Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't overdramatize it. The movie business didn't start with Oscar awards and it does not need them to continue. The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public. The critics and audience don't always agree. And now with less capture by the studios and cinema resulting in people having more choices of what to watch, people are choosing the more basic and entertaining "plotlines" or rather, content.

The industry is changing, the audience probably didn't change too much, but the Oscars don't matter any more except to some (high profile) actors and some industry insiders and it looks like they are sad about it.

View on HN

As an actor myself, I find that the Oscar bait is often the "Academy Award for the Most Acting". It has become a cliche that you seek an Oscar by playing a highly damaged character with obvious quirks.

More subtle performances are usually passed over, even though I consider them more challenging. They're often nominated, but rarely win.

Which is fine, since those kinds of films are usually not going to attract big audiences. The Academy Awards are a big industry advertisement, and they get the most bang for their buck by promoting a film that could catch the attention of an audience but hasn't yet.

I find that audiences are often puzzled by the Oscar winners. They go see them, and don't see what the fuss is about. But that does at least fund the next round of movies that are different from the summer blockbusters (which make plenty of money and need no help).

Rare to find a fellow actor on HN :) You don't have contact details on your profile, but I do - would be interesting in knowing more!

I'm just an amateur, and I only do local theater. I'm very glad to be able to do programming for a living so that I can do theater the way I want to do theater, rather than having my dinner depend on whether I win an audition against long odds. It sounds like a terrible way to suck the joy out of the craft.

I have nonetheless helped a few actors build minor careers. Despite the fact that my main advice is "don't".

I'm not interested in acting as a career at all, but I realized I'd love to try playing in local theater. How do I get in with no/low (I once read 'an actor preparss') background? Last I looked at it the local place was a bunch of people who went to school and had credentials. As far as starting my own, I'm worried there would be too many who would join and make a farce* out of it instead of striving for a serious, if amateur, effort.

*it's okay and ideal to have fun, but I've seen too many amateur bands/art projects/films/etc veer off due to members dismissing things 'cuz it's not for real' and just turning the effort into a hang-out

To get acting gigs at any level the one thing you have to do is go to auditions.

There is all kinds of training you can get which can help but ultimately you have to “just do it”.

Community theaters may have trained people in its management, but the cast and crew are usually untrained. Even reading Stanslavski once puts you ahead of most.

If you're looking at a regional theater (the kind where they actually pay people, albeit a pittance and most of the actors have day jobs), there will usually be a community theater in the area. If there's enough of an audience to support a regional theater, there will be others who want to do it just for fun.

Even if they don't have a place in the cast, they will often need techs of various kinds: lights, sound, props, costumes, stage management. It's a lot easier to cast somebody that you know can do things like "show up on time" and "be responsible". Actors... yeah. Even non-professionals.

(Bonus: I still use a light board with an actual floppy disk. The thing it replaced is literally a box of dimmer switches that they call Old Sparky. It's still in the closet. Theaters are fun places.)

Some areas really don't have community theaters. Mine had plenty, but I did actually start a theater of my own on shockingly little experience. Rent a performance venue, find a place to rehearse, get a script, put some notices on the relevant Facebook groups, and get ready for some Drama!

I cannot find a single accolade for J.K. Simmons' role in The Accountant. Heck, I don't even care to evaluate an entire role: that hallway scene[1] is seared into my head and that alone deserves an award if we're going to be giving out awards.

Stephen Root has countless memorable scenes if not entire characters. They're not "acting a lot" or playing highly damaged, complex characters. But they're absolutely nailing the characters in a way that I think, "no other actor could play that character."

Not that these actors don't get the credit they deserve. They're well-known and beloved. But if we're going to hand out awards, character actors like these, and countless others, are incredibly underrepresented.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRPvXbh-rLM

He's an underrated actor in general, finally getting some starring roles.

> It has become a cliche that you seek an Oscar by playing a highly damaged character with obvious quirks.

Even more likely if it's a biopic, and even, even more likely if the character has a disability. For example, The Theory of Everything vs Birdman for best actor and supporting roles.

Excellent example. Redmayne is a very talented actor, but that role was awarded for for its acting stunts rather than his understanding of who Hawking really was.

Birdman was very much an actor's movie. I went to see it with my actor friends, and had a wonderful time. Even setting aside the wonderfully long (and tricky) takes, it was an incredible exercise in performing the same scene several times in different ways. It was full of great performances, and Keaton surprised the heck out of everyone.

I notice that Iñárritu has a new film coming out on Netflix soon, Bardo, and I'm really looking forward to it.

This reminds me of Eddie Murphy's reaction to some "dramatic moment with a look he gave" in Showgirls that everyone reacted to as great acting, and he was like -- "Did you not see me in the Nutty Professor where I was FIVE PEOPLE AT THE SAME TIME? That was harder."

It's such an odd comment. Doing that is a great stunt... but it's a stunt. None of those characters were really all that well developed. The makeup team did amazing work, and it was an extraordinary technical feat (especially at the time), but Murphy's biggest contribution was some caricature voice work.

It must have been exhausting for him as an actor, and worth a ton of respect. But it's no surprise to me that other actors found it not to be his most interesting work.

Compare Tatiana Maslany, who portrayed multiple characters over several seasons, without prosthetics. If you want a real acting stunt, watch her play some of those characters pretending to be other characters.

I hope she doesn't get slotted entirely into genre films. Not that there's anything wrong with genre films, but all of the special effects tend to obscure what can be really great, subtle work. I'd love to see her do some theater.

Tatiana, if you're reading this ... I'm directing Midsummer Night's Dream next year and you'd be a killer Titania...

I absolutely fail to see the difference.

If anything, it's MUCH harder to be funny than to be dramatic.

I think you mean Dreamgirls, not Showgirls.

> The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public.

Not to state the obvious, but Oscars over the years have degraded into “who can wine and dine the voters the most”. There was a time (more than a decade ago) when almost all “Best Pucture” nominees were really entertaining and fun to watch. You look at the more recent lineups and almost all of them are a drag to watch. I’m not sure what else did anyone expect with West Side Story? It’s a movie adaptation of a Broadway show that has been adapted countless times. Anyone who has any interest in this genre has probably seen the story multiple times. What value add did the film have?

The new West Side Story is incredible. It's what a 100-million dollar musical looks like. Every frame is planned out, the actors are vulnerable, the songs are touching and super fun. The dance numbers are exuberant, some of the best ever produced by Hollywood. The film brings together the very best of American artists: Tony Kushner for the screenplay, Gustavo Dudamel conducts, the NY & LA philharmonics for recording, Justin Peck for choreo.

There's no way it can be argued to be a bad movie. I have no idea why audiences didn't go to see the movie. But I had a ball bawling my eyes out for two hours at the iMax.

No doubt it was a great movie. But my question was more around whether it was worth it. In an age when an imax ticket costs $25+ or you don’t have an imax theater nearby, but watching a movie still costs $20, how many people do you expect will go to watch the movie.

(Rotten tomatoes suggests that the audience liked the movie, there are no questions about it)

I went in with someone who was unfamiliar with the musical, and they walked out halfway deeply offended by the excessive and casual use of slurs throughout the movie directed at a specific racial group. If that had been a different group and the slur had started with a "k", nobody would think West Side Story is incredible.

And on a substantive note, the plot is fairly nonsensical.

Yes, the movie was technically well made but that's about it.

Did this slur end in the letter "X"? If so, yikes!

> The critics and audience don't always agree.

The Oscars are not decided by critics. They're decided by peers. Directors vote for best Director. Actors vote for best Actor. Composers vote for best Music. Etc...

> The Oscars are not decided by critics. They're decided by peers.

That's the Oscar nomination process: it's by peers.

The entire Oscar Academy (ie all previous winners in good standing) get to vote on the winners in all categories.

Which is why many in the industry consider "it's more important to just get nominated", & also why the final winners are often a popularity context. Many of the ppl voting aren't skilled in the areas being voted for. E.g. there's 4x more actors voting for technical categories, etc.

This is not how it works. Anyone in the Academy can vote on the nominees. The nominees themselves are decided by the people in their specific category.

Other way around. See above.

Source: my family is in the Academy

I think you have misunderstood either what I said or what they said.

https://variety.com/feature/who-votes-on-oscars-academy-awar...

Each person belongs to one of 17 branches. Each branch nominates for its own category — e.g., editors nominate editors, actors nominate for the four acting categories. Everyone gets to nominate best picture. For the final voting of the winner, all branches vote for everything.

> The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public.

The Oscars is Hollywood's prom and Best Picture is the Prom King. It's a popularity contest.

True, but at least its a popularity contest among peers. As noted elsewhere in the comments here, actors vote on the best actors, etc.

Nominations are by peers. Overall winners are voted on by the entire academy, & thus often a popularity contest.

In regards to basic plotlines: These might go well if you look at movies in pure commercial terms or a made up metric of "how many people did a single piece of media manage to distract from their lives for a few minutes".

But both as a musician and a film maker I'd be warn about relying overly on such metrics alone. People (can) form connections to the media they interact with that go beyond these metrics and the functions culture itself performs for humanity is more than the money it produces and the minds it keeps busy. It is also about reflection, documentation, memories, meaning, representation and similar hard to define things.

Some of the most important pieces of music I heard or films I experienced have been commerical flops and have small (but passionate) audiences.

Humans are wildely different in their tastes and psychological needs — the media we really love is a reflection of that. Commercially successful media is media that a broad majority of people find good or at least worth consuming and there is nothing bad about that. But it is often more specific productions that really strike a deep chord withing their audience. Maybe it brings up memories from their childhood, maybe it expresses feelings they always had, but never could put their finger on, maybe it is a particularily good expression of a (power) fantasy that individual has and so on. There might be a film with horses in it that saved a teenage horse loving girl from suicide and even if 99% of the world (including me) thinks that movie sucks, it might not have sucked for that girl.

The point here is: Often the stuff that really hits deep for one personally might not woo the broad commercial audiences at all. Because what hits you might not hit all. And what hits most might also hit you, but not as hard or deep.

Obscure media has it's value.

The Oscars often don't agree with critics, either. I don't think anyone had Ordinary People, Dances with Wolves, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Crash, Green Book, even CODA at #1 on their year-end best of list. Best Picture is usually going to favor something that is at least serious enough that the voters don't feel like children for loving it, i.e. they're never going to award a tentpole or franchise entry, sci-fi, fantasy, horror genre-type stuff will only very rarely even be considered, but they're also going to favor relatively inoffensive, unchallenging, often feel good work that isn't particularly novel or ground-breaking, which is more what critics will lean toward. They also have a tendency to reward message movies and films about filmmaking and Hollywood itself, even if no one likes them.

Excuse me? Most if not all of these could easily end up on peoples year-end best of list. Some people don't even remember any other than Titanic from the 90s.

>The Oscars often don't agree with critics, either. I don't think anyone...

They're talking about critics.

When Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan, I quit the Oscars and never looked back. How many people still watch Saving Private Ryan vs. Shakespeare in Love?

"The Favorite" won best picture, director and original screenplay in 2019, and it's the first film in a long time a worthy film took the accolades. "The Favorite" is a black comedy and totally not the type of film you describe. I was astonished it did so well.

If you’re talking about the Oscars and “The Favourite“ it won (a different) one.

I misread the wiki, you're right. The Favorite was nominated for 10 awards, it won only for Best actress.

Hugo. A movie I had mixed feelings about. I liked the stereoscopy in Hugo because it can add a lot to human interactions (for one thing the two eyes see a little bit more of the muscles around the edge of the face which are obscured in a single view), but unfortunately the business model of ‘pay more for 3d’ and the fact that 20% or so of people are stereo blind makes 3d a tough sell for most movies. But yet there is something a little sleazy and self-serving about movies that celebrate movies.

My take from the post was less about the Oscar per se — more about the decline fit the theater experience (sans Marvel/Pixar flicks).

Yes, and one could argue it's just cyclical.

I quite enjoy the type of movie they are referencing and have almost never watched a super hero movie but The Fabelmans looks like a total bore. That is even with wanting to see Julia Butters acting evolve.

We will see with Nolan's Oppenheimer next year.

This is all over dramatized. Butters will probably be the biggest actor in the world in 10 years making "serious" dramas.

Tarantino has even talked about how this goes in cycles and we have been going through a boring time like in the late 50s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com