By now, we all know awards are bullshit. Hollywood congratulates itself in a 3-hour star-studded ceremony which is actually just a 3-hour mega movie trailer designed to sell us what the studios believe to be their most artistic achievement of the year. In the end, even the winners don’t really matter because it’s about which company campaigned the hardest for it’s nominees. The best you can hope for is enjoying the hosts ripping on the celebrities, but most likely they are just there to begin pushing a movie they have coming out next year around this time. My point is the whole thing is one big publicity stunt that is meaningless to avid movie watchers who still genuinely regard film as a high art despite Hollywood’s need to constantly self-fellate on primetime television to move merch.
So, now that we’ve got that out of the way. The 2015 Golden Globes left me a little hopeful for film, and here is why:
Biopics. Hollywood has given us eight of them in the last month (Selma, The Intimidation Game, Theory Of Everything, Foxcatcher, Big Eyes, American Sniper, Unbroken, & Wild). We get it. This is award season bait. Play a real person with a sad story and a couple of non-fiction books written about them and you’ll probably get a nomination. We’re supposed to believe that your performance merits more than others because you weren't just getting inside a character’s head, you were getting inside a real human being.
The common belief is if you don’t have “Starring Meryl Streep” on your movie poster, your second best chance at an award is to have "Based on a True Story”. The problem is that these “true story” films and their blatant aspiration for award recognition have become so obvious and ridiculous that audiences are taking notice. Nearly every biographical film this season is coming under fire for historical discrepancies (some warranted, some not).
The Globes chose to over look all of those films save for Selma’s original song and Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking performance (because let’s face it, he’s hot and famous paraplegic portrayals always seem amazing, right?). Instead the Award show honored more independent films. Film that seemed like out-of-the-box fair- Boyhood, Birdman, Grand Budapest, and Whiplash. Each of these films has biographical elements though. Boyhood chronicles 12-years in the life of a boy and his family. Birdman perhaps unintentionally draws parallels between the career of it’s star Michael Keaton and the main character of the film. Grand Budapest is told in a pseudo-biographical manner recounting the life of a fictitious concierge during a period of time that could be interrupted as the first World War. And Whiplash loosely recounts the writer-director’s time not becoming a proper musician.
My point is that none of those films will come under fire for historical inaccuracies because they didn’t need “Based On A True Story”. “Based On A True Story” was unnecessary. And yet the filmmakers knew audiences wanted something that felt like real life. According to this year’s Globes, “Based On A True Story” didn’t work in its sheepish attempt to get statues (again except for Redmayne, but remember he’s a good looking white dude playing a genius white dude that defied the entire medical community, so let’s just drop it already).
I don’t think I'm alone when I say I love a good bio film. But the problem is I’ve seen very few because a good bio film to me is one without all of the historical inaccuracies.
Sorry, what’s that you say? It’s just a movie? They had to condense and composite some stuff to make everything fit? My smartass reply is usually “Maybe you’re just not a very good filmmaker.” But my more constructive reply is, “Fine. You could try to make it two films, or focus on a shorter period of time with this one. But as long as you don’t change the important facts of what historians actually know happened, knock yourself out.”
I say this because I go to a biographical film hoping to get biographical facts, not to see some filmmaker's desperate attempt to win a meaningless award. Sometimes I feel I am alone in this sentiment. That I am the only one that cares that “Based On A True Story” isn’t just award bait, but is a serious attempt to get what we know as the historical record portrayed correctly in this great medium that we call film. And I am glad at least that the Golden Globes last night didn’t seem to take the bait.
I must say that at this point I have not seen Selma. I am seeing it today and I’m looking forward to it’s historical accuracy because of all the articles I have read defending it from detractors. But the unfortunate reality is that after the screening, I will be doing a lot of research to verify the facts I’ve just been presented under the guise of “Based On True Story”. I will have to know, for my own enjoyment, that those plot points weren’t just plot points but were, in fact, true. And this isn’t the Selma filmmakers' fault, but the fault of every filmmaker who has attempted to dramatize history to win a golden statue. It’s the fault of awards shows that continue to shower films with awards solely because they brag “Based On A True Story”.
And that’s why I would like to propose The Biographical Accuracy Award. This award will be given out to the biographical narrative feature film with the greatest amount of accuracy and the least amount of award show pander. Foxcatcher, if Mark Shultz’s allegations are true, you are disqualified from this award. Theory of Everything, you’re going to have to make do with Redmayne’s award because your make-up department didn’t even attempt to age the two lead actors- Wait, I guess you thought that maybe Redmayne wouldn’t have been as handsome if you aged him so you were probably crossed; "do I go after the Accuracy Award or the Popularity Award". I see the flaw in my logic now.
Yeah, award shows are just bullshit.
