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The little gold man made me do it
Gary Hershorn/Reuters
Touched by Oscar gold: Charlize Theron,
best actress for "Monster" (2003).
Serious moviegoers tend to view the Oscars as a sideshow, and a déclassé one at that, with little relation to quality cinema. Important films, the convention holds, do not don a revealing frock and traipse the red carpet, risking a fondling by Isaac Mizrahi.
But the academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' growing tendency to nominate and vote for ambitious, risky films — movies that reside outside the forest of studio blockbusters — suggests that the annual bacchanal actually nurtures important work.
In a business that is almost always about the money, the appeal to vanity — a shot at the most coveted prize in almost any industry — has yielded the so-called Oscar film, a movie aimed at adults that makes its debut late in the year with an eye toward getting a date with the statue. The current season is thick with such releases: "Atonement,""Charlie Wilson's War," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Into the wild," "Lars and the Real Girl," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood" and many others. Oscar hopes undoubtedly played a role in the executive decision to approve these movies, which are not exactly going to have hordes of teenagers lining up at the multiplex.
That is not to say that absent gold-plated dreams,some of these films wouldn't have been made, only that more of them made it to a significant number of theaters, and did so with the kind of budgets and stars that can make for great movies. If the conceit holds true — industry insiders say the word "Oscar" comes up in serious movie pitches as much as "and" and "the" — people who care about serious "fil-lims" should skip the marathon of Iranian documentaries on Feb. 24 and assemble some friends and nachos to watch this year's Oscars, with Jon Stewart as host.
It would be nice if there were a pot of gold statues at the end of this particular holiday season, because after healthy summer box-office grosses it's been brutal out there. All sorts of serious movies have collided and then collapsed in the fight for audiences. The film going public is all the better for all these movies, but the dreary financial numbers will go down a little better if film companies are in the hunt for an Oscar, the kind of recognition that could provide a boost for movies that still have a ways to go to recoup their costs.
The general formula for most film making could be broken down thusly:Concept + stars + brute-force marketing = hoped-for payday. The studio system, with a need to appeal to plenty of people with huge opening weekends, does not generally lead to great cinema. But when the hydraulics of prestige are introduced into that equation, odd and wonderful things can happen. Big paydays are forgone by actors,directors work with (and for) far less money, and studios put money and promotion into films that have limited financial horizons. Actors,producers and directors know that when all is said and done, their obituaries are not going to mention their lifetime box-office tallies.The Oscars, by forcefully acknowledging artistic excellence, help people access the angels of their better natures.
"Oscar movies can be a kind of check and balance that can produce innovation, movies that break new ground and point the way for the future," said David Poland of the Web site Movie City News(moviecitynews.com).
Making movies is a trying collective endeavor, and attempting to make one that contains difficult subject matter — the best-picture nominees in 2005 tackled journalism, homophobia, racism and terrorism — can be Sisyphean. No one ever got chased off a studio lot for not failing to back, say, a multilingual triptych about the vagaries of human communication like "Babel," a movie that Paramount Vantage backed lastyear to a best-picture nomination. John Lesher, president of paramount vantage, Paramount's specialty film division, said the film was madebecause it was a good idea, not because it might win awards. But once"Babel" was in the hunt, "it helped brand the film," he said. "It isless about making a prestige film than the fact that actors want to dogood work in addition to making blockbusters. The best, mostinteresting careers do both."
Making movies is a trying collective endeavor, and attempting to makeone that contains difficult subject matter — the best-picture nomineesin 2005 tackled journalism, homophobia, racism and terrorism — can beSisyphean. No one ever got chased off a studio lot for not failing toback, say, a multilingual triptych about the vagaries of humancommunication like "Babel," a movie that Paramount Vantage backed lastyear to a best-picture nomination. John Lesher, president of ParamountVantage, Paramount's specialty film division, said the film was madebecause it was a good idea, not because it might win awards. But once"Babel" was in the hunt, "it helped brand the film," he said. "It isless about making a prestige film than the fact that actors want to dogood work in addition to making blockbusters. The best, mostinteresting careers do both."
"Think of how many projects get made because their backers think orhope or dream that they are going to be Oscar movies," said SashaStone, the longtime Academy blogger who runs Awards Daily(awardsdaily.com). "The answer this year, and most, is a lot."
Muchof the Oscar appetite is coming from the actors themselves. After HalleBerry revealed much of herself in "Monster's Ball" for a best-actresswin for 2001 and Charlize Theron disappeared under mounds of makeup in"Monster" to similar effect for the 2003 award, actors realized thatmore than ever, forgoing a big check in the short run for a vivid turnin a high-quality movie could lead to long-running credibility andperhaps bigger roles down the road.
"Actors and directors saythe word to their agents, and their agents say it to them to get themto do a movie," said Mark Gill, chief executive of the Film Department,a new independent company. "It may not be the sun — the be-all andend-all — but it is certainly the moon, with a significantgravitational pull."
Industry executives said that the Oscarshave become part of the lexicon of making deals, with contracts thatoffer bonuses for nominations and awards, even getting down to thespecifics of an Oscar campaign in support of the movie. And a financialcalculus of another sort is entering the picture along with some of thenewer players in the industry.
"There's a lot of fresh moneycoming into our business," said David Friendly, who received anomination last year as a producer of "Little Miss Sunshine." "Most ofthese investors have already made their fortunes. So what are theyreally after? A lot of them are trying to make films that make adifference and movies that might land them that ultimate prize."
Andsay what you want about the Oscars, there is no sure-fire way to gamethe Academy process, other than finding great directors and giving themthe resources to make an ambitious film. Cynics and outsiders like tosuggest that Academy members are too far removed from the culturalmainstream to reflect the best of contemporary cinema. But a look atthe choices for best picture in recent years suggests that they don'talways play it safe. In 2005 "Million Dollar Baby" came out of nowhereto win, and "Crash" took the same route in 2006. Like them or hatethem, they still represented fully realized visions that had nothing todo with selling action figures.
The allure of the Oscar isprecious precisely because there are so few of them — one best movie,one best actor, one best actress — and because the award maintainsfundamental integrity. The Academy process, for all its excesses, stillcarries great weight in the industry in part because it represents thewill of 5,800 members from all branches of the industry, both activeand retired.
"A lot of us in the Academy take our membershipas a kind of fiduciary responsibility," said Robert Shaye, co-chiefexecutive of New Line Cinema. "We are being asked what we want theworld to see of our industry, and that inspires respect and even someawe from those who accept the responsibility."
Sure, thereare occasional outrages — few would argue in retrospect that "DancesWith Wolves" is a better movie than "Goodfellas," as the Academy did in1990 — but things started to change in the mid-1990s, most especiallyin 1996. That's when four small movies — "The English Patient," whichwon, "Fargo," "Secrets and Lies" and "Shine" — all became best-picturefinalists, along with a single big-studio picture, "Jerry Maguire." Andunder Harvey Weinstein, Miramax proved that a specialty division,albeit with Disney's backing, could fight from the hills and win itall, as it did with "Shakespeare in Love" in the awards for 1998.
JamesSchamus, chief executive of Focus Features, Universal's boutiquedivision, pointed out that many of the current Academy members came ofage professionally in the '60s and '70s during an explosion ofambitious cinema. Their reflex, he said, is toward taking artisticrisks.
"The Academy has stepped out of the mainstream in manyof their choices over the past few years because many of the people whoare voting have that rebel spirit from those days," said Schamus, whoseofferings this Oscar season include "Atonement" and Ang Lee's "Lust,Caution." "But there is no sure way to make that happen. You can't putthe cart before the horse. We all have dreams of holding a statue andthanking all the little people, but you have to do the work on a greatmovie that succeeds in a very certain way. And that's no simple matter."
[ 本帖最后由 电影王国国民 于 2007-12-13 19:11 编辑 ] |
发表于 2007-12-13 18:51
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