Oscars Mandate "Inclusion Requirements" for Best Picture Starting in 2024

[AndyDursin]

Under these rules 1917 and THE IRISHMAN wouldn't even qualify for Best Picture.

If COVID doesn't kill off the cinema as we know it, this certainly might.

To be eligible for best picture, a film must meet at least two standards across four categories: “Onscreen Representation, Themes and Narratives,” “Creative Leadership and Project Team,” “Industry Access and Opportunities” and “Audience Development.” Within each category are a variety of criteria involving the inclusion of people in underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and those with cognitive or physical disabilities. (Other Oscar categories will not be held to these same standards, but the contenders for best picture typically filter down to other feature-length categories.)

Previously, the only standards to qualify for best picture involved a film’s running time (over 40 minutes) and specifics about how, where and when it’s screened in a public venue.

The new standards will not go into effect until the 96th Oscars in 2024. But at a time of racial reckoning both for Hollywood and the nation as a whole, the academy believes the requirements provide a road map for how the industry can ensure that at least those films that compete for its highest honor reflect the diversity of the moviegoing audience and the wider world.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... ssion=true

[Eric Paddon]

Reminds me of the standards that had to exist in 1930s German films.

[Monterey Jack]

Bullshirt.

[Monterey Jack]

This is gonna go over as well as that "Best Popular Feature" category they threatened a few years ago that never got off the ground. No one will stand for this, political correctness be damned. I will refuse to watch the Oscars ever again if they implement this stipulation, no matter how "racist" that will be.

[AndyDursin]

Going to be some hot takes on this.

[Monterey Jack]

This is every bit as bad as a company that hires someone with less experience and professionalism than another applicant, because they have a quota of POC/handicapped employees they require in order to "look good". What self-respecting actor or actress wants to be the "Token Black Guy/Girl" in a movie who's only there to push an agenda? That's not "inclusionary", that's EXTORTION.

[AndyDursin]

Can you imagine directors and writers having to look at a checklist as they mount a project? What about a historical film -- too many white people in it? Or how about too many black people? Wait, we have to put a lesbian in a wheelchair in the back of the frame. Or give her a line. Maybe two.

This is utter insanity. Oscars have been going the way of irrelevance for some time, but this will be the death knell. Might as well call it the Diversity Inclusion Awards and air it on a Sunday night at 1am.

[Monterey Jack]

A few years ago, I had a co-worker who had some sort of of obvious mental challenges. She was tasked with bringing carriages in from the lot. She was TERRIBLE at it, taking an ungodly amount of time to bring in a mere handful of carts, often forcing myself and other employees to drop what we were doing to go out into the lot and bring carts in while she was gormlesly wandering about, often nattering on to the customers about God knows what instead of doing what she was paid for. I complained more than once about how one of my managers needed to pull her aside as ask her to please step it up, but they never did, no doubt because they were afraid of "looking bad" for letting someone with mental disabilities go. She left of her own accord several months later, and I was never so glad to see the backside of a co-worker.

This is what I immediately thought of hearing this absurd new Oscar rule. It's the latest in a chain of "woke" Hollywood decisions that's strangling the industry worse than Covid. I'm reminded of how Birds Of Prey had a woman director, but they had to bring in John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski to basically re-shoot large portions of the action scenes, because Cathy Yan's work on them was seriously sub-par. And yet point that fact out, and it's somehow "sexist". Why didn't they hire Stahelski or some other experienced male action director in the first place? Because DIVERISITY, that's why...! The same way that Zack Snyder obviously ghost-directed all of the action scenes in Wonder Woman, a film by a woman whose previous movie was the kinetic action classic Monster.

[Monterey Jack]

Remember when the cast and crew of La La Land went up to the podium to accept their Best Picture Oscar, only to get interrupted partway through their speech so the award could be handed to "true winner" Moonlight instead?

What a sign of things to come.

[Paul MacLean]

Remember when the cast and crew of La La Land went up to the podium to accept their Best Picture Oscar, only to get interrupted partway through their speech so the award could be handed to "true winner" Moonlight instead?

What a sign of things to come.

You can say that again!

Those rules read like a humor article. Seriously, if I wasn't shown the identity of the website, I'd have thought it was The Onion.

And it's never going to fly. Movies will continue to be made, and made the way the filmmakers (and, of course, their financiers) see fit. The only thing this is going to change are the Nielson ratings come Oscar night.

[Monterey Jack]

Better revoke Parasite's Best Picture win, because there were no black or Caucasian people in it at all...!

Hey, if it applies to white people, it should apply to everyone, right? More white faces in Black Panther!

[Monterey Jack]

Can you imagine directors and writers having to look at a checklist as they mount a project? What about a historical film -- too many white people in it? Or how about too many black people? Wait, we have to put a lesbian in a wheelchair in the back of the frame. Or give her a line. Maybe two.

That two-second shot of women kissing at the end of Rise Of Skywalker. "See, look in the background, we're represented...!"

[AndyDursin]

Better revoke Parasite's Best Picture win, because there were no black or Caucasian people in it at all...!

Hey, if it applies to white people, it should apply to everyone, right? More white faces in Black Panther!

This is exactly where the problem is going to lie. If you made the movie GLORY today, would it qualify since most of the cast is black? PARASITE is "diverse" because of where it came from. There's little "representation" on-screen there!

If this actually goes through the Oscars are absolutely done. And what are they going to do, revoke previous Best Picture winners because "too many white people"?

It's flat out racism, disguised as "reparations" and "mandates", but in this Summer of Stupid, the gates have clearly been opened to all of this insanity.

[Monterey Jack]

This is exactly where the problem is going to lie. If you made the movie GLORY today, would it qualify since most of the cast is black? PARASITE is "diverse" because of where it came from. There's little "representation" on-screen there!

Wait, Matthew Broderick is there to check off the "token white guy" box!

If white filmmakers making movies about "white" subject matter have to include POC in their movies, it should apply the other way. Get some random white dude in Boyz N The Hood or whatever.

[andy b]

If white filmmakers making movies about "white" subject matter have to include POC in their movies, it should apply the other way. Get some random white dude in Boyz N The Hood or whatever.

MJ, you rule, that is a great post & I can add to your frustration, I promoted that film in Europe & had people of all colour asking me "why is the poster misspelled? do they not teach people correctly in America"!!

No matter what colour you are, something will just catch you out. For some territories we ever put an explanation on the poster!!!

Followed of course by those asking "we Missed Menace part 1 do we need to see it to watch Menace II Society"

love POC & film companies & it has just got worse over the years.

MJ, thanks for great reading entertainment.

regards
Andy b