There was a time when The Hollywood Reporter’s annual “brutally honest Oscar ballot,” in which an anonymous Academy voter dons the thankless role of giving an unfiltered — and often politically incorrect — opinion on the slate of nominated films, was brutally honest. In 2019, however, that brutal honesty has been supplanted by virtue-signaling.
Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences set the 2019 Oscars telecast on course for a complete ratings disaster when actor/comedian Kevin Hart dropped out of hosting the show after a woke troll campaign demanded he issue a apology over old LGBT-related jokes that were deemed controversial. Rather than use The Hollywood Reporter’s platform to get “brutally honest” about the Academy’s steamrolling of Kevin Hart, the anonymous Oscar voter, whom The Hollywood Reporter identifies simply as a “male member of the Academy’s 519-person directors branch,” elected to simply complain about the show being “hostless” while making no mention of Hart’s unfair treatment.
“I’m not going to watch the Oscars this year,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m just anticipating a very boring show. One of the best things about the show is the opening monologue, which is usually pretty good — it’s what happens after that that’s not great.”
The “brutally honest” voter leaves the controversy at that, saying nothing more about it. Regarding the Academy’s decision — now reversed — to relegate the Best Editing/Cinematography awards to the commercial breaks, the director’s language was far more pointed.
“It’s an abomination,” he said. “If ABC, which I’m sure was pushing for this, thought that dumping cinematography and film editing was going to bring back any of the viewers the show has lost in recent years, they’re idiotic. Cinematography and editing are so important. For f***’s sake, man, a movie director [Roma‘s Alfonso Cuarón] is going to win the cinematography award this year for the first time ever, and we weren’t going to see it live? I don’t f***ing get it.”
When it comes to the actual nominations, the anonymous scold shamelessly admits that he voted for Spike Lee for Best Director because “it’s about f***ing time,” admitting the veteran filmmaker did not give his best offering with “BlacKkKlansman.”
“The greatest wrong in the history of the Oscars was Spike Lee not being nominated for Do the Right Thing, and BlacKkKlansman is like the other end of Do the Right Thing,” he said. “I’ve admired this guy’s work so much over the years. Until now, the Academy has almost completely ignored this genius, and it’s about f***ing time to correct that. I don’t know that it’s the best directing job of the year — I think that [The Favourite‘s] Yorgos Lanthimos’ decisions were more creative, interesting and daring — but I don’t know that I’ll have another opportunity to vote for Spike, so I’m going to take this one.”
On the Best Picture nominees, the anonymous voter offers not even a shred of sardonic commentary about how nearly all the films (minus “A Star Is Born”) have received their torrent of accolades. In fact, he downright praises the films for their woke messaging, selecting Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” for Best Picture for taking a dig at Trump.
“I prefer to reward a movie that is solid and has something of social importance to say, like BlacKkKlansman,” he said. “The Charlottesville footage at the end of it sealed the deal for me — it reminds us that things really haven’t gotten better.”
Finally, to really wave the bias flag for all to see, the anonymous voter admits to voting for the documentary “RBG” about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — with whom he is none too happy due to her refusal to retire during President Obama’s tenure. He says, “I voted for RBG. I cannot say that I’m happy with Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a person — I’m really upset that she didn’t retire when Obama was still around, and if she steps down or dies now, this country is f***ed forever — but the story that they tell in that film is compelling and taught me so much and left me talking about it with my wife for hours afterward. For a documentary biopic, I found it to be fabulously entrancing.”