Oscar needs a page from NFL’s playbook

Elaine Dutka’s otherwise excellent article (“Oscar? That’s a Laugh,” Dec. 17), arguing that comedies don’t receive proper recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, didn’t go quite far enough in making the case for overhauling the Oscars.

It took professional football 74 years to admit that the college game, with its versatile and entertaining two-point conversion, had the more attractive rule. Finally, in 1994, the NFL swallowed its pride and voted to adopt the two-point option. Given the number of exciting finishes this modification has produced, no NFL executive would dare suggest going back to the old rule.

As it happens, the academy finds itself in a similar situation.

Clearly, a “rule change” is in order. With the Golden Globe nominees announced last Thursday and Oscar nominations just around the corner, it’s too late to tinker with this year’s awards. But now would be an appropriate time for the academy to announce that, beginning next year, it will adopt a dual-category format, presenting separate awards for drama and comedy/musicals.

Not mentioned in Dutka’s piece is the long-held belief among Hollywood watchers that the only thing in the way of the academy’s adopting dual awards is its fear that the departure would be taken as naked imitation of the dreaded Golden Globes -- a rowdy, plebian version of the Oscars -- which would result in a loss of prestige.

Innovation isn’t foreign to the academy. There is ample evidence, going all the way back to 1928, of a willingness to tweak its format whenever necessary. Before settling on the current number of five, there used to be as few as two or three nominees in the actor/actress category. Awards for supporting roles weren’t introduced until 1936, and from 1933 through 1943, there were regularly nine or more contenders in the best picture category.

How can the academy continue to conduct runoffs between such divergent films as “Tootsie” and “Gandhi,” both of which were nominated in 1982? (Guess which one won best picture.) To throw these stunningly dissimilar films into the same hopper and ask a committee to pick best picture is like asking a chef which dish has a “better” taste: beef stroganoff or peach cobbler.

Other examples: In 1992, the frightening “Silence of the Lambs” triumphed over fellow nominee “Beauty and the Beast,” an excellent animated feature; in 1997, “The English Patient,” a staid, painterly offering, beat out the hilarious “Fargo”; and in 1998, “Titanic” predictably brushed aside everything in its path, including the charming but overmatched “The Full Monty,” a 400-to-1 underdog in Las Vegas.

A common objection to dividing the categories (which would add seven more awards if extended to performers, writers and directors) is that it would lengthen the ceremonies and drive away viewers. But additional prizes don’t necessarily have to result in a longer show. Keep that cool “death montage” and the song nominees, but trim or speed up some of the other boilerplate stuff.

Another concern is the difficulty of classifying certain films according to genre -- the fear that an elegantly amorphous film will be rudely pigeonholed. Even though the Globes seem to pull this off every year, arbitrary genre distinctions tend to invite controversy. How intense does a subversive, angst-ridden film have to get before it slips from dark comedy into hip drama? Was last year’s “About Schmidt” supposed to be serious or funny?

The solution is to allow the studios to submit their films for Oscar consideration in whichever category they choose, just as they already do in the actor/actress and supporting actor/actress categories. This doesn’t guarantee there won’t be quibbling, but it does permit the filmmakers themselves to make the crucial call.

Thus, if the folks at Miramax had decided, perversely, that last year’s “The Hours” was actually a comedy, that would have been their privilege.

Come to think of it, one could argue that “The Hours” produced more outright laughs than “Death to Smoochy.”

David Macaray is a Los Angeles-based playwright and freelance writer. He can be reached at dmacaray

@earthlink.net.