Academy Bus Rolls Over Brett Ratner
I wrote as much on Monday, but take it from AMPAS president Tom Sherak: "Someone the Academy hired to perform a very important function messed up, messed up badly. He's done everything he can, but this is him. The Academy did what it needed to do by accepting his resignation when he offered it. Does it tarnish it? I hope not. If someone feels it does, then we will work really hard getting the tarnish off. It wasn't us, it was someone who worked for us. It's like anything else. I hope not. We are going to continue to do what we do, which is support the arts and the technology of arts, and we want to be as above the fray as we can be." [LAT]
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What tarnishes (or at least compromises) the awards isn't that they once employed Brett Ratner, it's that the AMPAS seems to simultaneously be pursuing two diametrically opposed goals - to encourage the nominations and awards to be about the films and honoring art (see dropping the ban on members attending panel screenings) and to pump up viewership numbers by desperately trying to find ways to include more commercially successful fare. Then you add to it the standard prom night politics and it alienates most of the people who might hold genuine interest in the results who don't have a direct stake in winning or being nominated. At this point, I rather don't care if a film or artist I like gets nominated or not...because the whole thing feels compromised to the point of invalidating any potential recognition that might result. The Oscarcast is now like the Golden Globes, but with less obvious corruption, and less obvious displays of drunkenness.