Up the Academy!

Henceforth, let it be known (at least by me) that the Oscar known as the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Direction has no grounding in even the most objective criteria of what can be considered "good direction". This so-called "award" shall not be considered in any way a yardstick of cinematic quality or artistic vision, but instead something akin to a Hollywood Chamber of Commerce "Good Citizenship" award. Considering the background of many of the recipients in the past 20 years, perhaps it should change its name to the "Actor Does Good" Award.

Let it also be known that for a filmmaker to be shunned or snubbed by the so-called "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" is not a detriment, but, instead, a credit to an artist's worth. Let it also be understood that the collective work of those not worthy enough to be so "honored", by any qualitative measurement, is far, far superior to the collective work of those who have won (and in this case -if it's close at all- it's because of the heavy lifting of a few: like Ford, Wilder, Huston, maybe Coppola, Bertolucci, and Polanski, and maybe Spielberg on a good day).

While all this may painfully obvious to many of you, this bite-sized piece of rancor was mainly created to assuage those (like myself) who had hoped against hope that perhaps this was the year the Academy would bend to finally honor America's Greatest Living Filmmaker. That Martin Scorsese, despite his outsider status, used every culinary trick and ingredient in his filmic kitchen to appeal to Academy tastes in his last two outings (historical feasts: grand, epic, sweeping, with big stars, and even bigger budgets), still he fell short of garnering the prize. Maybe it was a cynical attempt by Scorcese to rig the game, knowing that a movie like The Aviator had Oscar written all over it, and that this was his best shot. All the undeniably great films he made that had never won were much too raw, violent, and strange for the Academy, so he may have tried to smooth this wrinkles out in The Aviator. It could have worked, but, the problem remained: he's still Martin Scorsese. The Aviator, grand mess that it is, still had as its core, a morally ambivalent and somewhat unsympathetic main character. Howard Hughes is a classic Scorsese hero in much the same vein as Johnny Boy and Charlie, Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, Rupert Pupkin, or even Jesus Christ. And the Academy doesn't like weird characters... give them a gruff old boxing trainer with a heart of gold anytime.

Like the scorpion in Welles' Mr. Arkadin, it's in Scorsese's nature to have such uncompromising aspects in even such a compromising effort. And it's also in the nature of the Academy (the Hollywood elite, if you like... dull and conservative to a fault) to shun such irregularities, to turn their heads away from the weird and the colorful. If you're going to have to have a kink in the proceedings (such as euthunasia), at least let it be stately. One thing Scorsese is not, is stately.

So, once again, the asthmatic kid from Little Italy is uninvited to the big party. Well, Marty, if they don't let them play in their yard, fuck 'em. There's nicer fields all around.