Hamilton film awards - Will it happen? Should it?- Page 4

[Speed]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 2:47am

Oh and there have been LIVE broadcastings of great operas in actual movie theaters for years and many of them are greater works of art than HAMILTON, not that we need compare them, and no one ever clamored for them to win Oscars.

[DigificWriter]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 2:51am

Speed said: "I just don't understand why anyone in this thread even wanted it to win Oscars! You think this taping holds up to the standard of great Oscar winning films? The thing opened in 2015 and already won a ton of awards. This is just a videotape of that which Disney has chosen to share with its subscribers. I want movies to win Oscars. Not tapes of Broadway shows. Geesh."

I believe that people were hoping that the live-capture film would be Oscar-eligible so that Lin-Manuel Miranda could have a shot at completing the EGOT.

[Dolly80]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 4:06am

blaxx said: "Is it the feeling that Hamilton is God's gift to musical theater that makes people disappointed about this?

I don't deny it's a strong piece of theater, but I feel that some think that the show also deserves an Olympic medal and a Nobel award just for existing. Chill."

THIS. 

[imeldasturn]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 4:21am

As good as Hamilton is, it's already ridiculous that it won the Kennedy Center Honors to its creators, let alone an Oscar. The ruling is only fair, it would be an embarrassment if it got a nod for best movie.

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 11:34am

hork said: "Broadway61004 said: "Yes, I'm speaking to SHOULD it be eligible, not WILL it (although I actually do still feel the Academy may ultimately rule against it, but that's a completely separate discussion). And just to clarify, I 100% agree none of those other specials I brought up should be eligible either. But to me, Hamilton falls in the exact same category as them, because like those, they are performance events (not designed for film, but rather live capture of a live performance that are then broadcast on another medium). So even though Hamilton is a work of fiction as you noted, it's still a work of fiction for the stage, not film, regardless of whether someone put a camera up and filmed it. Had it been an actual adaptation (which we will undoubtedly get down the road and which absolutely should be eligible for the Oscars) then this would be a different story. But this is not a film adaptation. This is a video recording of a Broadway show. Hence my feeling that it is absolutely ridiculous if this ends up being nominated at the Oscars (again, my opinion, not what I think will or will not happen)."

My philosophy of film (which I think is shared by most people interested in the subject) is that if it gets a theatrical run, or plays at a film festival, it's a movie.Eddie Murphy Raw is a movie. All of Richard Pryor's filmed stand-up specials are movies. Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a movie.Give 'Em Hell Harry is a movie. Opera performances that get shown in theaters for one night are not movies, they are special events. Netflix specials are not movies, they are television.Hamilton was supposed to get a theatrical run, and the only reason it didn't (and, really, the only reason we're having this debate) is because of COVID. Does that turn it from a movie into not a movie? I guess that's up for debate, and my own views are mixed on the subject, but I would have to argue that no, it does not."

I see where you're coming from on that and can definitely see that argument.  I guess my opinion, though, is that it's more about what medium it was intended for, not necessarily where it ends up.  In the case of Hamilton, the performances, the lighting, the direction, the choreography, the scenic design, the costume design and even the book, score and orchestrations were all intended and designed for the theatre, not for film.  Yes, it ended up being filmed, but it was designed and created for theatre, not film.  The Irishman is a good comparison: Technically it played on a Broadway stage for a week last year, so should it be eligible for Best Play at the next Tony awards?  I presume we agree it shouldn't be, but that to me is the same argument for Hamilton.  Just because it plays in a movie theatre (or was planning to play in a movie theatre) doesn't necessarily make it a movie.

[Tag]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 11:41am

imeldasturn said: "As good as Hamilton is, it's already ridiculous that it won the Kennedy Center Honors to its creators, let alone an Oscar. The ruling is only fair, it would be an embarrassment if it got a nod for best movie."

The constant focus on Lin & friends in the Kennedy Center audience that night was cringeworthy.

[Jarethan]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 12:06pm

Speed said: "I just don't understand why anyone in this thread even wanted it to win Oscars! You think this taping holds up to the standard of great Oscar winning films? The thing opened in 2015 and already won a ton of awards. This is just a videotape of that which Disney has chosen to share with its subscribers. I want movies to win Oscars. Not tapes of Broadway shows. Geesh."

Please be careful re use of the word 'tape' or Carlos Alberto will lecture you in a very condescending way about why you are wrong.  I was soundly admonished!!  It is a filmed version of a Broadway show, which clearly makes all the difference in the world.  (That was sarcasm).

[bdn223]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 12:53pm

The SAG branch of the Academy voting pool will have the final say on Hamilton’s placement. They are far an away the largest voting block and as such have the most sway. If they internally decided that they think that performances from Hamilton should be recognized by the Academy Awards then its very likely it will be deemed eligible through either a new rule or exception being made. Otherwise I would expect Hamilton to sweep the limited series/Made for TV movie categories At the Emmys in 2021.

[Ledaero]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 1:47pm

bdn223 said: "The SAG branch of the Academy voting pool will have the final say on Hamilton’s placement. They are far an away the largest voting block and as such have the most sway. If they internally decided that they think that performances from Hamilton should be recognized by the Academy Awards then its very likely it will be deemed eligible through either a new rule or exception being made. Otherwise I would expect Hamilton to sweep the limited series/Made for TV movie categories At the Emmys in 2021."

I understand what you're trying to get at, but this is not accurate. First off, SAG and AMPAS are two separate organizations with different awards and different rules. I assume you mean the "acting" branch of the Academy, not "SAG." And that too is inaccurate. The acting branch you're referring to only has heavy weight when it comes to the actual voting. AMPAS creates committees for each category that regulate their own rules, and the Acting committee is just as big as, say, the Documentary committee. And regardless, the Acting committee has nothing to do with determining eligibility for Best Picture. The eligibility of Hamilton will be determined by the Academy's Board and/or the Documentary Committee. There are a handful of leaked sources saying that they've already decided that it's ineligible, but as I said already I'll believe it once AMPAS makes an official announcement about it.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 7/7/20 at 6:27pm

Gonna cut and paste ( linking isn't working) From Vanity Fair

Don’t erase Hamilton from the Oscar narrative just yet. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Monday that the filmed version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s epic Broadway musical, which recently premiered on Disney+, is ineligible for the 2021 ceremony, a source close to the film told Vanity Fair this week that Disney still plans to submit Hamilton to various Hollywood guilds and the Academy for awards consideration. The studio would then allow those groups to decide whether Hamilton is eligible for the awards they bestow, as each guild has a different set of qualifications.

Disney has not yet made any public comment on its awards plans for Hamilton.

According to a source close to the Academy, the Hamilton movie is not eligible to compete in the Oscars’ documentary categories due to a rule, instituted in 1997, that excludes “works that are essentially promotional or instructional” as well as “works that are essentially unfiltered records of performances” from contention. The source indicated that if Hamilton cannot compete as a documentary, it cannot compete in other Oscar categories either, including best picture.

But as pointed out on Twitter, the Academy’s rule eliminating “records of performances” has been challenged in the past. In 2000, three years after the Academy added that language to its eligibility requirements, the Spike Lee documentary The Original Kings of Comedy, a stand-up special featuring Bernie Mac, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Steve Harvey, was included on a list of Oscar-eligible films. Martin Lawrence’s 2002 stand-up film, Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat, and Kevin Hart’s 2013 concert movie, Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain, also appeared on long lists of potential Academy Award nominees in their respective release years.

A source close to the Academy indicated that there’s a difference between those examples and Hamilton: Specifically, the source said, those three projects included creative contributions from their respective directors, making them more than mere reproductions of stage shows. But in theory the same could be argued for Hamilton. Thomas Kail directed both the stage production and the film, which combines scenes from separate live performances with sequences that were recorded specifically for the movie (and which allowed for close-ups of the cast that could not have been captured during regular Broadway performances).

Hamilton was initially set to debut in theaters next year. After the coronavirus pandemic upended Hollywood—and closed Broadway theaters until at least January 2021—Disney decided to fast-track its debut on Disney+. That move put Hamilton—which won 11 Tony Awards in 2016, including best musical, as well as the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for drama—into the nascent awards conversation, thanks to a tweak in the Academy’s rules that allows streaming movies that had previously planned theatrical runs to be eligible for Oscar consideration.

But even if Hamilton is ultimately permitted to compete at next year’s ceremony, the question of whether it should be in the running for Oscars is an open debate. “To me it reads as a little disrespectful of the Tony Awards and the Pulitzer,” awards expert Nathaniel Rogers, who runs the website the Film Experience, told Vanity Fair of a potential Oscar push for Hamilton. “Like, ‘those weren’t enough, this stage play also needs an Oscar!’ Maybe some of it is that people just don’t have all that many new movies to be excited about right now.” That sentiment was echoed by an Academy member who spoke to Vanity Fair on condition of anonymity, and noted that Oscar voters might not necessarily be keen on awarding a property that has already received so much recognition and acclaim.

 

Regardless of what happens at the Oscars, the Hamilton film will have some kind of footprint during awards season. The Oscar ceremony—which was bumped from February to April of 2021, on account of the global health crisis—airs on ABC, Walt Disney Television’s flagship property. “I cannot imagine that they won’t invite the Hamilton cast to present an award at least,” said Rogers. As he noted, the Academy Awards once mounted a starry tribute to John Hughes, even though the awards never nominated a film from his incredibly popular body of work; coming off a year when Oscar ratings hit an all-time low and the future of moviegoing itself was on precarious footing, it’s hard to believe ABC won’t try to leverage its Disney corporate synergy to goose viewership.

And even if Disney can’t get the Academy to change its mind, there are always the 2021 Emmys, where Hamilton would become an instant favorite in the outstanding-variety-special-(pre-recorded) category—where projects such as Beyoncé’s Netflix documentary, Homecoming, and the Bruce Springsteen Broadway performance, Springsteen on Broadway, landed nods last year. For the record, that’s where Rogers thinks the Hamilton movie should be recognized. “It’s a great, great filmed production of a show,” he said. “Let things be the things that they are. Hamilton is a really great stage musical, so we don’t need to call it a movie.”

 

[Fosse76]

Posted: 7/8/20 at 5:30am

sabrelady said: " Gonna cut and paste ( linking isn't working) From Vanity Fair

"The source indicated that if Hamilton cannot compete as a documentary, it cannot compete in other Oscar categories either, including best picture."

This is where the argument loses me. So by that logic movies that don't qualify in the documentary category can't compete in the Best Picture category? That just seems absurd.

JBroadway said: "@Fosse - You’ve misunderstood. The argument in favor of Hamilton being considered a documentary has literally nothing at all to do with the content of the show. The show could be about a unicorn playing baseball and I would’ve still made the case for considering it a documentary. Because the entire crux of the argument is that it’s documenting a stage production."

A documentary film documents non-fiction, and Hamilton at best would be historical fiction. If Hamilton had been filmed in a studio, like Oklahoma!, would it be a regular movie then? Documentary film has a very specific meaning, and certainly an audience expectation.

But I am willing to accept that the meaning as you attribute a filmed stage performance is likely the "logic" that was used for putting the rule under the documentary category. But again, it still doesn't explain how being ineligible in one category makes it ineligible in another category, which has separate rules. 

[JBroadway]

Posted: 7/8/20 at 9:30am

@Fosse

No, you’re still misunderstanding what I’m trying to say.

The video currently on Disney+ is DOCUMENTING a REAL LIFE stage production entitled “Hamilton.” Just like the video of American Utopia will be documenting the REAL LIFE Broadway Show called American Utopia. Or the video of Cats on Broadway was documenting the real life stage production called Cats. Or that the video of Rent was documenting the real life stage production of Rent. Again, this has NOTHING to do with the coincidental fact that Hamilton (the Broadway show) happens to be about history.

What I’m suggesting is that the video on Disney+ is not itself a work of fiction or historical fiction. But rather, that it’s a piece of film whose purpose is to DOCUMENT a piece of art meant for the stage. And that stage production (“Hamilton: An American Musical”) exists in the real world; it happens (/happened) every night at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

The video is meant to show us what ACTUALLY happened every night at the Richard Rodgers theatre from the audience’s perspective. And therefore, it can be viewed as a documentary. If it had been a video of Beetlejuice, it would have been documenting what happened every night at the Winter Garden theatre, and I would say that could be categorized as a documentary as well.

Again, you are welcome to disagree with this interpretation. I know it’s a bit of a stretch. But regardless, I want to clarify what it was I was actually saying. Because your posts indicate that you were misunderstand.