Awards Show 2.0: The Awardening

By Jonathan Frey

This year the Academy Awards, or Oscars, are celebrating their 80th anniversary. 80th! Who would want to watch old crap like that? Is it you? Do you like to watch this old crap, Pa or Ma Kettle? The show needs to be remade, preferably by some young upstart who cut his teeth on shooting Nickelback videos and hasn’t been castrated by banal Old Hollywood thinking. I’m looking right at you, Louis J. Horvitz and Errol Morris, directors of the 74th Annual Academy Awards. God that was a bad year.

I mean f**k, RoboCop is only like six years old and it’s already been remade… 21? Oh. It’s 21 years old. Still, that’s nowhere near eighty. So this ceremony desperately needs to be updated. And fast. And when I say fast, grandparent, I’m not talking about mere MTV-style editing, I’m talking about something steeped in such dizzily irenic hyperreality and enough vaguely Canadian trappings it would put The N and its powerhouse Degrassi to shame. Where’s your claws at, Lady Oscar? Where’s the edginess? Thematically speaking (and when the strike is settled of course), why not inject the elegant majesty of the red carpet with a dose of visceral, incendiary storytelling? For example, with just a little bit of subtle scene-setting — and some steady-handed plotting — Hilary Swanks’s already visually arresting gown could be underscored by the heartbreaking parallels of corruption and humanity that run through both the public offices and the underworld of downtown Baltimore. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Moreover, the competitive categories that presently make up the Oscars are just entirely outmoded and, frankly, a little embarrassing. ‘Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay?’ WTF does that mean? Is that like the Charleston? Give the Lindy Hop a rest, you old-timey mossback. Let’s just start from scratch, and — I don’t think that was RoboCop I was thinking of, by the way - and how about keeping it focused on the areas of filmmaking that people still give a crap about?

Por ejemplo:

Outstanding Achievement in Awareness in a Motion Picture-
(Winner: Pedestrian who charges right up to driver’s side window and is immediately able to announce “It’s Quiz Kid Donnie Smith!” when former child semi-celebrity Quiz Kid Donnie Smith’s car crashes into store-front window, Magnolia).

Best Best of the Best starring Eric Roberts-
(Winner: Best of the Best 1).

Most Attractive Throat Hair on a Director-
(Winner: P.T. Anderson).

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