Week Of September 25, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

September 25, 2006

And so, another circle jerk begins.

After it screened for a selected audience guaranteed to love it and for an Ain't It Cool News crowd in Austin that was guaranteed to love it, the jungle drums are beating over Apocalypto.

So let me take a moment now to engage with reality.

This is exactly the strategy he used on The Passion of the Christ, though its screenings were further from the release date and, because of the material, it was inherently more divisive. There is nothing surprising in any filmmaker repeating the steps that led to a big success on their last film.

Mel Gibson knows how to make an action film with intense emotional peaks. Always has, drunk, sober, crazy, sane, anti-Semitic or in love with Barbra Streisand. There was never any question that Apocalypto was going to be interesting, likely visually compelling, and that language was not going to be an issue, anymore than it was for The Passion of The Christ - which, like it or not, was a strong, extremely brutal action film.

The reason, as C. Nikki Finke is told, that both Time and Newsweek are looking for cover stories is that Mel sells magazine and no one cares what the content of the magazine is until after they've grabbed it off of the newsstand rack. Period. Same as Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean or whatever mainstream stuff comes out in theaters in a given quarter. Same, for that matter, as Star and US Weekly and National Enquirer. Obviously, the controversy is enhanced for both newsmagazines by the fight over The Passion and the D.U.I. There is no honor amongst salesmen.

So now, C. Nikki and others are going to quote Harry Knowles on how good the film is? And C. Nikki's first take is to question whether the Academy will play fair?

Oy.

As everyone and their uncle in the business knew about Brokeback Mountain six months before C. Nikki told us she had an exclusive on the insight, old men (and some not so old men) in the Academy are anal-sex-on-screen averse. And as anyone who knows anything will tell you, getting Academy members to see any film is a challenge. Yes, there was homophobia in play, but the assumption that BBM lost because some 75-year-old actor said he didn't want to see it is stupid.

But more importantly, since when was the Academy a bastion of fairness?

And when did anyone other than C. Nikki start taking Harry Knowles word for Oscar quality?

How many Oscar Best Picture nominees in a foreign language have there been in the last 30 years? Three. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Life Is Beautiful, and Il Postino.

Is Harvey now running the Apocalypto Academy campaign for Disney? Because if not, we're down to one such film that got there without him (and Swartz and Lundberg) in the last three decades.

Add other things that make Apocalypto an unlikely Oscar candidate. 1. Foreign language 2. No stars or even actors familiar to the Actors Branch of the Academy. 3. Foreign culture that isn't British. 4. Action. 5. It may be a box office hit, but it has little chance of coming anywhere close to The Passion of The Christ.

Oh yes… and… well…

Of course, the last time I dared to acknowledge that there are a lot of Jews in the Academy, but there are also a lot of non-Jews who might not hold a grudge against Gibson for showing signs of anti-Semitism, I got drop-kicked by Patrick Goldstein as though I was some internet lunatic. Fortunately, he's off counting celebrities in the Four Seasons elevator as his paper tries to sell its new weekly Oscar pull-out before it gets sold off to a studio owner, so I am free to ramble.

I obviously have no reliable study of how many Academy members are so turned off to Mel Gibson that they will not vote for his movie under any circumstance. But can we assume that it is a little bigger than the group that is turned off by Michael Moore?

Fahrenheit 9/11… same problems… less resistance… Harvey pushing… still didn't make it.

And how many of the people who object to Mr. Gibson object to his repeated drunk driving, his quick rehab stint, and the management of his "apologies" even more than they do to any perceived anti-Semitism?

Anyway… I am writing about this now so I won't have to write about it again.

I am looking forward to Apocalypto because the material sounds interesting and Gibson can deliver… the same exact reason I am looking forward to Flags of Our Fathers.

Unless the film supplants Babel and/or Little Children and/or Little Miss Sunshine as The Critics' Pick of The Year, there really isn't much conversation to be had about Apocalypto's Oscar chances.

It wasn't a disaster they had to hide when Mel got arrested. It's not a lost masterpiece that is being discovered by committed archivists now.

It could end up being my favorite film of the year (good luck topping Borat, pal!), but I do not subscribe to the arrogance of my opinion being the opinion the Academy must follow to be "right." The Academy doesn't do "right." They do what they do.

But here we go… more gossip mongering… more Mel… more anger pretending to be insight from Roger Friedman and Frank Rich… more spin… more, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it?

I hate it. And I can smell it coming from a mile away.

There are extremely few filmmakers who could make a movie like Apocalypto and have a major studio release it. Fewer still who could have it coming out and have anyone think it had a prayer of commercial success. And fewest of all would argue that this movie is a good fit for the Academy.

I don't really want to hear the uber-sensitive hang Mr. Gibson out to dry for this film before even seeing it. And I don't really need to read anyone defending him before seeing it either.

Let the movie happen. See the movie. Write about the movie.

I know some are out the drooling, screaming, "What? And give up show business?" Let those people fight Uwe Boll or something and let's just try to be adults - those of us who are - for once. It's enough already. And it's just beginning.

E Me.

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