Oscar Baloney + Other Onscreen Junk Food

In a little more than a week, another Oscar ceremony will take place. For the second year in a row, the nominees, the Academy, and Hollywood as a whole have come under fire for their lack of diversity. Nationwide calls for greater representation of minorities have certainly been justified and long overdue.

These protests, however, do not prevent us from asking whether the movies that have been nominated in this or previous Oscar cycles — white, straight, and male as they may be — are especially engaging to watch in themselves.

I cannot judge the particular nominees of 2016, since I have seen none of them in full. I can state, though, why I have made little effort to do so, despite their ever more aggressive advertising campaigns and my undiminished love of cinema: most contemporary Hollywood films are formulaic and dull, none more so than those deliberately aimed at the Oscars.

1988 Oscar Ticket. Photo by Alan Light.

The storytelling of “Oscar-bait” movies is conventionally linear, and a smooth continuity style still dominates their look. Most of them purposefully echo previously successful films: Spotlight? All the President’s Men (1976). Bridge of Spies? Argo (2012) and Spielberg’s own Munich (2005) and Schindler’s List (1993). The Martian? Apollo 13 (1995). The Revenant? Jeremiah Johnson (1972). Even Leonardo DiCaprio’s activism on behalf of his First Nations co-stars, though commendable, is familiar: see Kevin Kostner in the wake of Dances With Wolves (1990); and before him, Marlon Brando’s refusal of his second Academy Award and Sacheen Littlefeather’s speech in his place at the Oscar ceremony (1973).

Whatever hits of the past today’s Hollywood films invoke, the common goal is earnestness. Oscar-worthy films are serious; the struggles of their characters (and, by extension, the actors who portray them) are important; they deserve our hushed reverence in the theater and imitation in our lives outside. In this way, Oscar-worthy films each deliver a message from the social, political, and artistic heights of Hollywood to audiences of plain folk below. Oscar-worthy films offer themselves as the strongest examples of art influencing life for the betterment of all. The history of cinema, therefore, becomes synonymous with the greatness of Hollywood, embodied in its self-selected elite.

Actor Frazer Brown with someone else's Oscar. Photo by Ebayzme.

If you also tire of the formulas, the manufactured earnestness, and the moral presumptions of Hollywood and its Oscars, a handful of documentaries have arrived recently to celebrate alternative universes of cinema. They offer heady thrills in themselves, serve as goldmines for seekers of extra-ordinary video, and demonstrate again and again that so many of Hollywood’s “original” and “groundbreaking” stories, images, and personnel appeared first, and often to greater effect, in “lower” cultural strata.

Ray Greene’s Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (2001) is an excellent place to begin plumbing greater depths of movie history and experience. Schlock! (not to be confused with John Landis’ ape-man comedy of the same name, 1973) covers a broad range of off-Hollywood genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres — distinctions of taste as well as hierarchy — with talking-head interviews and abundant clips. There’s cut-rate horror and sci-fi, nudies and sexploitation, dubious “educational” shorts, black power pictures and kung fu, mish-mashes of all of the above, and other oddities beyond categorization. The appearance of the occasional woman behind the camera or in the front office may be the largest surprise, though, amidst so much juvenile, male jerk-off material. My only complaint lies with the documentary’s subtitle: here is not a “secret” history, but one nearly lost with the demise of drive-ins and locally owned and operated theaters. Place Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies in your “saved” queue of DVDs on Netflix, or invest in a used copy from Amazon or eBay.

Alex Stapleton’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) narrows its focus to one of the boldest pioneers of independent filmmaking. Roger Corman has produced over 300 films and directed more than 50, all the while giving young actors, directors, screenwriters, and other personnel their first breaks in the business and never losing money on a picture. His distribution company also brought the work of international auteurs like Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, and Kurosawa to American screens for the first time. And perhaps most amazingly, he has achieved all of this success without the cutthroat business practices so often celebrated in biopics of other agents,  producers, and studio bosses; everyone who has worked with Roger Corman speaks of him in glowing terms personally. In 2009, Hollywood, now filled with his one-time proteges, granted him an Honorary Academy Award. He did not receive the full-throated praise of the Lifetime Achievement Award, however. Consider the injustice as you watch Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel instantly on Amazon, iTunes or on DVD from Netflix.

Isaac Julien’s Baadasssss Cinema (2002) argues that dismissing ‘70s blaxploitation movies, tales of hustlers and gangsters on the mean streets of America’s inner cities in the bitter aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, is a mistake as well. Finally, black financiers and performers had an opportunity to tell the stories of their communities, here and now, much as they may frighten or offend The Man. The sex and violence of these fictionalized stories was no more excessive than the actual crimes whites had inflicted upon blacks since slavery, or than the artworks whites had created since the first Greek tragedies. Survey the style and attitude of unapologetic American blackness in Baadasssss Cinema, available on DVD from Netflix.

Then see Hollywood’s clumsy appropriation of blaxploitation in the decade that followed, and one aspiring black actor’s attempt to resist the studio’s stereotypes in Robert Townsend’s archly independent and hilarious Hollywood Shuffle (1987), also on DVD from Netflix.

Ian Taylor’s Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong (2003) follows the artistic development and industry behind Asia’s most successful martial arts movies. Interviews and clips move briskly through the theatrical films of the Shaw Brothers studio in the ‘60s, to the contemporary street fighting of Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest in the ‘70s, including the inimitable Bruce Lee and comic Jackie Chan, to the modern era of Jet Li and others. Marvel at the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the filmmakers and the real physicality and death-defying stunts by its stars, male and female, that Hollywood still fails to match, in spite of its big budgets and cutting-edge imaging technology. See Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong on DVD from Netflix, then binge upon many of the films examined in the documentary that the site now offers on disc and streaming.

Director Mark Hartley is building a career out of chronicling cult cinema: in six years he has  made three documentary films. The first, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation (2008), takes viewers Down Under the globe and the usual proprieties. Included in the trip are the Aussie films most familiar to audiences world wide, the Mad Max movies of George Miller. The post-apocalyptic, automotive mayhem of Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior (1981) are essential viewing; Beyond Thunderdome (1985), distributed by Warner Brothers, less so, as Max begins to resemble a more conventional Hollywood hero. As an American co-production, Fury Road has received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The saturated colors and CGI of its four trailers, however, appear to my eyes to be no match for the sun-bleached, real man-and-machine stunts of the earlier installments, and I fear Oscar earnestness in its message, “Survive!” (shared, along with actor Tom Hardy, by The Revenant).

Hartley's documentary unearths gems in other genres as well: wilderness adventures like Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971), psycho-shockers like Richard Franklin’s Patrick (1978), and unique takes on horror classics, like the vampires' blood harvest of Rod Hardy’s Thirst (1979). Have a blast watching Not Quite Hollywood instantly on Amazon and iTunes or on DVD from Netflix, then hunt down some of its highlights on the same sites.

Hartley’s second tribute, Machete Maidens: Unleashed! (2010) scrapes the bottom of the barrel: the American exploitation films made in the “Wild East” of the Philippines, mostly in the ‘70s, where costs were lowest and industry regulations almost nonexistent. Even Roger Corman found production standards there sub-par! Tales by the surviving cast and crew members of these extreme oddities are entertaining enough, and Hartley punctuates the interviews with film clips that almost exceed belief, but fully enjoying Machete Maidens remains difficult. The abusive treatment of some Philippinos, often driven to participate by desperate poverty, leaves a bad aftertaste. Also, the resulting films, unlike the Aussie products of the same era, are seldom worth seeing in their entirety; watching the clips in Machete Maidens: Unleashed!, available instantly on Amazon and iTunes and on DVD from Netflix, is probably sufficient.

Hartley’s Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014) is more fun by itself and more likely to send viewers in search of individual titles. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus carried the torch lit by Corman through the ‘80s. One crucial difference remained between Golan and his mentor, however: where Corman did the best he could under tightly constrained circumstances, Golan imagined that many of his pictures were genuinely great; neither of the “Go-Go Boys” seem to have possessed Corman’s modesty and self-effacing industry. In the end, the Golan -Globus bluster and arm-twisting might have been the most entertaining show they ever mounted. Marvel at true shamelessness on and off screen in Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, available instantly on Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes.

Even Mark Hartley and go-to expert Quentin Tarantino yield to the world’s greatest authority on off-Hollywood cinema, Michael J. Weldon. His The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (1983), The Psychotronic Video Guide (1996), and Psychotronic Video magazine (1989-2006) remain unrivaled in their range, thoroughness, and hilarity. Find used copies of these out-of-print treasures on Amazon or eBay while they last, and share the fever dreams of a true fringe film fiend. Or, visit his Psychotronic store in Augusta, Georgia and online, where the offerings extend to the far reaches of music, home furnishings, and other un-imaginables.

And fear not, adult viewers, the personal corruption and cultural decay that come from gorging upon spectacles of gratuitous sex, graphic violence, and anti-authoritarian attitudes, as so many parental groups, social clubs, and pandering politicians have warned for more than a century of cinema. Art is the safe place to escape from the world’s usual constraints and to indulge in some deviant ideas and simulated behaviors. Without the occasional vacation from everyday life in civil society, we are likely to go genuinely mad and do damage to the real people and institutions that surround us. Far from harmful, a couple of hours in a dark theater with projections of our worst fears and fondest fantasies is a healthy exercise. Low-budget, left-field, off-Hollywood movies, — call them them “B pictures” or “exploitation films” — identify themselves most clearly as not-of-this-world, either by their incompetence, brilliance, or moments of both.

Fear instead the Hollywood productions, especially the visually seamless, painfully earnest Oscar candidates; they present themselves as augmented realities and guides for what we ought to value and how we ought to behave..!