Now that’s a little dismissive, isn’t it? A couple websites I’ve read make a pretty convincing case that he did stage some scenes, making up a couple scenes with supposed protesters, to cover for the fact that he blatantly lied and twisted the facts and dates to make it appear that Charlton Heston was deliberately following around acts of school violence to give local NRA pep rallies after them.
I mean, isn’t cheating the rules of documentary-making good enough to invalidate an award for best documentary?? I don’t think this is a “fantasy world.” Nor is it necessarily agenda-driven. I have no problem with his ultimate thesis (that it isn’t the presence of guns that causes violence but rather some other factor), and I found his use of the Oscars as a political platform only mildly annoying, but I would certainly say that if he broke the rules of documentary-making to manipulate the appearance of events in the film, that it’s not that ridiculous to suggest he lose his award.
As for your other example, I wonder why somebody won an Oscar in the first place for lens technology that, from it’s description, sounds pretty much like old news. I mean, weren’t they doing pretty much that exact thing filming Citizen Kane 60 years ago, with lenses and techniques invented by the cinematographer for that film? Ebert makes a big deal about the technique in the audio commentary, I assumed that keeping foreground and background objects both in focus was pretty much mastered with that film. Reporter in the phone booth, Mrs. Kane at the table, both in focus, technology perfected.
Since the topic has drifted a bit toward actors/actresses being nominated for roles playing the opposite gender, I’ll toss out a question that just popped into my head.
Since the situation is bound to come up someday, does the Academy have a stated policy recognizing (or not recognizing) transsexuals? If someone underwent a male-to-female sex change operation, then put forth an Oscar-worthy movie performance, would the Academy list her as an actor or an actress?
No, it’s not necessarily agenda-driven, but in this case it is.
As was noted earlier, an entirely staged documentary has won the award, so I doubt he’s violated any rules. Actually, I just re-read the Academy rules, and they settle this quite concretely. I quote:
“An eligible documentary film is defined as a theatrically released non-fiction motion picture dealing creatively with cultural, artistic, historical, social, scientific, economic or other subjects. It may be photographed in actual occurrence, or may employ partial re-enactment, stock footage, stills, animation, stop-motion or other techniques, as long as the emphasis is on fact and not on fiction.”
Emphasis mine, duh. But even if some of the scenes were staged, he didn’t break a rule anyway.
Well, if you’ll recall, “Somebody broke the toilet!” so the success of the attempted Oscar-flushing has not been established.
Regarding Linda Hunt’s Oscar, I suppose in the future someone might win an acting award for portraying an alien with no defined gender at all. It seems clear that you go by the gender of the actor, not the character.
