The Death of the Oscars (and my soul)
Grieving my Hollywood dream.
We've all done it.
In bed when you can't sleep, in rush hour traffic, in the shower. People are recording themselves doing it and getting thousands of views for it. Lonely nights in my college apartment saw me practicing my Oscar speech in the vanity, complete with fake tears and copious hand movements. While performing for my fake audience, I looked like a mess, but it didn't matter. I knew that someday, I would recall this rather pathetic moment and gush about it eagerly in an Instagram post the morning after winning the award.
Funny how things change.
Fast forward a handful of years and thinking back on those moments no longer inspire me. They fatigue me.
I've been trying to pinpoint when exactly the Hollywood dream escaped me. I'd say it probably started in art school when I attended SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design, or as students so affectionately say, sleep comes after death) for six months before dropping out due to high stress and anxiety. I, of course, was one of a small handful of black students attending the school and found my existence futile. No matter how hard I fought for inclusivity in my scripts or how I pushed for my instructors to assign us films that white men didn't direct, nothing mattered.
Upon returning to university after my dropping-out stint, I rekindled my spark, surrounding myself with a group of lovable misfits that formed the school's film club. It was there that I learned just how hopeful one can be about graduating and making the beeline to Los Angeles, a destiny fed to us by our professors who stressed that if we didn't make the jump to L.A., we'd be wasting all of our potential and never make it.
The thing is, I did make it to Los Angeles. No, I wasn't living there, but I managed to secure a programming gig, bringing me to L.A. twice while in college. In my eyes, I had found success. So why didn't it feel like it? Because to everyone else, it didn't matter. I wasn't on glamorous sets (let me tell you, movie sets are anything but charming), I wasn't having lunch with C-list actors, and I couldn't take a decent picture of the Hollywood sign to save my life. That's when I noticed that my dream of being a television writer and living in society's ideal of Hollywood had shifted. I no longer craved it and felt bad about it.
COVID-19, the strikes, and now the second reign of Trump have all but beaten the dream out of me. That and knowing what I know as someone who works for film festivals and has access to industry professionals. The glass has shattered, and now my worldview has been tainted. I had once been so engrossed in the film industry, and now I was suddenly repulsed by it. All the screenwriter influencers I followed sounded like cult leaders who wanted me to sell my soul to get a general meeting with Netflix. My friends who had recently moved to L.A. were begging me to reconsider, and some had even left shortly after arriving, noting that the experience isn't what they thought it would be. All signs were telling me to turn back and run for the hills.
Then came the recent string of highly scandalous articles stating that Academy voters are now required to watch all nominated films in order to place a vote for the prestigious Oscar award. Almost a hundred years of Oscar ceremonies and all this time, voters weren’t watching the films they were entrusted to vote on.
“I am the first one to be on that list of people who don’t watch everything,” one film editor in the Academy told me. (All of my interview subjects in the Academy requested anonymity to speak candidly about their own behavior or the Academy’s conduct.) “Wicked is totally uninteresting. I know I’m not going to vote for it, and I didn’t really watch it,” she added, referring to the Wizard of Oz prequel that was nominated for Best Picture this year. “I can only watch the things I’m interested in. Otherwise, for me, it’s a waste of my time.” The new rule won’t change her habits, she told me. “I know what I like. I know what I don’t like. If I start it and watch 10, 15 minutes and know I’m not going to vote for it, I’ll just continue ‘Play,’ but I might not watch it. I’m just gonna walk away.”
The Awful Burden of Actually Watching Oscar Contenders - Amogh Dimri
I can't say why, but this solidified my stance on everything. It's no surprise, that's for sure, but the "silence" finally being broken gave me yet another reason to justify releasing my dream.
If the people tasked with selecting the most renowned films cinema has to offer can't even be pressed to watch them, what does that say about the Academy? Why even have the Oscars? What the hell are you voting for? Then that leads me down an even bigger spiral when I remember how No Other Land (2024) took home best documentary this year, but when one of the leading subjects of the film was kidnapped by Israeli forces, the Academy refused to state solidarity. The jokes write themselves!
It's all so goddamn bleak. The longer these institutions run, the further they stray from the core characteristics they claim to embody. Sundance, I'm looking at you as well. Even then, in the darkest recesses of my mind, there's still a glimmer of hope. Hope that one day things will change, and saying "I want to win an Oscar" or "I want to be a screenwriter in Hollywood" doesn't dredge up a wave of embarrassment. I'll continue to toil away at my scripts, the dream now being that I get to make something meaningful with a crew full of people I love and admire. After all, that's what filmmaking is about. The Oscars will never change that.
To end my ramblings, which are disguised as essays, here's a good quote from USA Today that absolutely slams last year's Oscars.
But as ratings for awards shows dwindle, it's worth trying just a little harder to try to persuade people to spend their Sunday nights watching the rich and famous hand each other golden trophies.
This is Hollywood, after all. These people are supposed to know how to put on a show. Otherwise, why are we watching?"
God bless us and Kirsten Dunst, too.
