In a startling and surprising upset, the list of nominees for the 2009 Grammy Awards, which were announced earlier today, did not include Scarlett Johansson. Johansson's debut album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a concept record exploring the countless ways in which her head has been laid, was accorded extensive and breathless coverage here at the Screengrab, to the point that at one point, Zach Snyder became confused and thought he must be directing it. (He realized this was not the case only after his demand that Johansson's version of the song "Town with No Cheer" be beefed up with more CGI battle scenes fell on deaf ears.) Johansson was so determined to make a splash with her album that she went out of her way to give especially dull, unfocused performances in the fourteen films she made prior to the sessions, saving her energy for what mattered. (Johansson, who is rumored to have been in The Other Boleyn Girl and The Nanny Diaries, will next be seen in The Spirit, in which she is said to give an especially dull and unfocused performance, because she thinks she might like to go snowboarding sometime next year.) Johansson's musical efforts went unnoticed in 110 out of 110 categories, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Song of the Year, Best New Artist of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best Metal Performance, a category in which she was thought to have at least a shot, given that Jethro Tull has one on their mantlepiece. There was some hope that, in a thin year, Johansson might narrowly squeeze into the category Best Pop Duet Vocal, but her hopes were dashed after the Academy called in expert mathematicians to confirm that there is only one of her.
The Grammys are given each year by the Recording Academy to celebrate "artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry." There is some speculation that some in the Academy deliberately omitted from its mission statement the goal of honoring recordings that best simulate the sensation of having one's eardrums massaged with ground glass just so that they would one day be in a position to snub Scarlett Johansson, just in case she were ever born and chose to release an album, preferably of Tom Waits covers. A few defenders were quick to suggest that the Academy's failure to mention Johansson in its nominations reflected an enduring bias against movie celebrities, especially young and comely ones, and so could not be taken as any implicit signal that Johansson's music itself was found to be lacking. Those making this suggestion were quickly shouted down with scorn and ridicule, however, when it was pointed out that the Academy had not hesitated to bestow nominations upon Gwyneth Paltrow for her work on Brown Bear and Friends (in the category "Best Spoken Word Album for Children") Cynthia Nixon (who shared a nomination for "Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling)" with Beau Bridges and Blair Underwood, for their collaboration on the audio version of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth), and Tia Carrere, whose collaboration with Daniel Ho was nominated for Best Hawaiian Music Album. Spokespersons for Scarlett Johansson report that while the star has taken to her bed feeling all pouty, she is confident that this setback will in no way effect her film career. In an unrelated story, Woody Allen is rumored to have contacted Tia Carrere to feel her out about a project tentatively entitled Relic Hunter: The Motion Picture.
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Scarlett Johansson, Cover Girl
