What if Oscar threw a party, and nobody came …
… well, at least we’d still have a good crop of
movies. Stephanie Bunbury reports on the trouble in Tinseltown -
and how one strike might overshadow a mini-revolution.
THE main question hovering around the Oscars at the moment is
not who will win what, but (a) whether they will happen at all, or
(b) if they will happen, but in someone’s lounge room with no more
than a few party hats and crackers to create festive sparks.
The Hollywood writers’ strike is now in its third month and
shows no sign of lifting. This means that the Oscars ceremony, or
whatever passes for it, will be unscripted and thinly populated, as
most actors will not be prepared to cross the Writers’ Guild picket
line even if a gold statuette is waiting on the other side.
Which is something of a pity, as the field of contenders is both
wide open and largely deserving, which would normally make for an
exciting night as the envelopes get opened. No Country for Old
Men, the wacky Coen brothers‘ bloody one-man epic, appears to
dominate the field, with eight nominations, but the brothers’
idiosyncratic coolness and the film’s violence means it is by no
means universally loved; it will be hotly contested in every
category.
In the acting divisions, the only dubious inclusion is Cate
Blanchett’s reprised Elizabeth, a curious choice given that
Elizabeth: the Golden Age was widely panned. All the other
nominees in these categories will have strong supporters, however
%26#151; young Saoirse Ronan in Atonement has been hailed a
revelation, while Cate Blanchett’s cross-dressing role as Bob Dylan
in I’m Not There is worth a dozen Virgin Queens %26#151;
making for a series of hot competitions.
Other categories are even less predictable. The contenders for
the screenplay trophies, for example, include four women as
first-time nominees (for Juno, Lars and the Real Girl
and The Savages in the original screenplay category, and
Sarah Polley for Away from Her in the adapted
screenplay).
The hot tip for an original screenplay is, inevitably, the
colourful Diablo Cody for Juno, but the other screenwriters
in the adapted section are all heavy hitters, including Christopher
Hampton for Atonement, and Ronald Harwood for The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly. It could be anyone’s. What is
particularly striking about this play-off, however, is that it is
largely taking place between niche mini-studios and the big
studios’ specialist units.
These small units, many of them thriving within the big studios,
have practically taken over the prestige end of Hollywood
filmmaking. It is astonishing how quickly this has happened. A few
years ago %26#151; in 2003, to be exact %26#151; Sofia Coppola’s clever
Lost in Translation was the cuckoo in a best-picture nest of
epic studio production, all with casts of (not necessarily human)
thousands and spare-no-expense art direction.
The general talk was that films would increasingly be about
special effects, and no studio would bother with anything that cost
less than $120 million. Bigger, in other words, had become the new
better.
But, over the past few years, that pattern has been reversed.
This year, the only studio represented in the best-picture
competition is Warner Brothers %26#151; and that is for Tony Gilroy’s
Michael Clayton, perhaps the most intellectually demanding
film on the list, with a plot that could be usefully unravelled by
lawyers and a dominant mood of weary moral confusion.
Of the other four contenders, No Country for Old Men and
Paul Thomas Anderson’s There will be Blood, the two films
with the most nominations, were shared by the recently refurbished
Miramax and Paramount Vantage, the studio’s boutique division.
Juno, the only comedy, was produced under the Fox
Searchlight banner, and the British wartime drama Atonement
was made by Working Title for the independent Focus Features.
All apart from Juno, moreover, are resolutely serious. If
there is a shared theme in this year’s Oscar nominees overall, it
is one of mordant disappointment with the state of the world.
In a recent interview with Variety, the film industry
magazine, producer Scott Rudin said that audiences were ready to
welcome films with morally complex themes, but big studios simply
weren’t making those films any more. Rudin produced No Country
for Old Men, and was executive producer on There will be
Blood.
“In many cases, the majors have given up the business of serious
movies, and the rise of specialty units has made possible movies
that wouldn’t have been made %26#151; or would not have been made
this well %26#151; just a few years ago,” he said. The specialised
market, agreed James Schamus, of Focus Features, has matured. “The
Academy and the public, in general, are more open to challenging
movies than ever before. It’s not a case of indies sneaking in
there.”
The results of this shift should make for a stimulating night’s
viewing on February 24 %26#151; if, of course, it happens.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has confirmed
that the show will go on in some form.
Gil Gates, who is producing the Oscar Awards telecast for the
14th time, has suggested that they may use clips of previous
ceremonies to make up a show that would be a kind of Oscar archive.
Otherwise, there may be a ceremony, but no telecast.
Or the Writers’ Guild may be persuaded to come to some sort of
one-day truce to allow America’s most popular annual broadcast to
go ahead.
Officially, the Academy is saying that the usual red-carpet
event will go on. Given the current stalemate between producers and
writers, however, what will happen on the night is a good deal more
mysterious than the likely winner of best actor. Daniel Day-Lewis
for There will be Blood, they say, but we’ll have to wait
and see.
