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Does anyone watch Oscar winners anymore?
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There's a modern myth that nobody watches the Oscars because nobody watches the movies the Oscars celebrate anymore. It's just one more example of Hollywood being out of touch with mainstream America, according to the critics.
Maybe. Maybe not. I think it's more likely this simply displays the increasing fragmentation of our entertainment choices. People don't have to go to the theater to see arty films like "Slumdog" -- they can just wait for NetFlix to deliver it. Theaters are becoming the place where people go to see blockbusters, to get the full effect of the THX sound for all the explosions. (Most of the Academy voters, by the way, watch their movies for free on DVD screeners sent directly to their homes by the studios.)
I haven't done a comprehensive study -- that would take time and effort, and I'm a blogger, remember -- but here's a look at the trends.
"Slumdog" has been in theaters for almost 15 weeks, and it's earned about $98 million, according to the indispensable BoxOfficeMojo.com. Using figures from the National Association of Theater Owners for average ticket price, that's about 13.6 million people who paid to see the movie. For 2008, that puts it at 29 on the top 100 list of money-makers.
By way of contrast, a sequel about a guy wearing grandma's dress and a fat suit in jail earned $41.1 million, putting almost six million people in theaters in its first weekend alone.
It wasn't always like this.
"Rain Man," the Best Picture winner 20 years ago, was also the number one film of the year. It pulled in about 43 million people, using the same math -- but that was Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. The 1986 winner, "Platoon," was the number three movie at the box office that year. "Out of Africa," 1985's winner, was number five.
Over the past few years, fewer and fewer people have bothered to see the Oscar winners for Best Picture. Starting in 2004, the Best Picture went to "Million Dollar Baby" -- #24 on the charts. 2005: "Crash" -- #49. 2006: "The Departed" -- #15. 2007: "No Country for Old Men" -- #36.
There are exceptions, of course. In 1980, "Ordinary People" won Best Picture. Its box-office haul was $54.7 million, or $136.1 million, adjusted for inflation. At an average ticket price of $2.69 a head -- stuff was cheaper back then -- that's 20.3 million people. Not much more than "Slumdog," in other words. And in 2003, the Best Picture went to "Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King," which was also the number-one box-office hit that year.
You want to make a broad, sweeping statement, you could probably say that Hollywood is honoring more movies that fewer people have seen. But you'd probably be wrong to leap to the conclusion that Hollywood is out of touch. Hollywood rakes in billions of dollars every year, and not many people -- outside of recipients of government bailout cash -- do that by being stupid. The Oscars are supposed to represent the filet mignon of the film world, not the Hostess Twinkies and Double Stuf Oreos. This is one time it's supposed to be okay to be elitist, since we're talking about... well, the elite, after all.
Of course, none of this changes the fact I'm still honked off about "Dark Knight." Christopher Nolan was robbed.
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