Bravo to Academy for Expanding Best Picture Slate

Bravo to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for doubling the size of the Best Picture slate from five to 10 nominees per year. This is good for the Oscars, good for artists, and -- most especially -- good for American culture.

The Oscars are the sole method in America for attracting attention to serious, intelligent films. Critics by and large don't care about serious films. Their real concern is their own reputations and jobs. All they care about is getting published. (There are about a dozen exceptions, like A.O. Scott of the New York Times. He clearly cares about cinema.) 

Newspaper editors don't care -- they probably wouldn't notice if film disappeared tomorrow. Hollywood executives only care about producing profits for shareholders.

There is one sliver of the American population that cares: members of the Academy. And there is a substantial subset of adult moviegoers (not the majority, alas, but a sizable minority) that values what the Academy thinks. When a film gets nominated for Best Picture, millions of people across the land scurry out to theaters to see it. Or more often, they rent the film on DVD as soon as it's available.

What a wonderful thing. It's quite amazing that in this age of mind-bogglingly idiotic mass culture there is a mechanism that still succeeds in drawing attention to serious, non-commercial, original films. Artistic cinema is still alive in America (it's on life support, but it's alive!), and this continued life is by and large due to the Oscars.

There is no way that "There Will Be Blood" would have been a hit on DVD had it not been for its Best Picture nomination and the Best Actor win for Daniel Day-Lewis. This is just one example -- I could name countless others. American culture is enriched when five million Americans see such a film, instead of only 500. (It would be heavenly if 50 million people saw it, but that's a pipe dream. Only very rarely will a true work of art become a mass phenomenon. Let's be thankful for 5 million. That's a major achievement.)

The only problem has been that the Oscars could only draw attention to five films because that's how many slots there were on the Best Picture ballot. Yet there are at least 25 highly worthy films per year. Doubling the size of the Best Picture slate means that the Oscars can now rescue 10 artistic films from obscurity instead of just five. An embarrassment of riches. American culture will be that much more enriched.

Journalists who cover Hollywood (such as the New York Times' Michael Cieply) have already begun to speculate that the expansion is designed to get more popcorn movies onto the nominees' list. Journalists who cover mass media love popcorn movies and television and keep trying to drag the Oscars down to that level. But thank heavens the Academy resists and remains a serious artistic organization. Sidney Ganis, current president of the Academy, recently reiterated in interviews that he was in charge of an arts organization, not a commercial organization. Mr. Cieply and the reporters for "Entertainment Tonight" may never understand what Ganis means by that.

Yes, it's probably true that last year's snub of "The Dark Knight" helped propel this recent change. But the snub was offensive to Academy members because "Dark Knight" was a major work of art, not because it was a box-office bonanza or had one foot in the popcorn genre.

Rather than a nod to popcorn movies and mass-market popularity, the expansion of the Best Picture slate seems to me like a concerted effort on the part of the Academy to bring attention to more high-quality films. Journalists who cover pop culture hate when the Academy lauds films that lack a merchandise tie-in. They will have a lot more to hate now.