Haggistan

Okay, this will be the very last post about the Oscars, I promise. I'm even sick of hearing myself talk about the Oscars.

But there was some summing up to do, I felt, after last night's blitzkreig of disillusionment and disappointment. Yes, my least favorite film of 2005 has won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I'm learning to deal with it.

Some across the Web have implied that I care too deeply about such a triviality. Well, they are probably correct. It doesn't really matter, in a Big Picture way, what movie wins. But speaking as someone who works in a video store...The films that win these huge awards do remain in the public consciousness, do become a part of film history. People remember them.

It has not been an exclusive list for some time. Dumbass, unworthy winners like Forrest Gump, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago and Gladiator have long-since tarnished the title of Best Picture of any given year (as if The Greatest Show on Earth and Oliver! hadn't done so already).

But still, Crash will stand as one of the notable, important films of 2005. This reflects poorly on the film industry and on the American public in general. It is a shamefully shallow, trite, meaningless piece of puffery. If this is where the American people are at, intellectually, on the issue of race, then we're all Doomed with a capital D.

Okay, so, I'm not the only one who thinks so. An Oscar attendee (who shall remain anonymous) told me today that the audience was not particularly in Paul Haggis' corner. I believe his exact quote was, "I don't know who all voted for Crash, but none of them were in that room." The mystery nominee also told me that Jake Gyllenhaal was visibly upset at Brokeback Mountain having lost to Crash. "Any of the other nominees would have been fine," he allegedly said. "But not Crash."

The real girlie, backstabbing bitch-fighting was between the makers of Best Picture Crash and those who brought us Brokeback Mountain, the clear favorite, up until a couple of hours ago.

I asked Crash producer Cathy Schulman backstage what she thought about the already sizeable bitterness I was hearing about her flick eclipsing Brokeback. "Well," she sniffed, holding her Oscar (which, if you ask me, says it all), "I loved their film. Sorry they can't feel the same for us."

Yeah, but, you see, Cat...their film was good. Right? So that's why you liked it. Remember? When words like "good" or "bad" actually line up with real-world concepts and qualities? They don't have to love your film just because you made it. You are not a beautiful unique snowflake. Deal with it.

And those are just the mean-spirited comments from other Academy Awards attendees. They have a good reason to be nice...They're standing 10 feet away from the people they're shitting on.

Accordingly, everyone in the general public seems equally dumbfounded and aghast in the cold light of day. Kenneth Turan at the LA Times essentially calls the Motion Picture Academy cowards for picking Crash and avoiding conflict about the gay themes of Brokeback.

I do not for one minute question the sincerity and integrity of the people who made "Crash," and I do not question their commitment to wanting a more equal society. But I do question the film they've made. It may be true, as producer Cathy Schulman said in accepting the Oscar for best picture, that this was "one of the most breathtaking and stunning maverick years in American history," but "Crash" is not an example of that.

I don't care how much trouble "Crash" had getting financing or getting people on board; the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.

For "Crash's" biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions, but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul, when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed.

Folks, read this entire Kenny Turan article. He totally fucking nails it, right on the head. This is everything I've been thinking and saying about Crash since I saw it in the Fall.

It took the film winning Best Picture for me to discover that I'm not alone. I've been in my little bubble of Crash hatred, thinking the entire rest of the world adored this movie, and now that it has won real recognition, the truth is coming out. Morons have advocated this silly piece of shit for months, with sensible people simply remaining out of the conversation, not wanting to make people feel bad or start a fight. But now that the notion of Crash as a geniunely worthwhile piece of filmmaking has become a real possibility, the daggers are coming out.

There's always inevitable Best Picture backlash. All movies that take the prize become somewhat less esteemed in the years that follow - American Beauty, Million Dollar Baby, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Chicago, even Titanic...Can we say that any of these movies are still regarded as the absolute BEST of their respective years?

Is Haggis' film doomed to join the list of ludicrous Oscar flubs, along with Marisa Tomei's Supporting Actress Oscar for My Cousin Vinny and Ron Howard's bizarre win for A Beautiful Mind (compared at the time by Robert Altman to watching your mother-in-law drive your new car off of a cliff)? Probably. Only time will tell.

One more thing I'll mention about Crash. Today, I took a short break from work and went to move my car, to avoid getting a parking ticket. Turning the key in the ignition, it seemed like the engine was taking far too long to actually turn over. It was struggling. This was odd, because I had just taken the car in for service, so it should be working fine. When I accelerated, the vehicle lurched. I figured, though the dial said I had a little less than a quarter-tank left, that I must be out of gas.

I only made it halfway to the local gas station before the car lurched to a halt. Right in the middle of an intersection (Pico and Prosser, for locals). Before I even knew what was really happening, a group of five guys had all rushed over to help me push the car across the street and to the Shell Station. I didn't have to motion for help, ask a soul...nothing. (Okay, afterwards, one of the guys hit me up for a few dollars and another tried to sell me coloring books. But they didn't ask for anything before helping me, which is all that really matters).

These were strangers, of a variety of races and creeds, and they all pitched in to help me for no good reason. I didn't even have to ask. (And, no, I wasn't even blocking their cars. They were just helpful passers-by).

No one expressed any racist sentiments, or any anger at all. No motorists flipped me off or got in my face. Does this mean racism and misplaced anger doesn't exist in Los Angeles? Of course not. It just means that Paul Haggis is full of shit, and LA is nothing like the teeming cesspool of racial hatred that exists in his overripe imagination. If the real world were like Crash, I'd have been beaten up by angry motorists, sexually molested by the LAPD when they arrived in the scene and kidnapped by an evil old Chinese guy for use as slave labor.