VULTURE, the Oscars, and Animation
and why I have to explain the VULTURE article, at least my part of it
VULTURE magazine ran an article on animation and the Oscars. I’m interviewed in it, but the quote was taken out of context.
I said that ‘People dance with them as ‘brung em’. If you work on a film, you vote for it. It’s not even a matter for discussion. Ageism is bad; you don’t know how people think. Older members of the Academy, and retired members, might be more liberal in voting, since we don’t work for one studio any more and can vote for what we genuinely feel is the best picture.”
You can read my sentiments, done on the same day the reporter interviewed me, in my earlier post OLD HAT AND NEW DUDS. Click on this link to read it.
I never meant to imply that replacing older Governors with younger ones in the Animation division was an improvement. I do not believe in ageism, and hope that this article does not inadvertently offend my friends.
I still like the reporter, but wish he had used a different quote from me.
Here is the Vulture Article. Click on the link below the picture to read it. My own article follows.
https://www.vulture.com/article/oscars-animation-award-problems.html
MY TEN CENTS ON ANIMATION AND THE OSCARS by Nancy Beiman
it used to be ‘my two cents’ but inflation…
The Academy rules are pretty precise. Any film made in the previous calendar year can be nominated for Best Picture. There is no campaign against animated films, as has sometimes been believed. Three animated features have been nominated for Best Picture (Beauty and the Beast, Up, and Toy Story 3).
For most of the Academy’s history, only short theatrical animated films were eligible for awards at all. June Foray and Bill Littlejohn worked for years to get a separate category for animated features. The digital revolution increased production of animated features in all media and Feature Animation finally received Academy classification in 2002.
Many animated films were aimed at Family Audiences. There is nothing shameful about this. It means there is something in the film for every age; a young child watches the film and understands it differently from their parents. Watch any Disney or Warner animated film that you saw as a child, when you are older; and you will see it in an entirely new way. You will most probably ‘get’ jokes that went over your head when you were young. It was a successful system. But after the Disney features began to be taken for granted in the 1960s, and short films no longer played in American theatres, critics and the Academy turned up their noses at ‘cartoons’. They were not to be taken seriously. They were not ‘art’.
Animation was labeled ‘kid stuff’ after it went to television, even though successful adult animated shows existed from the beginning. There is a common presumption that TV animation is only for kids. This ignores THE SIMPSONS, the longest running television series of any kind, period.
But, as Ronald Reagan once said, “facts are stupid things”.
Then something happened. The Lion King became a date movie, and suddenly animation was reviewed like live action film. There was another boost when Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture and yet another when UP was nominated. Animated films were reviewed seriously for several years.
There has been a slide back into labeling animation kid stuff, again, over the past decade or so. I think that this was due to a belief that audiences are fragmented, and that movies must be aimed at particular segments of the audience; preteen girls, or teen boys, and that these were the only groups that mattered and other age demographics did not count.
I believe that ageism, in any way shape or form, is bad. I also believe that the most successful animated films still appeal to the ‘family audience’. There are many examples from many studios, but I’ll use one that is currently nominated for Best Animated Feature. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a Family Picture with a story that can be understood on several levels. It’s doing well in theatres because word of mouth got out: it’s not aimed at one demographic. It’s not kid stuff.
Animated films require the same level of craftsmanship as live action films and are sometimes made by the same people. Production designers and art directors for animation find it far easier to work in live action, than the other way around. Animation Art directors/production designers are never nominated for category awards, despite doing exactly the same work that they do for live action pictures.
Animation directors are not members of the directorial chapter of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They are not members of the Directors Guild of America. A director of an animated film has far more control over that film than any live action director yet cannot join these two groups because of…I’m not sure. The three animated Best Picture nominees were eligible for Oscars, but their directors were not.
Everyone is lumped into the Animation category and expected to stay there.
Clearly, there are some problems with the Academy classification system.
There are people in the Academy who only vote for the animated films of one studio without viewing them, or any of the other nominees. (This is not hearsay, I heard them say it.) This is completely unfair to smaller studios’ nominees who may not have the advertising budget or distribution that the big studios have. And of course, if you work for one studio, you will will vote for films from that studio even if the competition is stronger. If you work on a film, live action or animated, that is nominated for an Oscar, you vote for it. It’s not even a matter for discussion.
I believe that there should be a Best Domestic Animated Feature and Best Foreign Animated Feature award, just as there is a Best Foreign Feature award in live action. Enough animated films are produced each year to make it possible. But this assumes that animation is a medium. This assumes that animation is film. This assumes that animation is an art form.
Some producers consider animation a special effect. Animation is USED in special effects, but animated films are complete artistic works and should be judged that way.
Live action short film is lumped together with Animated Features and animated short film in the same category. No other Academy division has this system. They are chalk and cheese. You might as well put Editing and Makeup into the same category.
Animation and live action short films should be split, with the animated shorts remaining with Animated Features and Live action short films given its own category, with the films nominated by the Directors’ or Producers’ division. It’s common sense and would make the nominations fairer for both media.
Rules for submitting animated short films need to change. Since they now rarely play in American theaters, only the winners of Academy- approved film festivals are currently eligible for Oscar consideration. I propose that films that screened in competition in those festivals should be eligible since there are often excellent films in competition that don’t win awards. If only the winners count, then the Academy is allowing someone else to choose the animated short film nomination pool for them. It’s unfair to do this when any feature film made in a calendar year, whether live action or animation, is eligible for Oscar consideration without winning an award first.
I’d also screen some of the eligible animated short films before every feature presentation at the Academy Theatre so that the membership had an opportunity to see them throughout the year, rather than all at once, at nomination time. Final ballots would be on the Academy’s streaming site, which tracks the amount of time viewers spend watching each film, and attendance would be taken at live screenings so no one could vote for a film without having seen a set minimum of it (there is a 30-minute rule for feature films, and there should be a 50 percent rule for animation. No one should be forced to sit through a 20-minute animated short that would have been better at 10 minutes.)
A financier once told me that animation and science fiction were the most financially successful ‘genre’ films made…and the only ones he’d invest in. He was wrong about one thing: science fiction is a genre, but animation is a medium. Guillermo Del Toro’s remarks about animation being a ‘wonderful medium’ were extremely helpful in correcting this perception. At least, I would like to think so.