Oscar Night!
It is Movie Town’s brightest hour!
A 12-month scramble for a small statue you can hide in your overcoat pocket.
Raj: Have I ever yelled at the screen: “What the hell were you thinking?”
[laughs]
Absolutely!
Patrick: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the preeminent organization
in the art of making motion pictures.
It’s an organization that was founded in 1927.
The first Oscars was, like, 15 people were there.
Louis B. Mayer wanted to have an organization that could mediate labor disputes without
the unions.
Eventually, they wanted to honor achievement.
Raj: The Oscar has two functions in a way.
One function is to reward and celebrate great artistic accomplishment, kind of our vicarious
way of saying: “We love you and we love what you do for us and what you bring
into our lives!”
The other is to elevate and promote the industry in general, and create awareness at least
once a year about an industry that depends so much on the public’s engagement.
MoMA was privileged in 1979 to receive an actual Oscar.
Gregory Peck: For contributing to the public’s perception of motion pictures as an art form,
tonight the Academy once again pays tribute to the Museum’s department of Film for its
continuing and growing accomplishments.
Raj: So why am I putting gloves on to hold a gold-plated statue?
It’s because it’s an object in MoMA’s collection at this point, and we treat all
of our archival objects with great care.
The winner was…
MoMA!
Oh my God!
It’s Oscar!
Hey man, what’s up?
Weight: 8 pounds, 8 ounces.
Height: 13 and one half inches.
Name...
Oscar!
Patrick: So the Oscar statuette was designed by the MGM artist Cedric Gibbons.
He’s a knight with a sword on a film reel with the five spokes representing the original
branches of the Academy: actors, writers, directors, producers and technicians.
Our librarian, a woman named Margaret Herrick, who eventually became our executive director,
she looked at it and said it reminded her of her uncle Oscar.
There’s another story out there that Bette Davis said it looked like one of her husbands.
Bette Davis: The rear end of the Oscar looked like him!
Patrick: Now we are 17 craft branches from five.
Oscar season maybe runs from October/November through the actual ceremony.
Raj: The chase for Awards is also a chase for publicity and for awareness, and for “buzz”
and discussion.
Patrick: You’re trying to position your film so that the various critics and the various
Award shows can look at your film and think of it as an Awards contender.
There’s a fever pitch that happens, it’s quite extraordinary.
Raj: Probably everybody’s heard stories about certain figures in the industry over
the years really targeting Academy groups and lavishing them with parties and gifts.
A lot of that has been reined in by the Academy, realizing that if the process is corrupted,
then the legitimacy of the Awards will be called into question.
The Best Picture category’s probably the most fraught.
It’s certainly the one people remember the most, and I’ll go out there and say,
the year that Crash beat Brokeback Mountain, which you know I’m not alone in thinking
was the biggest jaw-dropper of my lifetime, you had to go back and question
"Well what happened there?”.
There really was consensus that Brokeback Mountain was the artistic achievement of the year,
certainly of that caliber or level of filmmaking.
One of the things I respect most about film is that we in the film world are very honest
about our relationship with commerce.
And that doesn’t happen in all the art forms.
There’s a lot of art forms that really try to hide the fact that there is commerce involved.
So that relationship between art form and industry is an integral part of the Academy.
It’s not always money.
Sometimes it’s relationships, sometimes it’s who knows who within the Academy, who’s
shaking hands with whom at the right moment…
Patrick: I have much more faith in the Academy voter, in that they will look at a film and
judge the film on its merit and not whether or not they had a glass of wine and a piece
of cheese to go with that screening.
Gregory Peck: Here’s how the voting for the awards is done.
Academy members voted by secret ballot for five nominees in each category.
Nominating is done by specialists in each field.
For example, only cinematographers may nominate cinematographers, writers writers and so on.
Harry Belafonte: Finally Academy members voted for all the awards of merit.
The secret ballots were tabulated by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouse.
You got all that?
Okay.
Patrick: Majority.
Majority will lose.
Loretta Young: And as for you…
At long last!
Raj: People started really looking at the make-up of the Academy, like who are these
members, and what’s the demographic?
Because some of the choices they’re making don’t seem to align at all with what’s
happening, certainly in the popular currents or even in the direction of innovation, and
the Academy realized: “Ok, we really need to take a hard look at this, our demographic
is too staid, it’s too homogeneous, so let’s mix it up.”
I was honored to be invited to join the Academy in 2017, as part of this new wave of getting
people involved from diverse corners of the field and diverse backgrounds.
More women coming in, more people of color and more international folks.
I think that’s been a critical element.
If those audience members aren’t seeing themselves reflected on-screen in the work
of not only the actors but the people behind the cameras and seeing those people hold Oscars
at the end of the years for the films that they love, you’re gonna start to lose audience
interest in both the Oscars and, you know, potentially cinema itself.
When the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite movement came together a few years ago, the one example
I remember most in a way was the film Creed, which was directed by Ryan Coogler, starring
Michael B. Jordan.
Sylvester Stallone was the only person nominated for that film, and just really was kind of
like “Well wait a minute...”
Yeah Sly is critical to the Rocky history, but this film wasn’t really Sly’s movie,
this was Ryan and Michael’s movie.
Taking a hard look at what happens when a film like that can succeed and have the Academy’s
attention, and still not get nominations for the kind of lead creators on that film,
really was kind of a shock to many of us.
Ida Lupino: If a genie ever gave me a wish, I think I’d know how I’d like to spend it.
I want my name to be in a list like this.
Those nominated for the Best Achievement in directing are…
Raj: It’s a big problem that there’s only been one woman ever to win the Oscar
for Best Director.
And that’s Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker.
It went toe-to-toe with Avatar and
ultimately walked away with both Best Director and Best Picture, many many more people saw
this incredible work of art.
That was something great that Oscars could do.
The fact that it hasn’t done that for more women or more films directed by women, is
a huge problem.
So a huge wave of the new members of the last few years have been women, in all areas of
creation on films.
Will the Academy be able to celebrate the contributions of women behind the camera in
ways that it hasn’t managed to in the past?
And if it can’t, I believe then that’s when there’s a real problem with its viability
as recognizing what’s happening in the field.
Kathryn Bigelow: There’s no other way to describe it, it’s the moment of a lifetime.
Patrick: Once the show was televised, and as we added more categories and opened it
up in honor of more crafts, there was a natural progression for it to go from the small gala
to the big television production that it is now.
Raj: There have been hosts who have been fixtures, so Bob Hope or Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres,
Whoopi Goldberg…
There have been duos, and then there have been I think gaggles of hosts…
They’ve tried a lot, including no-host, which may in fact be what the Academy tries
this year.
Patrick: There are some favorite moments when you’re watching this show.
Raj: I think some of the best stories are the ones of just the disasters at the Oscars.
David Niven was presenting an Oscar when a streaker ran behind him.
David Niven: Probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping
off and showing his shortcomings.
Raj: I also was very privileged to bring my mother to the Oscars when the wrong Best Picture
was awarded.
We get to the end and all of a sudden they’re taking an Oscar out of someone’s hand and
she was like: “Hey, has this happened before what’s going on?”
And I was like: “I have no idea!”
Moonlight.
Best Picture.
Patrick: The filmmakers who have won Oscars, and I’ve talked to several, have said:
“What does it mean now?”
And a lot of them say it’s a game changer for them.
It’s a game changer you know, doors open, scripts come in, they can get appointments
and meetings with producers and other directors and other actors, you know.
It really does open a door for them in their career.
Raj: Ultimately the goal is that the best artistic work of the year is celebrated.
It’s another opportunity for the industry to acknowledge how important it is for cinema
to be recognized not just as a commercial product, not just something that is escapist
and pure entertainment, but that is actually the collective efforts of an enormous
pool of talent.
Patrick: What I hope the future of the Oscars is, is that we continue to tune in and
we continue to make that one night the night where everyone comes together, collectively
and enjoy the ceremony.
Raj: He’s a reminder to all of us to always celebrate great works of art, in any field,
but certainly in Film.
We’ll see you soon Oscar, thanks for always reminding us.
Folks, we’ll see you at the movies.