Dear Oscar

Oscar

Let’s not mince words. 

We’ve grown apart.

I still love film but I can’t stand by and watch what you’ve become.  This has been coming for a while now but the corporate “industry” has tipped the scales at the expense of “entertainment” at the expense of the art.  I know that art will find a way and eventually, so shall we.  I’ll be wherever the story is being served while you will be in the gift shop selling yourself.  That is not a bad thing it just cuts to the core of our separate motivations.  We are looking for different things and, I fear, we have met an impasse.  Neither of us really wants to change and you could say that neither of us has to.  Perhaps someday you will reconsider and rediscover that love of storytelling that originally caught my eye.

I used to do a yearly blog concerning the Academy Awards where I would force myself to ‘think the way the Academy’ thinks to try to pick the winners.  We had a good run, you and I.  Some years you would win, some years I would.  The fact of the matter is, Oscar, these days I have enough on my hands avoiding things such as SOPA or PIPA than I do adding any further grist to the Academy mill.  I’m not a pirate and being treated like one by the corporate office(s) in the entertainment industry has me feeling more than a bit alienated.  And then there is all that wasted time and energy on, “the red carpet.”  Oscar, even you must see the self-aggrandized, bloated, misguided sense of importance & worth that the people you run with these days are about.  You do, don’t you?  That red carpet is another reason why I can’t bear to be with you this year.  You know me, I still go to the movies but these days, I’m picky; very picky.  I can feel myself getting more so as time marches by.  Really the best thing to get people back into theaters is to tell good stories.  You and your friends know that, right? 

I don’t say these things to hurt you.  I say them because I truly want to believe that deep down beneath that shiny exterior there lays a glimmer of that spark of creativity, wonder, and sheer storytelling that first drew me to you in the first place.  Who knows, perhaps that spark still exists in some of the people that you have been calling friends these days too.  I’d like to think that is the case. 

I hope one day we will strike a balance again you & I and once more we will pit our picks against each other.  I just think we need this time apart. 

Please give my love to Billy, I’m sure he’ll do a fine job.

Adieu,

Evil Chicken