by David Fairhurst
Okay, I think I may have invented some of those. But still, if there isn’t an award named for Samantha’s husband on "Bewitched" (best actor in a role created by another actor with the same first name, maybe?), there oughta be. Because, honestly, there just aren’t enough awards for actors. Why should the very people who bring so much pleasure into our lives have to toil in obscurity, without reward or recognition, while those shallow, narcissistic teachers and social workers get all the glory?
All right, you get the point: Am I the only actor who finds the entertainment industry’s relentless self-congratulation embarrassing? Is there any industry on earth that spends as much time patting itself on the back as show business? Most of what’s rewarded is so frivolous to begin with and most of the recipients are already so well compensated—and love what they do so much they’d gladly do it for free—that handing out awards for it is like the frosting on the frosting.
The industry’s awards obsession is particularly acute here at Back Stage (my employer, so I have to be careful), where the minutiae of awards history and the maneuvering of nominators, nominees, and judges is dissected and analyzed with a zeal that borders on the fetishistic. Here, let me show you (the details below have been changed to protect my job):
“Hey, Frank. Who won the 1984 Drama Desk Award for outstanding featured actress in a musi—”
“It was a tie between Catherine Cox for ‘Baby’ and Lila Kedrova for ‘Zorba,’ over Laura Dean for ‘Doonesbury,’ Bonnie Koloc for ‘The Human Comedy,’ and Marni Nixon for ‘Taking My Turn,’ although, interestingly, it was Kedrova who took the Tony that year, while Cox wasn’t even nominated, having been snubbed in favor of her co-star Liz Callaway, who was—”
“Okay, yeah, great, thanks.”
See what I mean?
Despite having worked in the industry onstage and off for more than a decade, I’d never even heard of “awards season” before I got a job at Back Stage. For me (and for most actors, I suspect), springtime meant many things, all of them about finding work: the waning days of both pilot season and summer-stock casting, ending that annual bonanza of jobs; the arrival of new opportunities at regional nonprofits as they announce their coming seasons; the unending chore of tracking industry personnel moves; along with local auditions and all the other things on an actor’s plate. I was way too busy to think about anything else. And aside from maybe passing along a good joke by Steve or Billy or Ellen at the Oscars, not once have I ever engaged in a conversation with fellow actors about awards or, God forbid, “awards season.”
In fact, I’ve long felt that most entertainment industry awards are far more important to the people who give them than they are to the people who receive them. Which might explain why so many actors’ acceptance speeches seem so robotic. Actors by their nature are emotional people, yet genuinely joyful Halle Berry moments are rare on awards shows. Most acceptance speeches involve the dry recitation of names—agents, publicists, lawyers, accountants—with all the passion of a board meeting of Jennifer Lopez Inc. Why do the winning actors all seem so bored while the winner of best documentary short subject looks like he just hit Mega Millions?
To call awards an industry obsession, then, is not quite accurate. For every award voted on by people who actually work in the business (the SAG Awards, for example, which, tellingly, feature the most heartfelt acceptance speeches), there are several others presented by that ancillary industry: entertainment journalism. Everybody, it seems, wants to feel like they’re in show business, including the people who write about it. Scratch a film or theatre critic and you’ll often find a former, struggling, or wannabe actor who, between reviewing assignments, hammers away at that screenplay he hopes to sell for a million dollars so he can finally kiss the newsroom goodbye forever (says the guy whose bio reads “actor/writer/copy editor”). And what better way to feel part of the biz than to invent an award, rent a hall, hold a ceremony, and schmooze with celebs?
While the organizations handing out awards treat the process with the gravity usually reserved for the White House Situation Room, most actors appreciate how ridiculous it all is. Chris Rock, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly before hosting the Academy Awards in 2005, summed it up nicely: “Awards for art are fucking idiotic. Unless two people are doing the exact same thing, how can you really say somebody’s better than the other? If Jamie Foxx is doing ‘Ray’ and Clint Eastwood’s doing ‘Ray,’ then you can kind of judge the two.”
I once heard a justification for awards mania claiming that since actors have to struggle so mightily in their careers, they deserve to be recognized for their efforts as much as possible—a rationale that ignores the fact that those who take home the trophies are not exactly “struggling” anymore, and that no matter how awesome that gold-plated statue or hunk of Lucite looks on the mantel, it’s nothing compared to the reward they’ve already received. And I’m not talking about money or fame or anything so tangible.
I’ve played dozens of roles in hundreds of performances over the years (and just so you don’t think this column is sour grapes, yes, even I once won an award), and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I came offstage feeling truly satisfied—like we’d all been playing at the top of our game, that we’d meshed as a cast as never before to do a show as close to perfect as possible. It’s a rare, exhilarating moment of creative alchemy that happens only in theatre and other team sports, and something that those involved will never forget. I can recall every one of those five performances as vividly as if it happened yesterday. They are the proudest moments of my acting career. And I wouldn’t trade one of them for all the trophies in Hollywood.