Salon on Gollum's Failed Oscar Nomination

Masem writes "Salon has an interesting commentary on the failure for Andy Serkis, the actor that used as the model and voice for Gollum in The Two Tower, to garnish an Oscar nomination despite the pressure that Peter Jackson and others placed on the Academy to get the nomination. They had previously pointed to John Hurt's Best Actor nomination in "The Elephant Man", in which the only visible feature of Hurt was his eyes after the elaborate makeup and costuming, but even then, Hurt did not win, he himself believing that it would be hard to connect the real actor to the role that he played. Salon suggests that the Academy needs to seriously consider how digital technology is affecting the way movies are being made and to be more open to non-traditional roles and films as potental Oscar material."

Comments

The Academy

[dreamchaser]

The Academy Awards long ago ceased to be about who was most deserving to win or be nominated. If indeed they ever were about that at all. They are not much more than a cliquish popularity contest and a way to make political statements.

In a way this mirrors the failure of the recording industry to 'get it' in our rapidly changing times. The entrenched establishment of the music and movie industry is so hidebound that nothing short of dramatic reform (i.e. tear it all down and start over) will probably fix it.

As CGI and other digital effects become more and more commonplace, there will have to be a change in perception by the Academy (aside: Do they teach something? I thought Academies were teaching institutions???) or they will become increasingly irrelelvant. Already, to many movie lovers, the Oscars are more of a joke than anything else.

Just my not so humble opinion. Your milage may vary.

Re:The Academy

[RatFink100]

The thing to remember about the Oscars is that they are promotional tool to sell movies. It's one of the ways to give the subjective process of assessing quality some semi-objective measure. Of course it's flawed, but all the others - box office, word of mouth, trailers, critic's reviews, track record - are equally flawed.

And I don't think it's shabby or dishonest as long as you approach it that way. After all if you're buying a tin of baked beans or a car you can try out the product first. There's no way to do that with a movie except to go on someone else's judgement. The Oscars are one source of information for doing that.

As with any contest where the result is determined by a vote there are many different reasons why people vote they way they do which don't necessarily relate to the matter at hand. This is human nature and we expect this to be the case and treat the result accordingly.

But the only way to remove those non-relevant voting influences is to use some objective measure. But if there was an objective measure we wouldn't need to have a vote.

As for it being cliquey - there are other awards that are voted for by the general public. If you want to pay more attention to those results you are free to do so.

Re:The Academy

[Tackhead]

> The thing to remember about the Oscars is that they are promotional tool to sell movies.

They're also a promotional tool to sell celebrity. Not celebrities, but celebrity - the notion that there's a group of people ("celebrities") who are prettier, wealthier, more knowledgeable on world affairs, and just plain better than you.

It's not that a CGI Gollum threatens the ability of $MOVIESTAR to demand a multimillion-dollar contract. (It does, but that's beside the point.)

It's that a CGI Gollum threatens the whole concept of "movie star" in the first place.

Once we realize that $MOVIESTARs are little more meat puppets that can be rendered by having anybody go the same motions in front of a bluescreen and using software to overlay an appropriate skin and bump-map on our pasty little knobbly bodies, we might stop paying attention to them.

a** kissers

[Joe the Lesser]

"despite the pressure that Peter Jackson and others placed on the Academy to get the nomination"

I do think he should get a nomination, but aren't these things supposed to be related to actual performance by the actor compared to his contemporaries, and not crooked lobbying?

Tron

[chimpo13]

Tron wasn't nominated for an Oscar in visual effects because it used computers and wasn't animated. Andy Serkis wasn't nominated this time, but people will be nominated one day.

The actor *made* the character

[Gerp]

For me, the very things which made gollum have such a big impact on the movie were provided by the actor. The emotion, the delivery, the facial expressions and the movement were all provided solely by the actor - I think this makes Andy valid for an oscar nomination. It's altogether different to the usual voice-over stuff that Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks have pulled off so well in the past for truly computer generated characters.

Why not a special Oscar?

[ShieldWolf]

To be fair to the academy this is new territory, and it would be difficult to distinguish between what Serkis accomplished, and what voice actors do for animated movies. Having said that, James Baskett won a special oscar for his performance in "Song of the South" wherein he interacted with animated characters. Why can't Serkis get the same treatment?

LOTR Will Kill Next Year

[SpaceRook]

The genereral consensus in movie-land is that the "Return Of the King" film will be the one that really wins all the awards. Awarding Part 3 will be seen as rewarding the whole series. So, I think Gollum has a good chance of getting nominated next year.

I agree but I'll add more

[GuyMannDude]

I completely agree with what you said but I'd go a step further and state that I think the whole idea of awards for movies and other art seems bizarre and way too subjective. Supposedly, top talent have chosen to make movies because they love the artform. So why would an award be meaningful to them? Awards are useful in athletic competitions but are they truly appropriate for art? I would argue that they are not. The creative talent in Hollywood (please don't snicker) should find that the chance to make art they think is meaningful and appreciated by others is reward enough. A golden statue and lavous ceremony should not be necessary.

We are then stuck with the question: why do we have award ceremonies (and so damn many of them as well)? I submit to you that the reason is purely popularity, politics and marketing as dreamchaser said. I don't give a damn about the Oscars and, quite frankly, I don't understand why anyone else does either.

GMD

Ricky Martin Is My Cousin

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

These are the categories that already exist which could satisfy your suggestion:

* Best Visual Effects

But I think you're missing the point - giving an award to the producers of the Two Towers for best visual effects or some new category involving animation is not the same as giving Serkis an Oscar for his performance. You're suggesting a general Oscar for the entire crew whereas New Line wants Serkis to get an individual performance actor. The question is whether Serkis deserves an Oscar for his performance alone. Now perhaps the addition of best Digital Performance/Inspiration could give Serkis a category that would fit what he did. Since he did have help from the CG team.

But, on the other hand, actors have their costumes selected for them so, in a way, they have a team behind their performances as well. And wasn't Serkis really just placed in a cool costume?

James Brown Is My Cousin

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

That last one was Star Wars? I think not. If you're judging whether the movie deserves a nomination based on what the public enjoyed, allow me to give you a list [all post-Star Wars]

Titantic - took the Oscar and was a huge commercial success - maybe you didn't like it but you talked about what the public enjoyed. This was in 1997.
Braveheart - took the Oscar and was also a huge commercial success for the year 1995.
Forrest Gump - another huge commercial success that also won an Oscar - 1994.

I could continue but I think I've made my point. You're claiming that movies which are nominated for best picture haven't been commercial successes. This is incredibly false as I've shown by just showing which huge commercial movies have WON the Best Picture Oscar.

Next time you rant, make a little sense.

Not to undercut the thrust of the argument...

[GMFTatsujin]

I didn't find his performace as Gollum all that compelling either way. Certainly not enough to merit a nomination.

When an Oscar-deserving performance comes along, computer-augmented or not, it should be recognized. I just didn't think this was one of them.

That being said, the performance wasn't just the actor's alone. There were other artists in front of the keyboard who tweaked and augmented the facial expressions among other things -- the performance was really a collaborative effort to get the final peice on all levels. So would the animators get to share in the Oscar too?

Re:Well, what IS an actor?

[Aquitaine]

Short answer: Me! I'm an actor! Hire me and pay me a lot of money!

Long answer:

All of those different bits of acting you mention require acting talent, and, usually, training. Voice acting is no exception. Voice acting can be very challenging, since a lot of actors I know (and myself) benefit greatly from having a real set and real costumes to put us where we want to be. Voice actors usually sit in a studio with headphones and a mic, so it's a lot more imginative. There's also a lot of books devoted to dialect study and even 'standard American,' or how American English is supposed to sound even though nobody actually speaks that way; for example, the word 'our' is often pronounced 'are' while it's supposed to sound more like 'hour' and 'what you' (like what you did that time) is supposed to be 'whaT you' and not 'whatchyou,' which is how nearly everybody says it.

There are many other things like those that will contribute to a seamless performance, even though not knowing about them doesn't necessary detract very much -- whatchyou and are/our sound natural to many people. Similarly, learning a Cockney accent or an Irish accent is technically challenging, but even if you master the accent, there are cultural things related to the vernacular in each and how words are used together (especially slang) that no engineer or computer will ever replace.

Personally, I believe that Serkis should've been nominated, but I also can't argue with the author's point (Hi Ivan!) that it gives future quasi-digital characters an unfair advantage. Most digital characters have actors behind them that contribute something, even if its just reacting to other characters in the scene during rehearsal and initial filming -- if the guy they have doing Jar Jar really sucks, for example, then Ewan MacGregor has a harder time doing scenes he has with Jar Jar, because a single character's bad acting can bring a whole scene down even if the actual character is digitally removed and replaced with something else for the film. Every single thing in the composition of a scene will affect an actor somehow.

But then, if you argue that you don't want to consider actors who get computerized help, shouldn't that disqualify anybody who has FX in their scenes? Doesn't the whole movie affect your attitude towards any actor in it just as anything in the movie affects the actor's performance?

Boiled Down

[slugfro]

The end of the Salon article wraps things up perfectly. Should he have recieved a nomination for Best Supporting Actor?

In the end, the answer is no, not because his talents are less significant than those of the supporting actor nominees, but because the work that he has done here is not equivalent. It would be a disservice to the other nominees to compete against the computer-enhanced Serkis, just as it would be a disservice to Gollum to be written off as an accomplishment of acting. The fact is that Gollum represents a new breed of synthespian performers...

Without Serkis' acting and voice work, Golum would not have been as good. Likewise, without the great CG work the character of Gollum would again have not been as good. It looks like the Academy really needs to wake up and create a new category for these "synthespian" performances which combine real acting/voice with digital effects teams.

Re:Was it deserved?

[thatguywhoiam]

Every time Gollum came on screen it knocked me out of the illusion.

Not to pick nits... (hey, it's Slahdot! I guess I will pick nits! c'mere, nits!)

... but maybe you've never seen a severly malformed hobbit under the influence of an evil magic ring who's been living in a cave for hundreds of years before?

I'm not trying to be flip.

There is an inherent problem in portraying something like Gollum on the screen. He's not going to ever look really 'real', in a sense, because you've never seen a real one.

I spoke last year with a friend who had worked on some of the CG in Spider-man. It too was criticized quite a bit for looking 'cartoony', not moving right, etc. This friend went to great lengths to explain to me that the problem was physics. You've never seen a guy move 3x faster than a normal human, while doing flips and handstands and generally flinging himself all over the place. Guess what? It looks really weird. He was quite disappointed that none of the hardcore fans had picked up on this, and actually felt slighted: here was the Spider-man CG team, actually sticking to the described physical limits of the character, and of course it looks a little strange.

Now, as far as Gollum goes, I can't buy that he looked cartoony, or that the motion was 'off'. It all looked pretty damn perfect to me. (If anything, they needed to grain him up a bit as sometimes the CG looks a little too clear.) Of course I know its not real, but that's because I know.

Re:It wasn't just the voice

[eekaterrorist]

I think rather than continuing to just ignore roles like this that "don't fit" into a category, they should do SOMETHING. .or have a special award for this . . Best Voice / Digitally Enhanced Acting Performance. That would also let actors from animated films get a chance.

I don't think there is a good example of this once a year yet. The award would end up being given to characters like Jar Jar Binks and Dobbie by default - making the Academy awards even more of a travesty than they already are.