Going With The Crowd

So, the Oscars were last night. I didn't watch the telecast which I felt was for the best, considering I hadn't seen the majority of the movies up for awards. (Whatever else you want to say, at least I'm consistent.) From the sounds of it I didn't miss much, even if I do feel like there was no way Billy Crystal could have been as bad as the internet is making it out to be. I'll all for being snarky, but there is a line where it just starts to be mean. Honestly, I don't know what people are expecting to see from these award show hosts. They are working in a room full of people who are trying to act nonchalant while on the inside they are fighting hard not to puke. Hollywood people love to pretend that they don't care whether or not they win, but you know they really do. That uneasiness does not exactly create a crowd which is in a laughing mood. Also, I would love to see some of the people who are killing Crystal today try to host a show watched by millions of people and see how well they do.

But, back to the topic at hand: I certainly wasn't about to let a little thing like not having any clue what I was talking about stop me from offering up my Oscar predictions when the list of nominees was released last month. I'll save you the trouble of going back and checking my predictions to let you know it turns out I'm pretty good at guessing Oscar winners, because I got 7 of my 9 guesses turned out to be correct. The only ones I missed were "Midnight In Paris" winning for Best Original Screenplay instead of "Bridesmaids" (travesty) and "Rango" winning for Best Animated Feature.

[Sidebar: Can all agree that it is time to do away with Best Animated Feature? This was only put in place because the Academy didn't know what to do with animated movies like "Toy Story". They felt like they should get an award because they were really good movies, but since they were animated they didn't want to give them the same credit as a regular film. However, now they have to keep presenting this category even when the crop of animated movies isn't that strong. It's like when the "Comeback Player Of The Year" award was created because people wanted to celebrate Frank Gifford's comeback from a brutal hit by Chuck Bednarik, captured in what became one of the most famous sports photographs ever taken. [Sidebar within a Sidebar: If you own a sports bar and that photo isn't on the wall, your bar sucks.] Gifford missed 18 months of his career recovering and professional football thought he should get something for the effort. That was all well and good at the time, but now the NFL is forced to scramble every year just to find a worthy candidate. At this point they end up giving it to a guy who simply played below expectations the year before because he was going through a divorce and his head wasn't in the game. Doesn't exactly hold the same heroic feel.]

Anyway, there is a very simple reason I was able to get so many predictions right: I was pretty much told who was going to win. Every movie critic said that "The Artist" was going to clean up at this show and who am I to doubt the experts? No need to over-think this. I picked "The Artist" in almost every category and it worked out well for me. (If only the guys advising my March Madness Brackets were this accurate.) The problem with this is that I have this sinking suspicion I am not the only one who made my picks this way. Every year it seems as though one movie starts to get momentum and becomes such a critical darling that it takes on the feel of a runaway freight train. (Ironically, for all the movies which get made about runaway freight trains, none of them ever win Best Picture.) Naturally, this makes me wonder if there are a few Academy voters who simply concede the Best Picture Oscar to the movie with all the momentum and don't even bother to see the rest of the options.

Now, if this were the case, the Motion Picture Academy would hardly be the first group of people who voted for something just because it seems like a waste of a vote to cast your lot with someone else. It is human nature to want to be on the winning side, so when it becomes obvious that one side has a clear advantage it is not uncommon for people to no longer feel like fighting about it anymore and get behind the front-runner. It is happening right now with the Republican Party, where it appears that no one really wants to vote for Mitt Romney, but he'll probably win the party nomination because enough people have said he will win and there are no better options for people to check out as an alternative. (In a strange twist of fate, much like the Republican Party, the Oscar voting committee is 94% white, 77% male and 86% age 50 or older. As golf writer Jason Sobel tweeted, "Even the Augusta National membership thinks it's too homogeneous.") It's not that he's the best, it's that he's got the enough people behind him to telling you he is.

The reason this is even an issue for me is that I hate when people vote for a person without doing any research into their stand on various issues and blindly follow the mob. Now, obviously, I'm not trying to equate the Oscars with the process which helps to decide the President of the United States (even though, sadly, most of the country would say the Oscars are more interesting), I'm simply saying that from here on out what I want is some kind of assurance that these people have actually seen every movie. I might have offered up predictions on movies I have never seen, but there is the little matter of my vote not actually counting. If the people whose votes do count legitimately feel as though "The Artist" was the best picture, then I am fine with that. I just don't like the suspicion that something won as a result of people being too lazy to be bothered to do the proper research. Think about it like this: if a movie has such little appeal to you that you can't even be bothered to sit through it for voting purposes and take another person's word for how good it is, than that probably tells you all you need to know about how entertaining it really is. It certainly doesn't sound like Oscar material to me.