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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, October 19th, 2009 - 8 Comments »
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Why Can't Gotham Get Serious About Movie Awards?

I like IFP. I want to support IFP.
But regardless of how they keep on trying to make The Gotham Awards the first step on the road to Oscar – neck and neck with the idiotic National Board of Review – the event remains a very nice place to be honored… and completely meaningless when it comes to the rest of the award season.
A few years ago, 2004, they figured out how to pick the lowest hanging fruit of the awards tree – awards for actresses – with the “Breakthrough Actor Award” and got behind Catalina Sandino Moreno, then Amy Adams, then Rinko Kikuchi, then Ellen Page, and last year, Melissa Leo.
Best Feature has been less successful in pushing nominees along since the category was launched in 2004. The first two – Sideways and Capote – got in. The last three – Half Nelson, Into The Wild, and Frozen River – did not.
Breakthrough Director Award has gone to Joshua Marston, Bennett Miller, Ryan Fleck, Craig Zobel, and Lance Hammer… only Bennett went on to a nomination (or his film with it).
In the four years of “Best Ensemble,” six films have won… only Babel got a Best Picture nod.
Writing and below-the-line awards were dropped over a decade ago.
And so… congrats to everyone who is being honored at this party.
This year, they are putting their bets on A Serious Man and The Hurt Locker. A 10 film Oscar BP list makes this safer than in past.
And for Breakthrough Actor, there is only one actress… which should make Jeremy Renner, the only actor on the list with a shot at an Oscar nod, a little anxious. (I wish him the very best of luck, indeed.)
Onward…

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8 Comments »

8 Responses to “Why Can't Gotham Get Serious About Movie Awards?”

  1. mutinyco says:
    October 19, 2009 at 5:09 pm

    The Gothams specifically honor independent film. If they’ve been less accurate in predicting Oscar nominees the last few years it’s because by 2006 there was a bit of controversy that while Half Nelson won big, most of the nominees were for well-budgeted studio/dependent pictures and not true indies; since then they’ve focused more on legit indies.

  2. LexG says:
    October 19, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    “…and got behind Catalina Sandino Moreno, then Amy Adams, then Rinko Kikuchi, then Ellen Page…”
    I’d like to “get behind” them too… if you know what I mean.
    GOOD JOKE.

  3. EOTW says:
    October 19, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    P: I’m confused. Are you saying these awards are pointless they predict the Oscar race accurately? what’s wrong with their past choices? agree with them or not, what is the point if giving out awards if only to predict the most banal and boring of them all?

  4. LexG says:
    October 20, 2009 at 2:44 am

    INTO THE WILD = K-STEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

  5. David Poland says:
    October 20, 2009 at 8:00 am

    I’m saying that this ongoing scam suggesting that there is a Higher Purpose to these premature – it’s f-in mid-October, folks!!!! – try-to-be-first awards is also ineffective.
    While I love the idea of it – as I do the also problematic Indie Spirits – the reality is that both “indie” events are chasing Oscar, whether they want to admit it or not. The same is true with the critics groups who whine about not being able to see everything before they vote, but then choose to vote in the first weeks of December because they don’t want to be left out of the big parade.
    When anyone can give me one good reason other than the maze of other awards to announce year-end nominees in October and to give a year-end award out in early December, let me know. But to be fair, it is a rhetorical question.
    Mutiny and EOTW hit my point right on the head… make Gothams about something more than chasing Oscar… same with Indie Spirits. Break away from the cycle. Stop trying to be the indie Golden Globes.
    And if killing the messenger is the only answer, I remain, faithfully yours…

  6. djk813 says:
    October 20, 2009 at 11:18 am

    I always assumed that the point of the Gotham Awards was to serve as IFP’s single biggest fund raising event of the year, and the easiest way to get people there is to nominate people who are going to be in the middle of Oscar campaigning and therefore have to show up. And then the studios of those films probably have to purchase a table to the event, and that draws other industry types and wannabe industry types.
    So they are jumping on board the Oscar gravy train just like the trades, websites, etc. who now all have Oscar sections to bring in the FYC ads. Hard to begrudge a non-profit organization for taking the opportunity, and I don’t think it’s completely cynical in that I believe that they really do admire and want to award the films that they’ve nominated.

  7. sashastone says:
    October 21, 2009 at 6:30 am

    Yeah, there is no gravy train anymore. There is way too much competition, so it’s a sellers market. Or is it a buyers market? I think it’s a sellers market but I’m terrible at econ. Anyway, I disagree that the IFP chase Oscar – or even Film Independent. What they do is what everyone does – position their choices early to help maximize interest before the glut of the awards season empties itself out. There are specific groups who do position themselves to influence the Oscars – like the Globes and the BFCA and NBR. There are a lot of different ways the Gothams could have gone if they had Oscar on their minds.

  8. djk813 says:
    October 21, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    I think the complete absence of Precious kind of negates any thoughts that the Gotham nominations were chasing Oscar.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon