Film: Let's abolish Oscar

An open letter to Frank Pierson,

president, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

Frankly, my dear Frank, you probably don't give a damn about the views of a mere critic. But every other ink-stained hack pontificates about the Oscars this time of year, so the temptation is impossible to resist.

As you know, this has been a year of tumultuous change for the Academy. Your daring decision to move the 76th Academy Awards ceremony forward a month, to truncate the mad distractions of the "awards season," threw the entire industry into turmoil. But now that this eminently sensible move is a fait accompli, may I humbly propose the next logical step? Let's abolish the whole insane shebang.

How wonderful life would be if we abandoned the fallacy that there's such a thing as a "best" picture. Unlike Seabiscuit's old equine rivals, great films are not horses galloping toward the post, but unique works of motion picture art. Insisting that Lost in Translation is better than The Lord of the Rings, or Finding Nemo is superior to The Triplets of Belleville is absurd. They're all entertaining, precisely because they're so incomparably different.

How wonderful life sans awards season would be. It's no secret that, in general, the studios hold back till the fall their "Oscar-worthy" pics, so they'll be fresh in voters' minds come nomination time. This implies that the stuff they foist on filmgoers the rest of the year is Razzie-worthy crapola. So if we ditch the Academy Awards, and get the guilds and critics groups to do likewise, filmgoers' faith may be restored. They'd head for the multiplex year-round, knowing the chances are good there'd always be something worth watching.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, it's clear that such a utopian scenario will never come to pass. With countless bazillions at stake, in boosted box office revenues and bigger paychecks for nominees and winners, nobody will willingly dispense with the little golden guy's bounteous windfall.

If we can't ban the Oscars, then, let's at least cancel the telecast. It nearly happened last year. With Operation Iraqi Freedom under way, you feared that the sight of le tout Tinseltown preening while our boys were dying in the Iraqi desert would have seemed even more tasteless than usual. Instead of canceling the March 23 festivities, however, you went ahead with a supposedly gentler, more sober event. But apart from Michael Moore's inappropriate but accurate outburst, upbraiding George W. Bush for "sending us to war for fictitious reasons," it turned out to be boring Oscar business as usual.

So let's get radical, Frank. Let's ban the cameras and revert to something like the very first awards ceremony, at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel, on May 16, 1929--a members-only banquet with just 300 guests. That way, narcissistic film folks can spend less time getting gussied up and rehearsing gushing acceptance speeches, and get on with the job of making better movies.

If this sounds far-fetched, consider your own example of precisely this sort of dignified affair. On Valentine's Day at the Pasadena Ritz-Carlton, this year's first Oscar winners were feted, when the Academy's scientific and technical awards were presented--to Bill Tondreau for robotic camera technology, Digidesign for its Pro Tools audio workstation and Peter D. Parks for lifetime achievement in microphotography. Free from the usual media frenzy, nobody noticed, and the techno-nerds just went back to work, creating improved moviemaking tools.

So this cinephile, for one, will be aiming to encourage your out-of-the-box thinking by boycotting Sunday's Oscar show. Neither Seabiscuit nor Ben-Hur's wildest horses could drag me to a TV to watch, for four sickening hours, as Hollywood pats itself on its collective, overdressed back. If only all that energy could be channeled instead into crafting better movies, what a joy it would be, every week, to revel in the finest achievements of the motion picture arts and sciences.

Sincerely,

Anthony Allison