The Academy needs money, invites 800 more people

The moment the Academy decided that diversity should be its guiding standard rather than quality it ceased to be relevant. Add Covid to the mix and its fate it sealed. Hollywood doesn't realized just how fucked it is. They will soon.

Relax OP, The Academy is still 80 percent elderly whites males who will continue rewarding films that they have probably never seen.

[R2] The very notion of an "academy" implies an older demo, but I know that sneering about "white" people is your MO. Nobody sees most of the nominated films these days.

My invitation was lost in the mail.

Quite a feat for Wash Westmoreland to be here, having gotten his start directing gay porn.

[quote] Surpasses Five Year Diversity Goal

!!!

Tyne Daly is finally being invited to be an Academy member!

But Natasha Lyonne, Niecy Nash, Tim McGraw, Eva Longoria?!

Niecy Nash is a very obvious comedienne, but she also has demonstrated very natural dramatic acting ability in the dark comedy “Getting On.” I was taken aback by her in a very dressed down, relatable character. This was an HBO series— I’m not sure about actual film work she’s done, but I’d like to see more from Nash and can see her as an Academy member. Tim McGraw and Eva Longoria.... while I really like both of them, those are truly puzzling choices!

Most Academy members are people you have never heard of, and are not particularly accomplished. You just need to know someone, and have a plausible connection to the film industry, to get an invitation.

Ari Ester and Wash Westmoreland.

Yes !!!

[quote] The moment the Academy decided that diversity should be its guiding standard rather than quality it ceased to be relevant. Add Covid to the mix and its fate it sealed. Hollywood doesn't realized just how fucked it is. They will soon.

I'd like to think that was true but realistically Hollywood hasn't cared about quality since they grasped the tentpole business model. CGI, stupid stunts, and comic book level scripts are the industry now.

That long list of marketing and PR people pretty much sums up the problem

Did DL fav and future superstar Melissa Beth Miller make the list?

Niecy Nash is very talented at comedy and drama, has one Emmy and three nominations and has been in two Ava DuVernay movies.

The inclusion of 24-year-old Florence Pugh is more eyebrow-raising to me.

Tim McGraw and Eva Longoria are definite WTF choices.

No one seems to have noticed the irony that just a few years ago the Academy purged their membership to make space for a younger, hipper demographic.

There was a great letter published by Bill Mumy (Danger, Will Robinson!) about his own experience. He began as a young child actor, but worked with some of Hollywood's biggest names, like Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart, with a string of TV and movie credits from 1957 to the present day. He was a voting, lifetime member of the Academy until the purge. After more than fifty years in the business, he was deemed unworthy of continuing. Now he gets to read that a former porn director with only a couple of legitimate credits to his name and performers whose combined credits don't come close to his are invited to become members... It's gotta hurt.

[quote]He was a voting, lifetime member of the Academy until the purge. After more than fifty years in the business, he was deemed unworthy of continuing. Now he gets to read that a former porn director with only a couple of legitimate credits to his name and performers whose combined credits don't come close to his are invited to become members... It's gotta hurt.

Those who didn't work in the decade in film were moved to Emeritus status. They they retained everything else - they are still members, they still get screeners, they just can't vote. And while I know actors dream of being invited to join the Academy, most actors will still get to review some films because to vote for the SAG Awards you only have to pay your minimum dues so even the person who hasn't worked in fifty years can still vote on a few films because they paid their dues.

Now, what I think is a huge misstep is that the AMPAS board are now moving agents from Associate members and allowing them to vote.

*Agents* will get to vote now, R16?!? The bloodsuckers of the industry who care nothing about film itself and only about money and what projects they can get their own client list into? The Academy is making another huge mistake with this rule....

R15, thank you for reminding us about “the purge” that the Academy did a few years back. I had completely forgotten about it. It was so disrespectful to veterans in the industry and people who had “paid their dues” for such a long time there.

I remember now that even Steven Spielberg came out and said that he was fully behind more inclusion and diversity in the Academy roster but was not in favor of purging older members from the Academy in order to do it. He was basically asking why they couldn’t just be inclusive without dropping lifelong members from the voting body.

I agreed with Spielberg then and now: the Academy didn’t need to drop veteran voters just to include diversity picks. They could have both kept the older, accomplished people and added all the new ones.

And now they’re going way to far with their “diversity picks”: porn directors and Eva Longoria?!?

The Academy is basically trash now and way too political. No wonder the Awards have been terrible for multiple years now...

The Academy Awards have always been terrible.

For more reference, here are Spielberg’s quotes about the veteran Academy voter purge and diversity in the Academy’s voting block from The Hollywood Reporter in 2016:

“However, the filmmaker suggests, recent history should rule out racism as an explanation for those omissions.

“You have to look back a couple of years," he says, "where Lupita [Nyong'o] was recognized for 12 Years a Slave [and] 12 Years a Slave won best picture, you know? I don't believe that there is inherent or dormant racism because of the amount of white Academy members.

I'm also not 100 percent sure that taking votes away from Academy members who have paid their dues and maybe are retired now and have done great service — maybe they've not won a nomination, which would have given them immunity to the new rules, but they have served proudly and this is their industry, too — to strip their votes? I'm not 100 percent behind that."

Reading over the list, they're great expanding the number of Documentary filmmakers.

Last post in this: Spielberg’s shockingly candid quotes about shady Oscar campaign and voting practices from the same 2016 Hollywood Reporter article:

“Spielberg, whose Saving Private Ryan was part of one of the most cut-throat Oscar seasons in history when it competed against Shakespeare in Love 17 years ago, also called for the Academy to reform its rules for Oscar campaigning. "There's a lot of money being thrown at it," he said.

"I'm not gonna sit here and say we should have campaign finance limits the way John McCain was asking for them a couple of years ago during a political cycle. But I do think think the amount of, let's just call it 'gifts,' the amount of 'enticements,' should be reduced to zero.

I think the thing I'm against the most are enticements — people sending elaborate brochures and baskets. I think sending out a DVD of your movie is all we should be doing and nothing beyond that. Not the dinners and anything else — I just think that's a little bit different than the way it used to be."

He continued, "[But] I don't think there's anything I can say that's going to stop that from happening, because everybody likes to go to a good party.

I don't want to say I'm against having a good party, but there's something about actual campaigning, where what you're campaigning for has been forgotten and it's [about] the power of persuasion over the power of the story and of the contributions ... that's what I'm sad about."

[quote]The very notion of an "academy" implies an older demo, but I know that sneering about "white" people is your MO. Nobody sees most of the nominated films these days.

Nobody seeing most of the nominated films these days is exactly the problem. What people watch and the way people watch it have changed. It doesn't make sense that the Academy wouldn't too.

[quote]I agreed with Spielberg then and now: the Academy didn’t need to drop veteran voters just to include diversity picks. They could have both kept the older, accomplished people and added all the new ones.

Their rules were perfectly reasonable!

Membership is 10 years long in which you have to at some point actively be a part of the film industry in [italic]any[/italic] capacity.

If you remain a member for 30 years (or three 10 year periods) you are a member for life.

If you win you are a member for life.

Someone who was inducted 35 years ago but hadn't worked since should not be in there especially when the requirements to remain a member are lax.

R22, the first quote from the article implies he might have been talking about Weinstein, but I bet that wasn't the only one he had in mind. Another one I'm convinced uses shady tactics to influence Academy members (and critics) is Leonardo DiCaprio. I mean, how the fuck does he get nominated for almost every film he does? He's been mugging his way through his performances for the last 20 years, yet Hollywood treats him like a god. The 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for his girlfriend's last movie also seemed suspicious to me.

Akwafina decides on Best Picture...........it is now meaningless

Speeding up the train to complete irrelevance, they are.

Tom Eagles! He's been waiting for this since World War II.

[quote] But Natasha Lyonne, Niecy Nash, Tim McGraw, Eva Longoria?!

Outside of maybe Lyonne (and certainly not recently for her) are any of those people known for being film performers? Emmys make sense, but movies? What has Longoria contribute to the art of motion pictures?