Oscar Watching

Copyright (c) Noelle Adams. All Rights Reserved.

While US and British coalition forces bombed Baghdad, Nathaniel Rogers was embarking on his own Shock-and-Awe campaign in a Brooklyn apartment.   

Armed with a knife and block of marzipan, Rogers set about sculpting a miniature version of Gollum, the twisted creature from film fantasy The Two Towers, the second adapted instalment of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The marzipan Gollum, it turns out, is part of preparations for Rogers’s annual Academy Awards party. As he explains, ‘I go all out.  The decor and food always revolves around the five films that are up for Best Picture.’  

Proud of his icing replica, Rogers promptly rushed to his computer to describe it on his online Oscar Diary.  

One of Internet’s major appeals is the ability for people, with relative ease, to establish a web-site presence, a ‘home’ online, for anyone to visit. As with homes in reality, what a person does with their web-site is generally their own business. Content covers the full-range of human experience and interest. 

Rogers, whose site is called The Film Experience, is just one of at least a dozen ordinary film-lovers whose ‘homes’ are not focused on themselves. Rather, they cover the film industry’s most prestigious award show, The Academy Awards. 

As Oscar web-site owners are quick to point out, maintaining a web-site about a once-a-year event is not a simple matter of recounting results after the show. ‘Oscar Watching’ is a year-round activity that can, in the ‘award season’ months of November through March, demand up to 20 hours of work a week. Activities include monitoring buzz of supposedly award-worthy films, writing reviews, recording all major award results, and, crucially, compiling lists of potential Oscar nominees and winners. 

University of Natal Media professor, Anton van der Hoeven, comments on what appears to be an escapist obsession with the utterly frivolous. ‘It’s a way for these people to have a more active participation in fan culture,’ he says. ‘It’s what they aspire towards, despite having little or no control over the subject.’

Rogers certainly seems to fit this description. He has fantasised about his own Oscar voting ballot since adolescence. He is now in his thirties. Like other Oscar Watchers, he attempts to explain his activities. Like them, he feels his work has value.

Ryan Blosser, Seattle-based owner of Ultimate Oscar, sees himself as fulfilling a vital role in ensuring that the genuinely-deserving receive accolades. ‘There needs to be an independent voice outside the movie industry that can impact on the process. For example, Miramax Studios, traditionally an Oscar power since 1996 with films like Shakespeare in Love, and this year’s Chicago, can't dominate the awards simply by spending a lot of money on campaigning.’ 

Neil Young, of The Jigsaw Lounge, enjoys the statistical side of predictions, calculating odds and placing bets. Although he describe himself as a ‘film critic first and an Oscar pundit second’ it is unsurprising to learn that he is also a horse-racing official.

Rogers offers a more pragmatic view about his Oscar obsession. ‘It's not fighting for human rights or curing cancer, but entertainment and the arts are a more important part of the human experience than we often care to acknowledge. Contributing to a dialogue about film in a public format has as much value as any deep conversation you'd have with a friend or colleague about the arts, which is a lot.’

Rogers adds, though, that his chief pleasure from maintaining The Film Experience is ‘being able to influence people to see a great film or to think about a movie or a performance in a new way.’ This suggests that for all the site-owners’ claims of benevolence towards the arts, they relish a sense of authority within the online domain. 

Young dismisses claims about power. ‘I don’t think prediction web-sites have any direct influence over the actual Oscar voters. There’s a strong degree of cross-pollination between the different Oscar sites, so perhaps that creates a minor power-buzz.’   

Film studios apparently do not share this view. Just as blockbusters’ success have come to be influenced by online discussion, the same now applies to ‘quality films.’ The major Oscar web-sites receive hundreds of visitors per day. Whether or not these visitors are the actual Oscar voters, comprising previous winner and nominees, the Oscar Watchers do develop public awareness. This awareness and popularity impacts on Academy Awards races. Take this year’s example of crowd-pleasing, but critically-disregarded, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, surprisingly nominated for Best Original Screenplay.      

Film studios, like Fox, Dreamworks and MGM, are keen to establish healthy relations with the Oscar web-site owners. Blosser, whose site only went online in September 2002, was invited this year to an ‘elite Oscar party’. Young, despite being based in Sunderland, England, regularly receives promotional material and DVD ‘screeners’, copies of films before they are released in cinemas. 

The result is that Oscar web-site owners are in a rather unusual position of being empowered fans.  Yet, despite studio contacts and some prestige, Oscar Watchers’ power does not extend to financial benefits. Typical Watcher costs include cinema tickets, and, in many cases, web-site hosting fees.  Minimal income arrives from on-site advertising and affiliate programmes.   

Sasha Stone of OscarWatch, a top Oscar site according to US critic Roger Ebert, asks for donations and sells OscarWatch-branded coffee mugs. Young shrugs, ‘Let’s just say that the money’s enough to keep us working full-time other jobs.’  

Nathaniel Rogers, who otherwise works in human resources, adds, ‘I receive no financial compensation and I haven’t really tried to change that. My site’s strictly a labour of love.’ 

Which brings up the object of affection: the 2003 Academy Awards. Despite Iraqi war-talk dominating online and real-life build-up to the ceremony, the evening proved to be bitter-sweet for Oscar site-owners. Mostly sweet. 

Explains Young, ‘The results this year indicate a more intelligent, daring and mature approach than we have come to expect from the Academy.... With a couple of exceptions that include Chicago as Best Picture and Nicole Kidman’s win, things were more unpredictable than in previous years. Although this meant that I personally didn't get a great percentage of correct forecasts, it’s a positive sign. There's nothing worse than grindingly straightforward Oscar races.’  

As for Rogers, and his marzipan Gollum, the annual Oscar party was a success. Rogers adds, ‘But Oscar night is always like Christmas at my apartment.’ The following morning he was back online to discuss his presents.   

And post his predictions for the 2004 Academy Awards. 

• The Film Experience:                www.thefilmexperience.net

• Jigsaw Lounge:                         www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/

• Ultimate Oscar:                         www.geocities.com/seattleguy_76/UltimateOscar.html

• OscarWatch:                            www.oscarwatch.com