This was going to be a comment to Parrish’s post, but it got too long. And I should know better than to challenge Parrish’s views on filmic issues, since not only does she live much closer than I do to the heart of the country’s movie industry, she apparently even has screeners in her house. Nevertheless, I must get one thing off my chest:
Only James Cameron could direct a film that would become as big as Titanic yet make Titanic look like a Tarkovskian masterpiece of depth and subtlety by comparison. If that’s what Best Director is for, then by all means.
Okay, with that over with:
The Academy Awards have bothered me for a long time. In particular, I’ve generally thought of the Best Picture category in much the same way as Mets fans think of the race to get into the playoffs: an annual opportunity for disappointment, anger, disgust, and despair.
But when I look at the nominees and winners from past years, I have to admit the Academy has picked some good ones. I can’t say too much about the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s — looks like a lot of box-office smashes on the level of Titanic, along with some true classics. But the ’60s and ’70s saw some great runs of winners.
It’s when you get to the ’80s that you start seeing the cringeworthy choices appearing in the winner’s circle again — Terms of Endearment, anyone? — and by the ’90s you’re getting shit like Forrest Gump, Shakespeare in Love, and, of course, Titanic. (Although, to be fair, a movie that makes as much money as Titanic kinda has to win, and the only truly worthy nominee that year, L.A. Confidential, is a good but not great movie. And the real tragedy of Titanic was in the Best Song category where, as Carl Wilson documented, that horrid Celine Dion song beat an Elliott Smith song from Good Will Hunting.)
I found that as I tried to pay more attention to the Oscars, the Best Picture choices got worse. American Beauty? Gladiator? The worst year in recent memory has to be 2005, when four excellent films were nominated and the fifth, a real piece of shit called Crash, took home the prize.
My new policy, though, is to keep things in perspective. If the film I like doesn’t win, I can at least hope that a plausibly good film does. While it’s soul-destroying to give up one’s Oscar judgment entirely to the market — “may the highest-grossing film win” — it’s fine to take many factors into account when rooting for a movie that will stand the test of time, that won’t embarrass us all on a Wikipedia list 40 years from now. Or, if there’s an otherwise great run happening from year to year and it’s interrupted, you can always think of the winner as the Rocky of our time.
I love this line – “And I should know better than to challenge Parrish’s views on filmic issues” – for two reasons. First, for the implied notion that I’m some kind of film expert (Haa!), and second, for the idea that Dave would hesitate to challenge anyone, anytime, because of their perceived expertise in a given field. Fortified with a healthy pour of scotch, Dave would challenge Albert Einstein on those crazy ideas about the space-time continuum.
Most of the time, I don’t mind that the Oscars are crass and commercial. I don’t mind that they reward spectacle over truly great film. I’m not such a purist, and really, the debate is the fun thing. The exception was the year Titanic won, just because I thought it truly was the worst movie i’d seen in years. Far, far worse than Avatar, which is at least serviceable as a narrative.
I also didn’t mind American Beauty, and I liked Shakespeare in Love. For the record.
Yesterday, Demosthenes and I watched (500) Days of Summer, which is a pretty good film, with fantastic music. As we were discussed it (500), we debated what makes a great movie. We decided that it must contain a strong plot, acting, wit, and intelligent writing. I recently watched All the President’s Men, and was fascinated with how good it was, despite the crappy acting prevalent in the 70’s. I’m still surprised that that it is difficult for film-makers to do in a 120 minute film (which takes weeks or months to complete) what The West-Wing did on a weekly basis.
So many fillmmakers seem to forget that a good script has to precede everything else. I used to have a job that put me around a lot of film crews, and I frequently overheard complaints from cast & crew who had received new script pages overnight, and were expected to shoot them that day. Crazy to pony up thousands of dollars per hour for people to work with zero preparation–and yet that’s pretty normal on film sets, especially when the script is written by committee or the star has script approval. No wonder so many scenes seem wooden!
“Geniuses” like Cameron or George Lucas refuse to admit that they can’t write for shit and so make gorgeous movies with inane story structure and dialogue. Do you think JC (check those initials for his Messiah complex) gets mad when people say, “Sure he’s an egoist and an ass, but…”, or does it simply fuel his desire for box-office revenge?
The Oscars are so amazingly unexciting this year.
p.s. I liked (500) Days, too. Oh, for a world (and a bar) where the Pixies are on the karaoke machine!
The most amazing part of Avatar was the very final shot, when the words “Written and Directed by James Cameron” appeared on the screen. You couldn’t spare a million for a better writer? Really?
The thing that surprises me about this post, Dave, is that your “new policy” is to keep things in perspective. Since you’re so rationally cynical about so many different things, I’m kind of shocked that you hadn’t dismissed the Oscars a long, long time ago… I like the Oscars, but I can’t remember ever thinking that the best films, or the best performances, were consistently rewarded. Even the supposedly “Independent” movies that the Academy is so worried about dominating the Oscars (hence the need to expand the field to 10) usually seem pretty mainstream to me.
And, ftr, I agree about most of the films you mentioned (though I liked American Beauty quite a lot), especially Crash, which was a complete cartoon. But isn’t it kind of fun to be incredulous every now and then, especially about something that doesn’t really matter so much?
Take some consolation imagining the satisfaction some kid will get, fifty years hence, discovering oh let’s say (500) Days of Summer* on DVD and saying to his friends in the dorm “Avatar was the commercial success, and it got the Oscar, but they were actually making good movies back then, even if practically nobody saw them so it wasn’t profitable to give them awards.” And then they’ll pass the joint and laugh about the idea of “commercial success” because capitalism will be dead. Hey, this is my little story. I can do what I want in it. Anyway my point, such as it is, is that I think we worry about these awards not because they mean anything now, but because they may shape the canon and deprive future geeks and aesthetes of what’s good. But it won’t. They’ll dig.
*Not the very best example, troubled if nothing else by the awful trope of the sassy younger sibling who knows the score, but it’s the only new movie I saw this year so I’m helpless to come up with better. Anyway it had its charms.
(um except not DVD because by then presumably you will think of a film and it will be projected directly through your optical nerves.)
Maury D,
You don’t have the ONP yet (Optical Nerve Projection)?
Got it last year- highly recommended.
Post-Singularity and post-capitalism, I will not be fretting about the Oscars one bit.