In my last blog, I explained why I don’t care who wins the Oscars. Bottom line? My personal experience working with hundreds of the 5765 members of the Academy revealed that they are predominately too male, too white, too old and too in love with the films they made in their Hollywood heyday — 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago — to be able to pick the best films and filmmakers of today. Over the past 100 years, the Academy has used the power of media hype to convince the world that all the pretty faces in the front rows of the Kodak Theater on Oscar Night are representative of the membership of the Academy. This would make them as young, hip and diverse as any organization on the planet. But, in truth, they are none of the above.
Don’t believe me? Okay, let’s look at the article published three days ago in the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/academy/. The Academy keeps it a secret, so to “unmask Oscar” LA Times reporters, Nicole Sperling and John Horn, “reviewed academy publications, resumes and biographies to confirm the identities of more than 5100” Academy members and found that “Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male…Oscar voters have a median age of 62…People younger than 50 constitute just 14% of the membership.”
And, most damning, the Times found that only 42% of the members had received a screen credit in the last twelve years. So their careers are over. They are sitting at home. And how great were they at their job when they were working? Not that great – 64% of the Academy have never even been nominated for an Oscar. They are more Deadwood than Hollywood.
This seriously skews the way they pick the Oscar winners. Don’t believe me? Okay, here is what Dave Karger, who is a Senior Writer at Entertainment Weekly and arguably the world’s leading expert on everything Oscar, told Elvis Mitchell today on NPR’s The Treatment, “when I watch a movie I watch it with two eyes. One eye is for the way I would see it, and the other eye is for the way a 60 or a 70 or an 80 year old guy would see it” because that’s how the Academy will vote on it. So when Karger saw an initial screening of “The Artist” he ran to file an article predicting that it would be nominated for Best Picture. Karger and Mitchell agreed with assurance that it will win the Oscar. Mitchell quipped, “I always get the feeling that the film which wins Best Picture is the Best Picture of 1939. This is why ‘The King’s Speech’ beat out ‘The Social Network’ in 2010.”
The world seems to think that it matters a great deal if a bunch of 60 or 70 or 80 year-old, white guys like “The Artist” and think it’s the best film of 2011. I’m sorry, but there is something seriously wrong with this picture.