I don’t know why I keep watching the Academy Awards. The truth is, just about everyone I really like in the entertainment industry is either retired or dead. But every once in a while, a film will come along, like “The Artist” or “The Shape of Water,” that will seize onto my retro sensibility. Or Morricone will finally get an Oscar.
At any rate, watching the Academy Awards has been a life-long tradition that goes back to my childhood, when the family would gather in the living room and feast like guests of Petronius as screen legend after screen legend would take the podium. And the film score nominees were like something out of a second Golden Age.
Sure, there was ample tedium, embarrassing production numbers that bloated the ceremony to eyelid-drooping proportions. You could watch “The Irishman” in the amount of time it would take to get to Best Picture. But it was worth it for the classic film montages and the “In Memoriam” segment.
And yes, there could be a few squirmy episodes of collective self-congratulation and maybe an eye-rolling political digression or two. But it’s the Oscars. When you flip on the tube, you’re giving Hollywood its night.
It’s like going to the circus. Does anyone even like the circus? And yet once you’re there, the impressions are overwhelming. It’s nostalgic. You may want to rant the whole time, but you can’t look away.
So I’ll be there on Sunday night, as I have been for decades, anesthetizing myself with a platter of viands, hoping to see Joe Pesci pick up another Oscar and hating “Joker” (which I still haven’t seen), all the while reflecting on the superstars and better movies of my youth.
Everything about the Academy Awards is like going to the movies anyway. They’re a construct. They’re fantasy. And every once in a while, just maybe, if I’m lucky, there’s still something worth seeing.
