The Oscars: it's all about the money

By: Corey Light

Posted: 2/23/09

After an entire month of Oscar season, you may be getting a little tired of all the highbrow film critic talk. But at the end of the day, you can sum up the entire process in one word - money.

Forget the directors, actors, editors, producers, composers, mixers, gaffers and costume designers that make a movie what it can be. And forget that there's a great idea out there just waiting to be transformed into cinematic gold. Money makes it all possible.

This year at the 81st Academy Awards, films have claimed their victory in all sorts of categories - best actor, best actress, best directing, and so on.

But what if all the nominees had played by the same rules?

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" reported a budget of $160 million. That's enough money to send 2,000 undergraduates to UMKC for full bachelor's degrees. They could even stay in the Oak Street Dorms.

On the flip side, "The Wrestler" had a reported budget of only $6 million - about 4 percent of Brad Pitt's super-movie.

What's the difference in quality? "Wrestler" scored 98 percent on www.rottentomatoes.com out of 189 journalist reviews. "Ben Button" scored 71 percent out of 202 reviews.

I'll take an A over a C- any day.

So what if all the nominees had the same budget? I suspect some would have been a little … different.

Let's take a look at how this year's biggest blockbusters would have done with a middle-of-the-road budget: an average value of the "Wrester" budget and the "Benjamin Button" budget - $83 million. That's a big step up for Mickey Rourke and Brad Pitt just got sliced in half.

First off, "The Dark Knight" ($185 million budget) would have had to use a black Honda Civic for the Batmobile - a minor drawback.

Additionally, they would have replaced Morgan Freeman with Kenan Thompson (formally of Kenan and Kel), Christian Bale with Michael Keaton (again), and Aaron Eckhart with … well they could probably keep Aaron Eckhart just to boost the poor man's ego.

"Hellboy II" ($82.5 million) would have stayed just the same, except for the extra money that could possibly make Ron Perlman's dialog coherent.

"Wall-E" ($180 million) would have been reduced to the animation equivalent of a Cartoon Network show - probably resembling "The Powerpuff Girls".

"Slumdog Millionaire" ($14 million) would have included known actors instead of rookies - perhaps Kal Penn from "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" as Jamal and Mindy Kaling, also known as "Kelly" from "The Office" as Latika. Furthermore, Michael Bay would have directed.

All of the nominees in the short film category would have been made into feature-length movies, thus destroying their inherent dignity.

Lastly, "Iron Man" ($186 million) would have never been made at all, saving millions of people time and money, while spurring Robert Downey Jr. to fall into another five-year stint of substance abuse.

We are told that money isn't everything. But sometimes, cash means quite a bit.

So the next time you see a film, think about the forces behind the feature.

As for me, you can be assured that I was rooting for the underdogs of the film industry during the award ceremony. You could even say, the slumdog.

clight@unews.com