The Academy herd has done it again. Put restraints on the art of movie making. One would think that anyone really interested in this medium would be up-in-arms over the conditions being placed on movies to be considered 'award contenders'. Directors, actors, screenwriters, novelists, producers, the cadre of 'artists' that make a movie a movie should be outraged.
For 20+ years I have been foretelling the demise of the Academy Awards. It was easy to see that the Academy was becoming more and more irrelevant to moviegoers and moviemakers alike. Each year the awards ceremony had become worse in terms of entertainment quality and viewership. In the past several years the show wasn't MC'd as the Academy couldn't muster a 'name' to host the event.
Now, the coup de gras, The Academy has voted to place quotas on race, gender, and sexual preference for those films to be selected for an award. This runs counter to some in the movie industry that are pushing for gender neutrality, ie, there would be no more Best Actress award just Best Actors - this makes sense.
To set quotas makes little sense and further erodes the relevance of the Oscar. If the Academy pushes through with their social divisions there will be no need for an Oscar night because no one with any sense would be in attendance.
Oliver Stone, in a recent interview, stated that the Academy's move for quotas in moviemaking would "never work and be detrimental to the industry. No director would work under these conditions."
Judging artists by the color of their skin, their sexual preference, gender, etc. is degrading and racist. No one can put a quota on art. This is equivalent to telling a painter what type of person to put in her painting. One thing is sure. That my decades old prediction regarding the Academy is coming true.
