The State of the Race: In Gods we Trust (and Giveaway)

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“They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. ‘O brave new world!’ Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. ‘O brave new world!’ It was a challenge, a command.”

– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 15

There are two kinds of Oscar bloggers. Those who get disillusioned about them, and those who already are disillusioned by them. The only people who still believe in them are people who either don’t particularly care about the outcome and just like to watch the pretty monkeys parade around on the red carpet with their genetically or surgically perfect faces, sucked in abs, and million dollar smiles. Or those so out of it they actually believe that the Oscars really do pick the best films, the best performers, the best writers, the best animators, the best composers, of the year.

The Academy is really a marvelous institution in its devotion to film history, its preservation of film and its legacy. There is nothing quite so pleasurable as going to the Academy theater. With a gently curving staircase and giant gold Oscars everywhere, mirrors and dim lighting — for any Hollywood palace where old stars are planning on attending the lighting is crucial. They care about your vanity enough to make it dark. There is a bar upstairs and a little party area downstairs with a patio and to be invited there is to feel privilege. To sit in that theater, with its massive screen and pneumatic seats you feel yourself in the lap of luxury. I can’t imagine sitting there and watching anything edgy or difficult. I saw Young Adult there and I wanted to say, why are you trying to harsh my privileged mellow? I’m happy up here with the stars. Look, there’s Mike Farrell and Mary Kay Place. I’m digging this. I might even go sample the delicious treats down there and I hear Kate Beckinsale is here. Oh, no, that was The Artist screening. I’m happy here. Don’t make me do anything except sink deeply in. Soma.

Those who have been at this game a long time already know what came before and what’s coming next. We’ve picked over the bones of the season and have the inner demons to prove it. Those journalists who really do have no stake in the race like Steve Pond, Kris Tapley, Anne Thompson, David Poland or Melena Ryzick write with a touch of bemusement at the silliness of it all. And then there are those who have their favorites, surely, but don’t take it personally when those don’t pan out — people like Roger Ebert. And then there are the newbies who really do get caught up in it to a degree. And to watch their subsequent disillusionment is always a bit of a bummer. On the one hand, you want to be the guy on the other end of that mushroom trip who says “sit down, let me tell you about what’s going to happen now.” And on the other hand you suspect they’re covering the Oscars because they have to, not that they want to, but they can’t help getting sick about them regardless. This would include the truly brilliant Stu Van Airsdale, who, despite it all, writing for Movieline, may be just about ready to turn his back finally and for good on the Oscars.

David Carr used to write about the Oscars and it was a fair amusement for a while. He was around when the great movies were winning. But once Slumdog Millionaire came along it shut down the chatter. It was going to win everything and there was no point in even going through the motions. That year killed the Oscars for him. And he also figured that writing about the Oscars risked killing his love of movies.

That sentiment is echoed over at Reeltime in his column, Why the Oscars Don’t Matter:

Fact is, the Oscars have been killing movies for me for years. I have hated some unjustly that have won, and not feeling as good about ones I love because they didn’t. The result has led me to not caring about the Oscars as I once did. I feel as though I am not alone in this either. The ratings for the Oscar telecast have been dropping consistently over the years and people are continually beginning to say that Oscars mean nothing anymore. Many people contend they are not indicative of who was actually the best and when people feel they have no control over who wins and can’t even justify it, they lose interest.

And then there is Jeff Wells, who says he’s been hit with despair over how things have turned out this year. He is open about his need to support himself through Oscar ads, but still can’t believe that it’s not Moneyball or The Descendants winning. He’ll somehow have to get up the juice to start all over again next year. Next time it will be different.

There isn’t any fixing the Oscars. They take a lot of heat each year for every new thing they try. To fix the Oscars is to fix everything else that is wrong with the Hollywood industry. The Oscars aren’t created out of nothing — they adhere to the patterns set early on by the film critics, then the Globes echo them, then the guilds echo the Globes and everyone leans towards this group of retired, tired, jaded, lazy and very much under siege Academy members. I think they appreciate the soothing tones of the FM Weinstein Co. They dial in there and find some traditional, ol’ fashioned relief. He quiets their fears. See, look, traditional filmmaking, still alive and well in Hollywood. But wait, it isn’t in Hollywood. No, you have to go outside of Hollywood — the UK and now France. To hell with the Americans who are the more daring filmmakers this year.

There must be some reason why the live action shorts only have one American film among them and it looks like a hundred other movies you’ve seen before. Last year’s winner, God of Love, also felt unoriginal to me. The other four were all better. And this year, all of the stories that came from different countries are better than the American one. Is that the fault of the millions of filmmakers in this country or is it the fault of the Academy’s taste? It’s hard to know. Are we at a crisis point in our film industry if we can’t, for the second year in a row, cultivate the earth that grows our artists? Can we not fortify our own fields by rewarding great American filmmakers like Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen…?

It isn’t about that. It can’t be about that. It has to be about the best picture. And if The Artist is the best picture how can you vote against it? You can’t, on the one hand, scold the Academy for never having the stones to award Fellini or Bergman and then say they shouldn’t vote for this French filmmaker. Does the fact that the Oscars are, for the second year in a row, shunning the American studio system mean anything? Should it mean anything?

It’s hard to know. All I do know is this. When it comes to blogging about the Oscars you have to accept what you’re in for. But remember, don’t let your heart get involved. Have a good time, enjoy the fruits of your labor but never, not for a minute, start to care because to care will be to get crushed, repeatedly, until there is nothing left but cynicism. And no one wants to read about that.

At the end of the day, these are really just one of the many games people play. We all went through it in high school when we’d watch the same girls get picked for cheerleading again and again. I remember when one unpopular girl straightened her hair, lost fifteen pounds and was rewarded by being a cheerleader. We all were so happy for her that she got in, that she crossed over, and could now strut around the cafeteria in that short skirt with her football player boyfriend. But when it came to the homecoming dance, the head cheerleader would get to win, pretty blonde and adored — AND homecoming queen? It hardly seemed fair. But almost everyone at the high school played along. They loved her. The bitter among us folded our arms and said, none of that means anything — it’s just stupid people doing stupid things. Decades later, I would befriend the homecoming queen on Facebook. Things had pretty much evened out by then. But she had her moment, though, and that was maybe everything it needed to be for her, for us.

Writing about the Oscars is like being in a relationship with someone you love who just isn’t that into you. You get tricked into believing them because, every so often, they show you a little attention. Maybe the Oscars award someone you feel was way overdue, or truly deserving. Maybe they seem to prove that they really do watch all of the movies and not just the ones their friends made. But like a frayed rubber band, sooner or later you’ll snap back to reality. The Oscars are what the Oscars are and they ain’t planning on changing any time soon. And they certainly ain’t ever going to care about you, not in the way that you need them to care.

Why just ask Academy President Tom Sherak about this year’s voting. Here is what he told Steve Pond: “From what I read, that turned out to be a good free-for-all.” Oh really Tom? You must have been reading Deadline, which has a secret red phone for Harvey Weinstein who, no doubt, was very happy with how things turned out.

Moreover, Weinstein morlock Tom Hooper said, “‘Looking at it from the outside this year,’ he said with a grin, ‘I now realize that people just write stuff pretending that there’s a race going on for the last few weeks.’ Poor old Hooper. He’ll never know that there was once a different kind of Oscar race. That sometimes things do happen. Upsets can happen. He wouldn’t remember when The Pianist bested Chicago in the Director, Screenplay and almost-Picture race. He just knows, “Harvey tells me where I should go and what I should do and Oscars appear.” And you know, going by last year and this year, he’s right. But, if he sticks with it long enough, I suspect he’ll find out that the worm turns. And it ain’t pretty.

Everything is great when you’re still a winner, when those shiny statues might still mean something. But countless Oscar winners give their speeches only to find a yawning abyss of indifference meets them once the whir of the awards race has dulled. How many of them vanished without a trace? How many of Weinstein’s own Oscar ponies took the lead as star directors only to find themselves in freefall afterwards. What, you mean it isn’t always going to be like this? Here’s to hoping newbie Hooper and newbie Hazanavicius can eke out careers after this. Finding a new height after reaching the ultimate one ain’t always easy. It’s far better to win an Oscar after you’ve proven yourself worthy of one — meaning, you’ve turned in many deserving films that haven’t yet won, or you’ve turned in many films period.

If I were a working director, the last thing I would want to do is win an Oscar early in my career. And I’d probably be a better filmmaker if I never won one at all — if I dangled in immortality like Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini or Ingmar Bergman, to name a few.

I think of all of the Oscar winners whose careers went nowhere after they won — partly because they stopped feeling hungry and started doing car commercials and action movies, or had a baby and disappeared from the spotlight, or they kept trying and trying to get back the adoration of the critics and the awards circuit and the Academy — but alas, they couldn’t get arrested. Those will then be written off as one trick ponies but at least they have that Oscar. At least they will be in the history books. At least NPR and the New York Times will say in their obit before their name “Academy Award winner” or “Academy Award nominee” as if it is a high honor. Is it?

Those who seem to do well in their post Oscar haze are those who didn’t particularly care one way or the other to begin with and cared even less in the afterglow. They care about doing good work, whether it is rewarded with an Oscar or not. These artists are continually hungry and most of the time they skip the publicity surrounding the awards circus. They skip it because they know what it means and what it doesn’t mean.

If The Artist weren’t such a good movie, I would say that this is the last chance for the Academy to do something brave and bold, a call to arms to rescue our own dying film industry. Do we really want more movies like The King’s Speech? Well, now maybe we do. Maybe that win, and the upcoming win by The Artist will send a message to those dark, daring storytellers — The Descendants, Moneyball, Hugo and Tree of Life that they need to try less, work more simply from the paradigm of old Hollywood, the “Oscar movie,” the crowdpleaser. But the Artist is a good movie. In terms of the awards race, it is the leanest, least offensive, most pleasing of the bunch. And perhaps that is now what it takes to win. Take note, American storytellers. Take note.

Or better yet, let this year be a call to arms to directors that they don’t need Oscars to be considered worthy. If it happens to come, great. But if it doesn’t, that doesn’t diminish, in any way, the greatness of the work. I think about Brad Pitt sticking it out through Moneyball, working hard to keep that troubled production together, and how many people worked so hard on it to make it the great movie that it turned out to be — and I wonder whether anyone would then regard Moneyball as a failure because it didn’t win Best Picture. I hope not.

You see, we need our gods. We need them to help us figure out where we fit into the tribe. We need them because they give us fleeting glimpses of what it might be like to crossover. We need them because they aren’t us.

To enter our giveaway, please tell us what you think the Oscars mean.  It can be a lot or a little, whatever you care to share.  We will choose a winner at random — and the prize is:

The Godfather trilogy – the Coppola restoration