Some random thoughts this morning as I’m still adapting to the infernal time change...
I’ve watched the Oscars the past few years thinking, “This isn’t so bad—it doesn’t feel too long.” Then I realized it’s because I’ve been starting them late and fast-forwarding through the ads and, ahem, boring parts.
Last night’s ceremony was enjoyable. I like seeing people happy to win something meaningful, like Ke Huy Quan.
And honestly, the Oscars are just locked into their format. All the “innovations” they’ve tried to speed up or improve them in recent years—I dimly remember an on-screen announcer?—have been lame. So just keep them as is.
Jimmy Kimmel is a terrific host. Genuinely funny, with a dry wit, but he seems nice. You don’t feel like he actually means to hurt anybody.
I enjoyed Everything Everywhere All at Once, even though it was a little too wacky for me. But I appreciated its emphasis on the humanity of the characters.
I think it was rather brilliant, perhaps unintentionally, because you want to watch the movie to find out what all these things mean—the googly eyes and hot dog hands. Like a secret code.
It is true that you can never remember last year’s Best Picture winner. I tried and failed. I had to look it up. (It was CODA.)
It’s been a long time since I actually paid close attention to the awards or cared who won, one way or another.
The truth that probably nobody wants to admit is that it there is a ton of luck that goes into winning an Oscar.
I don’t mean to diminish anybody’s achievement. By luck, I don’t mean people are untalented or chance into them as phonies (though I’m sure that’s happened).
And it’s not even the luck of getting the right job with the right piece of material, that happens to be well made, and gets properly promoted by the film studio—and connects with an audience.
It’s all of that plus the competitive field: are you up against somebody who is “due,” or happened to be in something exceptionally popular, or any of those vagaries of how the categories lay out?
It seems to me that there’s so much luck involved that to actually try to win awards is a fool’s errand.
In that sense, it really is true that the important thing is to be nominated. That seems like the bigger, and slightly more controllable, achievement.
At this point, I’m just trying to get a movie made!