Post Oscar Rant

Well, I’ve had a week to get over the Oscars.

Let me be clear—I love the Oscars. I get together with friends, we fill out our ballots, prizes are awarded, we partake of amazingly good food and drink, and we laugh and have a great time. Yes, I’m that naïve.

Naïve enough to believe it’s worth celebrating what’s best in the world of film. I have a little trouble with the whole contest part of it, but hey, we’re a species of contests—on the sports field, at work, even at home between siblings. Perhaps it’s conditioning, but we seem to be obsessed with who wins. You don’t find a couple of baseball teams playing without keeping score and saying, at the end of the game, “Hey, great game. Let’s do it again next week.”

So while we might SAY we play baseball for the joy of it or we write or act for the joy of it, when push comes to shove, we want to be the best. And it’s not just about being the best ‘in our own heart’—oh no—on some level we want those we work with, perform for or play with to acknowledge we’re the best also. Thus, we create these contests where there are winners and losers.

Interesting, sociologically? Probably. But it is what it is. And though I might wish we could all get together to celebrate movies each year, without a contest, well, how would we do it? Seriously, would we just have a television show that played clips of films and had interviews with the writers/directors/stars? Everybody, as the old saying goes, loves a horse race.

And the races last Sunday were many and varied. I was hoping, for example, that Melissa McCarthy would pull an upset in the Best Actress category. Of course, there was an upset there, but it wasn’t Melissa McCarthy. I was also hoping that Spike Lee would win best director. But no, it was not to be. I was, however, delighted that he and his co- writers won for screenplay. Spike finally holding that statue of fake gold that should have been his years ago.

Fake gold. Did you know? We call them golden statues but they really aren’t—they’re brass. Solid brass—PLATED with gold. Flashy on the outside, less so on the inside.

Now, I love this. It’s like a metaphor for the whole business. On the outside it seems glamorous and shiny—but on the inside? Opinions vary, but there has been many a Hollywood movie that attempts to figure out what Hollywood is all about. And if you’re struggling to break into this business, you should know that. You should know that all that glitters is definitely not gold—that under the veneer that is Hollywood, there is a core that just might not be that attractive.

So beginning next week, let’s look at some films that attempt to portray Hollywood, in all its wild and crazy glory. And whether you live in L.A. or not, imagine writing your own story about this fabled town. What would it look like? Who would the characters be? What story could you tell that hasn’t been told before?

And the best way to think about your own Hollywood story is to know the genre… which we’ll begin doing next week. Let’s call YOUR film A Hollywood Story, and over the next few weeks we’ll look at films from the genre and that should help you refine what your film could be. Wow, who knows what you’ll come up with!!

Copyright © Diane Lake

03Mar19

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com