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My POV
Brian A. Wilson
The Oscars: Should You Care?
Hollywood's own March Madness is upon us. Here in LA, where the only basketball anyone cares about is the game Jack Nicholson is watching, March Madness can only mean awards season.
The trade papers are bloated with ads touting movies, actors, directors, even--gasp!--writers. Fortunes rise and fall with each award announced. New awards shows seem to pop up almost every day, another chance for Hollywood to put Hollywood in the headlines.
But what, if anything, does it all mean? Should we pay close attention? Should we care at all?
If there is any award to care about, it has to be the Oscars. Say what you will about the alleged old fogeyness of the Academy members, make your jaded crack about the selection process or the field it selects. At the end of the day, that 18-inch gold guy holding the crusader's sword is still the be-all, end-all award, the closest thing you'll get to the Congressional Medal of Honor for fighting valiantly in the trenches of Tinseltown.
The Oscar telecast entertains a billion people around the world. Hundreds, thousands of careers get pumped by the outcome of the show. The work this broadcast recognizes generates billions of dollars of revenue, employs thousands world-wide and, most importantly, enlightens and entertains people around the globe.
Why does all this happen? For one reason: A writer decided to tell a story. Nobody who steps on Oscar's stage had a thing to do before a writer told a story.
Some of this year's Academy Award-nominated stories took longer to get to this moment than others. Susannah Grant's telling of Erin Brockovich's life story moved rather quickly (a few years total) from when she heard the story from her chiropractor until it made it to your local multiplex. Cameron Crowe let his own life story experiences perk for years before turning them into "Almost Famous." At the far end of the scale, David Franzoni's idea for "Gladiator" was formed decades ago when he saw coliseums while touring overseas as a college student.
Whomever wins, remember: They all started out just like you. They had an experience, it gave them an idea, and they sat down and typed "Fade In." That's how it happened for them, that's how it could happen for you.
Even as the Oscars are being handed out, somewhere out there, somebody is typing the "Fade In:" of story that, in two or ten or thirty years, will end on the stage of the Academy Award show.
It's America, so it could be you. Could be me. Could be the next schmoe who spends more time in his underwear than most people would consider sane. But it will happen to one of us.
So here in the midst of awards season, should we care?
The bottom line is, yes, you should care. Behind and beyond all the pre-parties, the after-parties, the air kisses, the media blitzes, stars blathering to talk show hosts who aren't listening, poster blurbs and Steven Soderbergh's so-hip-they-make-me-barf horn rims, something very important is going on: Storytelling.
And we're the storytellers. You at your computer, me at mine, hammering away while the world sleeps. Fighting off the blues, the blahs and the blocks. Driven by some odd admixture of compassion and compulsion. Ever befuddling our families, perplexing our friends, alternately stressing and thrilling our significant others. Exalting as our volcano of creativity overflows, agonizing when it stops as quickly as it started, ceasing for reasons that escape us. Willing to sacrifice anything to feel it start again.
You are Sisyphus, as am I. We each have a rock, and are blessed/condemned to a life spent rolling it up the hill. Much of the time, most of the time, it rolls back to the bottom. Unable to ignore it and walk away, instead we walk down to it, get behind it...and push.
Unlike our mythical role model, occasionally something fantastic happens during our rock rolling careers. We turn our heads to the side and see the most amazing sight; we see the moment a fellow writer actually gets his rock to the top of the hill!
This year, that moment will fall on March 25. Watch the Oscars. Visualize yourself at the Oscars. Imagine what it's like to hear your name called, to fly up those steps, to stand in front of the cameras and realize--you did it.
As you watch this year's writers hoist their prizes, remember: each one isn't holding an Oscar. He or she is holding up a rock that's just been rolled up a very long, very steep hill.
One year, that rock might just belong to you.
BW
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