Awards shows and writing...a little ranty

[shadowkat]

Ahhh the Academy Awards...is it just me or are they getting more and more predictable every year?

Honestly I knew the winners in pretty much every category after the nominations were announced- which is why I skipped most of it and watched a movie instead. Did see the last 20 minutes though, so caught two lovely musical performances: The Bellevue rag and A Kiss At The End of The Rainbow (which always makes me laugh for some reason - I think because it's such a perfect parody of all of those folk songs I adore, both celebrates the tradition and makes fun of it.). Knew Lord of The Rings would clean up - the Academy was waiting until Return of The King came out to give them the rewards. So, what they did was give the awards to the triology not just that movie. Can't give 8 or more rewards to each film each year - that would just be wrong. Yeah they did it with the Godfather, but it wasn't really a triology and they didn't knew Coppola was planning two in a row unlike Jackson who filmed his back-to-back. Knew they'd probably do it that way when Fellowship came out.

I also knew Scean Penn would win (sorry, but it was obvious, Bill Murray played himself - which wonderfully hard as that is, the Academy never gives you an Oscar for it - just look at Carey Grant and Dean Martin who often did the same thing. And the others? Their movies didn't resonate strongly enough - Mystic River was one of the Best Pic nominees and since they were planning on giving LoTR everything - but acting, this was the perfect place to award Mystic River which had been acclaimed for its acting. Add to that Scean Penn has only been nominated in Best Actor category 4 times, best supporting at least once for Carlito's Way, and could have just as easily been nominated for 21 Grams as well. His time had come. Ironic, since Penn is notorious for telling people how much he hates awards shows...and doesn't think you can gauge whose the best actor - since every performance is different and every role demands different things. I tend to agree with him. Just look at the people who were nominated? Each role was incredibly different with different demands - it would be a better contest if they all played the same role, and even then? How can you judge? Also what about the people who weren't nominated and should have been? Paul Giammitti in American Splendor was riveting, an amazingly layered performance with all sorts of bizarre demands. Or Hope Davis who played his wife?

Same thing about best actress. You always know that when an actress decides to undergo a physical change for a role and against type and manages to pull it off to about 65% of the viewers - she'll get the award. Hilary Swank did it for Boys Don't Cry, Elizabeth Taylor (who could care less about Oscars, having already won one and just cared about the craft at that point) got it for Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf. Now there's a risky performance. And probably the best of the three in my opinion. But few actresses can come close to doing what Liz did on screen. So, Theron's win didn't surprise me. That said, is it fair to judge the actress who has to go through a physical transmogrification against actresses who don't have all that makeup to work with to get into a character? And what about the ones who weren't nominated? Theron did a good job.
But I agree with Penn, there's no such thing as "best" in that field. Although the prolification of awards shows leads us to think there is. What's up with that by the way? Why do we have to have so many awards shows or accolades given? It's not like these people aren't getting any recognition - they are paid very well, they get good critical reviews..
And why do we have to make everything into a competition or contest - where there can only be one winner?

At any rate...awards shows annoy me now. I used to love them, but that was when there was only two or three televised a year - those were the good old days.



Finished Wicked by Gregory MaGuire this weekend. Interesting novel. Very much a political satire, but then so was The Wizard of Oz, I'm told.
Wouldn't know since I never read the original version.

What struck me about Wicked, is a comment made by a few thriller writers and the historical novelist John Jakes - "we don't read any fiction, just non-fiction, because we are afraid of stealing ideas or having our style unduly influenced" . Hah! For some reason this comment always pisses me off. Why? Because it is anathema to everything I was ever taught about writing. And why we write. You don't write in a vacuume. You write to share your thoughts with others and in return get theirs. It's about *communication*, the *sharing* of ideas, so we can figure out things together and develop new concepts.

Wicked, a fascinating novel by Macguire, basically proves these guys are missing out on some wonderful writing opportunities by avoiding fiction. My Dad echoed that speech about 'how certain fiction writers avoid reading fiction so as not to be unduly influenced to me' and I told him to ignore these guys - pay attention to what the *really* good writers have done. Harlan Ellison reads Issac Asimov, they even borrow from each other. Neil Gaiman is a huge Bester fan. Stephen King reads anything he can get his hands on, including some suspense thrillers by Louisa May Allcot who gave him the idea for a horror novel. Heck his new series, Kingdom Hospital, is partly based on The Kingdom by Lars Von Tries.

Wicked is a twist on The Wizard of OZ and it's pretty clear that MaGuire is not only very familar with the tale but has also read it a few times. Wide Sargrasso Sea is another example - that's a twist on Jane Eyre. The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnette is a twist on a character in Charles Dickens' novel The Old Curiosity Shop. And Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - was Pullman's response to reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicals of Narnia. Heck - Shakespeare borrowed ideas all the time - you didn't think he dreamed those tales up, did you? Legions of fantasy writers were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Every creative writing teacher I've ever had or workshop I've been too has said the same thing: If you want to write well? Read a lot, particularly things similar to what you want to write. Learn from others. Don't worry about stealing or borrowing ideas, there aren't any new ones (trust me) and beside you can't frigging copyright an idea. Just don't copy the way the writer is telling the tale - that is plagirism and unless you plan to do what Janet Daily once did with a Nora Roberts novel..which is copy the entire plot, style, and just change the name of the characters and settings- you should be fine legally.

Yeah, it's a typical Monday morning and I'm in my typical bitchy mood, can't you tell? ;-) Won't bore you with the reasons, done that enough lately, haven't I? At any rate, must mosey on - already 12:30 pm and I have to clean my bathroom and kitchen today...preparations for my Mother visiting..

Oh the lovely new default icon is courtesy of wisteria who creates some of the best ATS icons out there. It fits my mood, I think.

Comments

Re: Ah yes..

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

There was a very good episode of Xena that played off this concept. It took place in the 1940s and all of the actors played these characters who were searching for "the lost Xena scrolls." It had a nice subversion of what was expected, too, as the modern version of Gabrielle was the strong, tough, slightly twisted Indy character, whereas Xena was the shy and feminine damsel in distress.