#she’s a Grammy and oscar winner! she’s got a huge career ahead of her!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I’m not defending Billie in the least or anything, and she is an adult and is responsible for her words and actions, but I’m just saying… She was a child star whose family’s entire existence revolves around her career and has since she was a young teenager. Which can be lovely for support, sure, but could also lead to limited outside guidance or perspective on her career. (Look, I know little about her family other than watching her documentary on Apple a few years ago.) I’m just saying there could be an echo chamber of influence in her circle leading to people enabling short-term resentment and pettiness instead of calculating how to play the long game. The fact that her own management was obtuse enough to be liking unsavoury tweets about another high profile artist on a public account is evidence enough that her larger team’s judgment is perhaps not the best to put it mildly.

Obviously it’s not a great look to vocally criticize *checks notes* selling more physical copies of albums, selling special digital editions of albums, releasing long form content and putting on an intricate show for fans when that’s the industry standard that you have to aspire to, and more importantly, even worse to make it seem you’re above it all while actively pursuing some of those things. Eventually she (along with any other artist coming up) is going to have to find that you do in fact have to show you care to have the kind of longevity that the big names have. She might just skate through this one because her fanbase is young and will support her, but eventually, she will have to have the product to back this all up.

I don’t know what I’m really saying here other than who you surround yourself with absolutely matters.

[lol-jackles]

How exactly would one buy an award? What are the deals like? What goes on behind the scenes in these cases?

I’ll try to keep this short.  There are a few ways.  The old school acceptable methods are swanky luncheons between producers/directors/actors and academy members, and advertisement dollars to the media.   Netflix spent $25 million to “garner” Oscar votes for Roma.  Why do you think Harvey Weinstein got away with his sexual harrassment behavior for so long?  Because the media need his advertising money during award campaign season, otherwise the media would go out of business. The media damn well knew and colluded with Weinstein and other executive producers for money and in exchange media gave favorable press for their movies and actresses.  You the general viewers already knew this, right?

Maybe you didn’t know about lobbying for votes by paying a fleet of Hollywood publicists (who also happen to be Academy members) to NOT to generate press coverage but to schmooze their prominent Academy colleagues and convince them to vote to this movie and that actor.  Most Academy members have not seen the movies nominated for best picture and aren’t familiar with new actors.

The other currancy that everybody pretends doesn’t happen but everybody does it all the time are access, information, threats, favors, inside trading, deal exchange, favorable press, internships or jobs for relatives, and buying out contracts at a discount or canceling contracts without penalty.  ABC.  Is.  Literally Married to Obama’s cabinet.  NBC killed Farrow’s  Weinstein piece because several of their executives were pitching their movies scripts to production companies. Jackie, starring Natalie Portman, was written by Noah Oppenheim who is the president of NBC News.  Ofcourse Oppenheim wants  awards for his film.

The Academy try to keep awards like best lead actor/actress/picture legit to give their association relevancy.  But they are willing to look the other away with lower key awards like best supporting actress.  In my days a long running joke was the Oscar supporting actress awards were won by young actresses whom producers want to (or did) have sex with.  A benign explanation is the supporting award is a way for unknown or on the cusp stars to get exposure and free publicity and the producers are only helping their favorite B or C-list actors because awards (or even nominations) do help build careers.  That said I don’t want to hear another Marissa Tomei joke.  She was going up against 3 British and 1 Australian actresses and back then we were more ‘Mercia! 

Michael B u r g was one of Teen Choice Award’s original executive producers.  I met him when he was producing fluff professional ice skating competition (my sister was a huge skating fan fanatic).  He was preparing plans for the TCA and agents and managers were sniffing around during skating rehearsals looking to get on the invite list to the TCA so that they can find new talents to represent or poach from rivals.  For categories like acting and new breakouts, B u r g kept those voting result legit to keep TCA relevant-ish and agents, managers, and scouts can find legit talents to make money off of.  It’s how Jared’s manager found him, at the TCA in its debut year. 

As far as I’ve heard third hand, most of those votes for fluff categories like Best Hissy Fit, Best Selfie Taker, Best Chemistry, etc, are honored.  It’s when people start coming at you with stories of their awards that was theirs three days ago (winners are told ahead of time to give them time to arrange for travel and find outfits or update their IMDb) were suddenly told it’s no longer theirs because the award show’s producers have the final say.  Okay, sure, we knew that could happen.  Until two celebrities find out their awards were switched.  Say, an Instagramer model won Best Selfie Taker and a YouTube star won Best Red Carpet Pose, but their publicist made a deal with the other to switch the awards because it better suit their clients and to make the switch stick, throw in a few more dollars on top of their registration fee to the show’s EPs.  Mind you it’s not that the low teir celebrities actually want that fluff award, it’s more that they want to go to the event to network and make connections; meet producers, executives, and collaborate projects with other creatives.  Even if the “winners” are not invited to attend the event, producers and publicists want their actors/clients to get some publicity, even if it’s for “Best Screamer” because at least their name will be printed in the media and into the internet search engine.  Or there is an upcoming project/campaign to promote and a corresponding award could give it an air of legitimacy, if YANA had the same success and mainstream media attention as AKF did, you bet those articles would have mentioned the TCA chemistry win (btw, “chemistry” is no longer a category in the TCA).  It’s why we occassionally hear outbursts from celebrities like Katy Perry and Justin Beiber saying their awards are fake and the award shows like the Grammys are rigged because it wasn’t as straightfoward as they thought and caught that alot of exchanges, deals, and strategizing takes place behind the scene. 

This is a poor example but it’s not dissimilar when Emily Blunt won a SAG award for best supporting actress even though she was clearly a lead in a Quiet Place.  Her team entered her name in the supporting category because there was less competition compared to the leading actress category where Glenn Close and Lady Gaga were contenders, plus she wasn’t nominated for the Oscar so she went hard after SAG.  Real supporting actresses like Amy Adams (remember when she guest-starred in Smallville as the fat-sucking monster?) and Rachel Weisz were mad at this tactic but they couldn’t stop her.