IS OSCAR OUT OF TOUCH? : COMMENTARY

By PAT H. BROESKE

March 23, 1986 12 AM PT

What happened? The last Academy Awards show scored the lowest ratings ever for an Oscar telecast, so say the A.C. Nielsen people.

One theory was that the show’s “marquee quotient” was partially to blame.

That was a polite way of saying that audiences weren’t familiar with such (undeniably talented) non-household names as F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor.

That was also a polite way of saying that the industry’s biggest stars weren’t in the running. Heck--most of them weren’t even at the festivities. These days, there seems to be an unwritten rule that you attend the bash only if you’re (1) nominated, (2) presenting, (3) performing or (4) in need of a job.

Sure, there are members of the Old Guard who graciously show up year after year. But the New Hollywood isn’t so gracious. (“I promised myself I wouldn’t attend until I was at least going to be a presenter,” a young actress gushed triumphantly during a pre-Oscar telecast several years back.) To them, self-promotion and marketing is what it’s all about.

But to moviegoers the world over, stardom is what it’s about. But stardom--in terms of box office--doesn’t always count, come Oscar night.

Steven Spielberg isn’t the only one who knows how that goes. By now, George Lucas has surely caught on. And guys like Stallone and Eastwood must have an inkling--along with Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy.

So does the ticket-buying public that made “Back to the Future,” “Rambo: First Blood Part II” and “Rocky IV” the top-grossing hits of 1985.

It’s no secret that the critics went after “Rambo” and “Rocky IV” with a vengeance. But “Back to the Future” was widely heralded. So why wasn’t it in the best-picture running? Why were its performances overlooked?

The answer has to do with “light” and “heavy,” frivolous and serious, Meaningful and Non-Meaningful--and an apparent belief that a movie can’t give audiences a good time and be art.

That’s one of the reasons why there isn’t a best-picture winner among the Top 10 highest-grossing films of all time. (Along with the chart-topping “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” the list includes “Star Wars,” “Return of the Jedi,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Jaws,” “Ghostbusters,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Grease.”)

Sure, several of these were nominated for top honors. That was the academy’s way of telling the public that the membership can be Regular Guys, too. But when it came time to cast those final ballots. . . .

You won’t find a single nomination for the Top 10 in the acting categories. But there are lots of honors in the technical categories. Like the public, the academy appreciates great special effects.

“The academy isn’t riding any trendy bandwagons.” That’s how an academy member summed up the disparity between box-office hits and academy picks.

The reason for the gap? Said one industry observer: “The academy judges movies by different criteria (than the public).” Said another: “The academy celebrates artistry .” Then there was the studio executive who noted: “Look, the simple fact is there are more than 3,000 Academy members--all of them with different points of view about what is ‘the best.’ To a lot of them, the popular movies represent another kind of achievement.”

It wasn’t always so. In fact, there was a period (in the ‘50s and ‘60s) when popular entertainment more than flirted with and won best-picture status. Proof: best-picture blockbusters “Around the World in 80 Days,” “Ben-Hur,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “The Sound of Music” and “West Side Story.”

But in recent years, the money-making movies--and their stars--have been given a back seat on Oscar night. For the third year in a row, only a single title from the year’s Top 10 box-office champs is in the best-picture running (“Witness”).

Meanwhile, the best-picture winners of the past five years read like a long day’s journey into tribulation: “Ordinary People” in 1980, “Chariots of Fire” in 1981, “Gandhi” in 1982, “Terms of Endearment” in 1983 and “Amadeus” in 1984. (Only “Terms of Endearment” was a Top 10 money-maker.) Where are blockbusters like “Ghostbusters,” “Return of the Jedi” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark”? It’s as if academy members are looking over ticket sales and telling audiences, “So what?”

Judging by the Oscar telecast ratings, audiences are telling the academy the same thing. In a sense, they’ve even retaliated--by creating a market for alternative awards shows that reflect public choice.

Meanwhile, the Oscar telecast continues its downward spiral in the ratings. So alarmed was the academy board of governors over the 1984 ratings (down 9% from the previous show--and 28% lower than the top-rated 1970 telecast, the year John Wayne picked up his Oscar for “True Grit”) that even they criticized the telecast (along with the rest of the country’s TV critics). Then came the 1985 telecast--which plunged an additional 9%.

(Unlike past years, when the Oscars topped the season’s programming, the show was rated 11th--behind the Super Bowl, four episodes of “The Cosby Show” and even episodes of “Dallas” and “Dynasty.”)

Those ratings translate this way: 65 million people watched at least some of the 1985 show, 70 million watched in 1984 and 90 million watched in 1983. The networks and the Nielsen people don’t have ratings for the earliest telecasts, but it’s been reported even they fared better, relatively, than the 1985 show.

A reporter wanted to know how stars and film makers with so-called “marquee quotient”--but no Oscars--feel about the disparity between public and academy choice.

For some representatives of the stars, the issue appeared to be a delicate one. Oscar, after all, is still hallowed ground, signifying artistic achievement as well as peer acceptance.

So there were some embarrassed silences over the phone.

But they were familiar with the topic. “Sure we’ve noticed. It’s a boycott,” said a spokeswoman for a major comedy actor, adding: “There seems to be this thin line between what the academy perceives as acting and, well, just being yourself.”

The publicist for Sylvester Stallone--easily the world’s leading box-office star--seemed embarrassed by the topic: “I don’t think he’s going to want to talk about that . I’ll have to call you back.” Several days later, the publicist seemed relieved to report that Stallone (a best-actor nominee for best picture “Rocky”) was hard at work on pre-production for “Over the Top,” in which he’ll play an arm-wrestling truck driver. “So he doesn’t have time to talk to you just now.”

Clint Eastwood, busy politicking, was also unavailable for comment.

Famed for playing men of action--as opposed to words--Stallone and Eastwood are members of a clique that Oscar steadfastly attempts to sidestep: the genre players.

Westerns. Actioners. Sci-fiers. Comedies. Genre movies are the best-loved movie types of them all.

But genre films aren’t considered that artistic when it’s time to hand out the awards. It’s as if the industry is embarrassed by them. (A colleague snootily put it this way: “That’s because they’re not about people and characterizations; they’re about the genre.”)

Said an industry observer, in a reference to Harrison Ford’s Oscar-ignored work in his Indiana Jones and “Star Wars” films: “You’ll notice that Harrison got nominated this year--and not all those others years.”

It took “Witness”--a “serious” film--to get him that nomination.

By the same token, it was “The Color Purple” that many people expected to pave Spielberg’s way to a directorial statuette. Why not one of his earlier genre efforts? “Because they were more about special effects than anything else,” explained one Oscar-watcher.

Apparently, no one told that to the audiences who snivelled and sniffed and smiled their way through “E.T.” (It was a best-picture nominee that lost out to the serious, non-smiley “Gandhi.”)

So, what does the public know?

Consider what the academy didn’t know. It completely overlooked the great comedy stars (Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and more) and the glamour girls (Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth and Jean Harlow).

The voters nominated but didn’t award Oscars to Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, Irene Dunne, Gloria Swanson, Montgomery Clift, John Garfield, Kirk Douglas, Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant and Paul Newman.

And there were no Oscars for directing for Chaplin, Keaton, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock.

Some of the omissions were glossed-over in later years by honorary Oscars--like the one Paul Newman will receive this year.

And then there were the times the academy honored much-loved stars by sidestepping the movies (and genres) that made them famous. James Cagney won for “Yankee Doodle Dandy”--not a gangster picture; Cary Grant was nominated when he went dramatic--not for his comedies. And on and on. . . .

Academy glitches have filled--and will doubtless continue to fill--volumes on Oscar lore.

Meanwhile, the box office will go on telling a different story.