The Oscars

 

I was sitting on my then bunk bed watching the 1999 Oscars telecast in my room. Saving Private Ryan seemed a shoe-in for the Bst Picture award. Spielberg won Best Director so it has to win the big one, right? My fingers were crossed. Harrison Ford announced it. "And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to...Shakespeare In Love." The heartbreak created a rift. The rift created an allergic reaction to the Oscars. I think it's safe to say at that age I was naive. I had no idea what Oscar campaigning was much less who Harvey Weinstein was. Leading up to the Best Picture announcement, I was treated to a montage cut by Chuck Workman that was the impetus for my addiction to montages. Whoopi Goldberg made me miss Billy Crystal, Spielberg paid tribute to Kubrick, Scorsese and DeNiro presented an Honorary Oscar to Elia Kazan. I remember it being a strange presentation. Scorsese and DeNiro sounded nervous. Kazan was then met with some boos as he entered the stage. I'd learn about why after finding out about his testifying to the House of Unamerican Affairs Committee. 

The 1998 Oscars was the first telecast I watched. Billy Crystal was the host. It was also the first footage I would see of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, being clips of Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore for their respective performances in Boogie Nights. Sean Connery announced Titanic as Best Picture and James Cameron made his now famous 'king of the world' speech. Going in, I thoroughly enjoyed Titanic. I was already a Cameron fan from obsessively watching Aliens and Terminator 2. Not familiar enough with Boogie Nights or LA Confidential to be upset with the latter's losing to Titanic or the former's not being nominated for Picture at all. 

By the time the 2000 Academy Awards rolled around, I would add the name Charlie Kaufman (nominated for Being John Malkovich's screenplay) to my list of people to check out. American Beauty scribe Alan Ball beat both him and PT Anderson for original screenplay. Though the wound was mended when Ball gave me Six Feet Under. 

In 2001, Gladiator beat Traffic for Best Picture. In 2002, Ron Howard beat David Lynch for Best Director. And so it went. 

It became ritual. I would learn what it was all about to the point where anytime I made a list of who would win, there would always be a film next to it. Who I Think Should Win - Who Is Going to Win. What is Oscar Bait and what doesn't stand a chance to be nominated. It created a pragmatism in me that exists to this day. 

Studying the history of the ceremony and past winners helped me glean insight into Hollywood's favorite night. For one, horror movies were not welcome. There were of course exceptions: The Exorcist, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs. The makeup category was generous to them- Rick Baker winning for An American Werewolf In London. Nothing has changed. Whether you're Toni Collette in Hereditary or Mia Goth in Pearl, the performance still isn't recognized. Like Exorcist before it, Get Out was able to squeak by with a handful of nominations. But after that, nothing. It feels like the Academy said "OK, we nominated a horror film alright? Now get off our back." At least that feeling was palpable after seeing the complete shut out for Peele's film Nope. 

My obsession toward wanting to memorize the winners led me to go so far as to underline any actor who was nominated or won an award in the Movie Listings section in the back of the TV Guide. This would follow in the World Almanacs I would get every Christmas. I'd go look for the list with all the notable actors in it. Remember the scene from Wonder Boys where Tobey Maguire rattles off all of the famous actor suicides to a bunch of people? That was me but with Best Picture winners. The other categories of Director, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor and Actress soon followed.

Then came the lists. I had the list of Best Picture winners and wanted to check off all of them. Some of them seemed like major chores: Out of Africa, The English Patient, Ordinary People. Others sounded interesting: Cavalcade hit my history sweet spot, You Can't Take It With You was Capra so it had to be of quality, Rebecca's a no brainer because Hitchcock. It didn't take too long for me to realize that some of the pictures nominated were better than the film that ended up winning. Nobody remembers Cavalcade anyway. 

I am almost thankful I wasn't aware of certain directors, actors and the Oscars in the past. Had I been a fan of Denzel and Spike Lee during the 1993 ceremony, I would have been upset at him losing best actor. But this is once again, a thing I learned about the Oscars: they are always playing catch-up. Pacino's performances in The Godfather I & II and Dog Day Afternoon did not win him anything. If you ask me, they had the perfect opportunity to award him for Godfather II but instead they awarded...Art Carney. So in order to make up for past mistakes and give this acting legend his trophy, they shut out what is arguably Denzel's best performance in Malcolm X. And this was just the flubs in the acting category. 

Legends like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Altman missed out on the Directing oscar. Hitch, Kurosawa and Altman were given honorary oscars. Scorsese wouldn't win an Oscar until 2007. It further enforced the awards as a pointless show more interested in what was culturally relevant at the time than a ceremony that honored art. PTA and Quentin now took the place of Scorsese. Is this PTA's year? Is this Quentin's year? Still no. Will they give it to Quentin because his 10th film is said to be his last? 

The Oscars are the way Hollywood wants to view itself during that particular year. It's always been that way. Short term over long term. Trends over artistic value. The older I got, the more the smoke and mirrors fell away and I was able to see the politics of it all. It's only gotten worse with identity politics thrown into the mix.

II

This year was the first since 2015 that I watched the Oscars telecast from beginning to end. The other telecasts would be put through a strainer, filtering out all the interesting stuff to happen: Bong Joon- Ho winning for Parasite being the moment that made me think maybe there is hope. Then the slap happened. All anyone could talk about was the slap. It called back the streaking incident that happened during the 1974 Oscars ceremony. 

Michelle Yeoh won. Out of all the categories, this was the hardest for me to choose. Cate Blanchett gave the performance of her career in Tar. But Yeoh's performance was a career highlight for her. 

Ke Huy Quan, or Data, won and gave an emotional speech about his journey from refugee camp to Hollywood's biggest stage. 

Jamie Lee Curtis, who never denied her horror roots, dedicated her Oscar to all her genre fans. 

There were upsets. Tar, my favorite film of the year was completely shut out. As was Banshees of Inisherin. Had any Best Picture nominee other than EEAAO took it home, I'd be a lot more frustrated but seeing it win softened the blow. 

History always measures how long a film will last. In the year or our Lord, 2023, Steven Spielberg was nominated for Best Picture for The Fabelmans. Shakespeare In Love is not nearly as beloved as Saving Private Ryan. Though not nearly as hated as Crash or Green Book. Instead of being behind the scenes campaigning for his Oscar, Harvey Weinstein is now serving jailtime for a litany of sexual assault crimes.

Things have come full circle in a strange way. Harrison Ford announced Best Picture just as he did during that day in 1999. But I didn't come away disappointed. Sure the film I preferred to win didn't win. But the next best one did. What's more, it was a film that had a dildo fight, hotdog fingers and butt plugs. It's a long way from the stuffy likes of The King's Speech or The English Patient. Hollywood is mostly cynical bullshit but it is nice for once in a while to see artists like Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis who have mile long lists of amazing contributions to film finally get acknowledged for their talent. Will this change anything with the Oscars? Probably not. You don't even have to like EEAAO to celebrate the fact that this was a win for genre fans and artists who want to tell stories across various platforms and budget levels.