Waking Up at the Crack of Dawn to Watch the Oscar Nominations

Tomorrow morning I am going to get up at 5:15 am to watch the live broadcast of the Oscar nominations.

There is no good reason to do this. I could wake up at a reasonable hour — say, after sunrise — and flip open my electronic devices and all the news would be right there. Heck, there would probably be frantic notifications and updates on my lock screens blaring who got what and which film was the nominations leader.

But where’s the fun in that?

If you tune in to the live broadcast, you see the grand auditorium at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences decked out in Oscar glory. You see the 400 or so “media representatives from around the world” murmuring importantly to each other as they wait for the show to start. You see chipper commentators trying to fill the pre-announcement time with guesses about who will get nominated, and showing exaggerated concern that some deserving Hollywood luminary will get shut out.

And then around 5:30, there’s a hush, and the lights dim, and the presentation begins. Now, I don’t know who all these folks in attendance are, but I can tell you they are not all impartial entertainment journalists, because as the announcements roll out, corners of the room erupt in applause. Somebody always whoops. There’s general murmuring in the crowd when shoo-in is left out. And inevitably there’s a collective gasp when a surprise nominee makes the cut. (The gasping is the best part. I imagine some grizzled veteran Oscar watcher dumbfounded at the inclusion of someone like Jonah Hill.)

The whole thing is hilarious, and a bit like watching a sporting event. There’s great amounts of money at stake. The participants are deadly serious about the outcome. And in the end, it doesn’t matter at all. Which is great, really — it’s refreshing to pay attention to news that has no global import. Forget ISIS and climate change and Donald Trump — did you see that Star Wars got nominated for an Oscar?

And since I went there, let’s run it down. Star Wars does have a shot at being nominated for Best Picture because a few years back the Academy decided to feature ten Best Picture nominees instead of five; this makes room for popular — but maybe less artistic — films that might attract a wider television audience for the Awards show itself. The Academy is very dependent on income from the Oscar telecast. So Star Wars might get in, because it’s a good film and a sentimental favorite and it made the most money of all; and Mad Max will certainly get in, because it got rave reviews for George Miller’s direction and the acting prowess of lead actors Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy. And if you want to sound like a cinefile at the bar tomorrow night, you can talk about Spotlight vying for first place with The Revenant, or you can observe that The Big Short does a masterful job of making a comedy about a serious topic. That should cover it. Meanwhile, check out your electronic devices tomorrow morning to see what films and actors and directors and other film artists got themselves Oscar nominations. Who knows? There could be a surprise or two. You might even gasp.