One of Hollywood's proudest traditions is nominating big-deal songwriter Diane Warren for the Best Original Song Oscar and then not giving her the award. Last year, Warren broke an Academy record, racking up 17 nominations and zero wins, which means our ranked list of Oscar-nominated Warren songs is woefully out of date. Warren's last nomination was for "Dear Me," a Kesha-sung ballad from a documentary called Diane Warren: Relentless. That film's title has been conclusively proven true, since Warren is now back in the Oscar race.
Next month, Paramount Pictures will release a new crime movie called By Any Means. Mark Wahlberg plays a mafia hitman, and he stars alongside Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays a Black FBI agent. Together, they'll team up to investigate murders of Civil Rights leaders in 1966 Mississippi. Giancarlo Esposito is in the cast, and I'm sure his character will not turn out to be villainous somehow. If you need to be sold any harder on this film, it'll have a Diane Warren song on its soundtrack.
As the Wrap reports, Warren recently announced that she wrote "By Any Means," the film's title song. Singer-songwriter David Kushner and R&B legends the Isley Brothers recorded it together, and it's out today. It definitely sounds like a Diane Warren song that gets a random Oscar nomination. If the song does earn that nomination, it'll be the ninth consecutive one for Warren, extending a record-breaking streak for her.
There is absolutely zero chance that "By Any Means" will finally win Warren her long-coveted Oscar — not in a year where she's up against Taylor Swift's chart-topping Toy Story 5 song "I Knew It, I Knew You." She has to try, though! She's Diane Warren! Relentless! (Warren got an honorary Oscar in 2022, and she's the only songwriter ever to be given one, but she wants that competitive award, baby!)
In other Diane Warren news, the songwriter has added another escaped viral Los Angeles farm animal to her menagerie. In 2021, Warren adopted a cow that escaped a California slaughterhouse and arranged for it to be sent to a farm sanctuary — a story that led to a classic Stereogum headline. We couldn't think of a pun as good as that one for this second story, about Warren adopting a piglet who got famous after it was filmed running around West Hollywood last weekend.
As ABC 7 reports, Diane Warren adopted the 11-week-old piglet who has come to be known as Wilbur. After being caught, the piglet was taken to an animal shelter, and no owner came forward to claim him. When four different people showed up to try to adopt Wilbur, the shelter held a silent auction to see who would take him home, and Diane Warren won.
Marcia Zwilling, managing director of the Diane Warren Foundation, made the winning bid on Warren's behalf. Zwilling says, "Diane saw the news clips and saw the little pig running in West Hollywood and she just called me and said, 'Please get the pig, get the pig!'" So she got the pig.
Zwilling says that Wilbur will have a "wonderful, wonderful home" on a seven-acre animal sanctuary in Malibu. (The runaway cow that Warren adopted, which is named Free, is not at the same sanctuary; she lives in Farm Sanctuary in Acton.) Warren says that she already has a pig named Wilbur, so she's probably going to give this one a new name. She's thinking of calling him Hollywood.
ABC 7 was there to capture the footage of Warren meeting Wilbur and saying, "I lost 17 Oscars, and I won a pig." Please enjoy.
Read our We've Got A File On You interview with Diane Warren here.
