Oscar 2012: Oscar is Not a Happy Song
The Sad State of Best Original Song, and How to Save It
By Tom Houseman
February 1, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Okay, so yes, this year's Best Original Song slate is an embarrassment. But to solve the problem by eliminating the category altogether is just wrong. This is a great category that has rewarded wonderful songs, both historically and more recently. The fact that “Blame Canada” from South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut will forever be known as an Oscar nominated song is a testament to the potential this category has for greatness.
As a staunch defender of the Best Original Song category, I felt embarrassed to the point of nausea looking at the nominees this year. Two songs? One of them is one of the best movie songs of the year, but the other is a forgettable number from the also-in-all-other-ways forgettable Rio. Some people are saying that the fault lies in the contenders, that this was a weak year for original movie songs, and that there are so few good songs from movies anymore that the category has become irrelevant. There are no more Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley vehicles being made anymore, no more movies based around big showy musical numbers. Titans from Gershwin to Porter are no longer regulars in this category, so what's the point? Let's just get rid of Best Original Song and stop embarrassing ourselves.
That's just absurd. True, there were only three high profile movie musicals released this year, and one of them was the musically humdrum Rio, but the other two featured some memorable, wonderful, show stopping numbers. The Academy did right this year in nominating “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets, but what stopped them from going back to that well more than once? As an opening number, “Life's a Happy Song” is perfect. It establishes the tongue-in-cheek nostalgia that is a theme in The Muppets, managing to be wonderfully sweet while also poking fun at itself in the way the Muppets do so well. “Pictures in My Head” continues this theme, being sad and lovely and also totally ridiculous. Music Supervisor Bret Mckenzie clearly got what makes the Muppets so wonderful, and was able to bring that magic to the movie.
And what about Winnie the Pooh? True it doesn't have the kind of big musical number or lovey-dovey ballad that Oscar usually falls for, but the songs that are in it are great if you accept them on their terms. They are fun and goofy and totally lacking in pretension. When Pooh sings “A Pooh Bear Takes Care of his Tummy” or Tigger expounds on “It's Gonna Be Great” you can't help but smile. Easily the best song from that film is “The Backson,” in which Owl warns the others a fearsome creature that he is clearly inventing as he goes along. I'm a song nerd, and when he brilliantly subverts the rhyme with “its toes are black, its fur is blue/I swear that all I tell you is not made up” I crack up.
But isn't this category supposed to be voted on by song nerds like me, people who appreciate the detail and nuance that composers and lyricists put into their work in creating the world of their songs? If that's true, how could the voters have overlooked a great musical number from a non-musical, “Star Spangled Man” from Captain America: The First Avenger. As an homage to George Cohan's patriotic numbers it is spot on, and the montage it plays over is by far the best part of the surprisingly entertaining film. The Best Original Song category is made for numbers like this, songs written specifically for a film because they both match and enhance the tone and style that the film is creating. Another song that does a great job of this is “Rango's Theme,” which plays in bits and pieces during Rango before playing in its entirety during the credits. Rango does a superb job of creating a specific kind of world for its story, and the music perfectly complements that world.
But beyond the world of musical theater there were a number of great rock and pop songs written for movies this year. The band OK Go wrote a delightfully satirical song, “The Greatest Song I Ever Heard,” for Morgan Spurlock's overlooked documentary Pom Wonderful Presents The Great Movie Ever Sold. “Think You Can Wait” by indie rock band The National is a heartbreakingly beautiful song from Tom McCarthy's Win Win, probably the best closing credits number since Bruce Springsteen's “The Wrestler.” And while Elton John's work for Gnomeo and Juliet was not anywhere near the quality of what he did on The Lion King, he still had some memorable numbers in there, notably the fun pop song “Hello Hello” (which he and Lady Gaga rocked for the soundtrack) and the sweet ballad “Love Builds a Garden.”
But the film that had hands down the best original songs of the year was Richard Ayoade's British coming-of-age comedy Submarine. Ayoade got his start making music videos for The Arctic Monkeys, so Monkey's frontman Alex Turner returned the favor by writing a handful of beautiful and memorable songs for Ayoade's directorial debut. Take your pick of any of the songs and you'll have one of the best original movie songs of the year. My personal favorite from the film is “Stuck on the Puzzle. Just the opening lines, “I'm not the kind of fool who's gonna sit and sing to you/About stars, girl/But last night I looked up into the dark half of the blue/And they'd gone backwards” had me hooked on that song.
So clearly the problem is not a dearth of good songs written for movies (did I mention any of the beautiful songs from Chico & Rita, or the surprisingly catchy anthem “Collision of Worlds” from Cars 2?). Then what's the problem? Well, like with the Documentary branch and the Foreign Language voters, the way that the voting is tabulated for Best Original Song is seriously messed up. All of the voters watch the song played over the scene from the film in which it was originally played, and then the voters give each song a score from 6 to 10. Any film that receives an 8.5 or higher is eligible for the award, and if there is a year in which no song gets a score that high, the category is cancelled for the year.
This system has the advantage in that it helps songs from low-profile movies that are used really well in their film. But the major flaw of this category is that, unlike every other category, disliking a song won't just not help its chances of being nominated, it can actively hurt them. If somebody really hated Hugo, the most they could have done to keep it from being nominated for Best Picture is not vote for it. If Best Picture worked like Best Original Song, however, people would be given the chance to cancel out the vote of somebody who loved Hugo.
Let's make up an example here looking at three hypothetical voters. Voter 1 is a rock musician who hates musical theater, Voter 2 writes children's songs and doesn't care for rock, and Voter 3 is a musical theater composer who is terrified of lizards. Voter 1 gives Think You Can Wait a 10, Voter 3 gives it a 9, but Voter 2 thinks it doesn't fit the standards of what an Oscar nominee should be, and gives it a 6. Final score: 8.33, and thus eliminated. Voter 2 gives Rango's Theme a 10, Voter 1 gives it a 9, but Voter 3, terrified of lizards as he is, gives it a 6. Final score: 8.33, and thus eliminated. Voter 3 gives Star Spangled Man a 10, Voter 2 gives it a 9, but Voter 1 thinks it's too old fashioned and boring, and gives it a 6. You get the point. It is possible for a majority of voters to love or really like a song, but to have a minority actively sabotage its chances. It's like congress, but this matters.
What is the solution to this problem? Is changing to the more traditional voting system - you know, where each voter picks their five favorite songs and those are the ones that get nominated - really that difficult? Perhaps some great songs would get lost in the shuffle, but that's true in every category. What about a bake-off similar to Visual Effects and Documentary, wherein a portion of the branch picks nine or ten songs from the 35 plus eligible songs for a short list, and the field as a whole picks from there? Would that be too difficult for everyone?
There is no solution that is going to make everyone happy. The songs from Submarine that I gushed over so effusively weren't even listed among the t37 songs eligible for the award, which made me fairly grumpy. But if we are going to be fair and objective we have to admit that the current voting process is seriously flawed. Unless we want to eliminate Best Original Song altogether, and I pray that they don't decide to do that, the process needs to be fixed, so that we can keep on giving Oscars to songs like “Lose Yourself” and “I Need to Wake Up” and “Falling Slowly.” Because if the Oscar is about awarding the best of every aspect of filmmaking, they can't leave out the songs that we're singing on our way out of the theater.