It's More of a Game

In truth, I think the see the Golden Statue as a lifetime achievement as well as for a particular performance.  They always play this game of how someone is "due".  In 2004 when Sean Penn took home an oscar for Mystic River, my thought was that it was ust another one of those, "Well, he's due for an Oscar," type moments.  Johnny Depp was, for me at least, more deserving of the award for his portrayal as Captain Jack Sparrow.  It takes a lot of talent to be the ONLY one who carries a movie like that.  Without Depp the first Pirates film would've been nightmarish.  And then he became one of the most memorable characters in film.   I suspect that Johnny Depp will receive an oscar down the line when the Academy decides that he's "due" for one.  And it'll be for a role which he is hardly deserving of it for.

Miramax is funny when it comes to the Oscars.  They run Oscar campaigns (so does the Weinstein Company).  They tried an Oscar campaign in 1998 and it failed because they lost to Cameron's Titanic.  Then they tried another little trick in 1999 with Shakespeare in Love and they won over Saving Private Ryan.  Because when you really get your movie out there to Academy members they tend to like that for some reason.  Miramax does things like talk to Academy Members and send them each personal copies of the movies for them to enjoy.  They do things like that.  And they're allowed to do it.  So is any other studio, but many don't.  Warner Bros. recently did an Oscar Campaign with The Dark Knight and it didn't work. 

This is where the Academy Voters come in.  They're a strange lot.  Last I heard, there were 6000 of them.  I don't know much about the voting process, but I do know that as the Academy changes, so do the types of films you see nominated.  In the 70's, for example... nominating movies like "Jaws" "The Exorcist" and "Star Wars" for Best Picture were no big deal.  The current Academy would find it an insult to put something like Star Wars in the same company as something like, oh, "There Will Be Blood."  Despite the fact that Star Wars was an independent film... it has more to do with the fact that it's popular.  In short, you're dealing with an Academy that has this, "It's too popular to be nominated," attitude. Avatar may have still garnered a nomination if they hadn't opened it up, but they most certainly had no plans to reward it with a Best Picture award.  The Academy is a bit too snobbish in its current state to even consider doing something like that.  The big reason they felt The Dark Knight was not deserving of a nomination for Best Picture?  It's a guy running around in a batsuit.  They're playing games.  Of course, they always have.  Their game now just happens to be nominating a bunch of low budget films no one has heard of at all... and then give audiences at least ONE movie they're familiar with in the mix.  These are movies like "Juno," that get good buzz and become popular enough that they go mainstream.  They put it in a race for a big award like "Best Picture" but make sure to give audiences who enjoyed it something for their troubles... like "Best Original Screenplay" or something like that.

For some odd reason this fascinates me to know end.  In their current state, the Academy tries so hard not to appeal to popularity and to appeal to the Indy/Cult/Low Budget crowd that they seem to forget that just because a movie has a big budget and appeals to mainstream tastes doesn't make it really a bad movie.  It's the start of a new generation for the Academy soon.  So we'll see how it changes.