It’s that time of year again — awards season. The Golden Globes, Grammys and Oscars are all set to happen, despite the protracted writer’s strike, the rotten economy and the war that will not end.
Hollywood will try hard to help us forget the real world, like taxes and post-holiday poverty, by shifting our focus to the “who’s who” of the entertainment industry — the fashionistas and fashion victims, opulent and ostentatious parties, the seasoned and the ingénues — in an attempt to identify the very best of the field.
Awards shows can be fun to watch and equally as painful, as evidenced by the shenanigans of Britney Spears and Kanye West at the VMAs. It’s always fun to see stars who take themselves too seriously, like Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey and Katherine Heigl, pretend to have humility and feign surprise when given an award. We get lost in the moment and hopefully forgive them for a trespass that occurs each year like clockwork: the hoarding of great films for awards season.
Each year, audiences are held hostage by the film industry with crappy movies, while they hold on to the best of the best until December or January; that way, the films can be fresh in the minds of voters.
For example, last week I saw Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, No Country for Old Men, The Great Debaters and Charlie Wilson’s War, all of which are some of the best commercial films that I have seen all year. Other great films like Superbad, Spiderman 3 and American Gangster were released this year, but in terms of volume, we could be watching fabulous films all year long instead of choosing between lame films like Hairspray, Norbit, Ocean’s Thirteen and Live Free or Die Hard. The crème de la crème of filmmaking sits on shelves until the movies can be unveiled all in hopes of winning the gold.
Although I understand the importance of the awards shows to industry insiders and fans alike, it’s disappointing that the viewing needs of the audience member/consumers are dismissed all year in lieu of one night.
It’s also disappointing that the best films come out during the busiest time of the year. Many people are on vacation during December and January, but few of us are sitting around twiddling our thumbs. At that time, folks are shopping, traveling and preparing for their awards season — the holiday season with friends, family and everyone in between. While it is wonderful to have many new and interesting titles from which to choose, it can be logistically cumbersome for those of us who really like the movies and think of them as entertainment and art. Industry execs blame piracy, satellite television and the Internet for declining ticket sales, but there are clearly other factors at work.
One of these factors is the practice of sitting on films for an awards rollout, instead of releasing high quality movies all year long. This practice is dismissive of a public that wants solid entertainment at their local movie theaters. We are already charged exorbitant prices for admission and snacks. Who wants to spend upwards of $10 to leave their living rooms and spend another $10 to $20 at the concession stand to see a film that most of the time is just OK? Viewers can experience mediocrity all day and evening on cable television, at the local video store, and in the mail through Netflix, so why spend that kind of money to go out and be underwhelmed?
Like awards shows, going to the movies is supposed to be less of an exercise and more of an event, an overall cinematic experience buoyed by tasty treats. Theater owners count on concession sales to make money since most of the revenue generated from ticket sales goes to the distributor. Thus, pleasing the audience members is always good for business.
As technology is changing, so are the times, and Hollywood faces steep competition from a variety of sources. The practice of holding on to dynamic films until the last possible second is no longer a good idea because, while it may work for the awards voters, it clearly works against moviegoers.
Hollywood must make a decision: make audience members a priority and increase sales or continue making awards shows the priority and add to the growing disapproval of the overall cinema experience.
This article appears in Jan 9-15, 2008.
