Version
COMMENTARY
ET CETERA
DISPATCHES
LISTS
FEATURES
CORRECTIONS
MAILBAG
REVIEWS NEUNER
OLEAR
RICHARDS
STERNE
MASTHEAD
CONTACT
SUBMIT
SUBSCRIBE ARCHIVES
RECOGNIZE
Why I watch the Oscars
It's been six months since I wrote my first weekly column, on Hollywood has-been Geena Davis. In that time, I've cultivated a disdain for Goliaths corporate, cultural, and corporate cultural. I've bashed major league baseball, Verizon, EEO laws, our benighted President, and Hollywood movies.
What irks me so about these disparate institutions is their fall from greatness. An office once held by Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln is now sullied by a barely literate nepotist. A game that once captured the imagination of a nation has been ruined by the greed of its custodians. An industry that produced Casablanca and Audrey Hepburn sells us Gladiator and Julia Roberts. We are expected to spend more and more money on tickets and on campaign contributions. We are expected to be happy about this. We are expected to buy into the delusion that the product is still top shelf.
So why does someone who so abhors the celebration of mediocrity devote an entire issue of LARGEREGO to the Academy Awards? Is not the Oscar statuette an embodiment of all I despise? What is it about award shows, and the Academy Awards in particular, that so intrigues me? Why do I care who wins?
Four reasons, really:
I love movies. Sophomore year of high school, my friends and I made a series of them. We did a James Bond, an Indiana Jones, a Terminator, and my personal favorite, The Dukes of Hazzard Meets the A-Team. We had no editing equipment and no script, but we were all happy with the final cut, although I'm sure my mother thought we were all nuts.
I appreciate good movies. When I got to college I decided to pursue moviemaking as a career. I wrote a few screenplays and, with my friend Mike Strange, made a movie -- a fake documentary about the making of a really bad horror movie. I was a teaching assistant for a screenwriting class. And even though Georgetown had no film program, I studied cinema. I burned out my VCR watching every "good" movie I could get my hands on. Gorgeous spring afternoons I spent on my couch watching The Ten Commandments and Rebel Without a Cause. While I took pleasure in the exercize, I did not watch the films for pleasure. I watched them to educate myself. I felt like I needed to see as many movies as possible.
I write movies. I just got through entering Helen of Troy, N.Y., my latest script, in as many contests as I could find. I would like nothing more than to be able to write screenplays all day long. One day, come hell or major credit card debt, I will see one of my scripts made into a movie. And yes, I admit it -- I do occasionally daydream about winning the award for Best Original Screenplay.
I want people to appreciate my work. I don't want fame; I want recognition. And there's a difference. Stephen Gaughan, who won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Traffic, is not famous, will likely never be famous. My mother does not know who he is. Hell, if I saw him walking down Astor Place I might not recognize him. But he wrote a fantastic script, and he was recognized, justly, for having done so. That, to me, is what the Oscars are all about: recognizing creative people for jobs well done. We applaud at the end of stage plays, but when do we applaud films? Once a year, on the last Sunday in March.
I cheered when Benicio del Toro won Best Supporting Actor. I booed when the Russell Crowe won Best Actor. When the consummately mediocre Julia Roberts and her perky tits strutted to the stage, my girlfriend Stephanie threw a hat at the TV screen. I jumped for joy, literally, when Steven Soderbergh won Best Director for Traffic. And I cursed a blue streak when Gladiator, a glorified B-movie, took home the grand prize.
To me, Gladiator winning instead of Traffic is a breach of justice. It's no different than Dubya stealing an election he didn't deserve. Or the Russians beating the U.S. in basketball in the '72 Olympics because of corrupt officiating. Or Clarence Thomas being sworn in to the Supreme Court. The process has to be just, or the Oscars denigrate to the Grammys.
Traffic did not win Best Picture, but its director was recognized for his fine work. And Soderbergh delivered the speech of the night. "I could thank a lot of people publicly, but instead I'll thank them privately." He went on to thank everyone who creates, whether they write books or make movies or act or compose music or dance or whatever. "I'd like to thank everyone who makes art, because without art, life would be unbearable."
Soderbergh understands that the Oscars are not about fashion and fame, glitz and glamour, or even winners and losers. They are about recognition. And isn't that what everyone wants?
By Greg Olear
032701