Lessons for Hollywood and the Oscars before 2024 – Awards Daily
Trying to fix what’s wrong with Hollywood and the Oscars now requires believing that there was something wrong in the first place. In my view, something is very wrong. There is a creative bottleneck of people who are too afraid of being called out, exiled, attacked or ostracized, which prevents them from telling good stories authentically. They have to constantly prove that they are not “one of them”, the bad guys. In doing so, they almost destroyed themselves.
They also see their role as fixing wrongs in society rather than providing great stories that move us in ways that movies, books, art, and comedy are accustomed to. The end result is that people don’t appear in movies anymore. Why should they? They have enough content at home to fill their time. They can watch old movies from back when Hollywood was still interested in telling good stories. Or they can use TikTok or watch YouTube. What could be so important to motivate them to get out of their homes and pay money to sit there for two hours and tell them everything that is wrong with their view of the world?
For one brief moment, there was only one such film – Barbenheimer – a hybrid of two films that appealed to different audiences. Oddly enough, they made together what audiences seem to be craving lately – old-fashioned Hollywood blockbusters. It’s hard not to look at the Barbenheimer meme and not see the gender binary – very feminine and very masculine – man and woman from a very long time ago.
Mimi Barbenheimer tells a story, but not the one told by Oppenheimer or Barbie. It’s a couple on the brink of the end of the world. But what was more than anything else was an opportunity for us all to come together. We’ve seen the same phenomenon at Taylor Swift’s concerts. We all long to be whole again, undivided, unjudged, not hating each other, not held to one standard of behavior…but allowed to be ourselves again.
There is a more cynical way to judge this moment, one that would have anyone running to hide, hide, lie, or do whatever they can’t talk about, to confront the simple majority: white people. Between the years 2016 to 2023, we can say that white American culture was on trial, all because Trump unexpectedly won. It has started a virtual civil war that has turned Hollywood upside down and made them so ashamed of themselves that every film must dot the i’s and cross the t’s to ensure no one is accused of being racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc. till then. The end result is unwatchable movies. We might as well come out and say that.
And it’s not the fault of the actors who were put in front of the white people who still run everything, but at some point, we have to find a way to make art again, tell stories again, and stop counting heads and types of people. People – or not. The alternative is to make Hollywood films his own requirements. Sounds like a lot of fun, huh?
Hollywood and the Oscars no longer trust the market to guide them. Instead, they are guided by high-profile columns in high-profile outlets that praise or condemn them as righteous extremists or heretics. If they violated a rule of social law, they would be dragged into the public arena for defamation. It seems that what we want from our art now is to reflect what life should be like once we “get it right.” But this is not the truth. It’s not interesting, and Hollywood can’t survive it.
It reminds me of a story. In the late 1980s, I was working as a waitress at a jazz club in Greenwich Village. I only attended NYU for one semester before I had to drop out due to student loans. During that time, I worked at one of the greatest places of all time. A jazz club run by immigrants from Trinidad. It was a rundown hole in the wall but it attracted the most famous names in jazz. I loved everyone there. We were like one big family. But the place was a complete disaster behind the scenes. They were so broke, and mismanaged money, that at dinner time, they would cook one meal and serve it to everyone as if that was what they had ordered.
This went without comment most nights. Wealthy (white) patrons were happy to be there. My friend, the bartender, and I were waiting for someone to say something, but no one did until one night. One customer, a young man in a suit, stood up and said, “I can’t believe we’re all pretending that what’s happening here isn’t happening here.”
I looked at my friend, we were both worried, but what could we do? The owner ordered us to lock the door and not let people leave until they paid. I was too young to understand what was going on.
The restaurant closed shortly thereafter. I didn’t think about it until the last few years, as I watched a lot of people do the exact same thing. Those who stand up and say, “I can’t believe what we’re all pretending to do, as if what’s happening here isn’t here,” will be expelled from Utopia. It is taboo to tell the truth about almost anything. And so here we are.
So I’m about to advise Hollywood and the Oscars to tread carefully. I come to this industry as an observer, not an insider or professional. Everything I know comes from my love of movies – lifelong – and knowing me as someone who has been covering the Oscars for about 25 years. Very long, very long.
Make movies for Americans again
When Oscar movies come out, no one sees them or talks about them until they’re released online. Once they do, they become part of shared conversations about the film. Films like Saltburn, The Holdovers and others are out of reach for most Americans, who are slowly forced to stay home to go to the movies. Going out is a huge inconvenience.
This is probably our future, where we get nothing but bad news week after week. The Oscars and Hollywood want to abandon a large part of the country and seek access to the global market. After all, if the SAG Awards are on Netflix, the global community can watch them. Entertainment, like social media, is not limited to the United States.
The only problem is that the local box office makes movie theaters an essential part of our culture. Once it starts to disappear, once it becomes a thing of the past, we’ll all look back now and see that there was a way forward, and Hollywood chose to abandon America in the same way it did manufacturing jobs – cheaper labor, more global shop.
This means goodbye to cinemas and films in general as a cultural engine in our country. We’re almost there now. Once Hollywood chose the international market, its films became more fantasy-based, and more “international” in subject matter. This means they can earn ridiculous amounts of money without ever setting foot in, say, North Dakota.
But we have paid a heavy price for their collective greed. We have paid the price as a country. As a people. Hollywood can’t tell stories to Americans because they don’t know them anymore. They have become so disconnected from the reality of everyday life – but every writer will tell you that the best stories are where they are. There are a lot of them that could be told but in the current state of paralysis in Hollywood, we know they won’t.
Maybe you think this doesn’t matter. This is the future. You can just board or leave behind. Perhaps the culture will be limited to only “a little” and not “a lot.” But maybe we need to get over ourselves a little and stop acting like neo-Puritans.
Either way, Hollywood’s stagnation means there are weaknesses in its monopoly that invite competition. It’s good news. This is what we need.
The counterculture is coming
In the past year, we’ve watched Hollywood and the film industry attempt to distort, attack, and destroy many of the pop culture success stories that came from outside the left bubble. Whether it’s a red-haired pop singer, a hugely popular YouTuber, an entire media empire called the Daily Wire, or the movie Sound of Freedom, we’ve seen an outright challenge to the ruling class. This gap will widen as the new counterculture grows.
This means that this is actually an exciting time to be a writer, film director, comedian, or artist. You’re free once you escape the bubble of the left where people can’t tell you what kinds of stories you can tell. You just have to find a way to reach the masses. I think there is a renaissance waiting on the other end of this, just as there was a renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s.
The success of Sound of Freedom should have been a bigger deal. Instead, journalists attacked the success story as if they were an unwanted invader in their culture. It was another example of the “us versus them” phrase that only hurt Hollywood. It made more money than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, Taylor Swift, Elemental, Transformers, Hunger Games, etc.
I look at this box office chart and feel sad about what happened to Hollywood, despite the best intentions. It’s even worse than those who cover the industry, as they are not even allowed to talk about failure if the intentions are right. They have become ambitious, and as such, they have abandoned their entire purpose – to entertain us. all of us.
That’s not to say that there weren’t impressive films made this year, there were. David Fincher’s The Killer is among the best of these films, along with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Cord Jefferson’s American fantasy, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and many others. We did our best as Oscars watchers. We’ve found the best movies to honor her.
Happy New Year, Oscar watchers. See you in 2024.
