If there were ever something that Hollywood should be embarrassed about, it’s that Pixar has never won an Oscar for best picture — despite making 11 consecutive commercially successful and critically acclaimed movies. In fact, until last year, when the motion picture academy enlarged its best picture nominee list from five to 10 films, the animation house had never even landed a nomination in the category. It finally broke through with “Up,” but the movie was never a serious contender for best picture, which went to “The Hurt Locker.”
This year, Pixar has spawned another cinematic delight, “Toy Story 3,” which has made more than $1 billion around the world and garnered what are arguably the best reviews of the year, earning a 99% positive review score at Rotten Tomatoes. Disney, which bought Pixar in 2006, is so frustrated that the studio’s boss, Rich Ross, has publicly announced that, instead of settling for a best animated film Oscar, he’s going for the big enchilada.
Ross has boldly laid his cards on the table. “We’re going for the best picture win,” he said in a recent interview with insider showbiz news blog Deadline Hollywood. “For some reason an animated film has never gotten best picture and I always wondered was there not an appetite? We decided this year we have the biggest and best-reviewed film of the year. If not this year, and not this movie, when?”
Ross is putting his money where his mouth is. In the past, Disney has often skimped on its Oscar campaigns. But the studio has launched an ad blitzkrieg in the trades and in The Envelope (published by the L.A. Times) attempting to woo Oscar voters by linking “Toy Story 3” characters to familiar images from past best picture winners.
I hate to break the news to Ross, but he’s wasting his studio’s money. Even worse, if Ross keeps boasting about how he won’t rest until he’s scored a best picture statuette for Pixar, he’s going to end up like Harvey Weinstein, who staged a similarly noisy campaign for “Gangs of New York” trying to win a best director trophy for Martin Scorsese, who’d never won an Oscar. That backfired. When Scorsese finally won for directing “The Departed,” Scorsese didn’t campaign at all.
But here’s the sad truth. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t appreciate, much less understand, animated film. Everyone also points the finger at the actor’s branch of the academy, which represents by far the largest chunk of members — presumably members who, being actors, would never vote for a film that has no actors on screen. But the problem goes much deeper.
The real issue is that Oscar voters over the last few decades have completely lost touch with their original mandate, which was to reward the films that best represented the craft of filmmaking.