It’s no coincidence that a convicted rapist like Harvey Weinstein is back in the news while Oscar weekend is here. Now, this isn’t another smarmy post by some prude for clickbait on how the Oscars are no longer relevant. We live in a world of pageants and Chamber of Commerce annual banquets. Everyone seems to be patting each other on the back for basically doing the same thing over and over.
When I was working as a professional journalist, I would send off papers and clippings each year and even won the Sequoyah Award in my category in the Oklahoma Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest in 2012. I’m damn proud of it too and have the award hanging on my wall. When I returned to my hotel room after the banquet, I could see how the people in the lobby glanced at me as I was carrying the awards.
But the news and feature stories weren’t always written and published to win awards. Sometimes, it was just because someone had a story to tell and I thought others might like to know about it.
We live in a world where competition is not only inevitable but essential. When the nearby community of Wagoner, Okla. started a Truink-Or-Treat, they almost ruined the fun a year or two later by having costume contests that seemed to take a lot more longer than they should have as parents and children waited impatiently for a fun-size Snickers bar.
We’ll always have the Oscars as long as we have movies and entertainment. I know some people don’t see the relevance anymore. Even Billy Crystal showed his true colors years ago when he said he’d return to host if only they got rid of some of the categories. Movies aren’t made with just actors and writers. And I don’t think modern audiences really care about Crystal doing his schtick like Rich Hall doing a George Burns impersonation to an audience of Millenials and Gen Zers.
Yes, times are changing. And so are our movies. Yet, it still seems so many voters are just stuck in the past. I’m still surprised that The Silence of the Lambs did so well decades ago as horror flicks weren’t popular. Voters hate sequels even when they are very well made and Lambs is a sequel, as is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
I’m glad Top Gun: Maverick was nominated for Best Picture as it’s better than the first one. Before Weinstein started making his claim with respectable movies in the 1990s, critics and Academy Award voters could see through the facade. Movies like Fat Man and Little Boy and Come See the Paradise tried so hard they seem like the stuff of parody in the third Naked Gun movie.
But after acknowledging movies like Lambs and the brilliant Unforgiven, the Oscar turned around and did the same thing with movies like Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient and Titanic. They were epic saga period piece dramas that played it safe with their unhappy but not really depressing and sorta uplifting endings.
So, it was no surprise when Harrison Ford read the title Shakespeare in Love in 1999, he almost looked surprised it won over Saving Private Ryan. Weinstein had played the game and he had scored himself that Oscar. He wasn’t even obvious about making it appear to keep Edward Zwick, who had been trying for years to get the movie made, from even speaking on stage. You could almost feel the groan from people in the audience who clapped not because they were happy but they didn’t want to be caught on live TV not clapping.
Four years later, Weinstein would have three movies (Chicago, Gangs of New York and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) on the Best Picture nomination list. And when Chicago won, it was obvious he had changed the Oscars in the worse way. Let’s face it! Hasn’t anyone ever seen Chicago since 2002-2003? Hell, did even the Oscar voters even see it back then? Weinstein jumped up and waived at the other cast and crew in the audience to get on the stage. It had won six Oscars. But it was nowhere near Amadeus which is still great to watch over 40 years later.
And the movies of the 2000s seemed to go downhill from there. It seemed like there was a battle brewing between big studio movies and independent movies. Even the big names got on the band wagon with their own “independent” film labels. I mean, Paramount Vantage and Warner Independent Pictures weren’t exactly subtle. People seemed to be divided if a high profile big-budget major studio movie could still be great.
And in 2009, it was obvious there were cracks in the system so big the Titanic could sink through them. Two of the best reviewed and most popular movies of the year (The Dark Knight and WALL-E) were snubbed for Best Picture because they were genre movies. Slumdog Millionaire, which had been in obscurity during production that it was closed to going straight to the home video market, made big news, no doubt related to the Mumbai attacks of 2008. To make it up for the next year, the Academy increased the number of Best Pictures from five to up to 10. (Yet, since then it hasn’t always been 10 which has led to some suspicions they are purposely excluding the popular genre movies.)
It also didn’t help that Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel called the voters out on their hypocrisy as the mediocre Don’t Look Up got a Best Picture nomination over Spider-Man: No Way Home which was far more liked by audiences and critics.
But as most things change, most things stay the same. Even looking at the slate of nominees this year, it seems they’re still picking the same movies they’ve done for decades. And it doesn’t help that you can see these movies are only being made just so they can win awards. Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux called out this with their fake movie Simple Jack in Tropic Thunder. Yet, it seems we’re still going through the same motions many years later.
Take Bugonia which is horrible but yet it only seems to be nominated for so many awards is that voters saw Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos in the credits and decided it must be good. Hamnet, which looks about as uplifting as a slamming your hand in a car door, is considered a favored win for Jessie Buckley even though The Bride! is being called one of the worst movies so far this year. If she wins, we owe a big apology to Eddie Murphy. And even worse, it shows that Oscar voters are still being divisive and prejudiced. I would rather see Rose Byrne win for If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. It’s not the best movie but at least she gives it her all.
This brings me to my biggest problem. Years ago, Roger Ebert proposed the idea that Best Picture should consider documentary movies. Animated movies are still considered taboo. It seems that if it isn’t a pure drama or some epic period piece saga movie, it isn’t worthy of Oscar consideration. And that’s why younger audiences are being turned off left and right.
This is why limited series are changing things up. They’re better written and they have better plots. People can stay home and watch them at their leisure. They don’t have to spend $10-15 on a movie ticket to watch a biopic on a subject they can Google and read in five minutes. Nor do they have to sit through some celebrity’s vanity project like King Richard which only has a sole purpose of winning awards. And even thrilling movies like F1 are a formula movie. Also with HDTV that are as big as Barron Trump, why spend money to see something in an IMAX theater?
Scream 7 has made about over $175 million in just two weeks. Yes, it’s getting bad reviews. But maybe people are wanting to see bad movies that are still entertaining. How many more Fast and Furious movies can we watch of Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Stratham trying to prove whose dick is the biggest?
Like most things, what goes up must come down. I think we’re probably going to see a huge change in the next few years. I’m rooting for One Battle After Another or even Sinners, even though I didn’t really like it. But they seemed different and Sinners was at least creative in its format and style despite a so-so execution.
It’s not just Weinstein that ruined it but he’s obviously the perfect representation. You can also blame actors who demanded $20-30 million for movies they know are horrible. And some use them as safety nets to make the movies they want, others just cashed their checks and phoned it in.
The reason horror flicks usually make the most money is that people just want to be entertained for a couple of hours. They need that escape. They don’t care about some soapbox message. They don’t care about if someone is going to win an award or not.
We all have our guilty pleasure movies but even though they’re bad, they’re not exactly dull or boring. Exploitation movies have been around for decades and people enjoy them for the same reason others like demolition derbies and monster truck rallies.
Hopefully, we’ll return to that era again sooner than later.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 