Tomorrow night, Hollywood’s annual ritual of self-congratulation for a job imperfectly done will proceed apace.  In the course of a laborious (hopefully) three to four hour ceremony, a parade of overpaid celebrities will no doubt go through several costume changes and ornamentation in order to celebrate another mediocre year of filmmaking.   Whenever I hear or see the gushing interviews on television of Academy Award nominees I heave a great collective sigh for our culture.  A culture that awards personalities, not actors, with million dollar salaries and inordinate influence that in turn engenders an inflated sense of self-importance.  In the United Kingdom, talented actors and actresses often go about their lives in near obscurity after graduating from prestigious drama schools, happy to get even a supporting role in a West End production.  In America, we line the seats in order to give lackluster talents such as Bradley Cooper or Kristen Stewart the improper impression that they matter aside from distracting us from the toil of our lives for a precious two hours.  Whenever I see reporters tripping over their lapping tugs in order to heap praise and brownnose another celebrity, I cannot help but think of many of the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood who were interviewed later in life by Dick Cavett.   Most did not have a “big break” by making millions in an unmeritorious blockbuster, but were rather scouted and recruited by the theatre, and considered themselves inordinately lucky to land a studio contract.  Artists were willing to stand for something other than their own monetary gain, as Bette Davis did by risking her career by fleeing to London and breaking her contract in order to lobby for better roles.  Later in life, she and many other veterans of the Golden Age of Hollywood, from Claudette Colbert to Katharine Hepburn to Cary Grant, always remarked what a consistently humbling experience it was to see their fans line up at premieres, and how lucky they were to be in the business. Such humility is indeed a bygone era in the age of vapidity and narcissism we see in today’s Hollywood.

The vapidity and arrogance of modern Hollywood would not bother me as much if I did not know that there were actor and actresses of far greater talent who do not have the good fortune of Harvey Weinstein bankrolling their films and lobbying Academy members on their behalf.  If you truly are naïve enough to believe the Academy Awards symbolize merit or achievement, then I suggest you stop reading this article, as it is not for the hopelessly naïve.  As we speak, Argo is on track for the Best Picture nod for all of the wrong reasons. Namely, those in the Academy as a whole wish to give Ben Affleck of Gigli fame a Best Picture award as a means of showing their disapproval with the more narrow Director’s branch for failing to give him a nomination.  The sad truth is it has been ages since the Academy Awards have actually nominated films that connect with audiences on a large scale, and to wit, it has been a great passage of time since Hollywood has actually produced films that transcend boundaries.  And so comes another year where everyone in the entertainment industry must affix a forced smile and pretend Silver Linings Playbook is the best modern storytelling has to offer.  But a larger question seems to be what we tolerate as a culture.  A great majority of the time, Hollywood produces duds, a veritable litany of unsatisfactory work complete with stale storylines, trite and stale dialogue and one-dimensional characters that repeatedly reap just enough at the box office for the studio to make a profit.  And every year, Hollywood revels in the stupidity of the average American cinemagoer, basking in a parade of over caffeinated publicists and drowning themselves in overpriced alcohol at a litany of Academy Award after parties in the depths of a recession.  To be an actor in other countries is to be the object of constant ridicule, but in America we elevate celebrities far beyond their worth, work product and status.  Perhaps the joke is ultimately on us.