Angry Oscar winners to turn awards upside down as categories dropped from live show
FILM-MAKERS are planning acts of protest at tonight’s Oscars including flipping their statuettes upside down, after organisers cut eight award categories from the live show.
Awards, including for production design, make-up and hairstyling, film editing and sound, will be presented at a pre-recorded session to tighten up the live show and boost viewing figures.
Steven Spielberg, the film producer, told the Deadline website: “We should all have a seat at the supper table together live at five.”
Attendees are now threatening to wear their guild badges upside down during the ceremony, and winners will invert their Oscars when they accept them, in protest.
Karol Urban, president of the Cinema Audio Society (CAS), said: “This weekend the Oscars may be turned upside down, as we may see winners from all categories accept their Oscars upside down in a silent show of solidarity with the eight affected categories. We are all film makers of equal importance.”
The controversy comes as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed its Covid protocols ahead of tonight’s show, banning attendees who tested positive for Covid in the past five days. Anyone who tested positive within a six to 10 day window must provide two negative tests, taken on separate days, before attending.
Nominees and guests will also need to provide proof of vaccination, but presenters and performers will not.
The ramping-up of Covid rules comes after a number of stars and producers reportedly contracted the virus at the Bafta awards on Mar 13. A source told The Hollywood Reporter it “may have been a super-spreader event”.
Sir Kenneth Branagh, whose film Belfast is nominated for an Oscar, is said to be isolating after he tested positive following the ceremony.
Ciaran Hinds, who is nominated for best supporting actor for this role in the film, also contracted the virus. Both men were still testing positive on Friday, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
Last year, viewing figures for the Oscars hit a record low, with just 10.4 million. In a letter to members last month, David Rubin, academy president, said organisers “must prioritise the television audience to increase viewer engagement and keep the show vital, kinetic, and relevant”. The eight awards will be presented in the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles one hour before the live show begins at 5pm.
“Those presentations will then be edited by our creative and production teams and will be folded seamlessly into the live televised show,” Mr Rubin added.
The academy stressed that all award categories and all winners’ speeches will be featured on the live broadcast.
Ms Urban told Deadline: “There is a multitude of different organisations that are working together to find ways to circumvent having their voices clipped.”
The decision to move the eight categories out of the main broadcast portrays them as “second-tier skills”, she said.
“This decision undermines the important principles of inclusivity and diversity and sends a disappointing message to young viewers who may dream that one day they might win an Oscar.”
The academy was approached for comment.
The Hollywood actor and director Sean Penn, 61, has said he would smelt the Oscar he won for the biopic Milk (2008) in public if Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to speak at the ceremony.