It shoULDn’t happen to a fiLm joUrnaList
editor-at-Large Jamie graham lifts the lid on film journalism.
Jamie ponders his obsession with the Oscars.
The first time I stayed up all night to watch the Academy Awards was in 1994, stumbling out of the student bar at 11pm to walk three miles to the 24-hour garage in order to arm myself with beer, Pringles and a Scotch egg. Also crazy about film, my two housemates joined me on the pilgrimage, tottering from booze and the weight of their own supplies, and together we watched Spielberg finally bag his Oscar as Schindler’s List swept the board. It was glorious.
No one else I knew would stay up all night to watch a show that would play at a reasonable hour the next evening, and with all of the boring bits cut out. But to us it was impossibly exotic… the faces, the outfits, the speeches, and the genuine belief that any of the nominees might win.
Back then, I knew little of the Academy’s conservativism, or of the other awards shows that funnelled the potential winners, or of the campaigning. The next year, watching the Oscars live again, I was certain that Pulp Fiction would win Best Picture over Forrest Gump because, well, it was no contest. How very naïve I was.
WIZARD OF UGH
When I settle down to watch the 91st Academy Awards in the early hours of Monday 25 February, it will be my 26th consecutive live-viewing. A lot has changed
– I no longer eat Scotch eggs – and my excitement level will be considerably lower than in 1994.
The curtain, you might say, was long ago pulled back to reveal the mechanics: the box office, the campaign trail, the publicity spend, the dubious taste of the 80-odd international journalists based in LA who vote for the Golden Globes that dictate the Academy’s choices… All are now apparent, as are the countless times the Oscar goes to the wrong person or film.
I’ve watched Titanic sink LA Confidential, Shakespeare In Love outgun The Thin Red Line and Crash sideswipe Brokeback Mountain, and I now know of the historical screw-ups: Raging Bull losing to Ordinary People; Citizen Kane bested by How Green Was My Valley; Chaplin, Hawks, Hitchcock, Welles, Lumet, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Altman, Lynch, Fincher and PTA possessing not one gong between them.
Throw in Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) being only the fifth woman nominated as Best Director, and the English-language bias meaning titans such as Kurosawa, Bergman and Godard never got a look-in, and #OscarsSoWhite, and the hosting clusterfuck of recent years, and… Well, let’s just say the sheen has worn off.
BODY POLITIC
So come 25 February, older, wiser, not-so-fun Jamie will be sipping coffee to stay awake, and trying to ignore the fridge in deference to his slower metabolism. Were I not so stupidly proud of my consecutive-viewing figure,
I might even give the Oscars a miss this year and watch it at a reasonable hour the next evening, with all of the boring bits cut out.
But wait. The crusty white males club of the Academy has been shaken up. In 2018, a recordbreaking 928 inductees joined the ranks, making it a total of 2,707 newbies (with an emphasis on diversity) in the last four years – not bad given the Academy previously consisted of fewer than 7,000 people. Last year, a movie about a woman shagging a fish won Best Picture, and in 2017, it was Moonlight, a powerful affirmation for gay black men. Compare those choices to the days when the Academy equated production values with artistic quality and recognised a succession of bloated musicals and bland historical epics.
You know what? I will watch the Oscars this year, and I will be excited. Hell, I might even crack out a Scotch egg.
‘THE SHEEN WAS WEARING OFF, BUT THE CRUSTY WHITE MALES CLUB HAS BEEN SHAKEN UP’