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The importance of winning Oscar
Kathy Hofmeyr
Posted Fri, 02 Mar 2007
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Well, bang goes the scathing criticism I’d expected to write about Sunday night’s gauche-fest in LA. 2007 seems to be the year Oscar Got Class. Ellen Degeneres added a touch of homey sweetness and has never been funnier, the ceremony was unusually staid (by Academy standards, anyway) and, well, classy. Maybe it was the presence of all that Englishness.
Not many surprises, apart from Best Supporting Actor and Actress. Jennifer Hudson realised the American Dream while Eddie Murphy went home in a huff at having been squeezed out by the (frankly) far more deserving veteran Alan Arkin.
Marty finally got his — thirty years overdue, but hey. I must confess to having wept copiously at that. Helen Mirren, the very picture of elegance and still the sexiest woman over fifty on the planet (especially since Catherine Deneuve’s gawdawful facelift) got hers and took it away in style. Forest Whitaker… well, for once the Academy has rewarded a terrific and extremely deserving actor in a role that demands recognition.
Sad, though, to see poor Peter O’Toole go home empty-handed once again, bringing him into the lead as Oscar’s biggest acting loser of all time, a title he previously shared with Richard Burton (0 for 7 at the time of his death in 1984). At least O’Toole has his Honorary Oscar (what I like to call the “Oh Shit He’s Dying” award) from a few years back as compensation.
Cynical and underhanded
The story of the origin of the Oscars is neither a glamorous nor a generous one: started by the studio heads in 1927 as a cynical, underhanded means to keep control over employees who might otherwise unionise and cost them both control and money, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was ruled by a handful of powermongers.
The Award of Merit, an afterthought, was also rather a pointless exercise, since the studios more or less controlled the voters. Thus, for example, the biggest Oscar winner in history by miles is Walt Disney who, as Head of the Academy’s Cartoon division, essentially voted himself no fewer than 32 separate Oscars (not counting the seven little buggers crafted specially for 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs').
The early Academy Awards (which would soon become the world’s most eagerly anticipated AGM) also had the useful side effect of powerful, positive publicity, drawing attention away from the numerous indiscretions of the celebrities, whose public expected them to be squeaky clean, teetotal and either monastically celibate or matrimonially, monogamously hetero. Oh my, how times have changed.
Big old sham
The Oscars can be fun to watch, but so much of it is just a big old sham. Hollywood is, after all, primarily about money and entertainment, in that order. The arts and sciences are way, waaaaay down the list, so the title of Academy of Motion Picture Arts etc is really a PR-inspired misnomer. “Art”? C’mon — Hollywood is to films what McDonalds is to the food industry. It’s about producing entertainment — artistic creativity very seldom is permitted to slip in. Considering the technical feats it takes to make a film, “Science” is more like it, but even that takes a backseat to larger considerations. Shockingly, one of the hardest-working sectors of Hollywood receives no mention whatsoever at the Awards: the stuntmen.
But Oscars have another major flaw: the Academy’s electorate are a fickle bunch, frequently giving the award to the wrong person or film or to the right person in the wrong year. De Niro got it for 'Raging Bull' rather than for 'Taxi Driver'; Dustin Hoffmann got it for 'Kramer vs Kramer' (and then for 'Rain Man') instead of for 'Midnight Cowboy' or 'Tootsie'. Martin Scorsese finally got it this year for 'The Departed' — 17 years after he should have got it for 'Goodfellas', 19 years after he should have got it for 'The Last Temptation of Christ' and 30 years after he should have got it for 'Taxi Driver'.
Pacino won it for beating us over the head with the tear-jerking blind hedonist Frank Slade in 'Scent of a Woman' instead of for his delicately unfolding portrayal of Michael Corleone in the first two 'Godfathers'. Sean Penn won it for 'Mystic River', in which he was uncharacteristically outperformed by his co-stars, rather than for 'The Interpreter' — a crap film, to be sure, but Penn’s finest performance since 'State of Grace' — thus edging out the underrated Bill Murray in the only sniff he’s ever likely to get of the Oscar.
That’s just to name a few.
Getting it wrong
would like to be remembered as a best-selling author, a little-known blues singer and perhaps someone’s favourite aunt. She lives in Jo’burg with her dogs, two pure-bred mongrels named Harpo and Buffy.
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Among the geniuses never to win a single Academy Award (not counting the Oh Shit He’s Dying award) are Cary Grant, John Hughes, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Burton, Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin, Edward Norton, Tim Burton and his resident composer Danny Elfman, Willem Dafoe, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Angela Bassett, Peter Sellers, Tony Curtis, Sidney Lumet, Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg and the Marx Brothers.
The Coen brothers, undoubtedly two of the greatest maverick filmmakers working today, have won a single Oscar: for Best Screenplay ('Fargo'). More recently they were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' — a script so loosely based on Homer’s 'Odyssey' that not to nominate it for Original Screenplay was laughable.
Stanley Kubrick got nothing for direction but one for Best Special Effects. I mean, Special Effects? There’s a kick in the teeth if ever there was one.
Orson Welles lost out on all Oscars but one for 'Citizen Kane', the ballsiest, most controversial and technically the most groundbreaking film Hollywood ever made and one consistently voted the greatest film of all time. Welles had to settle for sharing Best Screenplay with Herman J Mankiewicz, the screenplay’s actual author. He never recovered from the blow.
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