Here’s an embarrassing admission: until recently I was an Oscar nerd. Although I was the only person I knew who did so, I insisted on watching every Academy Awards telecast all the way through, regardless of how pointless or dull they invariably were. I never tried to justify my liking for this dopey ceremony to anyone, as there was no justification to be had. As a friend once told me, “For one who’s so into cult cinema you sure do like the Academy Awards.”
The reason for my incongruous stance? I’d say it’s a childhood holdover. I’m old enough to remember when the Academy Awards were a big deal, second only to the Super Bowl in the category of Must-Watch television. So impacting were the Oscars that in my early years I was allowed to Stay Up Late and watch the end. It helped, of course, that back then the movies being honored were actually worth seeing, and the honorees deserving of the accolades they were given, something that no longer appears to be the case.
What hasn’t changed is the absurdly archaic nature of an event marked by formal wear, refined demeanor and impossibly beautiful people, things that even in the 1980s seemed like relics from an earlier era. That fossilized aura only enhanced the feel of a party, thrown by a mighty cool crowd with modes and rituals far removed from those of us mere mortals.
The whole thing grew stale for me in 2020. That was the year, you may remember, when the good-but-far-from-great PARASITE swept the major awards, beating out more deserving nominees like THE IRISHMAN, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD and FORD V. FERRARI. Another issue I had was with the political posturing that has crept into modern Oscar casts (I tend to agree with Ricky Gervais that Hollywoodians are in no position to lecture anyone about anything), which placed the event on the same tier as today’s mainstream American cinema, i.e. a place not many of us would want to go.
I skipped the 2021, ‘22 and ‘23 Oscar ceremonies, while the latest one interested me due to one category: Best Actress. That particular race panned out exactly as I expected it would, with ANORA’s very young Mikey Madison beating out THE SUBSTANCE’s much older Demi Moore, thus reenforcing the point about Tinseltown’s worship of youth made by the film Moore headlined. I say Demi was the more deserving recipient, but I know the haughtier-than-thou Motion Picture Academy well enough to recognize that THE SUBSTANCE, an unapologetic horror movie, wouldn’t be getting any major awards (several Academy members have admitted they didn’t even bother watching it all the way through). I’ll also note that Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, of I’M STILL HERE, failed to “avenge” the 1999 loss of her mother Fernanda Montenegro to Gwyneth Paltrow (which brings up a curious fact: people outside the US take the Academy Awards far more seriously than we do).
Beyond that I’ll have to rely on clips of the event. The Rachel Zegler-Gal Gadot presentation, in which these two evident combatants never looked at one another, was amusing, and I’ll give Best Supporting Actress nominee Isabella Rossellini credit for subtly referencing David Lynch in her blue velvet outfit. Otherwise, though, I’m glad I didn’t watch the entire thing.
A large part of the problem appears to be that the architect of today’s Academy Awards, Harvey Weinstein, is no longer in the picture. It was he who transformed the ceremony from a mainstream Hollywood shindig to, in the words of Billy Crystal, “Sundance by the Beach” (the Sundance Film Festival, BTW, was something Weinstein was also instrumental in transforming, from a celebration of independent cinema to the glitzy schmooze-fest it currently is).
One of the world’s promotional geniuses in addition to one of its biggest shitheads, Weinstein single-handedly steered mediocre films like IL POSTINO (1995) and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998)—and its leading lady Gwyneth Paltrow—to Oscar glory. He was known to treat the Oscars like a military operation, loudly berating his
employees in front of awards venues if his releases didn’t rack up enough wins, spreading nasty rumors about his competitors and bombarding Academy voters with aggressive campaign advertising and screener DVDS.
Things have relaxed in the years since Weinstein’s departure from Hollywood. A prime example of that relaxation is the dearth of year-end screener DVDs sent to guild members, which in 2024 were reduced to (in my case) just one: ANORA, which may explain why that film, and its lead actress, did so well with the Academy. Weinstein would never have allowed ANORA’s dominance to go unchallenged, and nor would Ms. Moore have lost out had Weinstein been on the case. His influence hasn’t entirely waned, however: Best Actor recipient Adrien Brody, in his interminably long-winded acceptance speech, mentioned his girlfriend Georgina Chapman, who it so happens is Weinstein’s ex, and her “beautiful children Dash and India,” whose biological father is Harvey W.
Not that this would have mattered much in my case, as I’ve been having a hard time getting myself to watch ANORA. Quite simply: it looks boring. Ditto THE BRUTALIST, WICKED and A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, while EMILIA PEREZ is something else entirely, a lousy movie that’s already been ripped apart many times over (and so doesn’t require any more bashing by me).
Perhaps the Academy Awards telecast’s plunge into irrelevance is a positive thing, as it appears to have cured me of an especially bad viewing habit. The Academy Awards are very much a party, and one to which I’m glad I wasn’t invited.