My Love/Hate Relationship with the Academy Awards

The year was 1992 and a wide-eyed, Disney-obsessed eight-year-old Australian boy was sitting down to watch the Academy Awards for the very first time. The guy from City Slickers opened the show with a six-minute song that made very little sense to the precocious child. Bryan Adams sang that gushy love song from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the boy’s sister was obsessed with. And, most importantly, this youngster was served his first taste of Oscar disappointment.

Way back then, I had no idea how the Academy Awards worked. My naïve mind didn’t know about unstoppable frontrunners, unscrupulous Oscar campaigns, and the notion that just because I loved a film didn’t mean it was going to win Best Picture.

To be honest, that last point is something I need to remind myself every year. But young Doug had to watch as his beloved Beauty and the Beast lost to that horror film about a cannibal his parents refused to allow him to watch. Little did I realise it was just the first in a long line of crushing blows the Academy would dish out over the next 28 years.

From Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan to the unfathomable victory of Crash over Brokeback Mountain and whatever expletives you wish to use to describe Roma losing to Green Book, it’s always rather crushing to see something you adore being defeated by something you despise.

‘Parasite’, an international film, wins Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards

My love/hate relationship with the Academy Awards is difficult to explain to those outside the awards season bubble. If something causes you so much continual pain and frustration, why do you continue to obsess over it? Maybe we Oscar prognosticators are just masochists, but, every now and then, you witness the sweetest of wins that makes all the torment worth it.

We saw such a moment of genuine bliss just a few months ago when Bong Joon Ho’s acerbic masterpiece Parasite made history as the first film not in the English language to win Best Picture. Naturally, we didn’t know it then, but the fact this remarkable victory arrived mere weeks before the entire world fell apart makes it all the more satisfying in retrospect.

It’s the kind of delicious satisfaction we awards watchers chase every year. Sometimes, it happens. Most of the time it doesn’t. But therein lies the chaotic fun of predicting a circus like the Academy Awards.

For as long as I’ve been watching the Oscars, I’ve been foolhardily attempting to predict who will win. Back in the day, it was cutting out the article featuring all the nominees from the newspaper and circling my picks to keep nearby while I watched the ceremony. Those predictions were mostly based on gut instinct and were likely completely wrong, but it always was fun to play the game. However, in 1999, something changed that ultimately charted the course to the Oscars obsessive I am today.

Filmotomy Podcast 93: Are We Over the Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody Oscars?

The 71st Academy Awards were supposed to be Steven Spielberg’s night. In many ways, it still was. He walked away with his second Oscar for Best Director and Saving Private Ryan scooped up five awards, which is obviously nothing to sneeze at. But when Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture, it caused a shift in how I viewed awards season. I became determined to understand how this happened and how I had completely misread the signals heralding a victory for the war epic.

With the advent of the internet, I was able to understand the larger concept of awards season and the cavalcade of precursor ceremonies that ultimately helped shape the overall race. If you wanted to be a true Oscar contender, there were several boxes and key nominations you had to tick. PGA, DGA, WGA, SAG, BAFTA, and the Golden Globes, to name just a few.

Throw in the somewhat-secretive practice of Oscar campaigning (which, at the time, was being maniacally manipulated by Harvey Weinstein He Who Must Not Be Named), and, suddenly, the notion of how one predicts the Academy Awards became much clearer.

Now, let’s be honest; predicting the Oscars is still a game of reading tea leaves that can be entirely misleading. This year, all the precursor signs were pointing to 1917 taking home Best Picture. A few years ago, the same occurred with La La Land. Both films cleaned up during the entire season and still fell over at the last hurdle, so there’s hardly an exact science to knowing how the chips will fall. Rules are made to be broken and those of us who attempt to predict the final outcome are wrong as often as we are right.

New Horizons for the Thief, Two Alfreds and Ginger – 1940 at the Oscars

When you’ve followed the Academy Awards for as long as I have (albeit there are many out there who have followed for much, much longer), you begin to understand the game to some degree. You quickly learn how often the eventual winner has very little to do with the film or performance itself. Yes, it has to be “good” enough to get in the game. However, from there, it’s a complicated and arduous task to become the eventual winner. And, even then, anything can happen on the night. Just ask Olivia Colman.

Regardless of the pain, frustration, and bitter disappointment the Academy Awards can routinely deliver, I love awards season. Much like the incomparable Moira Rose, it is my favourite season. It’s why I’m beyond thrilled and excited to be anointed Filmotomy’s new Awards Editor. As those close to me will attest, I live and breathe this stuff and I cannot wait to get started, especially with this particular incoming season, which will be one of the strangest in history.

Thanks to a postponed ceremony, an extended period of eligibility, and the snakes and ladders game of release date changes (see you next year, West Side Story), we’re in for an awards season unlike any other. Way back in the early millennium, discovering websites reporting on the Academy Awards made me feel less alone in my obsession with Oscar season. One can only hope Filmotomy’s upcoming coverage may do the same for you. Let the games begin.