Tabloid tawdriness to rule at the Oscars?
James Cameron, left, director of “Avatar,” and Kathryn Bigelow, director of “The Hurt Locker,” pose together last month at the 15th Annual Critics Choice Movie Awards in Los Angeles. His science-fiction sensation “Avatar” and her war-on-terror thriller “The Hurt Locker” lead the Academy Awards with nine nominations each, including best picture and director. How much should their relationship as former spouses be part of this story? (Associated Press file photo)
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, with James Cameron’s high-tech sci-fi epic “Avatar” and Kathryn Bigelow’s heart-pounding Iraq War drama “The Hurt Locker” both earning a leading nine nominations.
Or as the Associated Press’ David Germain put in the lead to his story:
The science-fiction sensation “Avatar” and the war-on-terror thriller “The Hurt Locker” lead the Academy Awards with nine nominations each, including best picture and director for James Cameron and ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow.
If Bigelow’s low-budget but excellent independent film has to play the proverbial second fiddle to a mega-blockbuster that has become the top-grossing movie of all time, that’s one thing. That’s life. That’s just the way it is. Money equals power.
But please, for the love of the 19th Amendment, tell me that we’re not going to spend the rest of awards season hearing about the big showdown between Cameron and his ex-wife.
And I make this plea knowing full well that it is a futile effort. I get the sneaking suspicion I’m about to start having recurring dreams of Bigelow winning best director at the Oscars and the TV announcer declaring, ‘This is the first nomination in the category for James Cameron’s ex-wife.”
Just my opinion, but I think it’s insulting to Bigelow that her two-year marriage to Cameron, which ended in 1991, should make it into the lead of a story about her small film matching his juggernaut for Oscar nominations.
And it’s downright wrong that her role in this Hollywood drama should be that of his ex-wife. (So far, I’ve seen just a few stories that have referred to Cameron as Bigelow’s ex-husband, though that may change if she wins the best director Oscar.)
As Germain’s story points out, Bigelow is only the fourth woman to be nominated for a directing Oscar, joining Sofia Coppola for 2003′s “Lost in Translation,” Jane Campion for 1993′s “The Piano” and Lena Wertmuller for 1975′s “Seven Beauties.”
No woman has ever won the directing Oscar, and Bigelow has a solid shot at making history. After all, she made history Sunday when she became the first woman to earn the Director’s Guild of America award for best direction.
Bigelow deserves to win the best director Academy Award, too, Oscar history and gender issues notwithstanding. “The Hurt Locker” is an astonishing film and directorial feat. She turned former embedded journalist Mark Boal’s screenplay, also nominated for an Oscar, into a war film that is both heart pounding and thought provoking. And she drew an Oscar-caliber performance out of star Jeremy Renner, who also got an Academy Award nod this morning.
(In full disclosure, I haven’t seen “Avatar” but fully intend to very soon. But I want to see it in IMAX 3-D, which isn’t that easy when there’s only one IMAX house in the whole Oklahoma City metro area – it’s more than 20 miles from my house, by the way – and you’re trying to catch a 162-minute film.)
Even if Bigelow didn’t deserve the Oscar, she deserves better than to wear the label “James Cameron’s ex-wife” like a millstone around her neck through the March 7 awards show and beyond.
Cameron has four ex-wives – he has been married since 2000 to Oklahoma City-born actress Suzy Amis – and I don’t think any of them deserve to carry that designation around as if it were a job title, particularly in news stories about some great achievement they have accomplished in their own right.
I don’t want to make Cameron out to be the bad guy in this situation. I’ve never interviewed him and don’t know him personally, so I have no idea how he feels about the media coverage of awards season. But I thought he was gracious at the Golden Globes when he won the best director award. He said he wasn’t prepared with a speech since he thought Bigelow would win and should have won, though he was grateful to be named the honoree.
If Bigelow and Cameron’s former marriage must be mentioned, then it should be a side note; it shouldn’t be the lead. And it shouldn’t make Bigelow out as the also-ran in the scenario, the kind of treatment Dean Goodman used in a Sunday box office report for Reuters:
While “Avatar” is expected to figure prominently in the Oscar nominations, especially in the technical categories, it has been overshadowed during awards season by “The Hurt Locker,” a low-budget war film directed by Cameron’s ex-wife. Kathryn Bigelow added another trophy to her collection on Saturday at the Directors Guild of America Awards. Only six times in 62 years has the DGA winner not gone on to take the Oscar for best director.
Nice of him to get around to mentioning Bigelow’s name in the second sentence there.
I’m not necessarily picking on the guys who write about film. They’re not the only ones; I’ve no doubt there are female offenders out there as well.
In fact, I’ll give kudos to MTV’s Adam Rosenberg for not even mentioning the past marital connection between Bigelow and Cameron in his story about her historic DGA win. In his story, he predicts that Oscar history and her gender will help Bigelow win the best director Academy Award. He may well be right; who knows?
And I’m going to be honest: In my Oscar nominations story here on the blog this morning, I did bill it as a “showdown between ex-spouses.” And I initially put it high in the story. But I later moved it down when I realized just how gossipy it sounded – and how much it bothered me to distract from the merits of last year’s great films by making the Oscars into some sort of battle of the exes.
I was annoyed with myself for taking part in the tabloid-y tone this story is developing, and I’ve repented. I can only hope some of my fellow journalists get similar writer’s remorse.
This “Cameron and his ex-wife”-style coverage seems to be an unfortunate reflection of the increasingly gossipy nature of the news, particularly legitimate entertainment news (yes, there is such a thing). It’s also part of our unfortunate national obsession with celebrities and confrontation, dirt and drama. Especially drama.
There’s plenty of David vs. Goliath-style drama already inherent in these Oscars. After all, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded the best picture nominees from five to 10 this year, largely so they could get better TV ratings for the awards show by putting more blockbusters in the running.
They succeeded in creating a perfectly evenly split field between $100-plus-grossing movies – “Avatar,” “The Blind Side,” “District 9,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up” – and their small but mighty counterparts – “The Hurt Locker,” “An Education,” “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” “A Serious Man” and “Up in the Air.” It will be interesting to see which films prevail when the statuettes are handed out.
With “Avatar” and its $596 million box-office haul – and counting – and “The Hurt Locker” with its $12.7 million take tying for the most nominations, the David and Goliath metaphor seems even more apropos. But that aspect seems to be taking a back burner to the ex-spouse face-off.
Maybe it’s silly to take these awards shows so seriously. After all, I roared with laughter when Stephen Colbert said at Sunday night’s Grammy Awards that “We’re here to celebrate what I believe is our most precious right: The right of celebrities to congratulate themselves.” It’s one of those funny-because-it’s-true statements.
But even if they are self-serving and a bit frivolous, these awards shows get big ratings and plenty of media coverage. Let’s just hope that the coverage lays off on all this James Cameron and his ex-wife nonsense, though I doubt it.
-BAM
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[...] there’s a problem. Bigelow was once married to Cameron. They divorced in 1991. And yet: Or as the Associated Press’ David Germain put in the lead to his [...]