Childish Things

How many little kids, do you think, got audibly excited about the Academy Awards every year? How many kids get excited about such awards shows? Not for the fashion, not for seeing the famous people. No, how many people get excited about the Oscars simply for appearing to treasure the best in each year's output of cinema? I did when I was a kid. Each of us, when we're young, gets to that point where we want to be adults. We want to be grown up, mature, whatever. But we all hit that point, and it manifests in different ways. I have no easy explanation for why it was always movies, but that's it. It's always been movies. And when I was young, the best example I could latch onto was the annual awards show that was as big as the Super Bowl to me.

I equated adulthood with movies, to boil it down to the bare essentials. I loved movies, but for a long time, I didn't get to watch as many as I wanted. Maybe this is why I'm still a Disney fan (and why I'm doing a Disney movie podcast): those were pretty much the only movies I could watch when I was a kid. My classmates would brag about having seen The Terminator or even Jurassic Park; I could only count down the days to when I was allowed to watch these movies. But every year since I could remember, my parents let me stay up and watch the Oscars, because where was the harm? Whatever inappropriate moments there were in movies like Unforgiven, Schindler's List, and Forrest Gump, among others, would be cut out for network television. And sure, I doubt I got half of Billy Crystal's jokes (and Lord knows I was completely stymied by David Letterman's hosting at the innocent age of 10). But they let me be an adult for one night...an adult wearing pajamas and holding onto an Eeyore stuffed animal, but dammit, I could stay up until midnight.

Growing up, being able to actually watch some of the movies that might be nominated for the Oscars, had its good and bad points. On the good side, I could actually see the movies people would talk about as they talked about them, not catching up to them years after the fact. Sure, I like The Silence of the Lambs and Goodfellas--OK, I love the latter--but I had to catch up with them years after everyone else knew about the fava beans and a nice Chianti, or Joe Pesci asking how exactly Ray Liotta found him funny. But I got to see some of the big movies of 1999 right around the time when they were released. I got to see movies like Being John Malkovich and The Matrix and The Sixth Sense as they came out. (And yes, I did say The Sixth Sense. I loved it when I was 15, and I bet it still holds up, unlike almost all other M. Night Shyamalan movies.) The problem, of course, was that the Oscars were beginning to disappoint me.

I was slowly being introduced to the very real idea that, hey, guess what? The people who vote for the Oscars and I didn't always agree. I got a big reminder of that in 2000, when Gladiator won the Best Picture Oscar. Who knows why I, a nearly 16-year old, found that movie stifling, dreary, and dull, but there you go. So, even though it was a big-budget epic action movie, I was massively disappointed that the voters fell for this overheated silliness. (I grant you, had they done the same for the outrageous, stupid 300, the only other wildly successful swords-and-sandals epic in the past decade, it'd be a lot, lot worse.) As the decade continued, I mostly found myself out of sync with the Oscars, and I'll tell you something you've probably already guessed: it took me a very long time to truly grasp that my disappointment with the Oscars was perhaps accurate if fruitless. I don't know that the 8-year old version of me would believe it, but it took me a very long time to fall out of love with the Oscars.

Over the last few years, as movies I treasure get passed over, I've finally come to terms with the idea that I should not care about the Oscars. I would be lying to you if I said I wouldn't watch the show early next year, but my hopes are not high, for the telecast and the awards. Regarding the former, it's somewhat of an inspiration for this post. See, this is the weekend when Tower Heist opened in theaters nationwide. You know, this is the Ocean's Eleven-lite with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy teaming up with other disgruntled blue-collar workers to steal from a Bernie Madoff type. The movie is important not just because it heralds, in some small way, Eddie Murphy's return to legitimate comedy, not just idiotic family movies. (Those movies are, by the ways, ones I'd have seen if I was still a kid.) No, Tower Heist is also important because it's directed by well-known purveyor of douche-y blandness Brett Ratner. Ratner is this year's Oscars producer. Murphy is this year's Oscars host.

Now, when Murphy was announced as the Oscars host, there was a great big fooforah online where film writers, fans, and Oscar prognosticators sent hosannas left and right, praising the Academy for hiring Murphy. I, of course, could be wrong, but it seems like all of that praise was rooted in nostalgia for Coming to America, Trading Places, and Murphy's incendiary 80s stand-up specials. (I forget if only one of them deserves the subtitle "Homosexuality is Weird, Right?") Don't get me wrong, folks: Eddie Murphy has the capability to be incredibly funny. His last truly funny performance was in Bowfinger, which happens to be Steve Martin's last truly funny performance. Murphy is brilliant in a dual performance, and it may be one of the true highlights of his 90s-era roles. And I do like Trading Places, Coming to America, and 48 Hrs., but I guess I'm more of a cynical realist than others. I am presented with a man whose career has some highs, but a lot of lows. The Eddie Murphy of the last decade is not someone I'm looking forward to as Oscar host, certainly not with Brett Ratner guiding him along.

Here's where Tower Heist enters into it. It was no coincidence that the director and one of the stars of the movie were going to join the Oscars for the first year; it was frequently said that the movie being a hit would help cement the idea that audiences nationwide were primed to see Eddie Murphy's comeback explode at the big televised ceremony. So what are we left with when seeing that Tower Heist fell to Puss in Boots at the box office this weekend by a gap of over $8 million? I've mostly left behind any interest in box-office discussion, but this combines a few passing interests of mine. Last year's Oscars telecast was an unmitigated disaster; when both hosts are admitting, after the fact, that the show was kind of a train wreck, you know you have a turkey on your hands. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has had a quandary on its hands for a few years now, and adding Ratner and Murphy to the show isn't likely to help. The ratings for the Oscars telecast have pretty steadily decreased since Titanic took the top honors in early 1998, and AMPAS is trying to figure out how to keep viewers from watching something else. Maybe the movies aren't famous enough for mass audiences to tune in? Let's nominate 10 movies! Wait, that experiment only worked a bit for one year? (The ratings for the 82nd Oscars, where The Hurt Locker won, were up a few million, but down just as much this past year.) Let's make it possible but not mandatory for 10 movies to be nominated! Hey, we need young people to watch this show. Let's have James Franco and Anne Hathaway, the king and queen of the teen set (circa 2002), host! Ooh, that didn't work. Let's put Eddie Murphy in there instead!

I think the real problem is that other people are realizing the same thing I've realized: the Oscars are not going to share my opinion in film, so why should I watch? There are 18 billion types of awards for movies these days. (Don't check that number. Just trust me.) Frankly, you could probably get away with creating your own awards and getting people interested; it's almost like there could be blogs that do just that. Why watch the Oscars anymore, especially when it's presided over by very old people who are struggling to understand what the young people like these days. I don't say this to be ageist or anti-seniority, but I'd rather the elders of the Academy stick to what they know best and not attempt to be hip and pander to people under the age of 30. While hiring Eddie Murphy to host the Oscars is not the most boneheaded move the Academy has made recently (it will be difficult to top the Franco/Hathaway choice, even if Ratner's hiring comes close), it's not a massive saving grace. And this weekend at the box office proves that.

What is a boneheaded idea is saying that if Tower Heist made a lot of money, it would validate hiring the two men for the Oscars. Maybe if the movie was released mere days before the Oscars aired, I could get behind that idea. Why not ride some potentially massive buzz into one of the biggest TV events of the year? I get that. It makes sense. But Tower Heist is opening months before the Oscars. Hell, it's not even the same year. Some folks will discuss the controversy surrounding Universal Pictures' failed attempt at charging sixty dollars--let me repeat that, so it sinks in: SIXTY DOLLARS--to watch Tower Heist on demand; this is not why Tower Heist has done solidly but not fantastically. (Quick sidebar: I admire Universal head Ron Meyer for his recent honesty about some bad movies his studio has released, but his willingness to stick with the VOD idea is ridiculous. Unless the movie is The Magnificent Ambersons and it has the fabled missing reel of footage, I'm not paying sixty dollars for any movie on VOD. Also? That hypothetical situation includes me getting two large pizzas.)

Tower Heist making just over $25 million at the box office happened for the same reasons that most movies these days do not make massive amounts of money: "I didn't want to see it," "I didn't want to see it this weekend," "I'll wait for Netflix," teenagers didn't want to go, "There wasn't enough money," "I couldn't find a babysitter," "I just didn't have the time," "I didn't know it came out this weekend," "I wanted to rewatch every episode of The Wonder Years," and finally, "What's Tower Heist?" There is not a reason. There are many. This is why TV ratings are plummeting, except there, the issue also revolves around multiple points of access. But the point is this: pinning your hopes for an Oscar telecast on a safe action comedy (get it? "Safe!" And it's about a heist! Oh, I kill me.) is dumb. It's just as dumb as pinning your hopes for an Oscar telecast to succeed based on the performance of any movie. There are no guarantees that one movie will be the key to success. Hey, you never know, AMPAS: this year might be the year with boatloads of viewers, but it won't be thanks to Eddie Murphy and Brett Ratner.

Like I said earlier, I'll watch the show. I'll probably end up watching the Oscars for years to come, but I treat the Oscars now the way I treat film school. Both were things I desperately wanted to be part of when I was a kid. I don't think I was incredibly vain to want to be part of the Oscars; again, mostly, this was due to me wanting to be a grown-up and seeing that as the ticket in. But I really wanted to go to film school, to be a writer. I didn't get in, which is disappointing, sure, but then along comes YouTube and Flip cams, and I started to wonder just how necessary it was to have a film degree to be a filmmaker of any kind. And I've started to wonder why it is we need the Oscars, or any awards show, to lend legitimacy to movies we like. The answer is, of course, that we don't. If you like the Transformers movies, if you think they're your favorites, good for you. (As much as I dislike those movies, I mean this sincerely.) If you think there hasn't been a great comic filmmaker since Preston Sturges, good for you. But if you think movies need awards to justify your opinion of them, it's time to reevaluate that. It's time to mature, to grow up past that position, folks.