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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."
Admittedly I didn't realize this, but it's still not clear cut like a classic acting role in a film.
.or have a special award for this . .
I think rather than continuing to just ignore roles like this that "don't fit" into a category, they should do SOMETHING.
As it stated, the way CG characters were handled in the past was that they were thrown in during post-production so that the person responsible for the movement and whatnot wasn't really involved in the scene at the time it was being shot. Jackson took a different approach during the filming and actually had Serkis involved in the process while it was being shot.
The Academy is a little too uppity to throw in new categories until they've already become such an obvious addition that their lack of addition becomes a controversy. The Oscars are really more of a salute to Hollywood's aging stars than rewarding innovative work. [I know that's a generalization and it's not always true - but for the most part it is.]
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This has been coming on for a couple of years, and I suspect that it's only going to get murkier in the near future.
It's time to ask the question: What IS an actor? Strictly speaking, I'd say that the voice and visual inspiration for a digital character is, in fact, an actor. However, the final onscreen character is the result of many people toiling away in many different jobs. The animator, the designer, the painter, the guy who runs the mocap studio... they all have a hand in it. Perhaps the academy simply needs a new category. Best digital actor, or something similar. Certainly all the work put into something like Gollum deserves more than an fx nomination!
It's remarkable that Serkis did both the (incredible) voice work and (astounding) physical performance. There will be more characters like Gollum over the years, but they're unlikely to match Serkis' incredible range. You'll have a dancer for the body, a rubber-face for the face, a voice actor for the voice, and so on. It's rare to encounter so much talent in one person.
This is a golden moment for the Academy to honor an astounding performance the likes of which we may never see again.
I can't hold it against them too much: for the most part the Academy wouldn't recognize good acting if it walked up and bit them. They too often honor "showy" acting, largely one-dimensional with huge emotional swings and featured parts, that are actually built on a combination of music, camera work, editing, and a host of other factors outside the performance itself.
I'm an actor myself, and IMHO on film you can see only a performance, not an actor. That's good: you're not supposed to be watching the acting. The hard work of acting is accomplished where you can't see it, in rehearsal rooms and in the actor's bathroom, in front of the mirror, and in long talks with fellow actors at the bar worrying about each syllable, on set finding the right tone not just for you but for everybody in a scene. All of which can be lost by different editing, direction, a music choice going the other way, or another actor taking a different choice.
I applaud Serkis' work, and I want to see if he has range as well as talent. I'm sorry the Academy chose not to honor him, and that's always going to hurt no matter how meaningless the award and no matter how thunderous the accolades from the people whose opinions really do matter.
Putting aside for a moment that the Oscars are absolute garbage awards that have no bearing on the artistic worth of the films they award, this topic isn't so tough a question to answer to me. Personally, I think that maybe they need a Best Voice Actor award, and that perhaps that would be the best category for Serkis in this case. Acting is more than speaking, it includes movement and posture as well. The fact that an entire team of people intepreted Serkis' performance and then modified it completely to suit their needs leads me to believe that it would be quite unfair to his competition to nominate him individually as an actor. They, the competition, had to rely on themselves to come up with convincing (or unconvincing as the case may be) physical performances. Maybe they need to have a Best Team Effort at Creating a Digital Actor award.
The reason we still have awards ceremonies is simple. It makes money for the industry. If people stop watching then two things happen. One, no more advertising revenue. Two, no more manipulative tool to get people to go see movies that they wouldn't have otherwise seen ('Gee, it was nominated for five awards, it must be good, I'll go see it!').
Good points. You should be modded up!
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 can't find the article right now, but if I remember correctly the academy refused to give TRON a special effects nomination because they "cheated" by using computers :)
Sounds like they're often a bit behind the times to me.
Cheers.
Gollum won't get nominated for the same reasons that Peter Lorre never got any significant award. No matter how good the actor is at playing the part, and no matter how important the role is to the movie, it's just not the type of role that gets nominations. It's not anti-CGI bigotry, it's anti-creepy-guy bigotry.
the academy should take this kind of acting more seriously.
In the near future there will be more and more actors with this kind of performance. We will start seeing movies with fiction actors and one could be playing as the main character, imagine a full motion picture named The Loveable Alien From Dunno-Whats-the-planet that the main actor is an (guess what) alien with better feelings and moral behavior that we-us humans, and get to the world's likeness at a "Schlinder List" or higher scale.
These main (virtual) actor would have done a huge effort from himself to make the wonderfully performed "alien" and get no real credit on an academy award.
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I certainly don't think the academy is anything but a manifestation of the peculiar and bizarre politics of Hollywood, but frankly I don't see any reason to assume the nomination was deserved, from the voice acting or the CGI character point of view. Of the supporting actor nominees I've only seen Chris Cooper (Adaptation) and John C. Reilly (Chicago), but there's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that these performances were far and above superior to the hammy charicature of Gollum. And I found the CGI character to be distractingly unreal as usual. As far as I'm concerned these CGI characters still aren't there. Yes, they are agonizingly detailed, writhingly articulated, mapped and textured and fractalled up one side and down the other, you can see every strand of "hair" and the reflections in the tiny beads of sweat on their noses... and they DON'T LOOK REAL. I look and what my brain says is, wow, that is an amazingly detailed cartoon. Every time Gollum came on screen it knocked me out of the illusion.
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