Edward Norton Speaks Out About Oscar Campaigns

Awards are big money, a huge influence on ticket-buyers. And that means studios spend big money to try to get them. Three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton spoke out about the abuses of the system in an Indiewire interview.

Not to sound cynical about it, but once a film gets channeled by the industry into that death grip of marketing via the springboard of the awards season, it’s this repetitive grind of promoting something that runs essentially from the end of the New York Film Festival to the end of February. Who wants to spend that much time talking about anything?… n some sense the industry is like the Mexican myth of the snake that eats its own tail. I think the awards season has become this thing that has metastasized. I think something unholy has happened: The Academy is a group of people who make films — six or 7,000 people who are the core of the industry. That’s a thing completely unto itself. Past that, every single thing that transpires between November and February is awards created by bodies of critics, whether it’s the Hollywood Foreign Press with the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle or the L.A. one. Critics Choice. It goes on and on. Unfortunately, the reality of what’s happened is that what started off on an almost academic and critical-slash-journalist footing has — more than people want to acknowledge — become a game of monetization.

I like his recommendation: Anyone paying for an ad campaign to promote awards consideration should be disqualified.