..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

12 Weeks To Go:
The No Awards Awards

I held off writing this week’s column until after the Golden Globes nominations… and then… well… who cares?

Every year, we all beat the heck out of the HFPA members and then mine their nominations like we are going to find nuggets that matter.  But we’re seeking fool’s gold… and get what we deserve. 

Can HFPA help cement in a nominee here and there?  Sure.  But history tells us that the group’s nominations are no more influential than anyone else’s.  There are just network TV lights when they give out their awards.

What really strikes me today is that it is time for someone, somewhere to start a No Awards awards show. 

Would it really be so bad to have a night to celebrate the great work of a year without worrying about the detail work of who won in what category, but to actively celebrate the movies of the year? 

What is there… 42 minutes in a network hour?  So three hours – perhaps not all in one shot – leaving 126 minutes of time to celebrate the great movies of the year. 

Do it like the BCS… “coaches” (critics) votes, seeding by way of “conferences” (genres or specific criteria, like highest grossing film of the year, top animated film, top foreign language film, top true indie), computer rankings based on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, etc. 

Send out a man-on-the-street crew to talk to real people about why they love these movies. 

Show clips that are not the standard clips everyone has seen over and over and over again.

Deconstruct one scene from each film with the director and cast.

Have some fun, celebrate what is great with a broad enough brush but a sophisticated enough palette to make it compelling for a lot of people who will be pleased to know more about movies they really like than they ever knew they wanted to know. 

Wouldn’t it be fun to just celebrate the movies instead of narrowing it all down to a niche that we can argue until the end of time… or worse, not argue for very long at all?

Honestly, I am rather bored with deconstructing whether The Dark Knight or Wall-E should be nominated for this or that… or if Rachel Getting Married is too inaccessible for a bigger audience… or if Waltz With Bashir is a doc or an animation or a foreign feature… etc.

We should be celebrating them all.  Che is a landmark, whether Academy members are willing to sit through 4.5 hours or if HFPAers don’t see the celebrity value.  Wendy & Lucy deserves a place at the table for its own little, intimate, oddball world.  And is Man on Wire really any less important… any less thrilling… than The Dark Knight?    

We all love movies.  So why slice and dice and parse and farce?  Why not find a way to love W. and Tyler Perry and right wing docs and the overlooked films and the massive machine films that work.  Can’t we love Robert Downey, Jr. without pretending that he deserves an Oscar for Tropic Thunder?

And yes, let’s include all of those Oscar nominees to be!  What the heck?  Let’s give them a break! 

When I talk to people about this industry – people who are not lawyers or accountants – I often find myself saying that if they don’t love the work they aspire to do that they should not get into the industry to chase the benefits that come from success in that work.  Of course, some get the brass ring.  Others are the brass ring.  But mostly, it is work… hard work… lots of hard work.  What I respect is someone who gets so much out of what they do that the work is enough.

Shouldn’t we aspire to at least one moment like that during the year-end awards season?  To just saying, “Yay.”  To celebrating the form and all the small pieces that come together to make the whole?

That’s what I got out of the Golden Globes nods this morning… that more and more it is less and less about loving movies.  And, my friends (and foes), that is why I am here.

There is no award for that… the experience is its own reward. 

This Week's Charts
Picture
Actor/Supporting Actor | Actress/Supporting Actress
Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay | Director

Recent Columns
December 8 , 2008
December 4 , 2008
December 1, 2008
November 20, 2008
November 14, 2008
November 6, 2008
October 23, 2008
October 16, 2008
September 25, 2008
July 31, 2008

2008 Oscars | 2007 Oscars | 2006 Oscars | 2005 Oscars

- Email David Poland