A Year in Movies, Awards, and Lessons Learned
“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”
–William Munny (Clint Eastwood) Unforgiven
Being that both the Oscars and the Independent Spirit Awards are already a week old by the time I am writing this, I’ll admit that there really isn’t much I can add to the discussion that hasn’t already been said by more experienced journalists than I nor other Monday morning quarterbacks. Still, I promised to put in my two cents.
First off, I have to give props to Joshua Marsden and Zach Braff for their Independent Spirit Awards for, respectively, Best First Screenplay (Maria Full of Grace) and Best First Feature (Garden State). I am nowhere near enough to be in the same league at these guys, but they are the closest thing I have to contemporaries, even at this stage of my career. Both excellent movies for first time directors. May my first effort fair anywhere near as well.
I point out my pleasure at the recognition of these first features because of the otherwise dominating force at the Spirit Awards. I am of course talking about Alexander Payne’s Sideways, a film that I quite enjoyed, though whether it was truly the best out of all the other indie nominees is still up for debate in my eyes. It certainly deserved recognition, but I found it ironic that the one movie in the room that was a major contender at the Oscars virtually swept the Independent Spirit Awards when other equally deserving films like Kinsey or Baadasssss! were passed over.
Which brings us to the Oscars. I think the above quote (ironically enough, spoken by this year’s Best Director winner Clint Eastwood) pretty much says it all. With a few notable exceptions, this was a pretty weak and forgetable year in movies, and what I though were some of the best pictures–Hotel Rwanda, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Incredibles to name a few–weren’t even nomitated as such. I was ecstatic at Charlie Kaufmann’s win for Best Original Screenplay and Brad Bird picking up the Oscar for Best Animated Picture was a no brainer, but I couldn’t help but feel like Eternal Sunshine got passed over because it came out so long ago and was forgotten about and The Incredibles was just shuffled into the animation catagory instead of being looked at as a regular movie.
Let’s face it. Animated films will always be seen as mere cartoons. The fact that there isn’t even a place for animation directors in the Director’s Guild is a bit problematic. It saddens me, personally, that it is unlikely in the forseeable future that we’ll see another moment like Beauty and the Beast being nominated for Best Picture alongside other live action films. We can take solace in The Incredibles getting a Producer’s Guild nomination for Best Picture, but animation will long be like Rodney Dangerfield. Getting no respect.
Then, there’s Martin Scorsese. Now, this is no reflection on Clint Eastwood, whom I have nothing but respect for and I think is a great director in his own right, but this is Martin Scorsese we’re talking about folks. Would it kill you to give the man a freakin’ Oscar? Perhaps, going with the omens, I already knew it would swing that way. Sure, The Aviator picked up most of the awards early on, but then Sidney Lumet came on stage to accept his lifetime acheivement award and it occured to me that Sidney Lumet, who had directed 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network never won an Oscar for Best Director. Somehow, this didn’t seem possible to me. But then, looking at the list of inovative, influential directors without the bald golden man (including Lumet, Stanley Kubrick, and Alfred Hitchcock), Marty doesn’t look like he’s in such bad company after all. We all know the moral of the story: You don’t need an award to tell you your great. But it is nice to be recognized, all the same.
To sum up what we’ve learned this week, independent is a loosely used term, animation still gets no respect, and deserve really has nothing to do with it.