Film

Here’s Why The Oscars Are Irrevocably Broken

Change takes a long time, yet the Oscars are lagging behind.

by Cameron Williams  24 January 2019
Oscars 2019

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When Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture in 1999, upsetting the favourite, Saving Private Ryan, it was confirmed the Oscars had changed forever.

Not only did Shakespeare in Love take out the top award, it won seven awards, and did it off the back of a campaign orchestrated by producer, Harvey Weinstein. Every studio vying for an Academy Award in the ’99 race got duped into a spending spree to target voters and improve their chances of winning.

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Political campaign logic was applied to the Oscars. Weinstein had been shaping the race for a decade and Shakespeare in Love became the crowning achievement.

But surely it didn’t become a thing? It did.

Jump to 2019, we’re experiencing the fallout of the campaign era where films designed to appeal to voters, also known as Oscar bait, like Bohemian Rhapsody, VICE and Green Book can steamroll the race with slick campaigns to get a best picture nomination, despite their troublesome stance on politics, sexuality and race.

A sophisticated Oscars campaign can even make voters forget a film was made by an alleged abuser.

Considering the issues faced by the Academy when it comes to diversity and representation — women were shut out of the best director category this year, once again, for example — 2019 is not the year to showcase mediocrity, and it gets worse when you recall how great the past 12 months has been in film.

In order to win Oscars it’s not about making a great film, it’s about the perception that a great film has been made: it’s where the hype comes in.

The Academy has let this practise become the norm and its small advances in making their voting body more diverse is in question and their relevancy is now at stake.

Guerrilla Campaigns

The campaign era began modestly in 1990 when Weinstein got a hold of the film My Left Foot, and saw an opportunity for it to enter the Oscar race.

But rather than copy what other studios were doing by making sure voters had an opportunity to see a film before ballots were due, Weinstein organised meet-and-greets with voters and the film’s talent. My Left Foot got pushed top of mind with voters and it worked — My Left Foot won two Oscars.

In 1995, Pulp Fiction shook up the race with a campaign to shake the dust off the types of films that were considered ‘award worthy’ and it got Quentin Tarantino his first Oscar. In 1996, it was the year of The English Patient that won nine awards including best picture.

Sling Blade, Good Will Hunting and Life is Beautiful all became Oscar campaign success stories.

During this time, studios began putting together their own campaigns and began hiring public relations gurus to come up with ideas to woo Oscar voters. Studios began to think strategically about the types of films they wanted to make with the goal of winning awards: biopics, epic period dramas and inspirational true stories became the bait. Campaigning ballooned to lunches with voters, parties, special intimate screenings and screeners.

Rather than inviting people to screenings, studios began sending DVDs to voters so they could watch them at home. Each DVD comes in packaging detailing the categories the studio wants filled out on ballots. Screeners always come with the line ‘for your consideration’ printed on the cover and a design for time poor voters who are usually too busy working to think about best picture.

But here’s the problem with screeners: voters get so many they create piles, so if you’re a studio, you want to be somewhere near the top of the pile. How do you get to the top of the pile? You create hype via publicity or arrange for a voter to meet an actor or director so they remember to watch their film.

There’s also the irony of people judging great cinematic achievements on their televisions at home. Granted, most of these people probably have cinemas in their homes but it’s a rickety system.

Campaigning has become the norm and it’s estimated that studios spend between $5 and $10 million getting the word out there about their films, which explains how the 2019 race became a nightmare.

What If You Sit Out The Oscars Campaign?

Luck, and only luck is on your side.

Writer and director of Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley, had one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2018 but got zero nominations. In a Twitter thread he pointed out that the film didn’t get snubbed because they chose not to run a campaign.

“The largest factor as to why we didn’t get nominated is that we didn’t actually run a campaign that aimed to get a nomination for Screenplay or Song. We didn’t buy For Your Consideration ads in the trade magazines and we didn’t service the whole academy with screeners,” Riley said.

“Without that, it’s perceived that you don’t have a chance, or enough buzz. Academy members don’t just vote for a thing they like if they think it doesn’t have a chance. It’s like that with most voting. That is not to say that we would have gotten a nomination if we had done that because at that point it becomes about which of the contenders they like the most — it’s just that not doing that made it a self-fulfilling prophecy that we wouldn’t get nominated. So I had no actual belief that we would get nominated.”

In the thread Riley pointed out that based on his experience there are plenty of people who want to see change and take a chance on new voices in the film industry.

Looking at the films of 2018 you can feel that shift with important films from female filmmakers like You Were Never Really Here, The Rider, Shirkers and Private Life. Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians dominated the box office and Netflix proved they could do more than just make TV to binge on with the magnificent Roma. Barry Jenkins proved he was a real deal after Moonlight with the incredible If Beale Street Could Talk.

Change takes a long time, but it’s happening, yet the Oscars are lagging behind despite nominating a few of the aforementioned films, it’s what’s missing that’s the most damning.

Desperate Times

Recently the Academy attempted to create a new category: Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film.

The hope was it would get people interested in the Oscars by nominating films known to the public due to their success at the box office. A huge influence on the idea was the dwindling viewership of the Oscar broadcast.

If people saw films they liked nominated (there’s a perception most Americans don’t seek out Oscar nominated films) they’d tune in to see if Fast and the Furious 12 could win. Of course, the idea what shot down quickly by the Academy board but it showed an institution in crisis.

For all the major changes happening in the film industry the huge problem is the Academy has enabled a pay-to-play campaign environment. Even changing the rules of its membership and inviting new members from different backgrounds is showing little signs of making an impact.

Awards will always be up against it for dwindling down an art form to gold statuettes but the Oscars are drifting further from reflecting the industry they represent.

Or are they just continuing to reflect the ugly truth?

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Cameron Williams is a writer and film critic based in Melbourne who occasionally blabs about movies on ABC radio. He has a slight Twitter addiction: @MrCamW.