Oscar’s Compton snub still stings
ACADEMY BLIND: N.W.A biopic was worthy of several nominations
The sting of rejection for Straight Outta Compton still hurts.
Oscar and his Academy Awards screwed up — again!
Last week, the 6,000-plus voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences ‘ghettoized’ F. Gary Gray’s brilliant musical biopic about the rise, fall and ultimate redemption of the pioneering hip-hop ensemble, N.W.A. The only nomination that this ruggedly accomplished film generated was for best original screenplay, with four writers sharing the credit.
Deserved? Yes, but not enough for this landmark effort. It should have been nominated as best picture. Meanwhile, both of O’Shea Jackson Jr., who played his rapper father Ice Cube, and Corey Hawkins, who played Dr. Dre, could/ should have been considered in acting categories.
This week, Straight Outta Compton debuted on Blu-ray. That timing is why Oscar’s snub is fresh salt in a still-bleeding wound inflicted by the racial divide in Hollywood and in America.
So, if you have not yet seen Straight Outta Compton, watch it now and judge for yourself. The hard-copy option is a two-disc Bluray and DVD combo pack loaded with a digital download copy and generous bonus materials, including a doc on the origins of N.W.A. In addition to the theatrical version, the Blu-ray includes Gray’s unrated director’s cut. That boasts an extended storyline that extends the film into epic status and hits some of the missing beats from the original version.
In my Oscar nominations predictions, I excluded Straight Outta Compton from best picture. I simply did not trust Oscar voters. Collectively, they seem incapable of seeing the value of hardcore, insightful and socially significant cinema outside their limited sphere.
Too many are retirees and are out of touch and ill-informed of the cultural complexities of American cinema, especially films bursting forward from minority filmmakers such as Gray. But some voters are just lazy: I remember Hollywood legend Jack Palance (now deceased) telling me he could not be bothered filling out his ballot, so he gave it to his maid — who spoke little English and watched few movies — to vote for him. The system is broken, or at least deeply flawed.
Yet nothing that the Academy members have done — or did not do — diminishes the value of Straight Outta Compton itself. Just as the album that the film is named for is a watershed moment in American urban music, the film is that for American black cinema specifically, and for musical biopics in general.
“To be honest,” Shakespearean-trained actor Hawkins told me recently, “I don’t think any of us expected it to do what it did. We set out to make a movie one day at a time and it felt like guerrilla filmmaking. It was labour but a labour of love. It was one of those projects that was just so special. Every single day that we were getting towards the end we were holding on tighter because we didn’t want to let this gift go.
“Then we finally got a chance to give this gift to an audience and they accepted it with open arms. So we could not be happier and more thankful. Everything that has come up since then (including all the awards conversations, he says in an aside) has been icing on the cake. It’s really amazing the power of the movie.”
The Washington-born Hawkins, now 27, is fascinated that audience members who do not necessarily embrace hip hop still admire Straight Outta Compton. “Isn’t it funny how — when you get a good story, a good script, good actors, a really good director, great producers and you get everybody on board and you have a great studio behind you — you get a great film.
“When you take high risk, it’s high reward, you know. It captured audiences across the board because it wasn’t just a film about rappers, it wasn’t just a film about drugs, it wasn’t just a film about these kids getting out of the ghetto, it was a film about brothers, about love, and about what happens when things come in between and you start to see this tear guys apart. That’s what you can emotionally hang onto and get involved in, whether you like the music or not.”