In the last Audio Edition Doug and I talked about how we thought the Oscars could be improved. Here are the highlights.
1) Change the Rules so that movies have to be in FULL WIDE THEATRICAL RELEASE by the end of the year!
Right now, to be considered for the Oscars, a movie only has to be in limited release by the end of the calendar year. This, in my opinon, is a STUPID rule. Oscar buzz starts, and most people haven’t even seen (or had the chance to see) the movie they’re buzzing about. Stupid stupid stupid. If you want people to be more interested in the Oscars, then make the movies available to the public before you start talking nominations for them.
2) Cut out the pointless Montages!!!
The montages for “In Memoriam” and for the recipient of the honorary Oscar are fine. Keep those ones. They have a point to them. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY cut out the 3 or 4 other pointless montages that served NO PURPOSE whatsoever. They were a waste of time and bored us to death.
3) Cut the performances of Best Song nominess
Why the hell are you devoting 15 minutes of air time to songs that weren’t good enough to make it on the charts, and were only played during the end credits of the movies anyway?!?!?! It’s STUPID! What’s more important… the Best Screenplay Oscar or the best original Song? Obviously the screenplay is MUCH MUCH MUCH more important. And yet, you ony play an 8 second clip for each nominee for screen play… but the best song nominees get to sing their whole frickin tune?!?! That’s DUMB. Cut out the performances, no one wants to see them.
4) Cut the President of the Academy Speech
I’m sorry dude… but no one cares about you or who you are. Introduce the show and the host for the evening, and then disapear. We don’t want to see you on stage taking up minutes of air time talking about how DVDs are bad. Go away.
5) Present Best short documentary, Best Short Animated and Best Short Live Action Oscars at a seperate event.
No disrespect intended to those very gifted people who make films in those categories… but 99% of the Oscar viewing audience have never even heard of any of those films let alone seen them. We don’t care, and together they took up about 12-15 minutes of screen time. Give those awards out at a separate evening like they do with the technical Oscars.
The Oscar are still way too long. Take out the things I suggested and you could cut the show by 45 minutes to and hour. I think everyone would be happy with that. Your thoughts?
“The “wide release” is not about “Ticket sales”. It’s about giving the general public the opportunity to see the films before mentioning them for Oscars. And I still hold that this is totally needed.”
Maybe, if you feel that the purpose of the awards is to get ABC big ratings one Sunday night. But if you feel it’s an industry awards meant to honor and promote the best work in film, the platform releases makes the ceremony a far more useful promotional too.
Thank you, John. I don’t listen to the podcasts, so this post was much appreciated.
Bobby…
You missed my point entirely. The “wide release” is not about “Ticket sales”. It’s about giving the general public the opportunity to see the films before mentioning them for Oscars. And I still hold that this is totally needed.
As for repeating myself… you have to understand that only about 1 out of ever 100 people who visit The Movie Blog also listen to Podcasts. So even though you heard me talk about it already… 99% of the people haven’t
And how is that different from me talking about things on The Audio Edition that I’ve writen about on the site??? Or should I not do that either? :)
Cheers
~John
Again with the repeating yourself on the audio blog and then writing it up here! STOP REPEATING YOURSELF ON HERE, you’re starting to sound redundant.
I strongly disagree with #1 that the Oscars should only be for films that are in wide release. The films should be judged mainly on quality and not on how many tickets it sells. Look, who cares about the ratings! FUCK THE RATINGS, JOHN CAMPEA. You’re not the tv studio executive. You need to care more about the films and performances themselves.
The most annoying thing about the oscars aren’t any of the things your mentioned at all. My main gripe is the stupid “Thank You, THank You speeches”. Should these be even considered “speeches” at all? If your speech is simply thanking people, then they wasted our time and I’d rather they not give speeches at all.
If the ratings continue to nosedive they could be using your changes.
I would also argue against wide release and your fifth point. Both for the same reason: The Oscars shouldn’t be only a mainstream event. The acadamy has a duty to introduce a “wide” crowd to films they would not know of otherwise. Therefore keep the eligibility criteria and short movies for indie and newcomer filmmakers (in a sense the Wilson brothers made that point in their presentation). Your first 4 points are right on, though
If you say movies have to be in wide release to be eligible, you effect shut out independent films. Not cool.
Montages are like movie trailers, people love them – so I disagree there. The Pres of the Academy speech is ok too as long as it isnt too long. The only part I agree is cutting out the lesser awards; give them out at another event and then just mention them briefly. If the songs are bad thats the problem, and they werent great this year, but I’d keep em anyhow, maybe you could do abridged versions of them though.
I enjoyed the show this year. Stewart wasnt great, he was a little too political at first, but he got better as the show went on. Clooney made a complete ass of himself. And those guys from 36 Mafia or whatever didnt even belong there, they acted like idiots. Why couldnt they just stand there and talk like normal humans?
If people haven’t seen the movies, that’s their fault. Just because a film isn’t in wide release doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve whatever it gets.
Also, the montages are sweet. If you can’t recognize the awesomeness of watching clips from classics like “Out of the Past” or “Gilda”, then I just don’t know. No point whatsoever? How about honoring the history of American cinema? Oh wait, but you’d probably think that’s a stupid idea — especially since most of your posts focus on big budget mainstream garbage anyway.
First, with all due respect John Campea, this is the second post you have up today which you had addressed in posts and the Audio Editions in the past week or so. Seriously, dude.
But “Hustle & Flow”‘s “Hard Out Here For A Pimp” was heard halfway through the film, and then reprised in the end credits. I also concur that they (3 6 Mafia) did put a little life in the Oscars and you can tell beyond a doubt that those people were HAPPY that the song won. The song also provided a few great jokes fom John Stewart (most notable: “For those keeping score at home…”) Now I admit I liked H&F’s “Whoop That Trick” better, but I just thought it was hilarious that a song wiith ‘Pimp’ in the title was nominated. Considering the weakness of the selection, I simply said that song will win. It did. As far as the dance number, as I said previously, it sort of reminded me of a nod to ‘West Side Story’. It was surreal, of course, but it sure as heck loked better than burning cars.
However, The music numbers were cut! Usually there are five and not three.
On the other hand, I do long for the days of a good movie soundtrack with not only decent songs, but songs that actually are heard in the film. In fact, there used to be a day when two songs were nominated that showed up on the same movie soundtrack. Then again, those films and/or the songs were hits.
Apart fom repeating yourself, since you didn’t mention presenters getting tounge tied, I suspect you are really being nitpicky. I propose the following: there was a winner who simply thanked his family. All the rest, he will thank individually, but if h can’t, ‘go to the website and read your name”. Therefore, let’s say, oh, Best Makeup. The artists have a website, and there is a list of people who they thank. They could even thank “the moviegoers” if they wanted to as a collective “the fans”.
Or how about taking a good full page/half page/little ass box ad out of Hollywood Reporter or Variety?
But yes. Montages took up some time- but count your blessings! It was nowhere near that clock monster a few years ago “let’s honor ALL past Oscar winners” put them on the stage and individually say thier names. Remember that one? I do. I remember because a friend of mine found me comatose in the morning and had to perform CPR…
I strongly disagree on separating short films; I think something could be worked out for the public. (Itunes! Itunes!Itunes!)
Ah hell…another sign of the end times. I agree with yet another Campea rant.
I pretty much agree with everything you said, although I think that Jay Seaver makes a valid point about advertising for the smaller independent films.
One thing I noticed that kind of annoyed me had to do with acceptance speeches. They let a ton of the earlier (and less important) award speeches run long, causing a time crunch later in the show which made them cut short some of the speeches that I actually would have wanted to listen to.
It seems to me that they should either cut everyone off equitably, or else give the longer speech times to the bigger awards later in the show.
Cmon…the Pimp song added the best real humor of the entire telecast…had me on the floor with the absurdity of it all! I agree with your comments in general and most oscar nominated songs are entirely forgettable.
You’re totally off base. The montages are the best part. The whole show should be montages, instead of that long, drawn out, boring stuff. The montages give you the best of everything. We should have a quick montage of a little clip from everyone’s acceptance speech so we know who won and how they felt (generally) and then wrap it all up.
M.
TrailerSnobs.com
I really think the Oscars have too many people to please these days in order to be successful or enjoyable. Hollywood has changed, and actors aren’t as likable as they were decades ago. The problems with the ceremony go beyond your brilliant points, and speak to a larger issue of how the Academy and the film industry in general don’t really feel as relevant as they once did.
I don’t see the need to shorten the ceremony. OK, it’s long. But, hey, it’s an industry awards ceremony – that it entertains the viewing audience is kind of it’s third priority. If someone wants to make a long rambling speech in front of the peers who voted him or her and award, let the speech be made. He or she may never have a chance to make another. Let the short filmmakers be recognized by the people who can give them jobs in the big leagues.
Sure, the songs and montages may seem useless, but they break up a repetitive loop of joke, presenter, speech. Cut them and you’d lose twenty minutes, but the amount the ceremony would drag would almost certainly make the show feel longer.
As to the eligibility rules, the only ones I’d change are the arcane rules for foreign-language films (which prevent multiple entries from the same country and get bogged down in politics) and documentaries (which I don’t begin to understand). Maybe not to the same exact rules as everything else, but to something that is based more on merit than politics.
The “must open in LA, not necessarily wide” requirement feeds into the other purpose for the awards – they serve as advertising for deserving films that may not get it otherwise. It’s not economical for something like “TransAmerica” to get a wide release before nominations are announced; prints and advertisements cost money that the distributor may stand no chance of recovering without nominations. In some ways, boosting returns for industry product is the most important function of the awards, and changing them so that many of the nominees that could most use the promotional push have already come and gone by the time nominations and awards are announced is counterproductive.
(Besides, how do you define “wide-release”?)
Your comments on Best song and the Montages are right on target.