another day, another awards show
Tuesday, December 18, 2001

For some reason, the American film institute feels the need to give the entertainment endustry yet another awards show: AFI Awards 2001. Now why would they do that, I wonder. Their official statement of purpose is that the awards are to "create an annual almanac that records and preserves the ongoing evolution and enrichment of the moving picture art form." Yeah. Right. No, really, why are they doing this? Hmm ... could it be ... they feel that the industry awards really aren't representative, and a more authoritative organization should take over? ... No, no. That can't be right. Could it be that they feel that the industry awards always get it wrong? .... No, no, no. After all,it's all popularity and opinion; how "wrong" can it get? (Don't answer that.) Hmm .... could it be the millions of dollars that CBS is paying them to put yet another possibly meaningless awards show on the air? Ding ding ding ding ding! I think we have a winner, folks! Though it'll be interesting to see if they're better predictors for the Oscars than the Golden Globes. (And being fair, those millions of dollars will go into the AFI budget to pay for the preservation of old films that would otherwise be lost, so as unstated reasons go, this show actually has a decent reason for existing.)

OK, I confess: I really have a secret love for awards shows. They're so .... excessive. Aren't we wonderful? Aren't we glorious? Aren't we ravishingly beautiful? Don't we like telling you how wonderful and glorious and beautiful we are so that you'll go out and spend money on the things we tell you are wonderful and glorious and beautiful? To be sure, everybody likes public acknowledgement of their work. And we'd all like getting lovely massive trophies in front of the entire planet, telling us and everyone else how wonderful we are. (Hey, at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, I actually held a real live -- well, OK, not live -- Emmy award. The damn thing seriously weighs, people.) And they're harmless, I suppose. If periodically puzzling.

The nominations process for the AFI awards is somewhat familiar. Unlike the Academy Awards, but entirely like the Daytime Emmy Awards and the Golden Globes (hmm...), nominations are made by an awards jury. Unlike the Emmys or Oscars, the final awards will be determined by a jury of "100 film and television experts", the identities of whom are kept secret until after the voting deadline. (One assumes this means that the nominations jury members don't vote for the final award, as their identities have been revealed on the web site.

AFI has divided their awards into two sections, television and motion pictures, just like the Golden Globes. Hmm ... wonder who they see their competition to be? Oh, well. Anyway, the differences in how the AFI sees television and how the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the Emmy people) see television are ... interesting. First, look at the acting categories. They plan to give awards for both comedy and drama series, but for some reason, don't divide the actors into comedy and drama categories as well, so you have the oddity of Ray Romano competing against James Gandolfini and Chi McBride, as well as Michael C. Hall in the Actor category, and Jane Kaczmarek against Edie Falco and Allison Janney, as well as Doris Roberts, in the Actress category. Note also that for television, they don't distinguish between lead and supporting roles, which would normally put Roberts and Janney into yet another category. (They did, after all, both win Supporting Actress Emmys this year.)

The differences in the content of the nominations between AFI and the Emmys are also striking. Take the Drama Series category nominees, for example: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The West Wing. The Sopranos and West Wing are Emmy staples already, of course, and Six Feet Under was ineligible for this year's Emmys, since it premiered after the June 30 first broadcast cutoff date. But ... But ...

They nominated Buffy the Vampire Slayer for best series.

Let me say this again, just in case it didn't sink in: the television series that was considered by most critics to be one of the best written and acted on television last year ... the television series that scored a complete shutout at the Emmys, not getting even nominated for a single award ... is actually competing for Best Drama Series. Now that is seriously weird, folks. (And even so, it was completely locked out of the acting categories, unlike the other Drama Series nominees.) It will be fascinating to see what happens in that category come January 5.

As for the motion picture category ... well, I suspect that these are what we'll come to think of as "the usual suspects" come Oscar time. (With the exception of Shrek, which will probably make the cut in Oscar's new "Animated Feature" category and nowhere else.) The actors are certainly the ones being talked up in the early season, with the exception of Denzel Washington for Training Day. (Well, every award ought to have at least one nomination that makes you think, "What, were they on crack or something?" Not that he didn't have a very strong performance, just that it's not the sort of thing that usually makes the cut come awards time.) Curiously, they do distinguish between lead and supporting roles in film, which AFI doesn't do for television. In fact, looking things over, the list of awards for film is simply far more developed; a result of their film-centered focus, no doubt. (You wonder why they included television at all, frankly, and if they had to do so, why they didn't join up with the Museum of Broadcasting or the Museum of Broadcast Communications for that part. After all, AFI isn't in the least concerned with preservation of television, whereas the others are. But then, they'd have had to share the gelt, wouldn't they? Never mind ...) Interestingly, they've also managed to put in one of those puzzling divides; Robert Altman was nominated as best director for Gosford Park, which was not nominated for best picture.

There is one interestingly peculiar touch about the whole thing. The voting deadline for the jury is January 2, and the show is only three days later. Are they INSANE? Why would you do that to yourself? Curiously, the Nominations Selection Process PDF gives the voting deadline as January 2, 2001, but that must be a typo; Six Feet Under didn't go on the air until July, and the films in the motion picture category mostly weren't released until this month. In any event, with a schedule that insane, they actually have made me feel sorry for Ernst and Young, which gets to spend a truly gruesome weekend tallying things. OK, it's only 100 votes, but still, to have only two days in which to make sure you get things right before a national air date is just bad bad planning.

In any event, it'll be interesting to see what comes out of this show, and whether or not it sticks. Have we had too much of the industry's self-congratulation? Will this show sink like a stone? Will anyone watch so that CBS renews its contract with the show for next year? Tune in tomorrow ...

© 2001 Iain Jackson, after-words.org

[Previous entry: "this program brought to you by ..."] [Main Index]