[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lxcMMGOhFA [/youtube]
Peter Guber and Peter Bart, on today’s Sunday Morning Shootout, only two weeks late with an Oscar preview featuring Amy Ryan and Javier Bardem. Pretty speedy for these guys, since they’re approximately 10 years behind the curve in their concept of what the Oscars are and should be.
- “It doesn’t mean that the Oscars need to totally snub all pictures which don’t have artistic pretensions.” — Peter Bart
- “Even Norbit got a nomination, which I think is great. Too often the Academy ignores movies that aren’t good.” — Jon Stewart
Basically the same perspective — except Jon Stewart was joking. So many things about this clip leave me dumbfounded, I don’t know where to begin. Maybe you guys can get us started. Finale of The Wire Party will dominate my evening, but I’ll be back to pound this from several jaggedy angles in a bit. Meanwhile, snark amongst yourselves.
Indeed how many popular films, for example the highest grossing films domestically, have the academy nominated/given Best Picture to that truly deserved their awards? If anything in the past I thought that they were too often swayed by a film’s popularity at the expense of better, smaller movies (Titanic and Kramer vs Kramer winning Best Pic over superior but less successful films e.g).
Guber and Bart would prefer they reward popular movies whether they actually deserved it or not? Been there done that. If the last 2 years (and occasionally throughout their history) have told us they will permanently put aside any prejudices when judging films.
Aw, come on, everyone. An ‘Audience Award’ isn’t that terrible of an idea.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this guy is a total boob. But underneath his terrible intentions is a gem of an idea that could save us all a lot of stress, and rile us movie geeks into even more of an annual frenzy. What I mean is this: they need to take a lesson from the Annies!
If you’re unsure of how the Annies work, here’s my understanding of what they do: they allow anyone (even you or I, who are not involved in the industry or animation in any way) to become a member by paying a membership fee, or “dues.” Membership gets you access to perks like screenings and such, and you get to vote every year as to which films get awarded with an Annie.
Now, consider this, if you will. An ‘Audience Award’ could be presented that would be voted on, not by people in the other branches, but by people who become “members” of the Academy through some special segment of paying dues. By paying dues, perhaps there could be somewhat similar “Oscar cards” that get you discounts at arthouse theaters? And you could, of course, vote on the ‘Audience Award’ every year.
I’m not saying it’s a great idea. I’m just saying, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. I know, I know, his intentions were for HIM to vote. However, if we can make it exclusive to people who actually care (*cough* us Oscar bloggers *cough*) then it’d probably be rather interesting.
Personally, I don’t think I’d like to see it happen. I just felt kind of offended that everyone was trashing the idea when it is a very similar idea to what the Annies do. And I, personally, love the Annies.
“Audience Award
. Knocked Up
. Hairspray
. American Gangster
. The Bourne Ultimatum
. Ratatoulie
now would that really be that bad of a catagory?”
nope… but try
– Pirates
– Spiderman
– Highschool Musical 2
– Transformers…
And you might think differently…
“Put it on cable somewhere and let the damn speeches run over 30 seconds and stop worrying about what the people who liked 27 Dresses will think.”
Well put.
This is the trailer for Fugitive Pieces–Rosamund Pike is looking awfully good!
http://63.250.192.158/p08r14/112/yahoomovies/1/60287926.mov?StreamID=60287926&pl_auth=bccf2e32db1590e06d63bf1637db6332&ht=30&b=2alurph3tbu0m47d61f19
I loved how they talk about films without artistic pretensions getting snubbed and then they mention Zodiac as an example, when that probably had more artistic pretensions than any other nominee besides There Will Be Blood! I mean it was hardly a crowd-pleaser.
dont hate me but i agree with them sort of
i think an audience award would be fine…everything can stay the way it is, except they an finnally reward the crowd pleasers. and no i dont mean norbit…
Audience Award
. Knocked Up
. Hairspray
. American Gangster
. The Bourne Ultimatum
. Ratatoulie
now would that really be that bad of a catagory?
Rob Wills, your comments about critics (particularly the insane claim that they hate entertainment) reveal that you don’t read their reviews. Which is fine, as long as you don’t make silly claims about them
“We may as well let the critics award the Oscars now, and the critics are destroying movies. A critic would never admit to being entertained as well as moved or enlightened, because being “entertained” is a bad thing.”
Modest proposal – why don’t you take us all out back and shoot us?
i’ll get pc speakers some day. 🙂
2 weeks late? Come on,man you’re ridiculous!As much as you may not like the show, do you have to underestimate them that much?
I’d totally (I could finally find a place where to use that word, now I have to find where to say iconic) agree with the division into Western and Eastern foreign language films, haha, furthermore I would even subdivide them into languages or we would always be competing with France, those béret wearing morons… Just kidding.
However, I find interesting what limeymcfrog says in 4, the studio tendency to split into different companies quality films and summer blockbusters, making the former look indy. Maybe it’s the studios themselves who are to blame for strenghtening the distance between Oscar potential films and crowdpleasers, instead of trying to join both quality and box office potential in the same films. So, if telecast ratings are dying, maybe the murderers come from within.
Peter Bart, when he’s not making comments like this, is always criticizing studios these days for not making more directors butcher their films. “Used to be, you could tell a director–‘Cut this thing by twenty mintues’–and it was cut!” Bart has exclaimed on numerous occasions.
His idiocy regarding Zodiac is hilarious by itself.
The last time I checked it was called the Academy Award of MERIT. Which pretty much means they reward a film that is excellent. It’s not called the Academy Award of whatever the audience at home loved the most (which would have been Blades of Glory, or something that had no business being near the Oscars). It’s about what’s the best. Truly, I know Titanic has jaded us into thinking the Academy ought to reward something that made a billion dollars, but they usually don’t work like that. They don’t care if everyone has seen a film or if one guy sees it. It’s not the Academy’s job to make sure people go watch a film. If you don’t want to spend money on Atonement and watch National Treasure that is your business and nobody says that you shouldn’t. If you don’t do your Oscar homework then don’t watch the show. Good lord, I live on a tiny island in the Caribbean and I saw most of the films – surely people in America could at least have tried.
1. Michael Clayton and Zodiac have nearly identical worldwide grosses (80 million dollars) and I believe Clayton had a lower budget and CERTAINLY more star wattage with the presence of Clooney by himself. No Country has grossed over $130 million and Atonement over $120 million. Claiming Zodiac as one of the more “commercial” films in order to bolster the resume of such films is intellectually dishonest.
2. Spider-Man 3 and Pirates 3 were both embarassing movies that were critically panned, and major disappointments for fans of both franchises. The fact that people spent almost a billion dollars on Pirates doesn’t mean they were happy with the product. If the academy even considered nominating these films, they would become a joke and lose their entire core audience. Oreos and Chips Ahoy would never win a damn bake off. Profit does not equal quality.
3. The oscars do not have to emulate the people’s choice awards in order to get ratings. When’s the last time anyone watched the people’s choice awards anyway?
4. Guber and Bart point out that studios are outsourcing their interesting artisitc projects to their sattelite production companies. Guber makes the valid point that these productions aren’t truly independant, but studio backed. So? It doesn’t make them less good. It’s not like people didn’t like American Gangster because it wasn’t “independant” enough. And if any of the nominated films benefited from a faux-indie sheen it was Guber’s beloved Juno.
5. There are no more “Out of Africa”s, or “Titanic”s, or “A Beautiful Mind”s because we’ve seen enough of the star-studded half-heartedly romantic semi-epics to know that it’s now a formula with no innovation. That’s why “Cold Mountain” and “Cinderella Man” failed. So studios have decided to do the big business franchises and not even try to put an oscar harlot in front of the now more savvy academy. Goober seems to think the big studios should not even try to make quality and just be rewarded for the crap they put out just because it sells.
6. Of the five films only Atonement had what I would consider a tragic ending. The rest where dark, some a bit nihilistic, but sometimes movies can’t end with a pair of cute teens wielding accoustic guitars. Some movies are dark, and sometimes those movies are good. In short Goober is saying that if your film ends tragically (like both main characters being capped in the crown) then you better have grossed over 300 million worldwide (like the Departed) or else you’re suddenly a downbeat movie.
Sorry, but these two gentlemen are only repeating what a lot of other people are saying. We may as well let the critics award the Oscars now, and the critics are destroying movies. A critic would never admit to being entertained as well as moved or enlightened, because being “entertained” is a bad thing. I think a lot of people have forgotten why we started going to movies in the first place. I have nothing against the nominated films. They are fine films all of them. But how many of them would people besides critics and the art house aficionados want to see again? 4 of them didn’t draw much of an audience in the first place. And, yes, I thought this was a fabulous year for movies.
GeorgeIII, what madness!
😉
“…everything they said about why the Oscar ratings have been in decline in recent years is pretty such accurate…”
That’s sort of the point. It seems that the main thing Bart and Guber are concerned about here is the ratings of the Oscar broadcast rather than the merits of the honor itself. Sorry, but who gives a damn how much they can demand for a L’Oreal ad? The two Peters are suggesting ways to “popularize” the Oscars in ways that would wreck the recent trend toward selecting a higher class of nominees.
No doubt the Nobel Prizes would get HUGE Nielson numbers — if only they would hand out a new category or two. The Nobel Prize for Best Limo Snatch Flash, maybe.
John and Saltire Flower, I’m liking this idea of expanding categories to embrace a wider selection too. Peter Guber wants to “bifurcate” the Oscars into Limo and Short Bus divisions. How about bifurcating Music into Original and Adapted scores again, so that Johnny Greenwood and the amazing music mix in Paranoid Park wouldn’t get stop-watched out of eligibility?
How about bifurcating “Foreign” films into Western and Eastern Hemisphere International Films — or, even better, by continent — so that the Oscars don’t feel so much like WASP Night at the Movies, with a tiny handful of token ferners trying to represent the entire rest of the planet?
If we’re going to have to deal with the “oops, you’re still around? don’t die yet!” sympathy nominations for veterans like Hal Holbrook, Ruby Dee, Alan Arkin, when the Acadeny scrambles to make up for past egregious negligence — then how about bifurcating some kind of “Best Octogenarian Cameo, No Matter How Brief” award.
But seriously, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, I’m ok with that, so long as they can come up with some better way to honor International films besides the current You’re Either With Us or Against Us mentality.
Woah let’s not make any bold statements I think adding “Musical/Comedy” and “Drama” categories is the LAST thing AMPAS needs to do…
“Globes has 5 nominees for Drama and 5 nominees for musical/comedy. Should Oscars just take-on the Globes mentality.”
This is actually one of the few changes the Academy could make that wouldn’t piss me off. If more categories were added then something more deserving could have replaced Juno in the dramatic category. Maybe something like Rescue Dawn, 3:10 to Yuma, Into the Wild or even American Gangster. Then Juno could have been put in the comedy/musical category with something like Hairspray or Sweeney Todd (which would have been awesome because they have screwed Burton enough times dammit.)
Guber is pretty reasonable, but Bart only says stupid things. Proposing to create an “audience award” for the Oscars is trying to equalize two completely, comnpletely, cultural phenomenons which are a movie festival, and a movie award cerimony. And saying that nobody complaing about the zero nods for “Zodiac”, pretty much made clear that he doesn’t read magazines and sites that covered the Oscars.
Well, I dunno Sasha. It seems that pretty much everything they said about why the Oscar ratings have been in decline in recent years is pretty such accurate, and was pretty much restated in the recent post-Oscar EW issue.
“…and the audience best picture would go to anything Johnny Depp is in.”
What is it about Johnny that turns the general public into cineastes? 😉
Globes has 5 nominees for Drama and 5 nominees for musical/comedy.
Oscars used to have best original score for drama and original score for musical/comedy.
Should Oscars just take-on the Globes mentality. More films (that perhaps, more audience saw), more nominees in acting categories? More celebrities? More ratings?
you say Ultim-AH-dum, I say you’re a moron. These two sound quite irrelevant to me! 🙂
I loved Transformers, and I loved Pirates. In fact, I think it was an outrage that Golden Compass took the Visual Effects Oscar over both of those films. That being said, those films have NO place in any category that wasn’t technical.
Juno was an excellent film, but it just wasn’t gonna win. It was an upbeat, intelligent, well-written film… but putting Juno up against No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood is like putting Kevin Smith up against Orson Welles.
It’s true, Juno was an audience favorite. But if audiences got to pick, I’m sure they’d hand Best Picture over to 300 in a heartbeat. Truth be told, I doubt Juno would even be considered by audiences if the Oscar hype didn’t advertise it.
I’m glad people don’t get a choice in this, because the general public isn’t serious about movies. They only catch about one movie every three weeks or so. Just the high-profile ones, if that. If people had the choice, Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3, 300, Transformers and Shrek 3 would all be competing for Best Picture. Sorry, but they already have an awards show for that, and I don’t follow it.
I admit, the Oscars sometimes piss me off. And yes, great movies ARE left out. Into the Wild was pretty much snubbed across the board, whilst Michael Clayton took many more nominations than it deserved. But these guys are serious about film. The Academy, for the most part, know what they’re doing. Except for that Golden Compass thing. Or Norbit. I really can’t defend them there.
The good thing about Peter Guber running his mouth off on a TV show each week is that it’s 30 minutes he’s not busy foisting off his shitty movies on an innocent movie-going public.
Take your remake (er I mean reimagining) of The Birds and stuff it somewhere smelly where we don’t have to look at it, you clown.
There must be more than this provincial life!!!!!
Thanks for clarification on the air-dates, Pierre. I confess I kept trying to miss Shootout these past few weeks, and now I remember why.
I see what you’re saying about
GooberGuber, but cutting-edge or not, what kind of person feels like they need to slit their wrists if a movie doesn’t have a happy ending with plinkety-plunck guitars and hoppy bunnies?Best Picture Oscar winners have had tragic endings for decades. Guber’s claim, “of course you vote for Juno! it’s the only upbeat movie of the bunch!” is an asinine remark to make to any intended audience, insiders and outsiders alike.
“bifurcate the Oscars” so that they have more mass appeal for audiences who want more Mike Myers and Cat In the Hat and Wild Hogs? Just when the Oscars are getting some street cred two years in a row?
& yes, marco_b, “Am I wrong, or are we talking the very same Zodiac who was competing last may for the Palme d’Or in Cannes?”
cheers to that!
Possibly Peter Bart believes the Zodiac killer is Freddy Kruger. Plus, phrases like “artistic pretensions” sound really provincial coming from somebody who’s supposed to be savvy. Try “artistic aspirations,” maybe, and it might help disguise the underlying condescension.
These guys drive me nuts! The idea of an audience award at the Oscars is just vulgar. The Oscars aren’t about what the people want, it’s about what the Academy wants. As for Bart’s comment that the Academy has moved away from the public tastes, I think it’s vica versa: The public has moved away from Oscar’s taste. Since when have movies like Pirates of the Caribbean an Transformers been winning best picture?
Check out The Oscar Nazi for year-round predictions and analysis.
Ryan, this episode is a rerun — I saw it either the day of the Oscars or a week before.
Saltire makes a good point about the Oscars providing a showcase for something like TWBB. The Academy’s biggest (by far) source of income is from ad revenue for the Oscarcast. That’s why they want to keep the ratings up.
As far as Bart and Guber — this show is targeted more to a mass audience than to Hollywood insiders. Factor in their age and years in the industry, that’s why they are the way they are. Cutting edge is not their schtick though Guber maybe can see it on a smogless day. (But then, who am I to know what he does off camera?)
ha, iggy! too right.
It’s not so much a foreign language as an ancient tongue (so to speak). I don’t think many universities teach Olde Hôlywæd anymore.
Someone should have thrown a pail of cold water on Peter Guber. I’m sick of this year’s debate about the nominated films not being “popular” enough with audiences. “The Departed” was a critical AND popular success and didn’t it win last year? There’s no “trend” that I can see! What will we debate when next year’s nominees are all box office smashes?
Anyone with the track record of Peter Guber (read Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters’ “Hit and Run” for details) has no business commenting about anything regarding the movie industry, much less the Oscars, and if Peter Bart would stop congratulating himself on how much he had to do with THE GODFATHER and, you know, watch the films being made today, I’d maybe take him seriously.
Can’t swear to what episodes are reruns in Canada, Nancy, but from what you say, apparently you’re seeing a different schedule than what we have in parts of the US.
I only know the AMC Central Time Zone (Chicago) lineup. We had the Patricia Clarkson episode Sunday, March 2. It was re-broadcast in the “encore” slot at 4 a.m. and Tivo had it tagged as (R) for repeat. Last week, after the Clarkson episode, the “next week” promo advertised Bardem and Amy Ryan for this week. It’s obvious that the interviews were conducted pre-Oscar. If it had aired before, I missed it.
Peter Bart mentions Zodiac among “the movies who don’t have artistic pretentions”.. Mhh.. Interesting.. Am I wrong, or are we talking the very same Zodiac who was competing last may for the Palme d’Or in Cannes?
And what about this “audience award” that “all major film festivals” have beside the jury awards? Really, Mr. Bart? I regularly attend Berlin, Cannes and Venice film festivals and have never seen “audience awards” in any of those places.. And, again.. Mr. Bart, should I feel represented, should I feel to be part of an audience that would give its award, say, to Transformers as the best picture of the year? I would like to remember to Mr. Bart that the European Film Awards do have an “audience award”.. And that the European Academy was forced to CHOOSE THE NOMINEES among whom the audience pick the actual winner, after the first year, the audience chose as best picture of the year.. Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla!!!!!!
Hmmm. I did see that several weeks ago. Its a repeat. The episode I saw today had Patricia Clarkson on it. Dont’ the same episodes appear on AMC in Canada and the US?
And this is why the Oscars are voted on by academy members…
*Sigh*
producers.
Now I remember why I stopped watching this show. Why are people so upset over things like Pirates of the Caribbean not getting major nominations? If people want to see an awards show where the biggest (and usually crappiest) films of the year are nominated go a watch the MTV movie awards or watch the People’s Choice Awards.
I don’t see anybody who likes the Oscars the way they are bitching about how the MTV movie awards never nominate the smaller (usually better) films.
Don’t people realize that the Oscars help the smaller films. Would people have known about There Will Be Blood without the Oscars? Hardly likely. Don’t even get me started on the fact that even lamest best picture nominated film was better than any of the stuff that came out in the summer. Leave our Oscars the hell alone.
It’s unclear to me if the snubbing Bart is speaking about is limited (in his definition) to the “Top 6” categories or if he’s saying it’s an across-the-board snubbing, since he does seem to be referencing the Cinematography in Zodiac. If that’s the case, I think a fair argument can be made that a movie like American Gangster (certainly) or Pirates, or Zodiac COULD HAVE BEEN recognized in more of the “tech” categories, but this argument seems to rise the level of “Was A Goofy A Dog?” I mean…yes, things get missed. There’s five slots and five thousand films, someone will be left out. Also, it’s not like the majority of nominations were just handed to these films. If you look at any one of this year’s Oscar nominees there’s some damn fine work. I may personally disagree with Juno for Picture and Director, but I can at least recognize that while Savides may have done fine work on AG & Zodiac, the nominees in the Cinematrography category all deserved to be there as well. Same can be said for Costumes, Art Direction, Sound, so on and so forth. I’m guessing their bluster is a product of having to fill an hour of television rather than actual indignation.
Also, “An Audience Award”? Tavis said it perfectly. This isn’t MTV. I don’t know why the Academy has this blood lust for ratings they’re not going to get, or why they’re courting the slack-jawed-yokel demographic. It’s a night for the industry to honor the industry. Put it on cable somewhere and let the damn speeches run over 30 seconds and stop worrying about what the people who liked 27 Dresses will think.
Ryan Adams Says:
Then can somebody please help me decipher what he says next?
That’s the sentence a foreign language speaker always expects someone else will say first 😉 because he was afraid to ask.
Bourne Alta-Maddim?
I don’t recall that one.
these guys are completly right, how can they snub Transformers in the best pic category, and they nominate that crappy movie called There will be blood???
(just in case that was sarcasm…)
I’d like to see the description of the Audience Award– “for achievement in inspiring slack-jawed awe in mouth-breathers everywhere.”
What? You said snark, right?
In regards to the trash bin remark– he’s seems to be saying that if you have a bunch of movies like Juno, in the long run most of them will be forgotten. I’m not sure what he means by that– maybe that films like Juno are a product of their time and won’t age well or retain a long shelf-life.
This was a rerun, Ryan, but I agree with you that Juno didn’t really belong there. I’m not sure what he said because my brain shuts off when “Juno” and “wonderful” are mentioned too close together. Being a producer, Guber is probably more impressed with Juno’s box office than actual art.
That Guber guy is nuts. Pirates? Spider-man? American Gangster? I’ll tell you why American Gangster wasn’t recognized: it wasn’t good enough. And the idea of Audience Award is just plain retarded. If that happened, Zac Efron would be winning every audience best actor award, and the audience best picture would go to anything Johnny Depp is in.
These people terrify me. I hope the academy stays the way it is.
Trash bin is solely reserved for movies like Bravehart, Oliver, Around the World. And let’s not forget How Green was My Valley winning over Citizen Kane.
Audience Award?????? this is not people’s choice award.
“Juno is the only goddamn film that had an upbeat ending! The rest of it, you wanted to cut your throat when you came out of the damn cinema! I mean of course you wanna vote for some– hey! somebody ended up happy! What’s going on?! My point is, when you say Juno, is that an aberration? No! It’s a wonderful piece of filmmaking!” — Peter Guber
Then can somebody please help me decipher what he says next? He seems to be tossing all the best picture nominees other than Juno into the “trash bin of history” — though it’s not quite clear who’s Oscar the Grouch and what Trash Can he’s popping off about.
You be the judge, and help me figure it out.