In a perfect world, an annual celebration by an industry that melds artistry, technology and business in the interest of promoting the culture of storytelling through film should be a joyful and straightforward event. It’s the simple announcement of the best in achievement during the preceding year – escapism all dolled-up to celebrate itself.
Unfortunately, when you are the epitome of self-congratulation, escapism becomes furthest thing from mind. AMPAS is quick to give the appearance of taking up the gauntlet for various causes out of self-righteousness and participants often bedeck themselves in badges and ribbons at the risk of looking like maypoles, but what impact does this have on determining the “best” of the year?
The Drive to the Prize
The most appropriate metaphor for the Oscar race is probably the image of a cattle drive, with PR staff working overtime to herd as many voters as possible into one’s own corral. What is the most effective strategy for this? Concentrating on the perception that one’s vote does not necessarily reflect what is best in film, but what best represents the collective self-image of AMPAS voters from selections of a particular season. Like any cattle drive, the herd can be skittish – the slightest thunderclap can send them scurrying in different directions; therefore the objective of every studio publicist is to capitalize on those social rumblings.
The taffy-pull of politics, issue-fatigue, and sometimes real, honest-to-god headline traumas occur that shake-off the reverie like an ice water challenge, often impacting the voting or the actual ceremony itself.
The Show Must Go On…Somehow
The presentation ceremony has been sidetracked exactly four times:
- In 1938, a massive flood hit Los Angeles, devastating the region and making travel from the Valley and along the shoreline impossible. The award ceremony was postponed for a week until stars who were stranded on the outskirts could make their way to the Biltmore.
- The 1968 Oscars were scheduled for April 8th, but when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on April 4th , the ceremony was rescheduled and the Governor’s Ball cancelled entirely.
- On March 30th, 1981 (the day scheduled for the Oscar presentation), President Ronald Reagan and three others were shot leaving a speaking engagement. The show was cancelled and, once the President’s prognosis was determined to be stable, took place the following evening.
- A strike by the Writers Guild of America in 1988 caught Oscar with half a script, forcing so much impromptu banter from the presenters that it garnered some of the worst reviews in its history. A similar situation was narrowly averted again in 2008.
As serious and terrible as these events were, none of them impacted voting or results.
Culture Clash: When the New Meets the Old
For a clan that’s too often painted with liberal broadstrokes, embracing change has never been Oscar’s forte. More than once, when presented with a fork in the road where old cinema and new diverge in style and substance and Oscar is forced to choose, he generally plows straight down the middle.
It’s 1968 again – the year of the King murder – and the five nominees for Best Picture reflect the first true confrontation between old and new Hollywood. The nominees from traditional wing were the bloated box-office loser Doctor Dolittle, and the sentimental, lip-serving vehicle starring two beloved veterans Tracy and Hepburn, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
The youngbloods were represented by the polarizing Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate. It was probably appropriate that a tight – if a bit unimaginative – drama about racism with knock-out performances was the middle ground choice, and In the Heat of the Night walked away with the Oscar. The win was probably fitting for the circumstances, but had they truly selected the best film of the year? No, not when one looks back in hindsight.
All’s Fair in Love and War
In 1971, the Vietnam War was in full charge mode and the country was divided as it hadn’t been since the Civil War. Oscar’s menu that year was made-up of three great, if conflicting films and two real head-scratchers. That the ridiculous Airport or the insipid Love Story made it into the top five can only be attributed to their box office success. Bob Rafelson’s brilliant Five Easy Pieces had attitude that the likes of Gene Kelly or Ginger Rogers could never embrace, especially after the previous year’s shocker of a win by the X-rated Midnight Cowboy.
A win by Robert Altman’s definitive anti-war comedy M*A*S*H would definitely not play well in much of the country. That left the epic bio-pic Patton, a grand and sharply written (co-scripted by the little-known Francis Ford Coppola) that somehow managed to appease both sides of the war question. Add to that an earthquake of a performance by George C. Scott and Patton easily waltzed away with the gold statue. Scott, of course, refused his Best Actor prize.
The Year of “Leave Me Be”
1977 offered voters a once-in-a-lifetime selection of some of the best films to be released in the 70s cinema renaissance; unfortunately, the subject matter of four of the selections were not exactly the salve voters were looking for after the bludgeoning they took in the ring from the reality of the times. Bound for Glory, about Woody Guthrie, the founding father of the protest song, would not survive the pounding hangover from the previous decade.
The groundbreaking Taxi Driver (never a good thing on Oscar’s eyes) was about a lunatic wannabe assassin that would never be allowed to represent AMPAS. The razor-sharp satire Network ripped the scab off all that was wrong with society by way of cinema’s nemesis, television. And, lord knows, years of non-stop Watergate coverage fatigued voters to the point that All the President’s Men was a non-starter for Best Picture. What was left – why, Rocky, of course. Finally – somebody to cheer for. And cheer they did.
The Ultimate Weapon – The Negative Campaign
With a very few exceptions, Oscar has proven to be pretty much of a coward when it comes to controversy. At the first sign of trouble, he ducks into the sand. Here are the three most infamous examples:
- 1941 was the year that, arguably, the greatest film ever made debuted. Orson Welles Citizen Kane revolutionized both cinematic narrative and technology. Unfortunately, politician and media magnate William Randolph Hearst, on whose life the film was loosely inspired, did not see it that way. He used all of his powers to bad mouth the film, prevent its release, and even tried to destroy the negatives. He set his flying monkeys – gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper – to slander everything and everyone involved with the film. The film was expected to win most of its nine nominations, but block voting by Hearst minions left it with a single award for writing.
- The gasp heard ‘round the world occurred in 2006 when a befuddled Jack Nicholson opened the Best Picture envelope and announced, “Crash.” Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain had accumulated a phenominal cache of honors in its run up to Oscar night, but homophobia reared its ugly head. Has-been veterans such as Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine slammed the film about “gay cowboys” and mainstream ultrabland critic Gene Shalit accused one of the film’s characters as being a portrayal of a sexual predator (for which he later apologized) . The right wing media went nuts, taking their on-air criticism to the edge of obscenity and beyond with terms like “Fudgepack Mountain”. When enough AMPAS voters chose to bravely and honorably duck and cover, the film’s fate was sealed. Crash, indeed.
- Six years later, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty would become 2012s best reviewed film of the year, according to Metacritic, but it encountered controversy before filming even began that was relentless up to – even beyond – the Oscars. The Conservative Right claimed it was politically biased while the Liberal Left shat themselves thinking that the film – sight unseen as yet – endorsed torture. Members of Congress alleged the filmmakers stole access to classified information and demanded investigations into the matter that were later dropped. What does all this have to do with filmmaking? Absolutely nothing, but the die was cast. Zero Dark Thirty won a single Oscar, for Best Sound, in a tie with the James Bond potboiler, Skyfall.
What Will Be the Story in 2018?
You can apply any one of these templates to many Oscar contests over the years, but which will apply this year? We already have some negative campaigns happening in social media against – what a coincidence – the two perceived front-runners – Del Toro has been accused of stealing his story for The Shape of Water and suggestions of racism have been leveled at Three Billboards. With last year’s win by Moonlight, some (enough, probably) will feel that they did their civic duty last year – two birds / one stone – and take Call Me by Your Name and Get Out from serious consideration.
Nolan’s multi-layered and immersive Dunkirk was probably viewed by enough voters on tablets and phones to be neither, and therefore easily dismissed, something the director has gotten used to. The cause célèbre flavor-of-the-moment is the #metoo, so will the Academy use this to try momentum and try to make amends for past transgressions? Perhaps they will, but only if they feel safe and secure in doing so.
Stay-tuned and let the games begin.