Groundhogs Are Out, Gaga Is In

You may have heard that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, meaning that we are in for six more weeks of winter. You may have also heard that Staten Island Chuck, the B-list groundhog, didn’t see his shadow, meaning that we are in for an early spring. What are we to believe? Well, the thing is that a groundhog cannot tell us anything about the future, but you know who can? Multi-platinum recording artist and actress Lady Gaga.

You see, the Oscar nominations are on February 8, less than a week away. Only then will we know if we are in for seven more weeks of the greatest Oscars campaign in history. If we all wake up on that Tuesday to find that Gaga hasn’t been nominated for her role in House of Gucci, winter (which in this case is defined as the months we have spent listening to Gaga say just about anything to get a soundbite, and look fabulous while doing so) will be over.

I don’t know about you, but I love winter. Specifically, I love Gaga’s winter, and am praying that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allows her to stick her head out next week and officially decree that it will continue on until March 27th, the night of the Oscars ceremony. Just think about all that this Gaga winter has given us so far.

• She revealed that she went to the U.S. Capitol and looked for “evidence of the insurrection,” because “if I weren’t who I am today, I would have been a combat journalist.”
• She told any journalist who would listen that she remained in character as Patrtzia Reggiani for a year and a half, doing the accent for nine of those months.
• She told an audience full of people that she was the creative mastermind behind a House of Gucci plotline wherein Patrizia and her psychic, Pina (Salma Hayek), develop a sexual relationship after teaming up to murder her husband. The scene was ultimately cut.
• She told Variety that while filming House of Gucci she needed a psychiatric nurse by her side, and that she was worried that the real Patrizia could show up at any time.
• At one point she said that she wrote an 80-page biography of Patrizia in order to get her backstory “inside” of her.
• In the Los Angeles Times’ actress roundtable, she asked five of her fellow thespiennes if they “ever drink the prop drinks and actually feel drunk?” They don’t.

According to the prognosticators at GoldDerby, an Oscars prediction site, Gaga is currently at 11:2 odds to be nominated. She’s sitting at third on their predictions for Best Actress nominees, behind Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter and Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos. Neither of them are doing it like her — Olivia Colman hasn’t even visited the Capitol — and without a Gaga nomination the road to the Oscars will become much more boring.

I’ll be honest, I have come to look forward to whatever batshit thing Gaga will say when anyone with a recorder approaches her. However, I’m of two minds about whether or not I want her to see a nomination next week. On the one hand, it would mean that her campaigning would somehow ramp up another notch, and that we might learn that she actually climaxed and temporarily lost her sight during the scene in which Adam Driver eats her out. On the other hand, an Oscar snub would mean that her next campaign (and there will be a next campaign) would be even more off-the-handle. Am I willing to forgo a present joy in exchange for a more intense one in a few years? I think right now, I want winter (remember that in this case “winter” is the House of Gucci Oscar campaign) to continue on, and I want it to get even colder.