Celine Dion, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey have all performed Best Original Song nominees at the Oscars. Every year, these flashy performances — from classic movie-musical extravaganzas to Disney earworms to Bond themes to power ballads — are the highlight of an already ridiculously flashy ceremony. But out of all of them, I don’t think there has ever been one as affecting as Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy in 2004 singing “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” from Christopher Guest’s folk mockumentary A Mighty Wind, which is still the only nomination ever for a Guest film. Beating out Robin Williams singing “Blame Canada” at the 2000 ceremony by just a hair, these Canadians delivered my favorite Oscars musical performance of all time.
The entire emotional climax of A Mighty Wind hinges on “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.” The film follows three fictional folk acts who performed under the same label in the 1960s and come together in 2003 to stage a televised tribute concert for their recently deceased producer. Levy and O’Hara play Mitch Cohen and Mickey Crabbe, a once-promising folk duo of young paramours who performed love songs under the name Mitch & Mickey and haven’t seen each other since they broke up. “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” was their most iconic song, made famous by their signature kiss before singing the final verse, and as the film builds towards their reunion performance, the central tension becomes the question of whether or not these two damaged, long-estranged adults will kiss one more time. When they finally perform the number, every single goofy, Guest-ian character drops their squabbling and falls silent as if put under a spell by Mitch & Mickey’s harmonizing, and they watch on the edges of the seats for the kiss.
O’Hara sang a lot in her various comedy roles both inside of the Guest-verse and out: She crooned as sassy lounge entertainer Dusty Towne on SCTV, scatted as the obnoxious Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, and played buffoon-ish women with cuckoo vocal styles in Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. But she delivers a uniquely grounded, sad, quiet performance as Mickey that provides the perfect balance for Levy’s cartoonishly daffy Mitch. It lives somewhere between her other Guest characters and her winsome vocal work as Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
In the Oscars performance, O’Hara sings with her eyes locked on Levy, projecting her character’s love, care, and regret all at once. It’s a tricky tonal balance, both as a character sketch and an earnest performance, and the song, which was written by Michael McKean and his wife Annette O’Toole, is tonally tricky, too. It has to sell you on the emotional plot of the characters, but like all of the music in A Mighty Wind, it’s also a parody song poking fun at the cornier corners of the early ‘60s folk movement. The duet is unabashedly sappy, its lyrics full of period-perfect, flowery Medieval revivalism tropes. What seals the effect is that plunky, archaic autoharp, which O’Hara learned to play for the film and plays beautifully live onstage at the Oscars. That O’Hara can simultaneously exude the earnest sadness of her character, draw audiences into the beauty of the song, and sell lyrics that are at least a little parodic is an enchanting feat.
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
During the Oscars performance, when O’Hara and Levy reach the part of the song where their characters have their famous kiss, O’Hara stops playing, looks down, and whispers “I can’t” under her breath. She looks like she’s about to cry and shakes her head, then Levy leans in for the smooch, prompting the audience to burst into applause and cheers. Like Mitch & Mickey, Levy and O’Hara had built up decades of history together by this point, with more collaborations — including Guest’s For Your Consideration in 2006 and Schitt’s Creek over a decade later — still to come. It serves as a sincere, sweet, and strange highlight of both Oscar history and O’Hara’s career as well as a reminder of how special and rare it is for artists to collaborate across decades. “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” ended up losing the Best Original Song Oscar to “Into the West” from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that year, not to mention getting completely snubbed for a “Best Kiss” nomination at the MTV Movie Awards. It’s just as well: The song, and this particular performance of it, is more precious than Oscar gold.
