The New Academy Awards Philosophy: The More the Merrier

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently announced that they would be expanding the field of Best Picture nominees in 2010 from five movies to ten. Their reason was that it was a throwback to the the early years of the Academy Awards, allowing a greater amount of great movies to get the respect they deserve. Maybe the Oscars were about genuinely rewarding talent and hard work in the 30s, but nowadays, they're mostly about publicity.

The most recent Academy Awards are a fine example of how things work. Look at the interesting development of The Reader. It was released as The Weinstein Company's prestige picture for the year. It opened to mixed reviews and its status was generally reduced from contender to also-ran. But the company pushed it so heavily that ultimately, it not only got a Best Picture nomination, but it became one of the top contenders to upset Slumdog Millionaire. All this for a movie generally considered average-to-slightly above average. It just demonstrates how recognition around award time is often based not on how good a movie is, but on the PR skills of the distributor.

Another example of how the Academy Awards work: Fox Searchlight had two big end of the year movies - Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. The Wrestler was gritty and different, Slumdog was flashy and safe. While The Wrestler's December release date positioned it as Fox's big prestige pic of the year, its success was eclipsed by the popularity (and hype) of Slumdog Millionaire. So Fox put most of its marketing money behind Slumdog, while spending a much smaller amount on The Wrestler, almost exclusively revolving around the performance of Mickey Rourke rather than on the film itself. The end result: Slumdog gets a bunch of nominations and ultimately wins Best Picture, while The Wrestler's only nominations were for the performances of Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei, neither of who won.

The expansion of the Best Picture category could potentially fix the problem of movies with smaller marketing budgets not getting proper recognition. However, the more likely scenario is that we would see more nominations for the more popular, fan-friendly movies like The Dark Knight. (Although I'm not bashing The Dark Knight. If you look a few posts down, you'll see that it was my favorite movie of 2008.) People seem to always make a big deal about the Oscar shows always getting low ratings, as if the only purpose of the show was to attract a huge audience. Well, if you throw The Dark Knight and Iron Man into the Best Picture race, more people will watch the show, even if those movies have no chance at actually winning. And in the months leading up to the show, just think of how much extra money and attention the studios can draw to these movies by pointing out that they're "Best Picture nominees!"

Increasing the size serves primarily to give free publicity to the studios and bring in more viewers and ad revenue for the show itself. The fact that a few additional deserving movies might get some additional recognition in the process is merely a side effect. And besides, the Academy rarely gives the award to the movies that really deserve it anyway, so it's not gonna make much of a difference in the long run.

Hey, there's always the Independent Spirit Awards...