3. All Movies Must Ignore Awards Season
There is a bigger and more exhaustive discussion to be had about whether or not awards season is good for film culture (it probably is) or whether or not awards are valuable in gauging the quality of a film (they most certainly are not) but this isnt about that so much as it is about the way that awards season intrudes upon the actual content of movies. Oscar-bait. What an ugly, cheap term that also pretty correctly sums up a huge portion of the movies that get made today. You know the ones. The ones that take the Have A Point mandate and turn it into a 100-foot high neon billboard that is then used to bludgeon the audience over the head. Famous people get naked! Famous people lose weight! Do accents! Put on weight! Get naked after losing weight WHILE doing an accent! Ugh. Its so ugly because its so obvious. And its infuriating because those films, those stupid histrionic films, are the only ones that ever seem to tackle real, adult issues. We should absolutely have a film industry that creates and rewards films that deal with sexuality, aging, race, poverty and institutional woes. But the only films that DO that are chasing the monetary reward attached to Oscar buzz, which means that if you want to make a film dealing with that subject matter and get distribution, you need to incorporate de-glammed movie stars bawling their eyes out, a triumphant redemptive arc (because Hollywood only likes movies about sad things if everything works out OK. Please see the list of Oscars Spike Lees direction has been nominated for as an example of what happens when films DONT do that) and all of it tied up in the sort of pat resolution that makes the industry people feel better about themselves and their politics, as opposed to, you know, making a challenging film about challenging subject matter. If films were forbidden from acknowledging the awards season at any point in their production, films would be in a healthier place. People both behind and in front of the camera would have to choose material based on what truly inspires and moves them, not because they assume theres a gold statue waiting at the end of the road. At the very least, a Hollywood that did not incorporate awards season into the process would be spared scenes like Robert Downey Jr. explaining Full Retard.