#32 | March 12 - 19, 1998  

Well, no new movies out there this week, so I'll have to speak at length about the upcoming Academy Awards instead. Before I get too knee-deep in the negative, I'll admit that the Grammys continue to lend the Oscars a fair amount of comparative legitimacy (see this year's award for best rap by duo or group, given to Puff Daddy for covering an old Police hit). Moreover, in Oscarland, it even sometimes occurs that good films are given recognition. For some reason they seem to come in pairs--The Silence of the Lambs and Unforgiven in 1991-92, Annie Hall and The Deer Hunter in 1977-78.

I'm not going to get into predicting winners because it's a foregone conclusion that Titanic will win every award for which it is nominated (even that faux-Celtic love ballad) with the exception of the two actress categories. Which is 12 awards in all, which will probably be a record of some sort, although who really cares, unless you write for People or Newsweek.

In the past, an average piece of shit like Titanic might have taken home a dozen of the industry's highest prizes because it either is an epic period piece (see The English Patient, Braveheart, Dances with Wolves) or has captured the imagination of the moviegoing public (a less common occurrence, this last happened with 1994's Forrest Gump) or is a highbrow offering from a long successful producer of studio blockbusters (a la Schindler's List) or is about a bunch of white people (as in every film ever to win the best picture Oscar, with the exception of Gandhi (darkie played by whitey), Driving Miss Daisy (token darkie servant), and--only if you accept the True Romance theory that Sicilians are niggers--the first two Godfathers; likewise The Color Purple, Spielberg's original Mr. Blockbuster Goes Serious film, and Amistad, his latest entry in the genre, both ignored).

The makers of Titanic were clever enough to work in all four golden attributes, but more importantly it possesses the one attribute that Academy voters have lately come to value above all: impressive size. The most expensive movie ever made may not be the longest movie ever made, but it easily outdistances its closest competitor, token quirky romantic comedy nominee As Good as It Gets, by nearly an hour.

Just how obsessed is the AMPAS with size in the late 90s? The statistics speak for themselves. Of course, length has always been an issue, but in the early days three hour epic best pictures were the exception, with most winners tending toward the low side of the industry-standard 2-hour mark. But with even mindless action flicks commonly approaching the 150-minute automatic Oscar-payoff zone, increasingly senile voters have been lulled into accepting that epic (length, not subject) equals quality.

The last decade has seen this equation assume a prominence to rival only the recently halted NFC hegemony in American football, whose shocking collapse statistically rules out a similar Oscar upset in the near future. Glaring examples of the long-n-mediocre triumphing over the short-n-good abound during this period: Dances with Wolves (180) beats GoodFellas (146), Schindler's List (195) beats The Piano (121) and The Remains of the Day (134), Braveheart (177) beats Babe (91) and Il Postino (98), The English Patient (162) beats Fargo (98) and Secrets & Lies (138). With recent history like this, can there be any wonder that Titanic (195) will easily defeat the underweight Brit entry and its only serious potential rival, The Full Monty (90), or the equally interesting Good Will Hunting (126)? With Titanic's inevitable victory the path of filmmaking a sometimes dynamically varying curve well into the 1980s, takes another step toward becoming a lifeless flatline.

Even the few exceptions to the size rule in recent years can be explained by the presence of other, overriding factors. In 1991, The Silence of Lambs (118) was able to beat out JFK (189) not because it's a better film (although it most certainly is), but rather because Oliver Stone had already received two best directors and a best picture in the last five years--and the only thing the academy hates more these days than rewarding short films is lavishing too much praise on one person. While Unforgiven (130) was on its way to a multiple-award triumph in 1992, the riveting, but obviously Black Malcolm X (201) was not even mentioned (the incredibly lame A Few Good Men was), perhaps the only 200+ film in history to be overlooked for a best picture nomination.

All of which should worry moviegoers simply because, whatever lessons the big studios learned from 1996's so-called "year of the independents," you can bet they learned a whole lot more from the titanic success of James Cameron's bland boating epic. And if you don't think that success is going to affect the kinds of movies dead-eyed suburbanites will be watching for years to come, then your name must be Fred Hiatt.

One thing that has always puzzled me is the award for best director. Shouldn't this be synonymous with best picture? Well, in 18 of the last 20 years it has been (the picture/director splits being Chariots of Fire/Reds in 1981 and Driving Miss Daisy/Born on the Fourth of July in 1982, the respective lessons presumably being it takes greater skill to do the Russian Revolution than British Olympic athletes and it's easier to get an old person to be crotchety than to get Tom Cruise to act vaguely human), but the separation emphasizes an important point: since the Oscars have come to be about revenue above all else, the best picture award goes to the money man (i.e., the producer), and the best director award is hence a somewhat less prestigious prize.

Without fail the difference between the two lists of nominees lies in the exchange of a faceless mainstream best picture nominee for a film by an auteur-type director, usually one who ignores the Hollywood system. This year, Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter replaces As Good as It Gets. The past few years alone have seen The People v. Larry Flynt step in for Jerry Maguire, Leaving Las Vegas for Apollo 13, Three Colors: Red for The Shawshank Redemption, and so on.

This "honor" has often bestowed upon Robert Altman, but its most frequent recipient--in fact, the director for whom the situation seems to have been created--is Woody Allen. Despite being--and making films about--the kind of self-obsessed Jew that is the average Academy voter, his movies have never been popular in the best picture category. Yet he routinely gets a best director nod (even more often he wins the still-further-down-the-prestige-ladder Citizen Kane award for best original screenplay).

Why the rough treatment? Putting aside Woody's personal problems, it all seems to come down to his well-publicized preference for playing clarinet at his band's regular Monday night gig than attending the awards ceremony. I'd rather play a gig than attend an awards ceremony, too, but I guess Oscar has its own selfish reasons for seeing it otherwise.

Rumors of sell-out shows seem to indicate that a frightening number of folks is ignoring my advice on the Titanic issue. However, since watching the awards ceremony isn't a viable option for most of you anyway, why not follow Woody's example at least in part and check out a blues show on Oscar night (March 23)? See next issue's calendar for details.