Academy Still Misses the Point As They Cut Honorary Awards from the Oscars Telecast
They either hear and don't listen, or listen and don't care
"For some years now, the Board has struggled to balance the desire to truly honor worthy individuals with the time limitations that the Oscar® telecast imposes on these honors," said Academy President Sid Ganis. "By creating a separate event for recognizing these outstanding people in the movie industry, we're insuring that each honoree will be given his or her full due, without compromise."
The above quote comes from a recent press release from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as they continue to tool with the upcoming 2010 Oscars, this time they announce the honorary Oscars typically handed out each year — the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Honorary Award — will be selected and announced in September and presented their awards at a celebratory dinner event in November.
The release also says they will be acknowledged at the year's Academy Awards ceremony, but it appears a formal presentation won't be taking place as much as I assume it will involve one presenter stepping on stage to mention the honored recipients before going into announcing another award.
There is no doubt the Oscars have always struggled with time issues and keeping general audiences from suffering from boredom, but honorary awards aren't as much a problem as are the meaningless montages. I don't believe I have ever heard someone offer up the solution to improving the show saying it needs more montages as they are always a complaint for increased malaise. Perhaps toss those out of the mix and see how that solves your running time issue.
The Academy's Board of Governors will hold a special meeting in September for the sole purpose of selecting the year's honorees. There will not be more than one Hersholt nor more than one Thalberg Award voted in any given year. No more than four testimonial awards will be given in a single year.
"We wanted to achieve more flexibility with these awards," explained Ganis in the release. "But we also need to maintain the integrity of them. By setting the limits that we have, the members of the Board feel they have achieved the appropriate balance."
This new twist in the proceedings joins the announcement the Best Picture category will now be made up of ten nominees as well as the recently announced changes to the Best Original Song category.
What do you think of these changes? The change to the Best Picture category was HUGE news and offered up plenty of debate as well as prompted me to look at it a little closer while the changes to the Best Original Song category and the possibility of their being no Original Song category in a given year has also sparked some conversation amongst RopeofSilicon readers.
As for the public perception of the honorary award portion of the show I think it's a generational dilemma, and I certainly don't think the attention given them during the Oscar telecast should be dropped. I know when I was younger I would have been all for cutting it out of the show because I was too young and inexperienced with the world of movies to know or care about the people being honored. However, as time goes on I will begin seeing the filmmakers of my generation getting their just due and to have a moment limited to a simple mention doesn't really seem appropriate. We are supposed to get wiser as we get older, but the Academy seems to be doing just the opposite. What gives?
Weigh in with any thoughts on the matter you may have below.
RSS Feed
| 3 comments so far 
news feeds