Somone's mad at Jerry Seinfeld, and the Academy, and environmentally-conscious celebs
The producer of the Academy Award nominated documentary Iraq in Fragments is pissed. So pissed in fact that he wrote an open letter to the Academy. The letter starts off restating the fact that he was an Oscar nominee, which is nice for him. Then he launches into a rant on Jerry Seinfeld of all people for his comedic riff on documentaries just before presenting the Oscar for Best Doc Feature (which went to An Inconvenient Truth). Seinfeld referred to all the nominees as depressing. Listen up people: documentaries usually are depressing, or at the very least a downer, especially the good ones. There's no need to get mad at famous and notoriously hilarious Seinfeld for stating the obvious. Hell, that's WHY he's famous. Lighten up Documentary Producer Guy. Seriously.
The letter goes on to attack the Academy's new qualification rules for documentary features. I'm sure the reasoning is that far less docs will make the nominations in the years to come, and even his own doc wouldn't have made the cut. I get his point. I don't necessarily agree, but I get it. To back up the Academy on this one, they have to tighten the belt on this one a little because there are just significantly more docs & films being made these days. There has to be some way of weeding them out, and putting specific requirements of distribution makes sense to me. Hey, I think my best-friend should be nominated for an Oscar for the short we made 7 years ago on our miniDV cam, but that's just not realistic. (That was hyperbole used to put more emphasis on my point through use of humor, in case anyone wants to get mad at me for making a seemingly ridiculous statement. In my defense though, she was quite good in the short!)
Lastly, the letter criticizes celebs at the awards ceremony for not mentioning Iraq or Afghanistan but rather the environment in their speeches. This may come as a surprise to all of you but the Oscars ceremony is NOT A SOAPBOX! Congrats on your war doc getting nominated and all, but I'd rather no one talk about politics at the Oscars. It's about filmmaking and nothing else. And if people are intent on discussing politics, I'm glad that it's about the environment, because we need people to step up in that department. And for the record, I don't think talking about the environment is political talk, but people keep telling me that it is, so whatever.
All in all, I think he's being overly sensitive. I will say though that the letter rambled a little and had no clear focus of topic. None of the 3 things he discussed were even related to each other outside of the fact that they have to do with documentaries in general. There needed to be a better unifying thread to the letter. I just hope his docs have a better consistency.
You can read more about this here (via CHUD)
The letter goes on to attack the Academy's new qualification rules for documentary features. I'm sure the reasoning is that far less docs will make the nominations in the years to come, and even his own doc wouldn't have made the cut. I get his point. I don't necessarily agree, but I get it. To back up the Academy on this one, they have to tighten the belt on this one a little because there are just significantly more docs & films being made these days. There has to be some way of weeding them out, and putting specific requirements of distribution makes sense to me. Hey, I think my best-friend should be nominated for an Oscar for the short we made 7 years ago on our miniDV cam, but that's just not realistic. (That was hyperbole used to put more emphasis on my point through use of humor, in case anyone wants to get mad at me for making a seemingly ridiculous statement. In my defense though, she was quite good in the short!)
Lastly, the letter criticizes celebs at the awards ceremony for not mentioning Iraq or Afghanistan but rather the environment in their speeches. This may come as a surprise to all of you but the Oscars ceremony is NOT A SOAPBOX! Congrats on your war doc getting nominated and all, but I'd rather no one talk about politics at the Oscars. It's about filmmaking and nothing else. And if people are intent on discussing politics, I'm glad that it's about the environment, because we need people to step up in that department. And for the record, I don't think talking about the environment is political talk, but people keep telling me that it is, so whatever.
All in all, I think he's being overly sensitive. I will say though that the letter rambled a little and had no clear focus of topic. None of the 3 things he discussed were even related to each other outside of the fact that they have to do with documentaries in general. There needed to be a better unifying thread to the letter. I just hope his docs have a better consistency.
You can read more about this here (via CHUD)
posted by Hameed at 12:33 PM
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