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Why I don’t give a crap about awards season, and you’d be wise to tune it all out too...


BLUMENKOHL

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Imagine you want to find a restaurant to go to. You can look at customer reviews on Yelp or Google. You can listen to what your friends and family recommend. You can drive or walk around down and see which restaurant is the busiest and go there. You can try some new restaurants for yourself and decide if you like them. You can taste the food, experience the service and the ambience, and you can judge for yourself whether or not it’s a good restaurant and whether you’ll come back. 

 

Imagine instead, 

 

But now imagine I get together a bunch of chefs and restaurant staff and I have them participate in something called the Academy of Restaurant Employees. They can invite other people they like from restaurants in town to join our Academy. Once in, everyone’s job is to get together every year and hold an awards ceremony for their peers in town. The wait-staff get to come up with the list of people who will be up for an award for being best wait-staff. The chefs get to come up with the list of people who will be nominated for being the best chefs and so on. Then everybody gets to vote in each category, on who is the best of the best. Except that most of us haven’t a clue what the heck is going on in the other restaurants, because we all work long hours and don’t really care much about what other people are doing. Besides, there are lot of restaurants in town, so how is any one person expected to know it all? So instead we’ll rely on things like word-of-mouth within our restaurant academy and reputations we’ve heard about to cast our votes. 

 

Once everything is set up, we hold a ceremony and award  all our favorite restaurants awards for all their accomplishments.

 

And of course Louis Bisset, the chef at “Le Pompeux” wins. Louis has such a talent taking any food you can imagine, throwing it in a blender, freezing it into a sorbet and plating it on a plate. His restaurant is really chic and that sorbet costs $54 along with a drizzle of pea essence and decorated with tweezer-selected herbs. No one has ever been to his restaurant, because, well, frankly, everyone is Bubba’s Pies that sells a slice of to-die-for pizza for $2 with a plastic cup of wine for $1.50. But Bubba is a bit of an asshole. He’s always greasy looking and he swears like a sailor. He’s never gotten a nomination before, and he never will. But everyone is lined up to eat his pizza, because he makes the best damn pizza on the planet. 

 

So everyone votes for Louis, because he looks like the kind of person that should win this and his restaurant looks like the kind of restaurant that should win awards. But everyone goes to Bubba’s Pies after the awards ceremony for the after party, because damn that pie is good. 

 

On Yelp, Bubba’s Pies has 7853 all 5-star reviews.  Le Pompeux has 100 5-star reviews., and another 50 or so 3 or 4 star reviews that complain about feeling like they didn’t have enough to eat and that they felt ripped off. Within two years Le Pompeux goes out of business when a new fancy chef comes into town and opens up “L’idiot” which serves up even fancier sorbets with, get this, liquid nitrogen effects! 

 

Bubba’s Pies sticks around, he’s been around 15 years, and he plans to be around for another 30, because after all, retirement is for schmucks, even though he is filthy rich and could retire any day now. Meanwhile when people walk by L’idiot, they whisper to each other about what happened to “Le Pompeux” and whisper even more quietly about the “Academy’s Curse,” where-in whoever wins best chef and best restaurant ends up going bankrupt soon thereafter. 

 

One day Louis comes by Bubba’s and grabs a pie. He gets tears in his eyes at how delicious that unassuming greasy pizza is. He tells Bubba, “Bubba, you’re lucky. You never got that damned award. The award is a curse. Everyone who gets it goes bankrupt in a year or two.” 

 

Bubba looks at him and laughs, “There’s no Academy Curse, buddy.” 

 

Louis looks back at him and says, “Really? How do you know?” 

 

Bubba replies, “I came by your restaurant once. Le Pompous or whatever the fuck you called it. I got dressed up real nice too. And then you served me a fucking teaspoon of ice cream with some weeds on it and a swirl of olive oil.” 

 

Louis is puzzled, “I don’t understand, Bubba...” 

was 

Bubba looks at him, “Buddy, there’s no damn curse. You went out of business because your food sucks and the awards are phoney. You see the line going out the door and wrapping around the corner and going down 9th street, filled with customers who I know by name? That’s the fucking academy award buddy! You’re a sucker, and so is everyone who pays attention to that Academy crap.” 


 

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4 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

I don’t care so much I wrote a dozen paragraphs


Did I strike a nerve? Are you a sucker? Excited for awards season? Would be happy if your favorite won so you can get validation?

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2 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:


Blocked. 

Did he strike a nerve? Are you a sucker for actually reading and carefully considering posts? Excited for discussion? Would you be happy if your post caused debate and dialogue so you can get validation?

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8 minutes ago, Fal J. M. Skywalker said:

Did he strike a nerve? Are you a sucker for actually reading and carefully considering posts? Excited for discussion? Would you be happy if your post caused debate and dialogue so you can get validation?


No.
 

Bye Fal!

 

Just now, JoeinAR said:

Joker is the biggest pile of shit in some time to be nominated for best picture. 


Yes. 

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28 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

@Blumenkohl

Blume, re: your original post. I have no idea what I read, and I've no idea what you said, but I can tell you, categorically, that I had fun reading it :)


Thanks! If you had fun, you get it in your bones, you just might not know it yet. 
 

Awards are a farce: they select for those who are most ready to hack their works to impress people who give out awards.
 

Artisans, like John Williams, work for the love of their craft, rather than impressing peer awards committees. 


People can sniff hacks like they can sniff out a restaurant that serves food made to impress awards committees. That’s why they go to places that make food for the love of food. 
 

That’s why Williams makes millions in royalties and album sales while most academy award winners go destitute. Gustavo Santolallalalalalallala anyone?

 

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1 minute ago, mrbellamy said:

I’m trying to figure out who Louis and Bubba are in this scenario. Maybe Harvey Weinstein and Jerry Bruckheimer, though that’s outdated.

Louis Theroux? King Louis XIV? Louis Armstrong?

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5 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Oscars are just gold plated dildos. I don't get the fascination at all unless you are into that kind of thing.


Welcome to JWFan. 

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I just think this is such a non-issue. Good films and scores will exist regardless of what awards they garner. At the same time, artists, composers, (more so than actors) are given a chance to be recognised by these awards - even if they don't win. The recognition of the filmmaking/Hollywood community is what most of these people desire and I'm not going to shit all over them for something like that, nor those who follow these events. I knew long ago that my favourite films and scores weren't going to be recognised, so I simply appreciated them in my own way and time. I still congratulate artists I know and follow. 

 

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14 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:

Imagine you want to find a restaurant to go to. You can look at customer reviews on Yelp or Google. You can listen to what your friends and family recommend. You can drive or walk around down and see which restaurant is the busiest and go there. You can try some new restaurants for yourself and decide if you like them. You can taste the food, experience the service and the ambience, and you can judge for yourself whether or not it’s a good restaurant and whether you’ll come back. 

 

Imagine instead, 

 

But now imagine I get together a bunch of chefs and restaurant staff and I have them participate in something called the Academy of Restaurant Employees. They can invite other people they like from restaurants in town to join our Academy. Once in, everyone’s job is to get together every year and hold an awards ceremony for their peers in town. The wait-staff get to come up with the list of people who will be up for an award for being best wait-staff. The chefs get to come up with the list of people who will be nominated for being the best chefs and so on. Then everybody gets to vote in each category, on who is the best of the best. Except that most of us haven’t a clue what the heck is going on in the other restaurants, because we all work long hours and don’t really care much about what other people are doing. Besides, there are lot of restaurants in town, so how is any one person expected to know it all? So instead we’ll rely on things like word-of-mouth within our restaurant academy and reputations we’ve heard about to cast our votes. 

 

Once everything is set up, we hold a ceremony and award  all our favorite restaurants awards for all their accomplishments.

 

And of course Louis Bisset, the chef at “Le Pompeux” wins. Louis has such a talent taking any food you can imagine, throwing it in a blender, freezing it into a sorbet and plating it on a plate. His restaurant is really chic and that sorbet costs $54 along with a drizzle of pea essence and decorated with tweezer-selected herbs. No one has ever been to his restaurant, because, well, frankly, everyone is Bubba’s Pies that sells a slice of to-die-for pizza for $2 with a plastic cup of wine for $1.50. But Bubba is a bit of an asshole. He’s always greasy looking and he swears like a sailor. He’s never gotten a nomination before, and he never will. But everyone is lined up to eat his pizza, because he makes the best damn pizza on the planet. 

 

So everyone votes for Louis, because he looks like the kind of person that should win this and his restaurant looks like the kind of restaurant that should win awards. But everyone goes to Bubba’s Pies after the awards ceremony for the after party, because damn that pie is good. 

 

On Yelp, Bubba’s Pies has 7853 all 5-star reviews.  Le Pompeux has 100 5-star reviews., and another 50 or so 3 or 4 star reviews that complain about feeling like they didn’t have enough to eat and that they felt ripped off. Within two years Le Pompeux goes out of business when a new fancy chef comes into town and opens up “L’idiot” which serves up even fancier sorbets with, get this, liquid nitrogen effects! 

 

Bubba’s Pies sticks around, he’s been around 15 years, and he plans to be around for another 30, because after all, retirement is for schmucks, even though he is filthy rich and could retire any day now. Meanwhile when people walk by L’idiot, they whisper to each other about what happened to “Le Pompeux” and whisper even more quietly about the “Academy’s Curse,” where-in whoever wins best chef and best restaurant ends up going bankrupt soon thereafter. 

 

One day Louis comes by Bubba’s and grabs a pie. He gets tears in his eyes at how delicious that unassuming greasy pizza is. He tells Bubba, “Bubba, you’re lucky. You never got that damned award. The award is a curse. Everyone who gets it goes bankrupt in a year or two.” 

 

Bubba looks at him and laughs, “There’s no Academy Curse, buddy.” 

 

Louis looks back at him and says, “Really? How do you know?” 

 

Bubba replies, “I came by your restaurant once. Le Pompous or whatever the fuck you called it. I got dressed up real nice too. And then you served me a fucking teaspoon of ice cream with some weeds on it and a swirl of olive oil.” 

 

Louis is puzzled, “I don’t understand, Bubba...” 

was 

Bubba looks at him, “Buddy, there’s no damn curse. You went out of business because your food sucks and the awards are phoney. You see the line going out the door and wrapping around the corner and going down 9th street, filled with customers who I know by name? That’s the fucking academy award buddy! You’re a sucker, and so is everyone who pays attention to that Academy crap.” 


 

 

Imagine I don't give a shit.

 

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On 1/13/2020 at 4:19 PM, Blumenkohl said:


Thanks! If you had fun, you get it in your bones, you just might not know it yet. 
 

Awards are a farce: they select for those who are most ready to hack their works to impress people who give out awards.
 

Artisans, like John Williams, work for the love of their craft, rather than impressing peer awards committees. 


People can sniff hacks like they can sniff out a restaurant that serves food made to impress awards committees. That’s why they go to places that make food for the love of food. 
 

That’s why Williams makes millions in royalties and album sales while most academy award winners go destitute. Gustavo Santolallalalalalallala anyone?

 

confused christian bale GIF

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I think if you asked Williams to give back his awards and nominations he would call security on you. Yeah, he's doing it for the craft, but he's allowed to accept awards and recognition along the way...

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