The 97th Academy Awards were on television on Sunday night. The Oscars, as many of us refer to the show, honors movies that were released the previous year. Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor (technically “Actress/Actor in a Leading Role” are the official category names) are just a few of the many awards that were bestowed over the course of the three-hour-and-45-minute broadcast on Sunday (I’m glad I didn’t have to sit in the Dolby Theatre for that!).
As far as great movies are concerned, a little over a year ago I wrote on these pages about a movie my wife and I had seen that we enjoyed, “The Boys in the Boat.” But the lead-up in my column was the simple fact that my wife and I went out on a movie date by ourselves. For the first time in decades.
I finished the column by suggesting that since we had broken our old trend of not going out on movie-dates, that perhaps we would start a new trend and begin to go out on more dates and see other films.
Well, I was wrong.
We have not been back out to watch a movie in a theater since then. Which is probably just as well. “The Boys in the Boat,” that movie I thought was great and very well-made, was not nominated for any Oscars. Not a single one. Not even for costume design or makeup.
Which, apparently, is about par-for-the-course regarding my taste in movies over these last few decades. It seems I don’t see the “art” in movies the way the Academy Award voters do.
I first realized this years ago when I went with another couple to see the movie “Places in the Heart” (my future wife was out-of-town). It was showing in the movie theater at the corner of Garner Street and Beaver Avenue in downtown State College, which is now home to the “Campus Tower” building with apartments and shops.
As we exited the theater that night from the almost-two-hour movie, I commented to the other couple, “Well, that sucked, I have no clue why they made it, but I bet it wins Academy Awards.” Sure enough, it was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won two – Best Actress for Sally Field and Best Original Screenplay.
And yes, that Oscar-winning performance by Sally Field resulted in the famous, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!” speech at the 1985 Academy Awards.
I should mention that, outside of that film, I have really enjoyed the work of the primary actors in it: Sally Field, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, John Malkovich and Danny Glover. I think they are wonderful at crafting characters. I just did not like that film. At all.
Which was, as I said, the beginning of the realization that what I liked in movies, and what the cognoscenti liked in movies, were wildly different things. Years later I heard Whoopi Goldberg make a statement that encapsulated my feelings in a nutshell: “Art and life are subjective. Not everybody’s gonna dig what I dig. But I reserve the right to dig it.”
And that quote brings me back to that column I wrote last year. One of the cultural notes I made in that story was the ease with which I believe a lot of us have defaulted to home theater viewing for many of the movies we watch. Our screen sizes, convenience, cost and the speed with which current movies come out on cable or streaming means it’s sometimes easy to just choose that experience over the movie theater.
Not to mention, did you ever find it odd that the annual premier event celebrating the motion picture industry – the Academy Awards – the be-all and end-all of the best-of-the-best for movies, is shown on television? I mean, if the movie industry was really supporting itself, wouldn’t the Oscars be better suited to being only broadcast live to thousands upon thousands of movie theaters all over the country? Where we would all go to immerse ourselves in the full theater experience to hail the previous year’s greatest movies.
Or, maybe the big-screen industry really does understand the value of the small-screen industry.
And that’s where I’m at – the small screen. As much as I thought my wife and I might have started a new trend, it looks like the new trend we’ve started is just going back to the old trend – staying home instead and not going out to the movies.
Which is somewhat OK.
“Somewhat,” in that, between the hundreds of cable channels and the numerous services we subscribe to – Disney+, Netflix, Paramount, etc. – we have access to a virtually unlimited cache of entertainment. But, a lot of that entertainment isn’t great. Or even good.
Lately, with our children’s encouragement, we have given a few of the newer television series a chance. We’ll check out the pilots or first episodes and see if they “speak to us.” Unfortunately, for me at least, the series “Ted Lasso” has ruined much of episodic television. “Ted Lasso” was just so good, so funny, so on-point, so wonderful at dealing with all the issues it touched, that it set a bar that’s darn hard to cross. The last television series I can think of that checked all those boxes was “M*A*S*H.”
One of those newer television series we took a chance on is a show titled “Paradise.” I’m not a fan, but some members of our family are at least willing to give up their valuable time for it, so in the interest of family harmony I’ve seen it.
And that’s where I got a little bit of a reward. One of the episodes later in the first season of the show – to the extent that any episodic television has an identifiable “season” anymore – had a nice piece of advice buried under the rubric of global extinction. Spoiler alert! Read no further if you haven’t watched episode 7.
In a flashback sequence, the president of the United States is about to be whisked off to a safe location where he and others will be sheltered from the cataclysmic events unfolding on the planet. (I know, I know, the plot is not exactly covering new entertainment ground here.)
He has already recorded an address to the nation that will be broadcast once he is safely on his way. An address that is essentially a complete lie assuring the nation of its continued existence. However, minutes away from leaving the White House, he has a moment of personal clarity and decides to go live on television and tell everyone the truth. His reasoning? “People deserve to know what’s really happening. They need a chance to say goodbye.”
Staring at the television camera, live to the nation, he starts with the usual salutation and then goes on, “…and I want to tell you the truth. Our modeling shows imminent worldwide disaster, including here at home.” He continues, “I’m telling you this so that you can make decisions based on where you want to be right now, and who you want to be with.”
Now, over the years I’ve watched many, many movies and television shows that portend the end of the world as we know it. Usually the masses are kept in the dark. Sometimes they find out and there is widespread panic. But this message was different: decide who you want to be with and go there. Sounds like great advice!
Which, if this sounds like great advice for the end of the world, shouldn’t it be great advice for living every day? Decide who you want to be with and go there?
Although our trend for date-night movies seems not to have taken hold, and my wife and I have fallen back a bit into the home theater mode, the one constant in both is that we are together and where we want to be. I like that. I think that’s a trend we’re going to keep up. And, I hope it’s one you can start or keep up as well.
