Anne Thompson reports that Entertainment Weekly will be doing an Oscars Recall, whose purpose is…:
“…to assemble a list of 7000 industry professionals who match in many ways the diversity and scale of the Academy voting membership–assuming some of the ballots never get returned–without looking at an actual Academy list, Smith insists. He wanted to keep it pure.
“We built it from scratch,” says Smith. EW reporters and editors scrolled through their rollidexes. They added everyone who had ever been nominated or won an Oscar, and crew members of films that grossed over $100 million. They looked at the news reports of Hollywood people who had been added to the Oscar ranks in recent years. They culled creative directories for execs, producers, publicists, editors, costume designers, art directors, directors, cinematographers, writers, animators, sound mixers, composers–all the categories covered by the Academy.
EW made one HUGE change. They invited top film (not TV) agents, who are not permitted to belong to the Academy, to join the list of Oscar revoters. And Smith thinks his list may skew slightly younger than the Academy’s. “We’re not trying to duplicate the Academy,” he says. “What do people working in the film industry think about these Oscar-winning movies now?”
And if that isn’t complicated enough:
Monday EW is mailing out their official “Recall The Gold” ballot inviting the industry to vote in six major categories for five given years spaced five years apart–2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and 1983–five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five years ago.
Sorry, I admire EW and all but something tells me this isn’t going to go over well. It seems to overreach and reminds me of the many polls generated about Oscar films which always end up proving the same thing. Finally, why should it matter who “should” have won or whether a bunch of younger industry professionals think someone should have won. The history is the history. Times change. Careers change. Are you really going to recall someone’s Oscar because their career went nowhere afterwards? A vote of “7000 industry professionals” proving the Academy wrong? It’s a bad idea.
