Ever wonder what would happen if there was a re-vote for Academy Awards of years past? Well, we are about to find out, because Entertainment Weekly has sent out 7,000 ballots this week to whom they considered the most powerful people in Hollywood this week, in hopes of getting them to cast Oscar votes for past races. Umm, hello, we didn’t receive our ballot yet. Hello?
EW is having the chosen few vote for six major categories, Best Picture, Directing, Actor in a Leading Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Actor in a Supporting Role and Actress in a Supporting Role for the controversial years of 2003, 1998, 1993, 1988 and 1983.
The years chosen will pit films and actors that in retrospect people love to say were snubbed up against the actual winners, such as giving “Saving Private Ryan” another shot at “Shakespeare in Love” and Daniel Day Lewis for his performance as a sociopath patriot in “Gangs of New York” against the actual winner, which was Adrian Brody as a really hungry guy in “The Pianist.”
The idea behind the re-vote is to see if the winners can stand the test of time, since many believe that you can only truly judge a film ten years down the road (which is kind of very true, or at least instant reactions generally don’t stick). So Sean Smith, the EW Bureau Chief, wanted to see what films would actually hold up and which ones wouldn’t. “The object is, if you strip away everything, the campaigns, the timing, in terms of pure movie quality and performance, were the right films picked? If you voted again would you vote the same way? Its voting without the buzz.”
An entertainment survey of this scale has never been done before, so Smith had an intern spend six months in a cold, dark, basement working to build the list of 7,000 votes which they thought were representative the modern film industry. Smith commented on the final list, which is a little different and includes less out of touch senior citizens than the Academy, “We aren’t trying to duplicate the Academy. What do people working in the film industry think about these Oscar-winning movies now?”
Academy purist are certainly going to be upset about the survey, believing that it is sacrilege to even mention that maybe the Academy didn’t pick the best movie of the year of Best Picture that one time. We, on the other hand, think the results will reflect an interesting schism between the Academy and other film industry workers. Let’s face it, when one runs down a list of past Best Picture and Lead Actor Winners, it does not take much to argue that the wrong person or film wins a decent amount of the time, and come on, it’s not like they are actually taking any one’s Oscar away [ed. which is kinda too bad].
