Lloyd Kaufman

by Lloyd Kaufman with Andy Deemer

According to Anita Gates of the New York Times [1], viewership for the annual Oscars show has been dropping faster than my pants after a hot Malay stew. Well I have three words for you, boys and gynos: big fucking surprise. That’s right… big fucking surprise that audiences aren’t tuning in to watch Hollywood’s fat bigwigs, and balding corporate whores, and collagen-injected starlets parade down the blood-red carpet at this back-slapping fiesta. The one thing that does surprise me is how long they’ve been keeping this racket alive.

As recently as the 1970s, the Oscars were accessible to independent filmmakers. In 1971, a little film called Joe was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film wasn’t made in Hollywood: it was shot on the streets of New York for a paltry $150,000. It stared a cast of then-unknowns, was written and directed by a team of then-unknowns [2] and was distributed by an then-unknown film company called Cannon Films. Could that happen today? What do you think?

To even be considered for an Academy Award nowadays, you need an advertising budget bigger than the GNP of Chad or Burma. Hell – more than that of most third world countries! The only way you can even get nominated for an Academy Award is by having enough green to buy full-fucking-page ads in every bullshit industry rag, with the words “for your consideration” taped on. And then hosting celebrity-filled all-expenses-paid parties in Laguna Beach. And then, of course, by stuffing your film full of big-shit Hollywood stars [3].[4] It doesn’t hurt to have the name “Weinstein” attached, either.

So look at the goddamn nominees this year. A load of predigested baby food! Fresh-faced little Leo stroking his jet, old man McClint with another tear-jerking piece of anal play. The one film that had me hoping for something special was a movie about a suspected pedophile… some notorious Victorian writer. But they left out the fact that he was a suspected pedophile!!! God [5] fucking damn… NAMBLA is up in arms. But then… then there’s the film that really gets my goat: this Sideways piece of shit. “Boy, oh, boy. Isn’t this just a coup for true independent cinema,” the media cries. But I cry fowl![6] This is no indie film! It has a cast of mainstream actors! And the director? He’s been directing Matthew Broderick and Jack Nicholson for years! To cap it off, the distributor is Rupert fucking Murcock’s Fox! And do you know how much money Murdoch ploughed into making sure this “indie” film was nominated??? I’ll tell you – more than ten times the amount it cost to make Citizen Toxie!!![7]

Well, with the public, that shit will not stand. That’s why the viewership is down year after year – the public is sick of watching a fixed contest between the rich and the richer. Between the same five or six companies, each with a gazillion dollars in their pockets to throw at promoting the fuck out of their wares. Independent film companies don’t have the cash to take out full page ads. Or to throw mammoth parties on a fucking yacht. Hell, the most we at Troma can offer is my apartment, a six-pack of Beast, and Paris Hilton’s phone book [8]. And you’ll all have to share.

Maybe if the Academy had a broader focus… maybe if they were just a little more interested in truly finding the best picture, the best screenplay, the best performances, we’d choose nominees like:

Jonathan Caouette’s gorgeous Tarnation, a moving feature-length documentary made on home video for $200, Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg’s gutsy Shaun of the Dead, the even gutsier Fahrenheit 9/11, Neil Young’s ode to simplicity Greendale, Mario Van Peebles’ slam against the Hollywood establishment BAADASSSSS!, Guy Maddin’s fucked-up The Saddest Music in the World, cool shark movie Open Water, and those amazing documentaries What the Bleep Do We Know, The Corporation, MC5: A True Testimonial, and DiG! These were films that challenged their audiences, and presented us with something new, something worthwhile. Maybe you’ve got other suggestions? Let us know here!

So when an awards show resorts to hiring a controversial (yet not even funny) huckster as its host, planting rumors about internal academy dissent, and trying every trick they got to get you to tune in, you know that all there is lost. The most rigged event in American media [9] is over [10]. So instead, we invite you to come back to Troma. The time for independent cinema to resurface is NOW!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 6:05 pm and is filed under `Roids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.