Weeks before the long-awaited Academy Awards ceremony, organizers announced they would be taking out eight categories from the televised show and giving them their award off the screen. The intention is to make the ceremony shorter and more dynamic after years of critics claiming that the Oscars were too long and eventually boring.
For audiences the decision might be right since most people only want to see their favorite celebrities being awarded; however, all in all, this move generated huge backlash among the industry and cinephiles.
The categories that won’t be streamed on the broadcast are Documentary (Short Subject), Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Short Film (Animated), Short Film (Live Action), and Sound.
All these, considered the least mainstream categories, will be presented off-screen one hour before the ceremony, and only a few short edited images will be broadcasted during the show. Now, although it’s understandable that the producers are trying to recover the rating numbers they once enjoyed and that they’ve been losing in the past years, is it right to do it by undermining the work of the people from those categories?
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That’s a no for Jessica Chastain and many others who have openly complained about the decision.
Chastain, who is nominated for Best Actress (and who is very likely to win), for her role of Tammy Faye on The Eyes of Tammy Faye, said on the Next Best Picture podcast that she is willing to skip the red carpet and avoid doing press on the big night to support the team of makeup and hairstyle. She wants to be present when the award for that category mainly because she recognizes that they played a key role in the making of the movie.
“The most important thing for me is to honor the incredible artisans who work in our industry. So much attention is on the actors, we’re like the face in some ways, because you go to a movie and you see us. A lot of people don’t understand how beyond an actor’s performance is. Look at this incredible makeup team, Tammy Faye goes through three decades.”
To become Tammy Faye, Jessica Chastain had to sit for hours on the makeup chair to get the prosthetics and the iconic hair being one of the most challenging things she’s gone through in her career.
Seeing the detailed and cared work the team carried out to transform her into Faye gave her another perspective on the field and she will stand next to them honoring the artists and artisans while they receive their award, even if it’s not televised and even if it means she skips one of the most important moments of the ceremony, the red carpet.
Chastain isn’t the only one who has commented on this decision. The also nominated director, Steven Spielberg, called out the Academy’s decision saying that the film industry is a collaborative medium that depends on every single area, “all of us make movies together, we become a family where one craft is just as indispensable as the next.”
The Oscars will be streamed next March 27 on ABC.