What If Teens Rocked the Vote?

We are curled up on the couch on a chilly March weekend, vowing to catch up on work and filling out little Oscar ballots instead. Well, art is a powerful thing, we’re thinking, when suddenly, in bounds one of the film industry’s most influential players. “Hi-eee!” trills the teenager, flashing that radiant smile that has but one subtitle: Give me cash.

“Seeing another movie?” we ask.

“Yeah. I think we’ll see . . . “ She reels off the title of something that seems to involve Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 18th century France.

“Didn’t you just see that?”

“No, that was Gwyneth Paltrow and 16th century England. Um, guys? Could I have, like, 20 bucks?”

We’d like to thank the academy for the fact that, in this age of cineplexes, VCRs and dead-on market research, our children not only get the classics, but could also probably cut deals at Sundance. We’d like to thank them but we’re too busy wondering who’ll get which Oscar, based on all the movies we didn’t have time to watch.

“What’s your plan for the day?” she schmoozes.

“Oh, just work. And Oscar picks.”

“Awwww. How cute! The little Oscar picks.” The radiant smile says, Obviously, I am not related to these losers. Oscar picks, in her opinion, are up there with “Prairie Home Companion” and taupe-colored sedans as signs that your life has become, well, just pathetic. Teenagers don’t do Oscar picks. They do irony, the irony here being that, in a purer world, no one in the industry would give an acceptance speech without beginning, “I’d like to thank all you teenagers for each and every one of your 20 bucks.”

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The fact is, in a purer world, teenagers would run the Oscars. Film critics might quibble, but parents will tell you: Both the knowledge and the numbers are there. It is the rare adult who manages to see even a fraction of the features at the theaters. But scientific studies indicate that not missing a single movie--even if you accidentally end up at, like, “Gods and Monsters” and you have to bail in horror after 10 minutes and sneak into “She’s All That” again because, what monsters?--anyway, seeing and re-seeing movies has become one of the most popular pastimes of modern adolescents, second only to scoring $20 bills.

Some people think teens only go to “teen movies” (“Scream,” “Scream 2,” etc.). What they don’t realize is that almost everything is now a teen movie, from Penguin Classics to cartoons to the entire prime-time network TV lineup between 1970 and 1979. (“I hear they’re doing ‘King Lear’ in middle school,” one Westside parent confided, adding, “It’s supposed to be quite good.”)

Why pander all year to the youth demographic, only to put a bunch of Hollywood geriatrics in charge of the prizes? It’s not only inconsistent, it’s bad TV. As the young Shakespeare might have put it: “Nay, I shant sit through thy Billy Crystal Whoopi Goldberg geezer show, not even for an eyeful of the fair Matt Damon. Um, couldst thou lay, like, 20 bucks on me?”

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Putting teens in charge of the Oscars would bring fresh vigor to an old industry tradition, though the awards would naturally have to be tweaked. For one thing, you’d have to move up the voting, since, as one kid recently confided, “Dude! Those Oscar movies were a lot of movies ago.”

Also, you’d need new categories, to honor the teen’s unique cinematic sensibility. In short, this means: Anything with subtitles, out. Also, no documentaries, which, if you wanted to see, you’d show up once in a while to biology. Furthermore, not another word about Ilia Kazan or Kazam or whatever that is, unless it’s a special effect, in which case, automatic Oscar. And shut up already about Nick Nolte in “Affliction.” Ditto for Meryl Streep, who’s, like, Mom’s age, so what’s up with that Dorothy dress?

On the other hand, Teen Oscars would finally pay proper homage to the role of music in the movies. For instance, if teenagers ran this year’s Oscars, that Aerosmith ballad from “Armageddon” would be a shoo-in for the category of Film Score That Omygod Is Sooo Our Song.

Writing, too, would be lauded. How about an Oscar for Best Movie We All Saw So Many Times, We Now Know It Better Than the Pledge of Allegiance? The shoo-in here would, of course, be that teen masterpiece now torturing in-flight businessmen with the Cajun motto, “Yeau can doo eet!” I speak, of course, of Adam Sandler’s classic, “The Waterboy.”

And let’s not forget the all-important category of trailers, which is so nuanced that it could be several categories. You’ve got your Best Punch Line in a Trailer (Austin Powers’ “Yeahhhh, bay-bee,” anything from “There’s Something About Mary”); Best Fireball in a Trailer (the nominees here are too legion to mention); Best Trailer That Makes You Need, as Opposed to Merely Crave, the Soundtrack; Trailer That’s So Dope You Don’t Even Stay for the Movie (“Star Wars” prequel); and Best Trailer That’s Not Even a Trailer, Really, but Still Makes You Go, Like, Dude! (Here, that sound check where they crank up the volume so it zooms through your eardrums comes most immediately to mind.)

Teen Oscars wouldn’t shy from political questions, such as: Who’s the bigger hottie, Jennifer Love Hewitt or Ryan Phillippe? And obviously, there would be an end to those prizes for old guys, once they instituted the Leo DiCaprio Early Lifetime Achievement plaque.

But the Teen Oscars will never happen. (Which is sad, because I don’t think kids are the only ones who’d like to see the Taco Bell Chihuahua as guest host.)

Why not? Because, in art and in life, even the most powerful notion needs sponsors. And some sweet-talking kid just talked me out of my last 20 bucks.