Donald Trump could be most Oscar-worthy president

ANALYSIS/OPINION

Thus the annual dance spins for yet another round:

Who will win? Will the best films and performances be rewarded? Will politics play a role in who takes home the golden statuettes on Sunday evening?

And will the host, a black man, weigh in on yet another dearth of persons of color being excluded from the major categories?

The answer to all — as ’tis every year — is yes.

Film criticism, like the appreciation of any other art form, is a necessarily subjective proposition. And when a body like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doles out its annual Oscars, it is also, by definition, an individual exercise of casting a ballot.

It is, in other words, democracy at work, in a year when Americans of all stripes — not just those in AMPAS — will head to the polls to choose their next leader as the final leg of an arduous, protracted process that began hours after the 2014 midterms.

Much like electing a president, selecting the best of what filmmakers offered in 2015 requires that individual voices necessarily fall silent in favor of the majority.

When the envelopes are opened on Sunday evening at the Dolby Theatre — just as when all ballots are cast on Election Day in November — the modality of a republican-style democracy will have done its work.

The people will have spoken.

I mean not to equate here the far graver import of selecting the next leader of the free world with the Academy membership voting for its favorites, only to point out that, in some small way, the Oscars represent the best and worst that Western democracy has to offer in opinion-construction, whether it be for political leadership or artistic excellence. It makes a firm case against tyrannical decrees on what — or whom — is best.

Someone once said we get the candidates we deserve — and so it is with this year’s best picture nominees, most of them, naturally, touted and supported by publicity armies and their lobbyists vying to shout the loudest rather than those whose message is the truest or most intrinsically artistically valuable. (In this way, Hollywood and Washington are not so different.)

The crop of 2015 Oscar contenders is a strong, if not exemplary, field, despite the notable absence of such outstanding fare as the superb “Sicario,” the nihilistic drug war border drama that was my personal pick for the single best film of the year, and other contenders I feel were slighted, including “Straight Outta Compton” (thus lending immense credence to the #OscarsSoWhite campaign) and smaller, smarter films like “Ex Machina” and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” the single best film made about teenagers — and mortality — since the halcyon days of John Hughes.

Of the eight films nominated for best picture, my pick goes to “Spotlight,” the ensemble true-life story of how the Boston Globe blew the lid off the Catholic Church’s continued enforced silence upon those parishioners who were molested by child abusers who happened to also be priests. Director Tom McCarthy, a self-described lapsed Catholic, and Josh Singer, a Jew, collaborated on a screenplay that is equal parts detective story, societal melodrama and old-fashioned reporter procedural of which Howard Hawks would be proud.

Every year I ponder if the eventual best picture winner will be “remembered” in 10 or 20 years. For every “Schindler’s List” or “Silence of the Lambs” there is a “Chicago” or a “Gladiator,” the latter a film I both loathed for its banality and for the reception it received from the Academy in 2000 over “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich.”

Maybe the problem is there are simply too many candidates, be they of the filmic or political varieties. Ever since the Academy expanded the vying number of best picture nominees from five to eight, seemingly lesser aspirants make the list. While I certainly enjoyed “Brooklyn,” and its star Saoirse Ronan is terrific as the young Irish woman struggling to make it in 1950s America, I felt there were far better films to have rounded out the top eight. “Grandma,” with Lily Tomlin, for one, or “Black Mass” with a magnificent Johnny Depp.

And hate me if you want, but the ongoing appeal of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” beyond its unquestionably competent and exciting direction by George Miller and draw-dropping stunt work, continues to escape me. As does the acclaim bestowed upon “The Big Short,” a film that angered me deeply, but for all the wrong reasons.

But that’s just me. Fortunately for those who disagree, I am not in AMPAS and thus have no say.

Studies have shown that radio stations that have “more variety” actually enjoy far less audience loyalty than those that crank out the same songs over and over again. This is why, after all, the crunch “pop” itself is derived from the more ungainly, less-seemly sounding, term “popular music.” Too many choices breeds audience fatigue.

And so in D.C. — where I live and work — for the past seeming eon, we have endured the race of “popular politics” at work. From 17 Republicans we are down to I forget how many — let’s say three likelies and the few also-rans who will be vanquished next Tuesday. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton spars with Bernard Sanders to be the liberal standard-bearer into the next decade.

But the strangest, most compelling tale of them all is that of a brash New York businessman and reality TV star who dared to take on the whole process with his fiery mouth and insult-laden tirades against his fellow contenders, labeling them “losers” and far more that is not printable here, and effectively shearing away whatever veneer of gentlemanliness the far most seasoned establishment candidates have heretofore clung.

Donald Trump, in short, has turned politics into entertainment.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Mr. Trump, a billionaire personality unto himself, has turned American political theater into American political farce with himself cast not as the joker but as the court jester decrying not only that Uncle Sam has no clothes, but that he should have shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue.

That Mr. Trump’s ascendancy has attained such fire — winning two of the most important of the three GOP caucuses and primaries — at the same time that Tinseltown will gather to crown its prime screen achievement for the year is especially apropos. Mr. Trump is the god-emperor of his own self-crafted cult of personality. He was almost literally born to be the first president made for television.

I met Mr. Trump very briefly last year at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In a crush of other newsies, his publicist and/or handler, informed of my outlet, told me “he loves The Times” and that I would be his final interview before he entered the ballroom — and that I would have 30 seconds.

The reporter before me, predictably, inquired of his presidential ambitions.

“We’re looking at it,” he responded, his hair maintaining that impossible strive against gravity.

I had one chance. As a native of New Jersey, I asked of the brouhaha of Mr. Trump suing to take his name off of the two Atlantic City casinos that still bore his moniker. Thankfully, his eyes brightened.

“Let me tell you about Atlantic City! They made a lot of bad decisions down there.”

Never mind that in the second Republican debate, I heard him parrot nearly the exact same response to the moderator.

In that limited interaction, surrounded by hundreds of gawkers, I found Mr. Trump to be pleasant and personable. This does not take away from the fact that he has made some rather execrable statements throughout his campaign.

How much of it he himself believes is anyone’s guess. But it’s been a lesson in that Mr. Trump the candidate and “The Donald” the character are about as one and the same as Batman and Bruce Wayne — neither the real nor the mirror image, but both controlled by the other as needed.

This may, however unlikely, in fact be the year that a TV personality — unlike the more refined movie persona of Ronald Reagan — at last melds Hollywood and Washington into one. Whether or not that proves to be the case come November, whether it be the presidential aspirants or the 10 best picture contenders, one thing is perfectly clear:

Maybe this really is the best we can do.

Fortunately, unlike with the upcoming election, the course of human history depends not on who takes Oscar home on Sunday.

Eric Althoff is the Entertainment Editor for The Washington Times. He will be reporting from the red carpet at the Oscars Sunday.