The Business Behind the Oscars

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the body that hands out the Oscars, last week announced that there would be 10 Best Picture nominees instead of the five nods we've seen in recent years. According to this Los Angeles Times story, between 1932 and 1943, 10 films a year were in the running for Best Picture. The Academy says they're just going back to that tradition so they can acknowledge the many worthy candidates that may have otherwise been "squeezed out of the race," said the body's president Sid Ganis. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there were that many good films to nominate. In 1939, some of the selections included Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz and Wuthering Heights. One concern many critics have is, are there enough good movies out these days to fill that number of nominee slots? The nominees are Inglourious Basterds and ... Paul Blart: Mall Cop?

Maybe. Some say, bringing the number to 10 is an effort to bring in a wider audience to the telecast. "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" was after all the number one movie in America when it came out. The more people who have seen the movie means the more people who will have a stake in seeing their guy get the prize and the more advertising dollars for the Oscar ceremony.

It also touches on another criticism that many have had of the Oscars in recent years: that its Best Picture contenders are too highbrow. No one has seen them aside from a handful of cinephiles in New York and L.A., a point that Hugh Jackman joked about in his opening monologue-musical routine at last year's show when he admitted that even he, the program's host, hadn't seen Kate Winslet's grim Nazi period piece, The Reader. Last year's feel-good winner, Slumdog Millionaire, was not widely seen in middle America because the film was not showing there. It took winning the Oscar for the movie to garner wider attention.

While it's great that more of the audience will be included in the show, as this discussion on radio's Air Talk suggests, are the Oscars supposed to be about validating the audience, or about rewarding artistic achievement?

And just a note: Paul Blart: Mall Cop, while a great example of a popular and widely embraced movie, came out last January and is not in contention for this year's race. That is, of course, the only reason it will not get a nod.