Do you want to know who is going to win in this year's Oscars? The answer is simple. The Hollywood movie industry. Besides an excuse to have an overblown, self-important party- one that way too much of the world falls in line with- the Oscars (or Academy Awards, using their more formal and pretentious title) don't really, actually accomplish or prove very much.
Basically, it is a more or less self-enclosed, cyclical love-fest, the entertainment industry blowing itself a giant kiss, and millions of others slobberingly joining the orgy via their televisions sets or organized parties.
Nothing really HAPPENS at or because of the Oscars. Sure, individual actors or filmmakers sometimes give interesting acceptance speeches, funny production pieces and poignant montages often grace the proceedings and the ridiculously banal, sycophantic pop-culture-arazzi always goes nuts over a shimmering designer dress here or a mismatched fashion disaster there, but especially in a year of a deadly serious financial crisis, our brand new President trying to handle multiple crucial issues and red-hot warzones potentially flaring up around the Earth, aren't these insanely lavish 'breads and circuses' a luxury we can't really afford? Hmmmm. Maybe it's precisely because things are so grim in other sectors that people want to escape into glamorous Brangelina-World.
My problem with the Oscars has to do, first of all, with what it is not. It is not an open vote amongst the American People- all regular schlubs included- like our political election process or the selection of winners on American Idol (or even MTV's TRL). It is not a wide-open measure of cold, hard mass public opinion. So we don't learn- for better or worse- what the great unwashed, washed, heavily scrubbed and cheap cologne-slathered masses think when forced to discern and compare amongst the considerable number of movies churned out by the Los Angeles-based motion picture industry.
The 'Academy,' with just over five thousand seemingly faceless voters, comes across as a shadowy, elusive body- L.A.'s version of the Vatican College of Cardinals, Knights Templar or Skull And Bones. Upon completion of the Academy's super secretive, uber-confidential voting, one half expects to see an iconic curl of smoke rise up out of the chimney of some ornate, faux-Gothic castle in Westside L.A. Except, instead of white, the smoke would be blue, from an Arturo Fuente Anejo almost-Cuban cigar.
When Oscar results are revealed, the phrase that often pops in my mind is: "The fix was in." That's because certain overriding behind-the-scenes "political" considerations essentially guaranteed a specific winner even if many (or most) people felt that a different nominee had the far stronger, more effective and impressive performance.
If the Oscars were voted among all of the United States, sure one could say that the results might be "uneducated," "uninformed,", "crude," "crass," "commercial," or "mainstream," but it would be very difficult for a "fix" to be in- amongst millions of regular voters, unless certain entities spent a fortune bribing regular Joes and launching massive Oscar-voter advertising campaigns aimed at the great heartland of the American public. But wouldn't regular people ultimately just vote for the movie or filmmaker that they honestly liked best, based upon their viewing?
The Oscars are not a live contest, like the Super Bowl. While the Super Bowl may be another silly American orgy of over-blown, quasi-religious importance and requisite intertwined commercialism, there is, at least, in that case a real, live physical contest, absolutely spontaneous and previously undecided, unfolding before our very eyes over those 60 (insanely delayed and pop-culture interspersed) minutes.
Say what you want about a Super Bowl, but within the actual game one always finds the inspiring spectacle of outrageously super-human athletes playing at their mind-boggling, heart-pumping peak and creating at least a few outstanding, heroic plays. And, excepting a few years of sadly lopsided mismatches ('86 Bears/Patriots), you really, truly never know who will win.
In this regard, how could the Oscars ever be anything like the Super Bowl? Good question. It's probably a bit unrealistic and would never happen, well at least not for a few years, but what if the nominated actors and directors came out on stage and faced off against each other in a short scene competition? The directors could loudly whisper spontaneous direction in the actors' ears like the ring corner man in boxing. The music composer would be spontaneously tapping out notes on the piano and the production designer would have to whip up an impromptu set, with only a few cans of paint and pieces of wood at his or her disposal. We could turn the Oscars into some strange combination of American Idol and Iron Chef.
With standup comedy competitions it is possible to forego an audience or judge vote and go straight to the "laugh meter," a scientific measure of the volume of involuntary laughter. Could the Oscars hook up audience members to a "drama meter" and then screen key scenes from the nominated films? Electrodes would be fed into a computer that sensed the body's involuntary response- through temperature, heartbeat, pulse, sweating, salivating, etc.- to poignancy, relevance, believability, romanticism, humor, inspiration and so on.
Imagine an Oscar audience of "voters," sitting in a darkened theater in their tuxedoes and expensive dresses, a tangle of wires flowing from the suction cups on their foreheads, cheeks, necks and wrists, while red LED readouts embedded in a bank of sophisticated computer equipment rapidly tally numbers in the Oscar's Kodak Theater control room. "Milk: 328.459 vs. Frost/Nixon: 279.852" Now wouldn't that be one hell of an Academy Awards? Sounds like something you'd see in a Spielberg movie.
So the current Oscar's are what they are, an insider-decided, generally predictable pageant of glamour and faux-breathlessness for an "event" that is really just about no event at all- in terms of the "winners"- but rather the display of essentially foregone results by a secretive, elite committee. It is, I will admit, a half-decent-to-solid night of TV entertainment, depending upon the year and how one feels about immense self-congratulation and cutting-edge haute couture on display.
What the Oscars can accomplish, of any worth at all, is giving a deserved boost to little underdog movies, actors or filmmakers, offering the break such players need to bust into the ranks of the bigtime, or at least continue making their modest, art-house projects. For instance, movies like "The Full Monty," or "Secrets & Lies," or actress Laura Linney in "You Can Count On Me" -totally NOT the obvious, huge budget, well-advertised multi-plex movies of their time.
In cases like the aforementioned, the Oscar uses it's bully pulpit to put a big spotlight on quirkier, smarter, more honest fare. Even with multiple Oscar nominations, English director Mike Leigh's still doesn't see his films open on a fraction the number of screens or make a fraction of the stupid money of a "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," or "Friday The 13th." The Oscars also give some needed professional recognition to the technical, organizational and artistic folks behind the scenes who work their asses off, are amazing at what they do and really do have a hell of a lot to do with the near-perfect-looking-and-sounding end product you see up on the screen.
While I do agree with the general thinking that the Oscars can affect careers and success in Hollywood, I believe that the most important results are the nomination announcements. I think that to be nominated is to be a winner. Top 5 in one's field, out of the entire movie business, is a huge accomplishment, and since any half-intelligent person knows that so many corrupting considerations go into choosing the one winner, it is often among the non-winning nominees that one finds the true elite of creative, artistic excellence.
Let's be real: Out of all the movies made in past years, big and small, were "Braveheart," "Titanic," "Lord Of The Rings," or "Crash" really the peak cinematic works of their year? The absolute most meaningful, emotionally impacting, honest, powerful, intelligent, transformative films produced in the English language? No, they were the biggest. They were good films- even very good films- but they were "best" only if one measures "best" as equivalent to biggest.
Sean Penn, who is an incredible actor, deserves the Best Actor Oscar for "Milk," but he didn't deserve it for "Mystic River," which was a better-than-decent movie in which he was not especially transformative, challenged or sublime as a Boston Irish tough guy. It's far too many decisions like that that keep me from taking the Oscars too seriously.
Because I live on Planet Earth, and in Los Angeles specifically, I will be going to some Oscar party or another tomorrow night with my girlfriend. I'll have a drink, politelty watch a bunch of it, and even make a few quips to the screen just like half the other partygoing viewers. But all I can say is this: at the party, there better be some good goddamn food!
