Box-office gold won’t buy Oscar

Regina Woods believes Eddie Murphy deserves to win an Oscar. But not for playing crooner James “Thunder” Early in the acclaimed musical “Dreamgirls.” Woods says Murphy should collect an Academy Award for playing the morbidly obese Rasputia, among two other lowbrow roles, in the critically hammered “Norbit.”

“He’s a comedian,” Woods, 28, said as she headed into a recent screening of “Daddy’s Little Girls.”

If Woods is any indication, the movie patrons at the Edwards Long Beach 26 and the tuxedo-clad Hollywood players who will congregate tonight at the Kodak Theatre have different ideas of what makes a great movie.

The suburban multiplex has booked no fewer than 18 daily showings of “Ghost Rider,” a film with such lowly critical prospects it was released without being shown to film reviewers. Inside the Kodak at tonight’s 79th annual Academy Awards, Ryan Gosling will be up for best actor for “Half Nelson,” a movie whose total theatrical gross over four months, $2.7 million, is less than “Ghost Rider” collected in its first hours of release.

The disparity between movies the public embraces and those Oscar voters revere has grown dramatically, leaving the award ritual open to charges it has become elitist and potentially superfluous.

The chasm between mainstream and Oscar isn’t always as wide as the Grand Canyon, but in recent years there has been little overlap between box-office blockbusters and best picture winners.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” took home the top Oscar three years ago, but the accolade for that global hit was far more the exception than the rule.

Of the top 20 hits in the last 30 years, only two films, “Titanic” and “Forrest Gump,” took home Oscar’s top prize. Many of those chartbusters -- including “Jurassic Park,” “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Lion King” -- weren’t even nominated for best picture.

Some of the most admired and influential films of all time didn’t win that honor -- not “Star Wars,” not “Citizen Kane,” not “Singin’ in the Rain” (which wasn’t even nominated).

As Woods sees it, the academy should be honoring “just the basic movies that you’ll sit home and watch with your kids. The simple movies. The simple movies deserve a chance too.”

She also sees an opportunity for some kind of “American Idol”-style audience participation. “The executives are voting. The Oscars are for show. It’s fun to watch, but I would be more into it if I were able to participate in it.”

In tonight’s best picture clash, only one movie -- the mob drama “The Departed” -- has grossed more than $60 million at domestic theaters.

When Oscar nominations were announced last year, none of the movies in the best picture contest (“Brokeback Mountain,” “Capote,” “Crash,” “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Munich”) had even grossed $55 million.

Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima,” which has four nominations, including best picture and director, has sold less than $12 million in tickets to date. That translates into roughly 1.8 million moviegoers -- or about a fourth of the audience for last year’s “Emily’s Reasons Why Not,” an ABC comedy so disastrously unpopular it was canceled after just one episode.

“I don’t think the Oscars reflect the taste of the general public,” said Alex Bahu, a real estate agent from Lakewood who was headed into the spy thriller “Breach.”

Telecast needs viewers too

Few of those interviewed outside the multiplex on a recent weeknight could name the five best picture nominees -- for the record, they are “Babel,” “The Departed,” “Letters From Iwo Jima,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Queen” -- a potential problem for the Oscar telecast, which has tended to draw its biggest audiences in years when a huge box office hit like “Titanic” can deliver a built-in cheering section.

When the 5,830 Oscar voters pay tribute to smaller, artier movies, television viewers tend to stay away.

Ratings for the last two Oscar broadcasts -- in which the best picture winners were “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash” -- have declined from the previous year.

In 2004, the ceremony attracted an average audience of 43.5 million, but that number slipped to 42.1 million in 2005 and fell to 38.9 million last year. (The show is still a ratings juggernaut, easily exceeding the audience for such popular prime-time series as “American Idol,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “CSI.”)

“The problem with all of these award shows is that you have to be rooting for someone you like,” says Dean Devlin, producer of the box-office hits “Independence Day” and “The Patriot,” who wants the Oscars to add a category recognizing more mainstream movies.

“But when the movies become narrower and narrower, you don’t have that rooting interest,” he says. “The award shows become more of an intellectual exercise.”

Any number of filmmakers and producers say that’s just fine. The Oscars, these people say, are not supposed to be a popularity contest and shouldn’t become one.

High-minded storytelling

“The name of the organization is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” argues Todd Field, the director and co-writer of “Little Children,” which has nominations for best actress, supporting actor and adapted screenplay. “Presumably, people within the body of that organization take the arts and sciences part of their moniker seriously. As filmgoers, I think we would all be the poorer for it should that paradigm ever change.”

As Field points out, Thomas Kinkade may sell tons of paintings, but that doesn’t mean he merits a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Along the same lines, John Grisham never lacks for bestsellers, but he doesn’t have a shelf full of Pulitzer Prizes or National Book Awards.

Kevin Macdonald, who directed Forest Whitaker’s best actor-nominated performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland,” doesn’t dispute that the awards tend to steer clear of the movies that generate the biggest box office headlines.

“There’s a danger that the awards can make themselves irrelevant if they don’t pay attention” to those kinds of movies, Macdonald says. “But the Oscars have always been elitist -- to reward art over commerce. And I think that’s fine.”

Richard Gladstein, the Oscar-nominated producer of 2004’s “Finding Neverland” and 1999’s “The Cider House Rules,” says the Oscar shift toward more obscure movies is a natural consequence of the studios’ abandoning high-minded storytelling in favor of sequels, remakes and comic book adaptations. “One of the biggest frustrations is that you present an idea to a studio and they say, ‘Oh, but it’s a drama. That’s not exciting to us,’ ” Gladstein says. “That’s almost akin to saying that you don’t want your movies to have characters.”

For the most part, ambitious dramas are left to smaller distributors, such as Miramax, Lionsgate and Fox Searchlight. For those companies, a $50-million gross is a great outcome, not the disaster it would be for a big studio.

Higher profile for art films

At the same time, the attention the Oscars bring to smaller movies can make them more viable, says Michael London, the producer of 2004’s best picture nominee “Sideways.”

He cites the comparatively strong performance of “The Queen,” which is up for six Academy Awards, including best picture and best actress for Helen Mirren. (And there is always the Oscar win aftereffect -- from a bump at the box office to better commercial prospects on the home video front.)

“The fact that audiences are really responding to it is really great news,” London says. “If that’s elitist, I say bring it on. I think [art house filmmakers] are really penetrating the popular consciousness now.”

That was certainly true among the crowds at the neon-sparkling Edwards Long Beach 26. A number of people in the crowds streaming into “Ghost Rider,” “Hannibal Rising” and “Norbit” offered nuanced perspectives about the Academy Awards. Some sounded as plugged-in as any Oscar consultant.

“I thought Jack Nicholson was overlooked for ‘The Departed,’ ” said Amy Klein, 30, a marketing director from Huntington Beach. “I thought he was amazing. But of the people that are up, I think Forest Whitaker did a great job in ‘The Last King of Scotland.’ I’ve never been a Leo [DiCaprio] fan until ‘The Departed,’ but he did a great job.... I think there were so many good movies this year, I won’t be disappointed with whoever takes home best picture.”

Martin Lopez, 22, from Long Beach, was rooting for “Babel.”

“It was just very unique,” Lopez says. “Just the way it was filmed. I’m more into the way films are made instead of the actors and actresses.... It really feels like you’re in the movie.”

And as for Eddie Murphy, well, let’s just say that if the Long Beach 26 moviegoers were members of the academy, he’d be a lock as best supporting actor.

“I haven’t seen one movie that Eddie has made yet that I didn’t enjoy,” said April Andrews of Long Beach.

“An Oscar should be a recognition of performance but also a career.”

john.horn@latimes.com

sheigh.crabtree@latimes.com

John Horn is a Times staff writer and Sheigh Crabtree is a special correspondent.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Box-office stars

The top 10 highest-grossing movies of the last three decades, adjusted for inflation, with year of release, domestic gross in current dollars and that year’s Oscar winner for best picture.

*--* Rank Year Movie Gross Best picture winner 1. 1977 “Star Wars” $1.04 billion “Annie Hall” 2. 1982 “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” $861.6 million “Gandhi” 3. 1997 “Titanic” $825.8 million “Titanic” 4. 1980 “The Empire Strikes Back” $614.8 million “Ordinar y People” 5. 1983 “Return of the Jedi” $596.1 million “Terms of Endearme nt” 6. 1993 “Jurassic Park” $553.3 million “Schindl er’s List” 7. 1999 “Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The $546.1 million “America Phantom Menace” n Beauty” 8. 1981 “Raiders of the Lost Ark” $539.5 million “Chariot s of Fire” 9. 1994 “Forrest Gump” $514.9 million “Forrest Gump” 10. 1994 “The Lion King” $490.3 million “Forrest Gump”

*--*

Sources: www.the-numbers.com, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences