On awards
Fredonia NY – I am not, and never have been, a fan of award ceremonies for art. Between the Golden Globes, the Oscars, and the Tonys, the profession of acting is riddled with them. They have done more harm to the professional theatre and the training of actors than just about any other force on this planet. My all-time highlight of the Oscar ceremonies was the night Marlon Brando refused his award for Best Actor in The Godfather in 1973 and sent up Sasheen Littlefeather to refuse it.
The Slumdog Millionaire situation has been interesting to study, and I am sure there are strong feelings on either side of the artistic merits of the film. I have not seen the film and probably will not, as I am not much of a moviegoer to begin with, but of all the items I read on the issues surrounding the film, I found this particular post the most illuminating. In particular, this paragraph caught my attention:
Let’s say I made a movie about the US where an African-American boy born in the hood, has his mother sell him to a pedophile pop icon, after which he gets molested by a priest from his church, following which he gets tied up to the back of a truck and dragged on the road by KKK clansmen. Then he is arrested and sodomized by a policeman with a rod, after which he is attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants, and then uses these life experiences to win “Beauty and The Geek”.
Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the “American experience” and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie. At the very least, I wouldn’t be on 94% on Tomatometer and a strong Oscar favorite.
Movies prey on Americans today because most of the movie-going public cannot separate illusion from reality. This inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality haunts this country in many ways. No matter what the subject matter, the only purpose Hollywood has in mind when it makes a movie is to make money. Anyone viewing Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, or any movie coming out of Hollywood should first and foremost remember that the primary item which must be sacrificed for the success of any movie is the truth. -twl
