Re: the Oscars; I was at a Q&A thing with Peter Weller once where he talked about being in the academy and nominating Bird Man and Whiplash (and I preface this whole thing by saying I love Peter Weller and this isn’t a criticism of him, just proof the Academy needs to diversify)

He talked about going to jazz school, and dropping out because of how abusive it was. When people told him about Whiplash he was blown away because he couldn’t imagine anyone accurately capturing how toxic that environment is, so he cast his vote to nominate it.

Then he talked about how deeply Birdman resonated with him, as a story about a 1980’s superhero actor trying to be taken seriously as a real artist, and how he couldn’t believe anyone could capture THAT either, so he campaigned for it to get the nomination as well.

And it occurred to me that if movies are getting nominated for Oscars because they reflect the extremely niche life experience of people like “actors who played popular 1980’s superheroes”, the only way to really diversify the nominations is to diversify the Academy

I think it’s great that there was a movie that captured the feeling of trying to be taken seriously after playing a famous superhero in your youth so accurately that the guy who played Robocop was moved by it!

But it underscores how important it is to build an Academy with a broad range of life experience if you want to see movies that sincerely reflect a broad range of life experiences being nominated.