Corman to Receive Oscar

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. You senile, old fool you. For a while now you've been doing these things that suggest that you're past it, ignoring every Pixar film for best picture and then giving them the derogatory best animated film award, say. Or how about giving Scorsese an award for a film that wasn't that great purely because you forgot to give him one for any of his great works. That one had you hanging by a thread.

But now you're giving Roger Corman an honourary Oscar. Really? Well it's time for the home Oscar.

Old time readers will know that I've got a bit of a problem with Corman and his Wonderful World of Budget Constraints, in fact the second ever Splice post was about him.

Frankly some of the true greats have never won an Oscar, or had to take the Scorsese-like one, so it's frankly galling that one will rest on the mantelpiece of the man who made these:







Now I love cheesy B-movies as much as the next weirdo but Corman's aren't even as fun as the trailers make them look! Basically this is a man who can take the idea of a mutant pickle invading Earth with his army of bats and make it boring!

So why is he getting this award? The argument about the talent he has fostered doesn't ring true. It's an impressive list of genuinely brilliant talent, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppolla, James Cameron to name a few. But the stuff they made under him was almost entirely garbage, mainly thanks to him. He may have given them a break but that's it. I doubt that the Oscar is being given to him because of association with others who were worthy winners. If that really were the case then an honourary gold chap is surely in the offing for, say, the Weinsteins.

No this smacks of of the industry honouring a great business man, which it must be said Corman is. In these troubled financial times Hollywood is feeling it, look at the way the entire industry appears to have pinned its hopes on Avatar being the biggest thing ever. As such Corman's business model, spend so little on the film that it actually isn't possible for it to fail to make the money back, is very appealing to the suits.

In fact, it's pretty much the model that the industry works on, just on a far larger scale. Hollywood doesn't fail to turn a profit thanks to all the ancillary markets, it's really all about how big that profit actually is when the scare stories about the industry in decline start spreading. Awarding Corman points to the fact that his way of doing things is the ideal for the industry so look out for more story-less trash designed to smash your senses into submission instead of films with any sort of substance.

An award such as this should be about honouring artistry, but in this case it's purely a business thing. Giving an Oscar to Corman for his work makes a mockery of an award's ceremony that should mean something but has instead become a mass marketing tool. It dilutes anything already given out under the name to others for their "outstanding achievements" and "artistry".

At this rate it'll soon be preferable to have an MTV Movie Award on your mantelpiece. Do you hear that Oscar? I said AN MTV MOV..., aw forget it you deaf, old bastard.