Trashing the Oscars, and Loving It!

To start, I would not like to thank the Academy.

In the midst of a sweltering summer of box office admissions, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced that they had decided to broaden the Best Picture race at future Oscar ceremonies - expanding the number of eligible nominees in that category from 5 to 10.

Academy president Sid Ganis remarked that the board’s decision to double the number of nominees may make the highest honour in show business “more interesting and less cloistered.”

While studio executives took this news with general enthusiasm, the public has been only moderately favourable to this decision. The former half say, “Great, now there’s more room for excellent movies to get the recognition they deserve,” while the latter half notes, “Has the Academy finally lost all common sense?"

I am, sorry to say, in that latter group. Here’s why:

1) The night of the Academy Awards is the most heralded night in all of show business, has been so for over 75 years, and will remain so for decades to come. It is an important part of cinematic history. Filmakers’ and actors’ careers change significantly (usually in a good capacity) after receiving recognition from the Academy.

That is precisely because the Academy Awards are the best of the best; it's the cream of the crop of award ceremonies celebrating a medium adored by billions of people.

Simply put, by doubling the top category, the prestige, the validity and the inviolability of the Academy Awards is sliced in half.

2) The Academy wants more people to watch their telecast. In years where massive blockbuster hits (Titanic, the Lord of the Rings installments) have competed for the top prize, viewership was at its peak. However, the nominated films from the past five years have made a small dent at the box office, none of them grossing over $150 million in North America.

Voters had their chance to nominate Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight for the top prize last year, and given its triumphant critical acclaim and $1 billion in worldwide box office, it would have been well-deserved. They didn’t.

Instead, Academy members put The Weinstein Co.’s The Reader into their final spot on the ballot. While initially a box office dud, due to a ruthless multi-million dollar campaign, however, company exec Harvey Weinstein bought his company’s film into the Oscar race.

The decision to nominate the pesky-little-indie over the boisterous-behemoth left many uninterested to watch last February’s ceremony.

The Academy thinks that more room for nominees will ensure that high-profile blockbusters have a better chance of getting nominated, and ergo, viewership will rise. Still, even with 10 nominated films, full-fledged award campaigns from independent studios that swing Academy thought still thwart the certainty of a major studio hit receiving a top nomination.

Rather, I believe the Academy should admit their mistakes in nominating a movie not because of its quality but because of another’s full-fledged marketing campaign. They should ensure that this episode doesn’t repeat.

When they have the trust of the public majority, we will watch in greater numbers. But ten movies instead of five in the Best Picture category just solidifies how insecure the Academy really is to gain a few million viewers.

3) If you expand the Best Picture category, why fail to broaden all of the other categories? If ten films are praiseworthy enough to win a “golden guy,” why aren’t ten directors, or editors, or visual effects supervisors?

The actual Best Picture statuettes themselves are not given to the film’s director or screenwriter, but rather its producers. This decision gives the studio the upper hand over the creative production team behind the year’s best films. This is yet another way where the head honchos of Hollywood get another chance to grasp the gold, leaving the real artists behind, without a nomination.

4) By year’s end, are there really going to be 10 films worthy of winning Best Picture? You see, a nominated movie for this category should not just be an excellent film, but one that many can agree upon as the year’s Best Picture, if by chance it wins.

Sure, there have been crowd-pleasers like Star Trek and The Hangover, and well-reviewed independent hits such as The Hurt Locker and (500) Days of Summer. But while a plethora of good movies have been released thus far in 2009, it is rare to find that modern-day classic that really deserves the crowning achievement of a Best Picture Oscar (although, in my book, Pixar's Up is a solid contender).

That leaves many of the eligible spots for the autumn and holiday releases. Unless we really are dawning upon a new age in cinema during these next 4 months, I don’t think we’ll see eight or nine films that legitimately deserve the top prize hit theaters.

Five's company, ten’s a crowd. The board’s decision to broaden the top category may seem friendly to the studios, but eventually the Academy has to own up that they’re tampering with entertainment’s biggest night. Don’t be surprised if there’s a crash at the end of this Oscar race.