What Is the 'Academy'?

The Academy Awards telecast is the most visible, though not necessarily most important, activity undertaken by AMPAS. The most valuable work done by the Academy is in the area of film preservation. Thousands of Hollywood movies are in danger of being lost forever because of deteriorating negatives made with old silver nitrate film stock. AMPAS is attempting to transfer these negatives to a more stable medium. The process is expensive and labourious. Other AMPAS activities include trade publications, annual student film awards, research, film festivals, a scholarship program, and the maintenance of one of the best film libraries in the world.

Who Belongs to AMPAS?

Each branch has its own rules of admission but they generally include solo credits in at least two critically acclaimed or commercial hit movies and sponsorship by two members. Being nominated is a sure way to become a member.

Except for the Acting Branch, which has equal numbers of men and women, the AMPAS branches have been male-dominated. There are only a handful of women in the Directors Branch and some of the technical branches have no female members.

AMPAS members are often mailed videocassettes of the nominated films after they are announced, since many of those who vote haven't seen the nominees. This service is not provided by AMPAS but by studios seeking to promote their films.

Because the Acting Branch is the largest within AMPAS (25 per cent), actors have a disproportionate influence in choosing the nominated and winning films. This also explains why so many films nominated in the major categories feature show business themes, usually involving performers.

One of the frequent criticisms of the Academy Awards is that its aging membership does not reflect popular demographic trends. In fact, there is a full generation gap between the ages of average members of AMPAS and the ages of active filmmakers. There are two or more generations between the ages of average members and average filmgoers. Some voting members are octogenarians who haven't been to a theater in years.

At least two major stars (Henry Fonda and James Garner) admitted publicly that they let their wives fill out their ballots for them, prompting AMPAS to tighten up its voting procedures.

Oscar's Timeline

December 31
Award's year ends (at midnight).

Early January
AMPAS members are mailed a booklet listing eligible films.

Mid-January
Nomination ballots are mailed to AMPAS members who then have ten days to mail them back.

End of January
Nomination polls close. The sealed ballots are carried by armed guard from the AMPAS offices to the offices of Price Waterhouse, a nationally known accounting firm that verifies the secret coding on the ballots designed to prevent forgeries.

Mid-February
Nominations announced by AMPAS officials, with the help of last year's Supporting Role Oscar winners, to a group of 500 international journalists at 5:30 am in the AMPAS theatre.

End of February
Screenings of nominated films in AMPAS' state-of-the-art Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.

Mid-March
Final ballots are mailed out. Voters have two weeks to return them.

3rd week of March
Final polls close.

4th week of March
Awards presentation.

What Exactly is an 'Oscar'?

Since the list of winners is kept secret until the telecast, the awards handed out on television are blanks. The Academy reclaims the statuettes the morning after the telecast and has them engraved before they are shipped back to the anxious recipients. The personalized engraving is on a small plaque attached to the pedestal on which Oscar stands. The engraving includes the year, the award category and the name of the recipient. Each statuette is also engraved with a serial number on the back of its base.

The Oscars are manufactured by the Chicago factory of R.S. Owens and they cost AMPAS about $200 each. Since some awards can have up to three or four recipients in each category, several additional Oscars are ordered to cover all contingencies. AMPAS usually orders about 100 Oscars each year. R.S. Owens also manufactures the Emmy awards, Miss America statuettes, the National Football League's Most Valuable Player trophies and the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame awards.

On occasion, old Oscars have shown up for sale at auctions. Marlon Brando's 1954 Best Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront sold for $13,500 in 1988. AMPAS will buy back an Oscar from the recipient for $1. To date, about half a dozen Oscars have been sold, none to AMPAS. Recently, Vivien Leigh's Gone With the Wind Oscar sold for $563,000. The statue was nameless until 1931 when, according to Hollywood legend, an Academy secretary claimed that it looked like her uncle "Oscar." A columnist repeated the remark, the name stuck and, today, is a more familiar term to those outside the industry than "Academy Award." There are at least two different versions of this story and no one is sure which one is true.

The Academy Awards Telecast as a Media Event

• The Oscar telecast is the most widely viewed annual media event in the world originating from the United States. It has an audience of a billion people in 90 countries. In 1992, the Oscar telecast was viewed by 28.4 per cent of all households in the United States with television sets. Of all the sets that were on that night, over half were tuned to the Oscars.
  
  
• Almost 9 million Canadian viewers, or one-third of the entire population watched all or part of the 1992 Oscar telecast. Canada's Oscar audience was 48 percent adult women, 40 per cent adult men and 12 per cent children.
  
  
• Its 76 million American viewers is less than the Super Bowl audience of 120 million, but the Oscars attract hundreds of millions of viewers world-wide in countries where American football is unknown. The all-time top-rated Oscar telecast was in 1983, when it drew close to 81 million viewers in the United States.
  
  
• For days after the telecast, millions of people, whose usual opinions of movies can be expressed with monosyllabic grunts, become loquacious film critics with deeply held opinions about the intricacies of directing and performance. Many of them do not set foot in a movie theatre more than once or twice a year.
  
  
• The Oscar ceremony has only been delayed on three occasions: for two weeks in 1938 because of floods; for two days in 1968 because of the assassination of Martin Luther King and for 24 hours in 1981 due to the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
  
  
• The venues for the Oscar telecast alternate between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center (1992) which seats 2,900 people and the Shrine Auditorium (1991) which seats almost 6,000. Several hundred seats are reserved for the nominees, the presenters, various entourages from the corporate advertisers sponsoring the Oscar telecast, and well-connected individuals accompanied by their escorts.
  
  
• The remaining seats are then available to AMPAS members on a first come-first serve basis since there are many more members than there are seats. Those who wish to attend will pay between $50 and $200 per ticket. Scalpers will charge as much as $1500.
  
  
• The seating plan is carefully controlled. The nominees and presenters are seated in a "golden horseshoe" close to the stage so that their faces are easily seen by the eleven television cameras and the winners won't have far to walk when they collect their awards.

Hosting the Oscar Telecast

The emcee most frequently identified with the Oscars was Bob Hope, who performed this function 22 times. Hope was a star of virtually all of the major media forms of the 20th Century - including vaudeville, movies, radio, concert venues and television.

Johnny Carson was a witty and engaging host for a few years but, as he was a television star with virtually no credibility in the film industry, his presence was considered inappropriate by many.

In 1984, the single host was abandoned in favor of a format that allowed for a number of different hosts during each telecast. Robin Williams and Chevy Chase were among the most popular emcees during this period.

In recent years, the single host format has prevailed, with Billy Crystal being a popular emcee. Crystal was a television star before becoming a movie star and his good-natured yet acerbic humour have been appreciated by bored audiences. Actors and comedians Whoopee Goldberg and Steve Martin have also hosted the ceremonies.

The Business of Awarding Oscars

The economic beneficiaries of the Oscar telecast include:
 

The film winning the Best Picture Oscar can usually count on increased box office revenues of $20 to $50 million in the weeks after the telecast, providing the film is still being exhibited in theaters.

Examples of winners that have directly benefited from Oscar wins include 1990's Dances with Wolves ($48 million) and Driving Miss Daisy ($32 million).

If the film is already available on video, rentals and sales of the video will increase, but this has a negligible influence on total earnings. 1991's big winner, Silence of the Lambs had already been out on video for several months and was showing on PAY-TV when the film won in the "big five" categories including Actor, Actress, Screenplay and Director. For this reason, Hollywood studios will usually release their serious Oscar contenders in December, both to capitalize on the huge Christmas market and so that the film is "fresh" in the minds of AMPAS voters in the new year.

The Best Actor/Actress/Director awards have limited box office value. The other awards have virtually none except as an advertising come-on to try and lure people into the theatre.

How Are the Oscars Awarded?

There are about 5000 voting members of the Academy. Only a few hundred live outside the Los Angeles area. To qualify for the calendar year for which the awards are given, a film must have been exhibited for at least a week in the L.A. area before December 31.

All voting members of the Academy get to vote for nominees for Best Picture. The other nominees are selected only by those who work in their specialized areas. (Only directors vote for directors, etc.) The members of each group nominate up to five individuals who, they feel, have demonstrated excellence in their respective areas of expertise.

The top five recipients of votes in each category become the official nominees. All voting Academy members get to vote for all the major categories, even technical areas in which they may have no expertise. This policy has been subjected to much criticism and has often resulted in Oscar winners that are an embarrassment to members of a particular branch.

There is much politicking, back stabbing, influence peddling etc. during this period. Special screenings, publicity campaigns and media events are arranged by the studios for voting members although, in recent years, there has been a backlash against obvious and lavish attempts at "vote-buying."

Foreign film nominees must have English subtitles and are submitted by each country's equivalent to AMPAS. There is only one nomination per country. The few AMPAS members who bother to vote in this category must attend special screenings of all five nominated films before they are allowed to vote. On occasion, even Canadian films from Quebec have been nominated in this category.

Oscar Winners: Keeping the Secrets

AMPAS voting members mail in their choices and the votes are tabulated by the accounting firm of Price, Waterhouse and Company. The results are kept secret from all but the three tabulators who are locked in a guarded counting room, make the final tabulations on the day of the telecast, and prepare the sealed envelopes announcing the winners.

A Price, Waterhouse official takes charge of the 22 sealed envelopes, brings them to the awards and hands them to the presenters just before the winners are announced. A duplicate set of sealed envelopes is kept by an anonymous "back-up" official who is seated in the audience in case something happens to the first official. The "back-up" has never been needed. The official and his "back-up" will not travel to the ceremony in the same car in case of an accident.

Las Vegas bookies will give odds on the major winners who are only announced on camera during the telecast.

Rituals Associated With Oscar

Watching the Oscar telecast has become the equivalent of a secular religious experience for many. The Oscars occur every year at the same time and there are strict rules and regulations and hundreds of commandments. The Oscar itself has become a sacred icon within the industry, prominently displayed above the "altar" during the ceremony. Many of those who participate by watching the ritual don't really understand what it's all about and find themselves bored by much of it. Yet, for the average viewer, it's all beyond criticism. The vast majority of the television viewing audience has seen few, if any, of the films nominated.

• Oscar "sacrileges" include overlong acceptance speeches and presenters who take advantage of the media exposure to pontificate about pet political causes. AMPAS takes great pains to discourage both. Richard Gere's prattling on about Tibet one year all but guaranteed that he will not grace the Oscar stage again unless he is nominated for and wins an award, an unlikely event in any case.
  
  
• Every male connected with the ceremony in any capacity, from star to truck driver, wears a tuxedo. Females wear formal evening gowns which have been vetted in advance by AMPAS's official fashion coordinator. Female nominees and presenters can also obtain, through AMPAS connections, a free outfit costing five figures from designers in search of publicity. Gender confusion is seldom apparent during an Oscar telecast.
  
  
• The longest Oscar ceremonies were in 1989 and 1992, both of which tied at 3 hours and 24 minutes.
  
  
• As many as 300 limousines are reserved up to a year in advance by AMPAS for the "grand entrances" by the stars. The fleet includes up to 20 chauffeured Rolls-Royces for the superstars. Even unpretentious stars like Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro opt for official AMPAS limousines on Oscar day because the traffic conditions are horrendous and best left to experienced drivers.
  
  
• The 1988 ceremonies saw the worst traffic grid lock in the history of the awards. Stars who were several blocks away from the venue (including nine-months-pregnant Glenn Close) were forced to abandon their limos and walk the rest of the way. One production number starring leading players from 39 Best Pictures was canceled because many of them had not yet arrived. Some L.A. city employees are now let out of work early to avoid a repetition.
  
  
• After stepping out of their limos, Hollywood's royalty parade down a red carpet between two blocks of bleachers crammed with fans, some of whom have waited 48 hours for their seats, many of them camping overnight on the sidewalk. Also present are television cameras and photographers from all over the world. It can take the bigger stars almost an hour to run this giant media gauntlet.
  
  
• When the stars leave their seats to present or receive awards, prepare for production numbers, or go to the toilet, a team of 128 "seat fillers" are prepared to fill the empty seats until they return. This is done so that the television cameras will not linger on apparent gaps in an otherwise perfect symmetry of stars. The fillers are volunteers who are under strict instructions not to initiate conversations with the celebrities nor to ask for autographs.
  
  
• The audience wants to see "controversial events" during the telecast to help relieve what is essentially a stultifying exercise in tedium. These might include streakers, political statements, embarrassing gaffes, such as the wrong envelopes being opened, etc. The originators of the telecast do everything in their power to avoid these "events" by hiring 500 police and civilians who enforce security during the telecast. AMPAS wants the awards to be seen as idealized, non-controversial and non-ideological.
  
  
• "And the winner is" and "..the envelope please" have become among the most familiar phrases on the planet even though they are no longer used. The presenters now come on stage with the envelopes and usually say "..and the Oscar goes to?"
  
  
• The illusion that we are seeing the stars as "real people" is an important part of Oscar mythology. This is reinforced when they yawn, get excited, register disappointment, wear tacky costumes, argue with other stars, show up stoned or inebriated or display behaviour considered normal in any other milieu.
  
  
• One of the major attractions of any award show comes in the possibility of watching big stars reduced to babbling idiots because they have no script to read from.
  
  
• During the week following the telecast, several million people will go to see the Best Picture winner. This status will be used to promote the film in all its ancillary markets. Most of the time during an Oscar telecast is taken up by tedious walks to the stage, rambling speeches acknowledging people the audience has never heard of and obscure awards and other prizes that are virtually meaningless to most viewers.
  
  
• When the winners are announced in the major acting categories, all the nominees present in the auditorium are shown on camera simultaneously. The losers will then give the finest performances of their careers as they pretend not to be disappointed. Some will even give the impression that they are happy for the winner.

Voting Patterns Among Oscar Winners

Given that the vast majority of films are wholly fictional, AMPAS shows a clear preference for docudramas, movies based on real events or people, among nominated films. AMPAS voters also show a penchant for honouring successful movies that are still playing in theatres and whose box office take can be "helped" by an Oscar. Movies that were not already profitable or were out on video during the voting period tend to be ignored.

In recent years, AMPAS has consistently ignored superior performances by young actors in favour of one-shot star turns by elderly character players. Twenty-one year old Eric Stoltz's gifted portrayal of Rocky Dennis in 1985's Mask wasn't even nominated even though it was acknowledged by many as one of the finest screen portrayals in years and was performed under several pounds of makeup. In 1992, 72-year old Jack Palance won an Oscar for playing a character in the movie City Slickers who was so moribund that, when he died, it took the other characters several minutes to notice that he was dead.

Biographies of remarkable individuals and portrayals of the mentally ill are heavily represented among Oscar winners, particularly in the acting awards. Acting Oscars tend to be given for a total body of work by a particular actor rather than for individual accomplishment in a film, contrary to the stated rules of AMPAS.

Certain film genres have been historically ignored for Oscar nominations for Best Picture (horror, youth, adventure, science fiction, action, etc.) Genres that used to receive many nominations, but which were practically extinct, include westerns and musicals. The last two Oscar winners for Best Picture reversed this trend: Silence of the Lambs, a horror film and Unforgiven, a western.

Serious dramas with weighty themes are much more likely to be nominated than "popcorn" movies. These movies tend to be released in the latter part of the year rather than during the summer though, again, the last two Best Picture winners reversed this trend.

It helps an actor's chances of winning an Oscar if the character dies during the movie. In Oscar-winning films, the two most common occupations for men are soldiers (14 percent) and law enforcers (9 percent). For women, they are actresses (15 percent) and prostitutes (12 percent).

The Ideology of the Oscars

AMPAS was practically destroyed by a talent boycott during the 1930's when movie moguls successfully used the organization to prevent the formation of artists' guilds and labour unions.

Everything in the awards telecast is planned with regard to how effective it will be on television in serving the interests of the film industry. This priority even overrides the requirements of good television itself.

The Oscars are hegemonic in that they affirm many of the values associated with American dominant culture. These include: democracy, equality, hard work, individuality, competitiveness, upward mobility, occupational achievement and monetary success. While the Academy Awards purports to celebrate these values, a closer analysis reveals the inherent contradictions.

While the Oscars go out to the world, no foreign equivalent is beamed back to the United States. It is the most visible example of U.S. dominated cultural imperialism. American values and ideology are embraced by hundreds of millions of people around the world who are unaware of the contradictions.

The Oscars are an American equivalent of British media events involving the royal family. The British influence is also heavily represented by Best Picture nominees and Oscar-winning performances (18 per cent).

Other countries have virtually no influence. The Last Emperor, the Best Picture winner of 1986, was made in China by an Italian director but, was financed by Hollywood. The occasional Canadian film recipients (usually in the short film or documentary category) are often devoid of any Canadian identity unless they are French films made in Quebec, in which case the film is nominated in the "foreign" category.

Oscar Winners Reflect Prevailing Social Conditions

Oscars are often given for sentimental or ideological reasons rather than for technical achievement, especially in the major categories. In recent years, these biases have reflected a "liberal" sentiment and have attempted to redress wrongs that the voting members perceive have been perpetuated by the movie industry.

The political and social upheavals and inherent contradictions of the late 1960's are well represented by the winners of the Best Picture award during that period.

The Flip Side of the Acting Oscar

Actors whose appeal is somewhat limited to begin with find it difficult to get good roles after they win the Oscar (F. Murray Abraham, Louise Fletcher, George Burns, Art Carney, Marlee Matlin). After winning an Oscar, some actors exploit their popularity by choosing film roles of consistently inferior quality (Rod Steiger, Louis Gossett, Sophia Loren, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson). Actors become typecast in the types of roles that won them an Oscar or nomination (Julie Andrews, Marsha Mason, Bruce Dern). Some actors have difficulty finding good parts because producers assume that their services are too expensive after winning an Oscar (Maureen Stapleton, Linda Hunt). Other actors find the hype surrounding Oscar so intense that they find it difficult to lead a normal life (Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange). Still other actors allow their Oscar success to go their heads and they become dysfunctional (Richard Dreyfuss).

Unscripted Events, Embarrassments and Other Gaffes

• During the various telecasts, AMPAS has often trotted out elderly stars on the verge of expiring. Industry pioneer Mary Pickford was so "honoured" in 1976. Miss Pickford was so infirm that she could not attend the ceremonies but a camera crew recorded her at home, barely able to acknowledge what was happening.
  
  
• Similarly,1958 Oscar winner Susan Hayward was dying of cancer in 1974, but AMPAS persuaded her to make an appearance on the telecast. She was practically carried on stage while her doctors watched the telecast, wondering if she would be able to continue.
  
  
• Hollywood's most successful director, Steven Spielberg, has been consistently snubbed by AMPAS voters. E.T., one of the most profitable film in history, lost out to Gandhi, a politically correct but overblown and practically unwatchable exercise in tedium. Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, one of the best science fiction movies ever made, was similarly passed over. Oscar voters will made up for these "snubs" in 1994 by showering Spielberg with awards for Schindler's List, which was nominated in 12 categories and garnered seven awards, including best movie and best director. Schindler's List would have had to have won 11 awards to beat out the all-time Oscar winner Ben Hur, in 1959.
  
  
• In 1973, Marlon Brando, who was then active in native rights politics, sent "Indian Princess" Sacheen Littlefeather to the ceremony in his place as he had been nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of Vito Corleone in The Godfather. When 007 actor Roger Moore announced Brando as the winner, Ms. Littlefeather mounted the stage, refused the Oscar, and delivered a prepared speech on native rights. It later turned out that she wasn't even a native. The Oscar was never collected by Brando and is still in AMPAS' possession.
  
  
• The following year, a naked man ran across the stage while actor David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor. Niven made a crack about the streaker's "shortcomings" but AMPAS officials were appalled that their security arrangements were so easily breached.
  
  
• In 1975, the winner for Best Documentary was Hearts and Minds, a controversial anti-Vietnam War film directed by Bert Schneider. During his acceptance speech, Schneider read a telegram from the Communist government of North Vietnam. A squabble erupted among several stars backstage as to who should refute Schneider's comments publicly.
  
  
• During Oscar's 50th anniversary show in 1978, Vanessa Redgrave, a left-wing political activist, delivered a passionate speech about Palestinian rights during her acceptance speech for the Best Actress Oscar for Julia. A near riot almost ensued backstage and presenter-writer Paddy Chayefsky was so intent on publicly refuting Redgrave that he forgot to read the list of nominees while presenting the award for Best Screenplay. Outside the auditorium there were hundreds of pro and anti-Palestinian demonstrators, some of who were burning Ms. Redgrave in effigy, and the L.A. SWAT team was called out to disperse them. Ironically, Redgrave's win reflected the impartiality of AMPAS' many Jewish voters who had awarded her the Oscar despite her outspoken anti-Zionist views.
  
  
• The excitement continued during the 1978 telecast. Debbie Boone sang the Oscar-nominated song "You Light Up My Life" while surrounded by a staircase full of hearing-impaired ten-year olds who were signing the lyrics. It turned out that the kids weren't deaf and that their signing was inept. AMPAS was forced to admit that the kids had been recruited from a local public school.
  
  
• Oscar was becoming a lightning rod for protests but these incidents only served to bolster the television ratings for what was becoming a self-serving and indulgent exercise in mutual congratulation. The 1980's were relatively placid but hopeful audiences continued to watch waiting for unscripted and exciting incidents.
  
  
• In 1992, gay activists threatened to disrupt the ceremonies to protest what they considered to be negative stereotypes of gays in Hollywood movies particularly two films nominated for Best Picture, Silence of the Lambs and JFK. While the television audience was unaware of the protests outside, the host of the telecast, Billy Crystal, and many of the stars wore red ribbons indicating sympathy with AIDS victims and a few commented on this while accepting and presenting awards.
  
  
• Ironically, Silence of the Lambs, one of the films that was the focus of much rage from the gay community, won Oscars in the five major categories (Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay and Film). Only two other films in Oscar history managed to win in the "big five"; It Happened One Night in 1934 and 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Quotes About the Oscars

• Have students compare a list of the top money-making films for this year with the films nominated for Oscars.
  
  
• How do they explain the discrepancies between profitable films and those which are critically honoured?
  
  
• Circulate a list of the Best Picture Oscar winners for the past fifteen years. Have students discuss how the films reflect the social priorities and ideological concerns of the times.
  
  
• Judging by the Oscar winners in the 1990s, what are today's social priorities and ideological concerns?
  
  
• Similarly, any list of Oscar winners from any time period could be circulated as a springboard for historical and sociological research. These lists are available in the books listed below, as well as in several other reference books on film that one could find in a library.
  
  
• Distribute an Oscars ballot (which can be obtained from newspapers or from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Official Academy Awards site.
  
  
  • Have students determine which films are familiar to them.
  • Have them vote according to their personal preferences and have them vote again according to their understanding of Oscar ideology and politics.
  • Compare the votes with the actual results immediately after they are announced.