14 DAY TRIAL // Actress and screenwriter Julie Delpy, who is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars 2014 for her work on “Before Midnight,” isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade, even if that means going up against the very awards gala that might see her crowned a winner tonight.
In a new and very scathing interview cited by the Daily Mail, the 44-year-old French star criticizes the Oscars and the Golden Globes and, with them, the entire Hollywood, which, in her opinion, is run by the Weinstein brothers.
They have killed independent films and, while their intentions are no doubt honorable, this means that they’re putting out only poor-quality pictures, Delpy argues. She actually uses another term for “poor quality pictures,” but we can’t reproduce it here. It has to do with number 2 when you go to the bathroom, just so you know.
The bottom line is that Hollywood is ruining cinema. To make matters even worse, the Oscars have come to mean absolutely nothing because, if you have the right sum of money, you can easily secure one such statuette for yourself.
“We have the Golden Globes. If you could see it, you wouldn't believe that there's anything good about it. The same goes for the Oscars. It's 90 per cent white men over 70 who need money because they haven't done anything in a long time. You just need to give them two or three presents and they're in your pocket,” Delpy says.
She says the Oscars “don’t mean anything” to her so the question of the diversity of the voting membership, which includes only a handful of women, isn’t really of any relevance to her. The Oscars are awarded by the AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), whose voting members are overwhelmingly white old males, several undercover investigations have recently revealed.
As for the Weinsteins, the biggest producers in Hollywood right now, Delpy blames them for the death of independent film.
“I think [the Weinsteins] love cinema, but they also like to take a movie and give it an added value, then kill everything left behind. This has a lot to do with the Oscars. In the 90s, there were real independent movies, but they have slowly been crushed by the majors. The minute they take over something, they crush it,” she says.
Before you point out the hypocrisy in her words, because she too has worked in several big budget Hollywood productions, Delpy is well aware of that. She’s the first to call them useless “[expletive],” adding as an afterthought that about 90 percent of Hollywood releases are just that.
Delpy’s chances to win an Oscar won’t suffer from her very passionate new interview because the ballots have already been sent in. The 2014 edition of the Academy Awards takes place tonight at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. It would be interesting if she won, don’t you think?