It’s okay to just not think that January Oscars are a good idea, but Anne Thompson’s piece on it chooses to embrace every weak, self-serving argument – from smart, well-intended people – to make the point.
Just start looking at the ramifications of moving the date that early and you can see why it
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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
it seems to me that a shortened campaign season would mean a devastating loss of ad revenue to some on-line and (what’s left of them) print outlets….am i wrong in that thought?
however, given that this change isn’t being considered until ’12, i’d be willing to bet it’ll get sidelined by then…..
Who’d thunk it? David arguing for a collapsing window. January personally seems a bit too early for me, just like the new start to daylight savings time. I guess everything just gets brought up a bit on the calendar. I realize I
I would be very much opposed to cutting 10 (!) awards from the show. Award-winners from categories like editing and makeup often are more excited and give more heartfelt speeches than the big stars, especially the ones who’ve been winning precursor awards for months by that time.
I also agree with what Triple said above.
Question: How many people even watch the precursor awards enough to be fatigued by them? Obviously the industry and awards enthusiasts probably do, but to talk strictly in terms of a percentage of people who watch the Oscar telecast — and I assume, perhaps wrongly, that it is ultimately that ratings number that this is all about — how many of them will have been following the precursors too?
I can’t imagine it’s a very impressive percentage. For what I suppose is the majority, the acceptance speeches that the repeat winners have been giving 15 times in 45 days are going to be brand new.
As I have been saying… this is not just about The Golden Globes. It’s not the shows or their ratings… it’s the relentless media hype that extends over 3 months and change.
Likewise, the speeches are not just live on air… they are repeated a million times by TV, radio, and web alike.
It’s not as simple as being first or not as many shows. Most of the “shows” are not televised. But the hype is relentless and exhausting.
David, moving the ceremonies to January will not exactly kill the exhausting and relentless hype. They will just move it back to accommodate the Oscars possible January move. If you really wanted to get rid of the hype. If you really want to slim line that exhaustive and relentless machine. You move the Oscars to the last week of December.
David: I didn’t mean to imply that awards fatigue was the only issue. It was just a tangential question.
But now that you mention it, what’s so bad — from the perspective of the studios — about “relentless and exhausting” hype? I can think of one reason, which is that it’s expensive. I can’t think of another.
“Expensive” is a great reason on its own, of course. But I wonder about that. You’ve done a great job so far showing how the box office bump that movies get for getting Oscar nominations/wins has declined in recent years. Where once it was quite conspicuous, now sometimes a bump doesn’t even register.
But I wonder if that’s because the bump is now just spread out over three months instead of hitting all at once on nominations day and again after the telecast. It’s fairly inarguable that awareness of the awards season is dramatically higher than it was 10-15 years ago. Oscar predictions games have exploded in popularity. All this may have caused awareness of awards contenders to set in earlier, and over a broader period of time, than it used to be, when sometimes the first people knew about a movie was when ads started showing up saying “Nominated for 8 Academy Awards!”
It’s hard for me to prove this, but it fits logically. Look at some of the small movies that have made respectable amounts of money: Capote? Frost/Nixon? Take these movies out of awards contention, and I don’t see them making nearly so much money.
So I wonder if the expense of the three months of hype is just as financially profitable as it always was, if not more so. But instead of all the box office cash hitting the weekend after nominations, the presumptive nominees start banking it earlier.
I wish I knew of a way to test my theory against evidence, but I’m not sure how to. We can’t know how much a movie might have made under other circumstances.
Side note: I just realized I conflated the interests of studios with the interests of AMPAS. I don’t know how much overall revenues for awards contenders matter to AMPAS, or if it does, how much that matters relative to other things like the telecast ratings and Oscar’s image.
I think I’m less clear on all this than I was before I started participating in this thread.