More Oscar Stuff Floating In MJ Wake
Every surprise of The Academy keeping a secret and making a controversial, but forward thinking move is a little undone this morning with the fumbling of a press release and planned Monday news conference to announce a change that may kill off Best Song and moving the honorary awards from the telecast to a November dinner.
This is classic over-responding to a problem in one case and crazy responding to another.
In the first case, the songs, this is a weird interim plan that is even worse conceived than foreign and doc. There will be a “quality” hurdle to qualify the category. Wha?
In the second case, the idea of a full event and dinner for these honored folks makes sense. But how can they not still end up being acknowledged during the show? It’s not that these moments make great TV, as a rule. But why do they do any of it? To honor their best, right?
The reason for this decision, on top of hoping to shorten the show, was that the Board found itself not honoring John Calley and Alan Ladd, Jr last year in a time concession. Much of the board realized that this was a travesty.
But they need to think bigger. They need to seriously consider a TV event, highly produced, to celebrate the tech nominees. A show that really celebrates how movies are made, complete with a lot of behind the scenes content, could be its own modest hit. And either give out Oscars that night… or don’t. If you want to give awards out during the big show, you can do 8 of those in 30 minutes or less if you remove the set-up.
Anyway…
Announcing today came as a result of some fumbling of multiple press releases… sigh. And the idea this time? Not as exciting or controversial. And so it goes…
Fumbling of a press release? What does that even mean? Inside, inside, inside. I feel like you shouldn’t bring it up if you aren’t going to divulge. Otherwise, who gives a shit?
Anyway, it won’t necessarily kill off the category, obviously. If only one song makes the score cut then some other, obviously lesser entry will be scooted along making for a two nominee race. I don’t think it will be often that no song makes the cut. Regardless, there are deeper problems in that branch that need serious, serious tending to.
This is actually a great idea, Poland. AMPAS needs in increase their TV exposure, not lessen it. A “geek” Oscar telecast (like on G4 or SciFi or something) with all the tech awards might be strong niche programming, and a separate Lifetime Acheivement ceremony (like AFI or the Cinematheque or the Kennedy Center awards) would be protentially great TV and wonderful exposure.
The one thing the Academy has never done is expanded their TC presence beyond the Oscar ceremony. It’s time to chage that.
AMPAS trying to eliminate Best Song? Back in the 80’s it was Oscar’s nod to mass culture. Take away Best Song and you brush off the casual moviegoer.
Really? Are there that many people out there humming the Academy Award-winning songs from An Inconvenient Truth or The Motorcycle Diaries?
The Best Song award pretty much died with the musical. It was able to hang on a bit through the ’80s and ’90s because there was a lot of original popular songs being released with film (especially Disney animated films), but nowadays studios don’t see fit to release original pop music with their product anymore. The last major studio song to win the Oscar that was also a popular radio hit was Lose Yorself by Eminem in 2002. Even by that point it was an anomoly.
Best Original Song is the most worthless category of the night, and this is coming from a big fan of musicals (at least the old ones).
Sure it’s cool to occasionally see someone like Bob Dylan get awarded, but whatever. I’d rather see an award given to a casting director for Best Ensemble.
The “quality hurdle” has been in place for many years in several categories, including song and some documentary and shorts categories. That’s why there are sometimes three song nominees and sometimes five. There’s nothing new in that aspect of the rule — only new guidelines to determine what happens when not enough songs get the minimum score.
And doesn’t the first paragraph of the press release specifically state that the honorary recipients WILL be acknowledged during the main Oscar show?
The short categories should go, really. Or, at least, moved to this secondary ceremony they’re having. It seems strange that five-minute movies can be Oscar winners, doesn’t it?
However, moving the technical categories to a different show altogether is NOT a good idea. You’re looking at “backlash” territory there. I’m sure the art directors would like an Oscar, but part of the excitement is getting up in front of all those people and all the viewers and letting them see the face of the behind the scenes stuff. Equating a costume designers work to lesser value than a supporting actor nominee who’s only in a movie for ten minutes is dangerous.
The original song category… well, I’m at two minds. yes, it doesn’t really take much to write a song, but sometimes there are indeed songs that are integral to films and should be rewarded. Perhaps they could get rid of that category and bring back the “Best Original Song Score” or whatever it was called for when there actually are movies with original songs? I dunno. It’s tricky.
The business about the honorary awards stinks. Those are often the high point of the telecast.
Here is the problem with the Oscar telecast, first and foremost…
And I say this with no disrespect intended to Bill Condon or Laurence Mark or Laura Ziskin or Joe Roth any of the other fine film producers who have tried their best to make the Oscars an exciting telecast…
The Academy needs to hire a skilled LIVE TELEVISION producer to produce the Oscar telecast.
To be honest, I would have no idea whom that person should be, but in order to make the Oscar telecast an exciting show, they’re going to need someone who works in this specific medium, day in and day out, to get the most bang for their buck.
Hiring movie people to produce a live television show is the absolute wrong way to go. It’s like hiring Eddie Deezen to play Bud White in “L.A. Confidential” or John Stamos to play Hunter S. Thompson in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Even if everything else was exactly the same, it’d still be the wrong person in the wrong role.
But then, of course, there’s the problem of there being so few producers of live television anymore…
But, truth be told, there’s just not much leeway in where the ceremony can go. And there’s certainly no live television the size of the Oscar show.
“And there’s certainly no live television the size of the Oscar show.”
Wouldn’t a film-loving sports producer have a good go? I’d say the Super Bowl is one hoopla-filled live event much larger than the Oscars.
Sport in a stadium is different to a movie awards show in a theatre. Right?
Well, why not see if Norman Jewison would have fun taking a crack at it. His career began doing live variety TV.
Then Jewison could turn the show into ROLLERBALL…