posh feel of the Oscars. But other aspects - the mounds of candy, the rowdy hoots and hollers from the crowd, the over-the-top attire of Hello…Shovelhead! - ensured that the Baldwins also reek of youth. Ultimately, as founder Ben Birnbaum says, the Baldwin Awards celebrate youth. Four years ago Birnbaum, editor of Boston College Magazine, created the event to showcase student talent in film.

Unlike the Oscars, the students didn't have $100 million budgets and $20 million actors. They had their limited college cash (with some aid from the film studies department) and fellow students to act for free. Yet the students created 26 submissions that entertained and impressed, more than deserving a night of celebration and golden Baldwin statues.

While not every student could win a statue, Richard Blake of the fine arts department reminded the crowd that Alfred Hitchcock, whose body of 53 films makes his the most heralded and inspired career in film, never won an Oscar. Most students have just begun to develop their skills, and some may thrive in the film industry, as former Baldwin winners Joe Sabia and Woody Tondorf, BC '06 (creators of The BC), now work at HBO.

As decided by members of the fine arts department, the communication department, and The Heights, here are the winners of the 14 categories.

Asinine member Richard Rosario, A&S '08, who wrote jokes for the award presenters, won the Baldwin for best actor in Rough Cut: Bert Baxter. Ousting the cast of Hello…Shovelhead!, a man with a pig's head (Benjamin Broadmeadow, A&S '10 in The Conception of My First Child), and an impersonator of the Unsolved Mysteries host (Matt Porter, A&S '09), Rosario earned the statue as he nailed the goofy, neurotic senior resident assistant role.

In a year heaping with comedy submissions, the cast of Hello…Shovelhead! (Ryan Kagy, A&S '08, Kendall Mayhew, BC '07, Sean Kane, BC '07, and John P. Reighery, BC '07) snatched the award for best comedy in Da Leahy Code, a spoof of the Dan Brown blockbuster. To accept their award, the cast swaggered to the stage as Hollywood hipsters, from suspenders with a T-shirt to a purple top hat to a suit with Converse.

For students within the film studies program, the judges voted on two awards: beginning film and video, and advanced film and video. The most bizarre submission to the Baldwins, The Conception of My First Child, directed by Ryan McDaid, A&S '10, won best beginning film. Shot in black and white with dark splotches to emphasize blood, McDaid's short artfully captures a painfully birthed animal progeny. Kristen Ernst, A&S '08, won the Baldwin for advanced film and video with The Dispatcher, a haunting short on cheating.

With a vast array of submissions, documentaries ended in a judges' tie. Adrienne Leslie's, A&S '08, Eat Drink Talk Think: Perspectives from Behind the Counter took one of the Baldwins for best documentary. Amanda Abel, BC '07, and Dani Morello, BC '07, won the other statue for Indian Healthcare: Right or Privilege?, an expansive 40-minute look at the need for medical treatment in India.

With a glossy look and badass chase scenes, Stuart Pike's, A&S '10, Guns Don't Kill People won the Baldwin for best cinematography. Guns Don't Kill People almost runs as a parody of action flicks like the Bourne series with outlandish murder scenes - squashing faces with rocks and car doors - and it also won the award for best drama.

Shot and submitted from Europe, Americans Abroad by Kyle Trainor, A&S '09, won the Baldwin for best editing. Still studying abroad, Trainor and the actors of Americans Abroad accepted their award over the phone from Sri Lanka. Trainor also ousted all other submissions for the Critics' Choice award selected by Heights editors.

Also filmed across the Atlantic, Roman Nesis's, A&S '10, The Rules of Life won best work by a non-major. Shot in Russia, The Rules of Life blares the universal message that we should all be our own selves. With a series of subplots (following character types like the "glamour girl" and "rebel," who aren't content with their image), Nesis's film also won the award for screenwriting.

In this year's only musical, No One Sings Forever by James Zhen, BC '07, earned the Baldwin for best sound.

In the final awards, Viewers' Choice and Best Picture of the Year, all 26 submissions were eligible. Students voted online for the former and the 10 judges selected the latter. But they selected the same.

Leslie won the Viewers' Choice and Picture of the Year for Eat Drink Talk Think: Perspectives from Behind the Counter, which provides a humorous and human look at the disrespect students show in the dining halls. In a baffled speech, Leslie told the crowd, "This goes out to every hard-working person at BC."