Two Hollywood veterans, Laurence Mark and Bill Condon, will oversee the next Academy Awards telecast.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wednesday that producer Mark will produce the Feb. 22 show, while writer-director Condon will be executive producer. It will be the first time either has worked on the Oscars.
“It’s both daunting and the gig of a lifetime,” Mark said. “We haven’t done anything like this before. I’m hoping that’s in some way a plus. We don’t quite know what can’t be done.”
Sid Ganis, the academy’s president, said Mark and Condon are “fresh thinkers” who will bring a new perspective to the show.
“They’re both fun and elegant, and that’s what we want the show to be,” Ganis said.
Mark and Condon worked together on 2006’s “Dreamgirls.” Mark’s other producing credits include “I, Robot” and “Jerry Maguire.” Condon won a screenplay Oscar for 1998’s “Gods and Monsters,” and was nominated for a second for writing 2002 best-picture winner “Chicago,” which he also directed
The first order of business for the pair?
Choosing the Oscar host.
“All doors are open,” Mark said. “The casting of any movie is crucial to the success of the movie, and we believe the same is true with any kind of awards show. The casting of the host is a big deal.”
He declined to offer any hints as to whether a past host would return or a new face would grace the Kodak Theatre stage.
Mark and Condon plan to brainstorm together — and listen to the counsel of the film academy’s staff — to create a show that celebrates movies.
“Not only should the Oscars celebrate excellence in the movies of the year,” Mark said, “but hopefully we can figure out a way to also celebrate the joy, poignancy, laughter and thrills that folks have had at many movies of the year.”
The Oscars Are More International Than Ever. But Is The International Film Category Broken?
For many filmmakers, the Oscars are a pipe dream. But not because they think their movies aren't good enough.
The Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, for instance, knew his native country was more likely to jail him than submit his film for the Academy Awards. Iran, like some other countries including Russia, has an official government body that selects its Oscar submission. For a filmmaker like Rasoulof, who has brazenly tested his country's censorship restrictions, that made the Oscars out of the question.
"A lot of independent filmmakers in Iran think that we would never be able to make it to the Oscars," Rasoulof said in an interview through an interpreter. "The Oscars were never part of my imagination because I was always at war with the Iranian government."
Unlike other categories at the Academy Awards, the initial selection for the best international film category is outsourced. Individual countries make their submission, one movie per country.
Sometimes that's an easy call. When the category — then "best foreign language film" — was established, it would have been hard to quibble with Italy's pick: Federico Fellini's "La Strada," the category's first winner in 1957.
But, often, there's great debate about which movie a country ought to submit — especially when undemocratic governments do the selecting. Rasoulof's fellow Iranian New Wave director Jafar Panahi likewise had no hopes of Iran selecting his 2022 film "No Bears" for the Oscars. At the time, Panahi was imprisoned by Iran, which didn't release him until he went on a hunger strike.
Rasoulof's film, "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" — a movie shot clandestinely in Iran before its director and cast fled the country — ultimately was nominated for best... Read More