Fri, July 25, 2003

This week the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (also known as "AMPAS," or "Harvey Weinstein's Bitch") blocked the sale of the Oscar awarded to Orson Welles in 1942 for writing Citizen Kane. Welles's daughter Beatrice had sought to auction the statuette at Christie's along with other memorabilia of screendom, and the Academy – earning its reputation of being controlling to a fault – stepped in, citing an agreement that Oscar winners sign which allows the Academy the first right to bid on their statuettes should anyone choose to sell one. The Academy gets the right of first refusal, and the price is locked at $1.

Here's the catch: The Academy was not psychotic enough to start requiring the pact until 1950, the same year they began stamping each award with a serial number. (Obsess much?) Since Welles won his award eight years earlier, his daughter assumed she was in the clear. By some accounts, the Academy has actually managed to bully some heirs into retroactive compliance, although the only example I could unearth was Clark Gable's 1935 award for It Happened One Night, and it appears that Spielberg bought it and donated it to the Academy which hardly counts as AMPAS blocking the sale. In this week's case, however, they had a delicious loophole – Ms. Welles reported the award lost in 1988 and the Academy "generously" broke tradition and issued her a duplicate. (They also took advantage of a convenient opportunity to demand Ms. Welles's signature on the buyback agreement, which would apply to the replacement award and the original statuette in case it should ever turn up. They're always thinkin'!)

Here's what bothers me about all this: A spokesman for the Academy says the rule is in place because the Oscar is "not an article of commerce." Hey? What business is it of yours? It seems awfully sleazy to give someone an award and then tell them what to do with it. Maybe you don't approve, but it hardly seems like a genuine appreciation of someone's work if you award them with strings attached. (Remember when Monica lent Rachel that money and Rachel went shopping and Monica was all upset? Once you give someone something, it's theirs.) Of course, I'm speaking ethically. Legally, AMPAS has created a situation in which it indeed gets what it wants. I can't dispute that they have legal recourse to block the auction, I just say they're jerks for doing it. Especially in this case, where Ms. Welles would have been better off if she had not accepted the replacement Oscar and just waited around for the original to reappear. (It did.) The Academy is just being a pain in the ass the way it always does. (They're more compulsive than Disney about getting that "©AMPAS®" on anything bearing the award's image and they slapped Pixar on the wrist for even suggesting the statuette's likeness in their consideration material for Toy Story.) If it's so damn easy to create replacement Oscars, they should create a replacement to go in their collection!

I don't buy for a second the argument that selling Oscars diminishes their value. There are still a limited number of them. You still have to win one to have one with your name on it. I'm sure Cuba Gooding, Jr. doesn't feel any worse about his Academy Award because some rich collector has one on his bookcase any more than he does because some sound designer's niece has one. (In fact, the sound designer's niece may feel worse about hers. Especially if she saw Boat Trip.) Considering that, in recent years, the Academy's choice of winners for the Oscar have been at best retarded and at worst the result of conspiracy and graft (I'm looking at you, The English Patient's Anthony Minghella!) I would say its unlikely that the inherent value of the award has much farther downward to go. As a matter of fact, it's entirely possible that in a fair auction, the Academy could offer $1 for Jack Palance's award and outbid the nearest competitor two to one.

I've seen reports that the Academy requires all nominees to sign the agreement and some that say only winners are forced to sign. I side with the former, because it seems characteristic of the whole thing. ("We won't even put you on the ballot until you say yes to this.") Besides, if they waited for someone to win, the award is already in the winner's hands and there's no leverage. What, they threaten to kidnap it when it's brought in to have the nameplate engraved? Who needs the nameplate? Write your name on some duct tape and slap it across the front – it's an Oscar. Yes, I like the nominee theory. Especially because lately I've pretty much given up hope that my dream of writing or directing a feature film will ever come true, but this is just the kind of thing to make me try all over again. Wouldn't it be great fun to be nominated and then not sign the stupid thing? (Or, cross out the $1 and write $1 billion! Mwa-ha!) Call their bluff. Are they going to un-nominate you in front of the world? (And if so, I embrace it. Sure, I always dreamed I'd propose to my girlfriend in my acceptance speech, but without the film or the girl, I'm 0 for 2, so let's get realistic. There's an 80% chance that you're not going to win your award anyway. This way you can say, "Well, I probably would have won, but I wasn't going to bow to the Academy's dippy little rule.")

In its statements this week, the Academy has said that the rule does not apply to donations (which further bastardizes the "devaluing" argument), so I encourage Beatrice Welles to "donate" her award to a wealthy collector in such a way that her donation just happens to coincide with his buying her a yacht. That, or hand it off to the makers of Rosebud Frozen Peas. "Full of country goodness and green pea-ness."

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