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Commentary: No Moore Oscars, At Least For Now
By
Shannon Snow
February 2, 2005
Many speculate that the Academy Award committee, wearied of
controversy, shunned Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" for
political reasons. But I would argue that it was not politics
that played most heavily in this decision. It was time and tradition.
Time has have long played a role in the selection process for
Hollywood's most prestigious awards. Before Adrian Brody took
the stage and kissed Halle Berry to claim his Academy Award for
Best Actor in 2002, the youngest man to win an Oscar in the Best
Actor category was Richard Dreyfus, at 30. Even Brody, a relative
unknown, was 29 when he won, a not so tender age in an industry
captivated by the fresh faced, nimble and young.
While magazine covers, gossip columns and blogs herald the new,
the dating, the dramatic, the coke snorters and violent alcoholics,
youth and glitz are not appealing to the Academy. Fans may be
fascinated by the breasts of 18-year-old Lindsay Lohan, the waifish
figure of Mary Kate Olsen and the red nostrils of Tara Reid,
but it is age, place and timing that grab Oscar's attention.
Indeed, when Academy presenters slowly announce "And the
Oscar goes to...," the answer on the inside of the envelope
is most often the established, the obvious, the safe, and most
of importantly, the long overdue.
In 2001 the Academy received flak for its lack of representation
of African Americans among nominees. (Even Julia Roberts "couldn't
imagine" a world in which she had an Oscar, and Denzel Washington
didn't.) Sure enough, that year two prime candidates cropped
up: Halle Berry for "Monster's Ball" and Denzel Washington
for "Training Day." Both were nominated for performances
that were not the actors’ best work; both won. The awards
were so pat that Denzel himself looked incredulously upon the
audience when receiving his statuette.
"Two birds in one night, huh?" he said.
The Oscar for Best Documentary Film is another example of a
category slow to change with the times. The category has received
record nominations to films produced by the United States Office
of War Information, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. Indeed,
the Academy was known to shun mainstream documentaries in favor
of stoic war-focused unknowns. One such casualty was 1994s "Hoop
Dreams," a celebrated crossover hit that earned play in
mainstream theatres and airtime on PBS. The Academy's failure
to nominate it was so bemoaned that even David Letterman -- who
earned blank stares in his notorious appearance as host -- drew
applause when he mentioned the film in his "Top Ten Signs
the Movie You're Watching is Not Nominated for an Academy Award." Number
six, "It's a beautifully made documentary about two kids
in the inner city trying to realize their dream of playing professional
basketball."
Eight years later, when documentaries had become more common
in the theatres, three well-known films were nominated: "Spellbound," "Winged
Migration" and "Bowling for Columbine." The last,
which had set records for the most money made by a documentary
in the United States., won. It was an unprecedented victory for
director, producer and writer Michael Moore, who accepted the
award with the other documentary filmmakers by his side onstage.
Two years later Moore's next effort, Fahrenheit 9/11, was an
incendiary presence at the box office and in critical reviews.
The New York Times called it "the best film Michael Moore
has made so far, a powerful and passionate expression of outraged
patriotism." The prestigious Cannes Film Festival crowned
the film with its highest honor, the Palm d'Or, winning out over
the best narrative fiction films of the year. It was the first
time a documentary had ever won the award.
Moore submitted "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be considered
in the Best Picture category but did not complete the paperwork
necessary to enter the film for Best Documentary. But the Academy
could only be pushed so far. It did not nominate the film, instead
filling the field with a slew of last minute releases. It wasn't
the first time the Oscar committee had failed to recognize a
film in the category which it deserved to be in. In 1998, Roberto
Benigni's World War II classic "Life is Beautiful" won
Best Foreign Language Film, but it was beaten for Best Picture
by the romantic comedy "Shakespeare in Love."
It is fitting that the Cannes Film Festival recognized Moore's
documentary in a way that the Academy is clearly not ready to.
Cannes has always has a history of honoring the genius in filmmakers
much earlier than the Academy gives them due. After all, it was
11 years after Stephen Soderbergh won the Palm d'Or for "Sex,
Lies and Videotape" that he earned his first Academy Award,
for "Traffic." Like the long overdue awards for African
American performers, and the belated recognition of mainstream
documentary films, the Academy itself is years behind Cannes.
As reality shows take over our television sets, it is increasingly
becoming the new mainstream narrative form on the small screen.
This transformation, in the making since "The Real World" premiered
on MTV in 1992, is seeping across media and redefining boundaries
of what is documentary, what is fiction and, most of all, what
is a story. It may take years before this blurring of categories
affects the members of the Academy and enables them to nominate
a documentary for Best Picture.
It will probably not be soon enough for Moore's next film, on
the health care industry, to be nominated for Best Picture. But
when documentaries that are of the quality and artistic prowess
of Fahrenheit 9/11 are able to be recognized as the best film
of the year, it won't only be time, it will be long past due.
Contact Shannon Snow at ssnow@stanford.edu
