Critics blame all-white Oscar nominees list on studio heads’ conservatism
Most of Hollywood’s top people are white males, and studios like to place safe bets on film franchises. That squeezes the space for fresh and diverse talent, but one studio executive points out they are ‘not in the business of making Oscar movies’
The absence of non-white acting Oscar nominees for a second straight year has led many to criticise the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its lack of diversity. But a growing chorus of film business figures are instead pointing the finger at another culprit: the executive ranks of the major Hollywood studios.
“This whole academy thing is a misdirection play,” said Lee, director of the critically acclaimed independent movie Chi-Raq and a longtime critic of the Hollywood establishment. “This goes further than the Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gatekeepers.”
Lee’s statement echoes a past comment in which he said it is easier for an African American to become president of the United States than to become head of a Hollywood studio. Lee said in a social media post on Monday that he would not attend the 2016 Oscars ceremony, although he did not call for a boycott, as some activists have done.
It’s a delicate issue for the industry. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures declined to comment. Twentieth-Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and the Walt Disney Co. did not respond to requests for interviews.
“In a year with huge commercial hits with African-American leads, someone should be noticing the trend enough to respond with more African-American movies, including those with Academy Award potential,” said Bill Mechanic, veteran producer and former head of Fox Filmed Entertainment. “More diverse executives will result in more diverse movies.”
The dispute has cast a spotlight on green-lighting – Hollywood jargon for studios giving the go-ahead for a movie to be made. It can be an opaque process, with major decisions ultimately made by the studio heads, along with a committee that typically includes presidents of production, marketing and publicity.
At issue is who sits on these committees and whether they represent the diversity of the film audience at large. “It is the green-lighting process,” said Wheeler Winston Dixon, a film studies professor at the University of Nebraska in the United States. “They not only need to look at films about minorities, but they cannot keep up this steady drumbeat of blockbuster tent pole films.”
Some experts blame the lack of diverse Oscar fare on safe bets made by studio chiefs. Tinseltown has increasingly placed its chips on franchises – known brands that can come with a built in audience and reliably generate sizeable ticket sales not just in the US but in other countries. That, analysts say, leaves less room in the studio pipeline for prestigious titles with new talent in front of and behind the camera.
A studio executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said it’s not fair to blame the studios that are not in the business of making art house movies.
While many agree there’s a problem, there may not be an easy fix, industry experts say. One idea, advocated by Lee, is for the studios to implement a version of the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule”. Enacted in 2003, that rule required professional football teams to interview at least one non-white candidate for head coach jobs.
It’s unclear, however, whether or such a rule could ever fly within the studio system.
Complicating matters is that green-lighting of films has evolved as industry has changed. It’s no longer a simple matter of a handful of executives poring over scripts, cast lists and budgets. Hollywood’s movies, especially Oscar fare, are now largely financed and produced by multiple outside partners in order to mitigate risk, and they have often have a say in whether the film gets made.
And many movies that get Oscar buzz are made outside the studio system entirely, financed by an amalgam of production companies and investors around the world before they’re sold at festivals to the major studios or small, independent distributors.
Nonetheless, some see signs of hope for an Oscar season that better represents the broader population as Hollywood continues to follow the money as audiences demand more inclusion.
“I think truth be known that the whole industry is making great strides in this area,” said Marshall Herskovitz, former president of the Producers Guild of America. “I think we’re in a period of transition. They will follow the audience.”
Los Angeles Times