By Jim Emerson

When it comes to movies, the buzz-word people always use to justify their opinions is   "entertainment" -- as if that meant the same thing to everyone.  The usual  difference of opinion between the public, the critics, and the Academy is often a matter of how each group defines that deceptively simple word.

So, does that mean that something fishy’s going on here – with the Academy, or with the critics, or (god forbid) with the moviegoing public?

Hell, no.

Think of it this way: If the public and the Academy always agreed, then the Oscars would just be redundant. If the public and the critics always agreed, then there’d be no need for critics. If the public... well, the ticket-buying public can rest easy: It is in no danger of losing its job.

The Oscar voters, the critics, and the public all have entirely different roles to play – sometimes conflicting, sometimes complementary – in the Great Movie Food Chain.

Take, for example, the "awards year" of 1995 (if we can remember that far back):

• Oscar winner: Braveheart, a fairly expensive epic which received mixed reviews and was enough of a box office disappointment (even at $60 million) when originally released in the spring that it was re-released in the fall (adding another $7 million) in hopes that Oscar would help boost its fortunes. (Oscar obliged.)
• Critics favorite: Leaving Las Vegas (best picture winner from both the Los Angeles and New York film critics groups), a low-budget, relatively low-grossing movie which got some respect from the Academy (and a best actor Oscar for Nicolas Cage), but was not nominated for best picture.
• Box-office champ: Apollo 13, which took in $337million worldwide, got pretty good reviews, but won only two technical Oscars, for editing and sound.

The Oscars

The Academy Awards ceremony is the movie industry’s annual excuse to collectively pat itself on the back. It was designed as a publicity stunt, and it remains one -- a very effective one. The idea is for Academy members to give and to receive recognition from their peers – i.e., other people who work in the movie industry. There’s a lot of politicking (tons of money spent on "For Your Consideration" ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter), and, yes, some races are indeed nothing more than popularity contests. But, really, what do you expect from a three-hour TV commercial for the Hollywood film industry? 

Still, the Oscars don’t entirely take place in a vacuum; the moviegoing public does exert some indirect influence on the results. A movie that tanks at the box office is not likely to be rewarded with an Oscar. The voters, after all, are people who work (or have worked) in the movie business, and they are quick to distance themselves from anything that smells even faintly of "failure."

On the other hand, too much commercial success often inspires jealousy and resentment – or at least suspicion – in Academy voters, just as it does with critics and the general public. (Just about everybody, at some point, has wondered: Well, if it’s that popular, can it possibly be any good?) Just ask Steven Spielberg.

So, is the Academy Award really the definitive honor, the Last Word on what is "Best" (even if only of American movies) for any particular year? Of course not. Just take a look at the Academy’s track record. And if you can figure out how Oliver! -- spunky though it may be – wound up as the best picture of 1968, drop me a line. The Academy is just one of many groups bestowing movie awards with various purposes and prejudices. And while others’ selections, such as the various critics groups, have (as it turns out) better stood the test of time, over the years the internationally televised Oscar ceremonies have become the most glamorous and best-publicized in the world. (After all, who would you rather see present an award, a movie critic or a movie star?)

The Public

Movies – even small, independent movies – are very expensive to make. Today, the average studio movie costs somewhere between $20 and $30 million, and that doesn’t even include the multi-million dollar cost of advertising, publicity, manufacturing of hundreds or thousands of prints, and so on.

So, from the financiers’ point of view, the only opinion that matters is the one the public registers at the box-office. Only one thing is certain in the movie business (where death and taxes are considered optional): a movie lives or dies by word-of-mouth. Critics or Oscars can add a little prestige (and a best picture Oscar can generate an additional $24 million in revenue, on average), but the bottom line is money, money, money. Indeed, a report in Daily Variety in 1996 (the year only one studio film was nominated for best picture) concluded: "The recent ascendancy of foreign films (in the Oscar race) has come about partly because of the studios’ abdication from the business of producing important – yes, occasionally self-important – Oscar-caliber pictures."

And then Titanic came along and Hollywood eagerly hopped aboard to reclaim its position as the world's premiere producer of glossy popular entertainment.  Titanic, so expensive it required the backing of two studios, 20th Century Fox and Paramount, was made to collect money, not Oscars. That it did both is just a bonus.

I'm sure that Joe Roth, when he was the head of 20th Century Fox, was thrilled to have made such challenging, respected, and acclaimed movies as the Coen brothers’ Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink, and David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch. But the reason he kept his job for as long as he did was because he also made Home Alone.

The Critics

What if you're one of those people who really didn't like Titanic and doubts it deserved all those Oscars?  Well, if it'll make you feel any better, L.A. Confidential won lots of awards (and Titanic none) from the critics in 1997.  And that's just fine.  One's a big, popular entertainment; the other is a serious and complex drama that's nevertheless presented as a pulp thriller.

Contrary to popular belief (i.e., the belief held by the vast majority of people who don’t read movie reviews), critics have very little influence over box office results – except for specialized (generally foreign language and small, independent films) targeted at, well, the kinds of people who do read movie reviews.

Movies with multi-million-dollar ad campaigns and big-name stars are, generally speaking, critic-proof. If they dive-bomb at the box office, it’s because the people who saw ‘em on opening weekend warned their friends and acquaintances to stay away, not because some critic had reservations about Jim Carrey’s comic sensibility. Sure, the critics can occasionally spread the bad word about a turkey like Howard the Duck (if the studio is self-destructive enough to screen this sort of fowl for them in advance), but the public has always been uncannily good at smelling stinkers like that from a distance, with or without critics.

So, while the vast majority of film critics have very little sway with the studios or with the public (c'mon, do you really read the names under those ad blurbs -- has anyone ever heard of most of those people?), the function of critics is unique. They actually attempt something nobody else does: they try to understand the movie. A critic’s job is to place a movie in some kind of context (historical, artistic, commercial, sociological, political, generic), to explain what it’s about, and to explore how it does or doesn’t accomplish whatever it is it seems like it’s trying to do (and if all it's trying to do is make money, then there may or may not not be much to write about).

Since (unlike the public) critics see almost everything (200-400 movies a year is not uncommon), they are painfully aware that 90 percent of it is pure crap.  (I was a daily newspaper critic for more than ten years, so I can say this from first-hand experience.) But they can -- and should -- steer people to that odd, maybe "difficult" little movie that doesn't have a massive studio ad campaign behind it, but that may be far more rewarding (for viewers who care to make the effort to see it) than the picture that's being touted on TV this week.

In other words: critics are the only people who don’t get to forget all about every movie before the end credits crawl is over. They still have to find something to write about it. And that something needn’t have anything to do with what the Academy, or the public, is likely to think. If the critic describes the movie, and compares it to other movies by the same people, or in the same genre, then the reader is likely to get a very good idea of whether he or she would like to see that picture -- regardless of the critic's verdict. 

That's a valuable service, because when a movie opens, the critic's is the ONLY voice reporting on a movie that isn't part of the film's marketing campaign. The critic has no vested interest (or shouldn't, at least) in whether the movie is a hit or a flop and is free to examine and judge the movie independently of its box-office prospects. (I've always said that if critics could predict what the public would like, they'd be making millions working for the studios rather than slaving over keyboards at low-paying newspapers.)

So: the movie industry applauds itself with the Academy Awards (originally designed by studio heads as a publicity stunt to butter up stars' egos and keep 'em happy at work). The critics say their piece in their reviews and in the year-end critics’ group awards. And the public has its say at the box office – reflected back in those now-omnipresent box office charts and "Number One Movie in America!" ads in the papers and on TV.

That seems clear enough. Now, what I’m wondering is: Where in the world do the People’s Choice Awards fit in? Why give an award for being popular? ("And the winner is... Titanic!"  Wow, how suspenseful.)  We already know who’s the most popular – that’s what those box office and Nielsen ratings charts in the paper tell us every week. We don't need another award to repeat that information. And does a movie that’s grossed $500 million really need an award to testify to its popularity? I mean, ask yourself: Isn’t $500 million enough of an award already?

So, just what do "they" want
from a movie, anyway?

Take a look at this handy-dandy chart
and you'll see that everyone has his reasons,
and there's plenty of room for diversity of opinion...

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When a movie opens, the critic's is the ONLY voice reporting on a movie that isn't part of the film's marketing campaign. The critic has no vested interest (or shouldn't, at least) in whether the movie is a hit or a flop and is free to examine and judge the film independently of its box-office prospects. (I've always said that if critics could predict what the public would like, they'd be making millions working for the studios rather than slaving over keyboards at low-paying newspapers.)

A movie that tanks at the box office is not likely to be rewarded with an Oscar. The voters, after all, are people who work (or have worked) in the movie business, and they are quick to distance themselves from anything that smells even faintly of "failure."

From the studios' (or the financiers’) point of view, the only opinion that matters is the one the public registers at the box-office. Only one thing is certain in the movie business (where death and taxes are considered optional): a movie lives or dies by word-of-mouth. Critics or Oscars can add a little prestige (and a best picture Oscar can generate an additional $24 million in revenue, on average), but the bottom line is money, money, money.