Corona Daily 171: The Purest and Strangest Oscars

On 28 February, the coming Sunday, millions would have watched “the Oscars” on TV. Thanks to the pandemic, the 93rd academy award ceremony will now take place two months later, on 25 April. The Academy Awards were given first time in 1929, when the entire ceremony lasted for fifteen minutes. Since then, this is only the fourth time the Oscars are delayed. In 1938, flooding in Los Angeles postponed the date. In 1968, the date was shifted following the assassination of Martin Luther King. In 1981, President Reagan survived, but the assassination attempt was scary enough to delay the Oscars.

Funnily enough, the name “Oscars” is not official. In 1930 or thereabout, when the Academy librarian Margaret Herrick saw the statue, she said it resembled her uncle Oscar. The famous statue weighs eight-and-a-half pounds and stands 13 and a half inches tall.

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In a normal Hollywood year, winter is the award season. Los Angeles, London and New York are busy with hundreds of screenings, ceremonies, panel discussions and lavish cocktail receptions. Pandemic has put an end to all that. Some panel discussions are held on Zoom, but without cocktails to follow, few people are interested in them.

Theatrical release was mandatory for eligibility. That has been relaxed to modify the condition as “intention to release in theatres”. Films released via password-protected or transactional video-on-demand are eligible if originally meant to be shown in cinema halls.

This year a record 9362 academy members will vote to decide the nominations and winners in twenty-four categories. They are reduced to watching the films in their living rooms. Voters opening up the official screening app have 177 films to consider. With no guidance and no cocktails, voters will have to actually watch the movie and assess.  

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Rules prohibit the movie producers or studios to send to voters anything other than a DVD of the film. However, there are enough ways to bypass the rules.

The season usually begins with the Toronto film festival in September and culminates with Oscars in February. Between them are four televised ceremonies, all of them postponed this year. Golden Globes (this year 28 Feb), Critics choice (7 March), SAG (14 March) and BAFTA (11 April) lead up to Oscars.

Earlier, big Hollywood studios did everything to wine and dine the voters. Now online platforms like Netflix compete with the studios. Last time, for the Critics Choice awards, Netflix received 61 film and TV nominations. Netflix had flown some 400 journalists, from the voting body, to Los Angeles and New York, on expensive trips. They were booked in the high-end hotels, had private encounters with filmmakers and stars, were gifted promotional items such as premium alcohol bottles.

For big films, the cost of a campaign to win awards is over $20 million per film. There are specialized agencies and consultants that work exclusively on marketing and lobbying the voters. Even an actress in the supporting category requires personal styling for every look she sports on the campaign trail, including a designer for outfits to be worn at airports.

Just like without a billion US dollars as the campaign money it is not possible to become the president of the USA any more, it is difficult to win an Oscar unless substantial money has been invested in winning the voters. None of the practices are ethical, but they are based on loopholes in the existing laws. In a normal year, there is the box office boom following an Oscar win. This year, that is unlikely to happen.

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The pandemic year may create the purest and strangest Hollywood awards season. Without the glittering events and posh marketing campaigns, we may witness some surprises. On the coming Sunday, for the Golden Globes the Kate Hudson drama “Music” has been nominated, a movie hardly any film connoisseur had heard about before the nomination.

Ravi