Beverly Hills, Calif. – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is hipper than you think.
Later this week, the nearly 80-year-old organization will announce it’s inviting one of the youngest people ever into membership – 12-year-old blond, blue-eyed and impossibly cute Dakota Fanning.
It’s the latest sign the academy is trying to break a long-
held perception that it’s a stodgy film institution in need of fresh, edgy blood.
“Most people who aren’t really aware of the academy think it’s probably a bunch of elderly people,” says AMPAS director Bruce Davis. “They’re not thinking Scarlett Johansson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, they’re thinking really old guys. That’s a hard perception to overcome.”
But the academy is certainly trying – and not just with its membership. Consider Three 6 Mafia’s 2006 Oscar win for rap song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” complete with an onstage performance of dancers gyrating as prostitutes and pimps.
Not to mention the last two Oscar hosts – hipsters Chris Rock and Jon Stewart.
Then there’s the smattering of year-round academy events appealing to cooler, younger audiences – from a presentation by surrealist underground animators the Brothers Quay in their first speaking engagement in the U.S. to anniversary screenings of the campy commercial comedy “Airplane” and cult fantasy favorite “Labyrinth.”
The annual event at the Goldwyn Theater, hosted this year by director Kevin Smith and comedic actress Nia Vardalos, featured honorees from as far away as Korea and South Africa and as close as Berkeley, Calif.
South African foreign student film award winner Tristan Holmes, whose movie “Elalini” delved into the incestuous back story between a father and daughter, spoke passionately about the academy changing with the times, and representing world audiences.
“World cinema is changing. The people watching films are changing. People in control of the money are changing. Now they’re 12-to-18-year-olds. They’re not getting older, they’re getting younger,”
Holmes said.
“Institutions like this really want to consolidate what is art, and what is beautiful, and they have to balance expectations in order to do that, they have to change, and that’s great,” he said.
Academy head Davis said the organization has been doing edgy programming for the quarter-century he has worked there.
“You can look back at the nominations through the years, and see that. Granted, you might look through some of the nominations in the ’50s with fingers over your eyes.”
Davis also said that while the academy won’t resort to screening porn, or showing “camcorded 8-year-old birthday parties,” it isn’t as shocked by certain behavior as many would think.
“We’ll never abandon our goal to acquaint people with the medium,” he said. “We’re not going to abandon the past, but we also have an obligation to the present and we’re going to honor that.”
