Oscar night focus on serious subjects
Grit over grins as Academy hopefuls on somber path
March 3, 2006
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the 78th Annual Academy Awards. Hollywood got serious -- really, really serious.
It's not just that the five films nominated for best picture are a uniformly somber lot -- though to be sure there is barely a rueful chuckle among them.
It's also that the inevitable hoopla surrounding any Oscar race was kept carefully curtailed. After years in which the Academy wagged its finger about excess campaigning, the contenders in this year's showdowns almost appeared to have borrowed a page from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, all vowing to place "principles before personalities."
As a consequence, there wasn't a nasty brouhaha over dirty campaigning like the one that surrounded "A Beautiful Mind" in 2002. And there was no dramatic standoff between the specialty film labels and their parent companies like the one that occurred during the great screener war leading up to the 2004 awards -- this year, the first screener, Sony Pictures Classics' "Junebug," was issued in September and nobody blinked.
Instead, this year's focus remained quite firmly on the films itself as the 5,798 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences turned their backs on much that the mainstream studios had to offer and instead chose to champion smaller pictures produced by indie outfits or the specialty units, often with an assist from outside financiers like Participant Prods.' progressively minded Jeff Skoll.
The best picture nominees that emerged could almost be read as a civics lesson on issues with which America is struggling: homophobia in the case of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," racial tensions in Paul Haggis' "Crash," the responsibilities of the media in both Bennett Miller's "Capote" and George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" and the response to terrorism in Steven Spielberg's "Munich."
That, of course, immediately triggered cries of outrage from the usual suspects who delight in Hollywood bashing as they protested that the film industry was out of step with mainstream America.
ABC News, for example, offered up a report that characterized Oscar noms for movies like "Brokeback" a "cultural can of worms" and trotted out conservative spokeswoman Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, who opined, "The motion picture industry has a death wish, quite frankly, because these kind of movies do not resonate with mainstream America." Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who couldn't quite quit expressing his distaste for "Brokeback," lamented, "In popular culture, things are getting worse. You know, I can give you -- I could sit here and give you examples all day. Let me just give you this example, and this is a controversial example. This gay cowboy movie -- and it's going to win, you know, a lot of awards all over, and they're -- the media is pushing this like crazy."
Gay advocates were just as eager to pat the Academy on the back for singling out such movies as "Brokeback," "Capote" and "Transamerica," which all feature gay or transgender protagonists. "By telling our stories, this year's Oscar nominees have helped raise the visibility of LGBT issues and have given millions of Americans a greater understanding of who we are," proclaimed Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
But while the pundits have been out in force, both attacking and applauding what they perceive as the Hollywood agenda, there's probably a simpler explanation at work. Certainly, a number of the filmmakers who rose to the fore this year -- Clooney most prominent among them with his nominations for both "Good Night" and "Syriana" -- are unapologetically liberal. But rather than advancing an agenda, Clooney posited, "Films are reflecting what is going on in society." Spielberg likened the outpouring of engaging movies to the cycle of films that emerged in the late '60s and early '70s "when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics."
Outside of the Academy Awards, however, the industry remains largely apolitical, more committed to turning a profit than advancing any cause.
If the Academy's choices don't reflect the traffic patterns at the local multiplex on a given weekend, that's largely because the Academy is made up of adults far removed from the young male demographic that Hollywood caters to during most of the year. Such movies as "Boogeyman" or "Saw II" might have enjoyed weekends when they were No. 1 at the boxoffice in 2005, but they were never on the Academy's radar.
This year, the Academy largely restricted itself to handing out nothing but technical noms to such populist entertainments as "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe" and "King Kong." Even in the best animated film category, the Academy turned its back on big grossers in favor of Nick Park's "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" and Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" -- together, the three movies grossed less than the $194 million domestic haul of the missing "Madagascar."
To be sure, some in the Hollywood community, though they are loath to go on the record, have bemoaned the fact that this year's nominations didn't exactly embrace what could be called more centrist movies. James Mangold's "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash biopic that found favor with moviegoers nationwide, did get five noms, including spotlights for its stars Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, but was denied a best picture slot. Ron Howard's "Cinderella Man" -- though it earned Paul Giamatti a deserved best supporting actor nomination among its three noms -- failed to duplicate the seven nominations, including a best picture mention, earned by a similar underdog tale, 2003's "Seabiscuit."
"Brokeback," the leader of the pack with eight nominations, might have confounded the skeptics who claimed it would never find an audience in the heartland. It has collected more than $75 million, a solid performance, ahead of the $64 million that last year's winner "Million Dollar Baby" grossed by the eve of its Oscar night triumph. Even so, with the boxoffice performances of the other best picture nominees all trailing behind "Brokeback," insiders are predicting a ratings-challenged broadcast as ABC airs the 78th ceremony, hosted by Jon Stewart, on Sunday night.
At the same time, there is plenty of evidence that even if they have not attracted hordes of moviegoers to the boxoffice, this year's nominees have seeped into the popular culture with "Brokeback" a genuine cultural barometer that has popped up everywhere from Jay Leno and David Letterman monologues to the cover of the New Yorker, with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the iconographic back-to-back pose of star-crossed lovers Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.
In part, that's because the specialty labels that released the bulk of this year's contenders took their time as they assiduously courted Oscar's favors. Focus Features unveiled "Brokeback" early in September with appearances at Venice, Telluride and Toronto. Warner Independent Pictures took "Good Night" to Venice and the New York Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics bowed "Capote" at Telluride, Toronto and New York.
By contrast, among the year-end releases, only "Munich," a Universal/DreamWorks production, proved to be a dominant player. Films that popped up briefly for limited Academy-qualifying runs such as Tommy Lee Jones' "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" and Terrence Malick's "The New World," which earned just one Academy nom, for its cinematography, were largely overlooked.
With the front-runners establishing themselves so early, this year's Oscar debate played out on a relatively new forum -- the blogosphere -- with such mainstream outlets as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times jumping into the fray to offer wall-to-wall coverage of the campaign season's every twist and turn. Even the resolutely independent Woody Allen, who picked up a writing nom for "Match Point," was coaxed into recording podcasts.
Among the online Oscar pundits, the walk-up to the nominations turned into something akin to shootout at the oy, gay! corral, with "Munich" proponents taking aim at "Brokeback" supporters and vice versa. In the postnominations period -- with "Brokeback," on the strength of its multiple guild wins, established as the prohibitive favorite -- the debate has shifted to whether "Crash" can break through for an upset.
Yet, for all the vituperation that has bubbled up on the Web, participants in this year's awards shootout have been struck by how remarkably congenial the competition has been. The DGA Awards dinner turned into a veritable mutual admiration society with Lee, the evening's winner, embracing his competitors by saying, "We're filmmakers. We make movies together, we celebrate together."
So let the 78th Annual Oscar lovefest -- or should that be love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-fest? -- begin.
It's not just that the five films nominated for best picture are a uniformly somber lot -- though to be sure there is barely a rueful chuckle among them.
It's also that the inevitable hoopla surrounding any Oscar race was kept carefully curtailed. After years in which the Academy wagged its finger about excess campaigning, the contenders in this year's showdowns almost appeared to have borrowed a page from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, all vowing to place "principles before personalities."
As a consequence, there wasn't a nasty brouhaha over dirty campaigning like the one that surrounded "A Beautiful Mind" in 2002. And there was no dramatic standoff between the specialty film labels and their parent companies like the one that occurred during the great screener war leading up to the 2004 awards -- this year, the first screener, Sony Pictures Classics' "Junebug," was issued in September and nobody blinked.
Instead, this year's focus remained quite firmly on the films itself as the 5,798 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences turned their backs on much that the mainstream studios had to offer and instead chose to champion smaller pictures produced by indie outfits or the specialty units, often with an assist from outside financiers like Participant Prods.' progressively minded Jeff Skoll.
The best picture nominees that emerged could almost be read as a civics lesson on issues with which America is struggling: homophobia in the case of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," racial tensions in Paul Haggis' "Crash," the responsibilities of the media in both Bennett Miller's "Capote" and George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" and the response to terrorism in Steven Spielberg's "Munich."
That, of course, immediately triggered cries of outrage from the usual suspects who delight in Hollywood bashing as they protested that the film industry was out of step with mainstream America.
ABC News, for example, offered up a report that characterized Oscar noms for movies like "Brokeback" a "cultural can of worms" and trotted out conservative spokeswoman Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, who opined, "The motion picture industry has a death wish, quite frankly, because these kind of movies do not resonate with mainstream America." Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who couldn't quite quit expressing his distaste for "Brokeback," lamented, "In popular culture, things are getting worse. You know, I can give you -- I could sit here and give you examples all day. Let me just give you this example, and this is a controversial example. This gay cowboy movie -- and it's going to win, you know, a lot of awards all over, and they're -- the media is pushing this like crazy."
Gay advocates were just as eager to pat the Academy on the back for singling out such movies as "Brokeback," "Capote" and "Transamerica," which all feature gay or transgender protagonists. "By telling our stories, this year's Oscar nominees have helped raise the visibility of LGBT issues and have given millions of Americans a greater understanding of who we are," proclaimed Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
But while the pundits have been out in force, both attacking and applauding what they perceive as the Hollywood agenda, there's probably a simpler explanation at work. Certainly, a number of the filmmakers who rose to the fore this year -- Clooney most prominent among them with his nominations for both "Good Night" and "Syriana" -- are unapologetically liberal. But rather than advancing an agenda, Clooney posited, "Films are reflecting what is going on in society." Spielberg likened the outpouring of engaging movies to the cycle of films that emerged in the late '60s and early '70s "when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics."
Outside of the Academy Awards, however, the industry remains largely apolitical, more committed to turning a profit than advancing any cause.
If the Academy's choices don't reflect the traffic patterns at the local multiplex on a given weekend, that's largely because the Academy is made up of adults far removed from the young male demographic that Hollywood caters to during most of the year. Such movies as "Boogeyman" or "Saw II" might have enjoyed weekends when they were No. 1 at the boxoffice in 2005, but they were never on the Academy's radar.
This year, the Academy largely restricted itself to handing out nothing but technical noms to such populist entertainments as "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe" and "King Kong." Even in the best animated film category, the Academy turned its back on big grossers in favor of Nick Park's "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" and Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" -- together, the three movies grossed less than the $194 million domestic haul of the missing "Madagascar."
To be sure, some in the Hollywood community, though they are loath to go on the record, have bemoaned the fact that this year's nominations didn't exactly embrace what could be called more centrist movies. James Mangold's "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash biopic that found favor with moviegoers nationwide, did get five noms, including spotlights for its stars Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, but was denied a best picture slot. Ron Howard's "Cinderella Man" -- though it earned Paul Giamatti a deserved best supporting actor nomination among its three noms -- failed to duplicate the seven nominations, including a best picture mention, earned by a similar underdog tale, 2003's "Seabiscuit."
"Brokeback," the leader of the pack with eight nominations, might have confounded the skeptics who claimed it would never find an audience in the heartland. It has collected more than $75 million, a solid performance, ahead of the $64 million that last year's winner "Million Dollar Baby" grossed by the eve of its Oscar night triumph. Even so, with the boxoffice performances of the other best picture nominees all trailing behind "Brokeback," insiders are predicting a ratings-challenged broadcast as ABC airs the 78th ceremony, hosted by Jon Stewart, on Sunday night.
At the same time, there is plenty of evidence that even if they have not attracted hordes of moviegoers to the boxoffice, this year's nominees have seeped into the popular culture with "Brokeback" a genuine cultural barometer that has popped up everywhere from Jay Leno and David Letterman monologues to the cover of the New Yorker, with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the iconographic back-to-back pose of star-crossed lovers Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.
In part, that's because the specialty labels that released the bulk of this year's contenders took their time as they assiduously courted Oscar's favors. Focus Features unveiled "Brokeback" early in September with appearances at Venice, Telluride and Toronto. Warner Independent Pictures took "Good Night" to Venice and the New York Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics bowed "Capote" at Telluride, Toronto and New York.
By contrast, among the year-end releases, only "Munich," a Universal/DreamWorks production, proved to be a dominant player. Films that popped up briefly for limited Academy-qualifying runs such as Tommy Lee Jones' "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" and Terrence Malick's "The New World," which earned just one Academy nom, for its cinematography, were largely overlooked.
With the front-runners establishing themselves so early, this year's Oscar debate played out on a relatively new forum -- the blogosphere -- with such mainstream outlets as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times jumping into the fray to offer wall-to-wall coverage of the campaign season's every twist and turn. Even the resolutely independent Woody Allen, who picked up a writing nom for "Match Point," was coaxed into recording podcasts.
Among the online Oscar pundits, the walk-up to the nominations turned into something akin to shootout at the oy, gay! corral, with "Munich" proponents taking aim at "Brokeback" supporters and vice versa. In the postnominations period -- with "Brokeback," on the strength of its multiple guild wins, established as the prohibitive favorite -- the debate has shifted to whether "Crash" can break through for an upset.
Yet, for all the vituperation that has bubbled up on the Web, participants in this year's awards shootout have been struck by how remarkably congenial the competition has been. The DGA Awards dinner turned into a veritable mutual admiration society with Lee, the evening's winner, embracing his competitors by saying, "We're filmmakers. We make movies together, we celebrate together."
So let the 78th Annual Oscar lovefest -- or should that be love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-fest? -- begin.
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