My rant of the day is quite personal and on a subject that is of little or no importance to the vast majority of people. It has to do with a little golden man that turns 82 this year - yes, it's Oscar, also known as the Academy Awards. The only reason I'm giving my two cents worth on this subject is because I'm a true cinema lover. Cinema addict is more like it, to be honest. Hence my little poke at Oscar today.
And the Oscars, love them or hate them or frankly don't care about them, my dear - well, it's a ceremony that commands over a billion viewers each year. That's a serious number of people worldwide who take at least a passing interest in the little gold man.
The 82nd Academy Awards will be hosted this Sunday, March 7th. 'Big deal', most would say. And I get that. I totally understand why the vast majority of people really don't give a flying cuckoo as to who wins what at this year's Oscars. In fact, count me in. I don't give a bloody damn either. At least not of late.
But there was a time when I did care about Oscar. There was a time when the Oscars were something I would look forward to, something that I could share and enjoy with people who loved movies, really loved movies, just like me. It was glamorous, it was exciting - it was a milestone each and every year one could count on.
Sure, I always knew it was a highly political game and that the 'winners' were not always necessarily the best in their category for that year. And there were examples aplenty: The stunning music score by Ennio Morricone for "The Mission" losing Best Original Score to Herbie Hancock's forgettable jazz piece for "'Round Midnight" in 1987? Ridiculous! Fernanda Montenegro's astounding performance in "Central do Brasil" losing Best Actress to Gwyneth Paltrow's sweet but very undeserving performance in "Shakespeare in Love" in 1999? Come on!
Yet another Best Score travesty: Thomas Newman's groundbreaking and brilliant (and so often imitated since) score for "American Beauty" losing to the screechy violin strains of "The Red Violin" by I-forget-who-the-hell-composed-it? Please! And yet another Best Actress travesty: Glenn Close in her iconic 1980s performance in "Fatal Attraction" losing to Cher in her very endearing but totally undeserving role in "Moonstruck"? I love Cher - what a lady, what a legend - but, come on!
Terrible choices have abounded throughout Oscar history. And, of course, you can never please everyone. The whole world's a critic, as the saying goes. Yet somehow I looked beyond that and enjoyed it for what it was.
Then, suddenly, it happened: one year I saw the Oscars for what they really are - political, arbitrary and just plain overrated. Even ugly. I'd always known it, of course - it had always niggled at me. But, suddenly, I guess I'd had enough. I call it the 'Brokeback Effect'. It happened so:
It was 2006 and there I was, watching yet another Oscar show live on television. It was nearly 7 o'clock in the morning (that's how damn late the live show runs when one is nine very, very long hours ahead of Los Angeles - not fun). I was tired, the show had (yet again) been quite a bore and I just wanted to know who had won Best Picture for the year. For once, a movie I was really rooting for was the favourite to win. And I just wanted to know it had done it. "Brokeback Mountain" was that favourite - a groundbreaking, beautifully made and quite superb film by Ang Lee. Jack Nicholson stepped on stage to announce the final winner of the night, Best Picture. He opened the envelope, looked up, eyebrows cocked in his inimitable way, and announced the winner as...
"Crash"...!
I literally felt the air sucked out of my lungs. I could not believe it. Someone next to me said, "Oh no, that's terrible." I actually felt sick. You see, my dislike for "Crash' knew no bounds. It was a film that had everything that I hated about bad cinema - it was cliched, the plot was preposterous, it pandered to every known stereotype and it was such a safe, safe film. I was crushed. And surprised at how much so.
A film that was a ready classic and that had achieved iconic status that year (and against all the odds, by the way), but which many did fear would be too 'controversial for the Academy, had been beaten by a lesser, unimportant, forgettable and shrill diatribe. Suddenly, my love-hate-love opinion of them, my ability to forgive the Academy Awards for its many foibles and drawbacks, suddenly it all became untenable - now, I had become solidly hate-hate.
And it was like everything I had always known about the Oscars but which had always been somehow fuzzy came into very sharp and very intense focus. Like a camera lens that focuses something quite unnervingly into all its ugliness.
My contempt for the Oscars has only grown. I've not watched a live show since 2006. No big deal to most, I know - but that's one less annual milestone in a year to which I can look forward. The difference is there, silly as it may seem. I see them ever more for what they are - a huge, frankly vulgar popularity contest very seldom based on the very best merit, and in which humongous PR (read: truckloads of money) and staged 'events' during the so-called 'awards season' determine the nominees, the winners, who will cry on stage, who will be snubbed, etc. It really is pathetic.
I laughed with derision at Martin Scorsese finally winning Best Film for "The Departed" in 2007, without a doubt one of his most unimportant and instantly forgettable films. But he was so overdue, you see (that's Oscar-speak, as you might know). So, typical Oscar, they just went ahead and gave it to him. I laughed with even more derision when "No Country for Old Men" by the Coen brothers won Best Picture the following year. They're so cool, you see. I defy anyone to tell me where the hell the plot was in that piece of overrated rubbish, because it did a damn good job of hiding itself from me. And I usually like the Coen brothers, not to mention Scorsese. But that's Oscar for you. Truly deserving very seldom comes to the party.
Of course, there will always be just winners. True excellence does sometimes still float to the top, even in the midst of such a morass of big bucks and arch-cynicism masquerading as 'serious'. Thank goodness for that. Categories like Best Documentary Feature and, oddly, Best Costume Design often get it spot-on. And I do hope Jeff Bridges finally wins his Oscar - yes, he has been so deserving after all these years, but at least he'll get it for a damn fine performance! And I would love to see South Africa's very own "District 9" win something - what an unexpected, outstanding surprise that was for me in my movie-going in 2009.
I would even love to hear that Kathryn Bigelow's film "The Hurt Locker" has won Best Picture and beaten out her ex-husband, James Cameron, and his film "Avatar". Not because I've even seen her film or will love it (who knows if I will) but only because he's such a pompous prick and because his film has visual effects that I just absolutely know will look hopelessly outdated by 2012. Snicker.
I will possibly see the recorded version of the awards the day after. It does make for passable viewing on a Monday night in between making dinner and clipping my toenails. And I will enjoy seeing some of the stars and even be happy for some of the winners. But gone is that feeling of watching an awards show that, warts and all, somehow had a magic about it. Gone, gone, gone.
Goodbye, Oscar. It was really good knowing you - when it once mattered.
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