You gotta love right-wing filmmakers. Whenever they make a awful movie, they can just claim that the “liberal media” is spreading lies, and that their work is actually super-terrific, and would be making billions if only Big Hollywood weren’t suppressing them. And come Oscar season, there will be even more bellyaching of this nature. There’s not likely to be a better example this year than this story.
This past week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their shortlist of documentaries that will be competing for the nominations in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Oscars next year. Absent from those 15 films is 2016: Obama’s America, the faux-origin story for President Obama that explains how his experiences in his youth have shaped him into a someone who will totally destroy America, for sure. The film’s producer, Gerald Molen, himself already an Oscar winner (For Schindler’s List. I imagine he and Spielberg don’t get along too well anymore), is crying foul over this snub.
Said Molen: “The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood circles. The film’s outstanding success means that America went to see the documentary in spite of how Hollywood feels about it.” Yes, apparently the fact that the film was successful (it grossed more than the 15 films on the shortlist combined) means it deserves an Oscar. Because that’s how awards of merit should work. It doesn’t matter if your movie is terrible. The people have spoken, and the people clearly know what’s best. Then again… the people also voted Obama to be President again. So therefore, the movie must be wrong, and doesn’t deserve awards attention. Check and mate, Mr. Molen.