The Daily Babble

The Academy Rewards

I'm sorry but I love the Oscars show. I enjoy seeing people who have been honored for their work, which often extends over years for even a short documentary. Hundreds of people devote significant pieces of their lives to each movie, and for even most winners, this is their only significant moment of being praised and honored in a career that is typically fraught with difficulty, doubt and lots and lots of opposition.

Even those who have won elsewhere can get emotional about this moment, and their speeches are often generous, not only to others but to the process and to the kind of films they care about making.

I realize this is not why most people watch. I gave up going to Oscars-watching parties long ago, because all they seemed to be about was dishing, and taking delight in celebrities who dressed disastrously and otherwise made fools of themselves.

There was plenty to dish about this year, as all years, like that incredibly tasteless flaming car wreck for the song from "Crash." And I have a specific gripe in a few things they left out.

Still, as Jon Stewart and George Clooney pointed out (satirically or otherwise), the Hollywood creative community as represented by the Academy is about the most congenial institution to a certain political as well as creative point of view. The two--political and creative--have always gone naturally together for me. So this is in a goofy and certainly impure way a tribute to that as well. It isn't all lip or even celluloid service either--with winners from or about China, South Africa, Japan, African-America, Latin America and Latino America, etc. plus as usual in recent years, a lot of Aussies.

But basically, I've always felt this way about the Oscars: I enjoy seeing and listening to the winners. (Though it does help when I don't have a horse among the losers.) The only difference is that when I was sitting in a small town bar fighting back tears as Michael Douglas and cohorts won all the major Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, saying that it took five years to get anyone to believe it was worth making, I was still holding on to a wild hope that I would be part of that process one day. (It wasn't totally insane---I had friends who were, including a few who were at the Oscars as nominees.) Now my identification is totally vicarious and increasingly distant, as those dreams have gone the way of most others. There are still usually a few films to identify with in terms of wishing to have been part of them, though I see fewer new movies.

Now if I had it to do over again, I might try becoming a really good gaffer. Film crews have a lot of fun.