STUBBORNLY, WISTFULLY | February 20th 2008

Alan Light/Flickr

The Academy Awards distort the annual film-release cycle and neglect what's popular at the box office. But Scott Castle, a manager of a cinema house in Brooklyn, eagerly anticipates the glittering parade ...

It was with high expectations that I sat down to watch my very first Academy Awards in 1982. I had good reason to be excited. The movie that changed my life, the one that compelled my father to buy me a bullwhip for Christmas, "Raiders of the Lost Ark", was up for some kind of award called an Oscar. When it won this award, it would verify what I already knew: "Raiders" was the best film of the year and quite possibly of all time. But after three long hours filled with movies that no nine-year-old has ever heard of, this triumph was not to be. It was beaten by some movie about guys running in slow motion down a beach. So began my 25-year love/hate relationship with the Academy Awards.

When I was younger, I couldn't comprehend the amount of money an Oscar meant to a film studio, or the lengths they would go to win it. I did not yet understand the ceremony as the highly profitable results of complex political and financial machinations in which a film's artistic merits are not paramount. The Awards ceremony was simply a glorious competition, like the Super Bowl. It was an event to determine, once and for all, that my favourite film was better than yours.

The contest was exciting, often because the films in question were also box-office successes. But can anyone imagine a movie like "Kramer vs. Kramer"--which won Best Picture and topped the box-office in 1979--pulling in the masses in today's movie-going climate? In 2007 the top ten box-office films included a sequel, four three-quels, a five-quel, two cartoon-based live-action films, a sci-fi remake of a remake and a graphic novel adaptation. It is for good reason that these are not the kinds of films that attract the Academy's notice.

In 1975, when "Jaws" gave birth to the modern blockbuster, it was nominated for Best Picture and Steven Spielberg was tapped for Best Director. George Lucas followed in 1977 with a Best Picture/Director pack for "Star Wars", and Spielberg received his second directorial nod for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (though the film was not nominated). In 1981, "Raiders" topped the box-office, and "E.T." did the same the following year (though it lost the big award to "Gandhi"). Sure, these were crowd-pleasers, but clearly there was a time when summer blockbusters had enough depth to go toe-to-toe with a Mahatma biopic.

Alas, the quality of summer blockbusters has ebbed, amid competition from video games and the internet for their target audience's dollar. (One almost needs to be raised on video games and the internet to sustain the visual assault of modern CGI movies.) But also a film is barely in theatres before the Academy's decisions are made. Studios now hoard their aptly named "Oscar-bait" films until the last possible moment, saving anything with promise until late autumn, at the earliest. (As long as a film starts before midnight on December 31st and then plays for seven consecutive days at a theatre in LA County, it is eligible for Oscar consideration.)

This trend took shape in 1997, when Miramax delayed a wide release of "Good Will Hunting" until January 1998. The film, fresh in the minds of Academy judges, earned seven nominations and two awards. Miramax reprised this strategy the following year with "Shakespeare in Love", which, along with a famously unprecedented ad campaign, courted a Best Picture upset over "Saving Private Ryan", the year's box-office champ. By 2002 every single Best Picture nominee had gone into wide release in either December or the following January. Studios would be foolish to gamble their "prestige picture" money on anything earlier.

The obvious problem with this autumn-heavy nomination habit is that the Academy seems to ignore those rare fine films that sneak into cinemas earlier in the year. One of this year's most blatant victims was "Zodiac", David Fincher's crime drama about San Francisco's infamous serial killer. The film, set in the 1970s, featured top-notch performances from a strong cast and a nicely restrained and atmospheric directorial outing from the usually flashy Fincher. Released back in March, it appeared near the top of dozens of critics' top-ten lists for 2007, yet failed to receive a single Oscar nod. Would a December release date have helped? 

It is a pity when well-crafted films get lost in the calendar's shuffle. But in the end the clear losers are serious moviegoers, who are often left with little reason to enter a theatre before September.

When I was young, I relied on the Oscars to let me know which films were required viewing. Though I no longer require their advice, I still love the Oscars. I love the overly familiar montages that always include Julie Andrews spinning on a mountain and Cary Grant running in a cornfield. I love gratuitous cutaways of Jack Nicholson laughing in the front row. I love that the greatest thespians on the planet can't make 20 seconds of scripted banter sound naturalistic. And I love that the Oscars never fail to disappoint me. Just as they did that first night when Chariots of Fire did what the Nazis could not: defeat Indiana Jones.

(Scott Castle is a writer based in Brooklyn, where he manages the Pavilion Theatre.)