Are The Emmy's Over Yet

You’ve got to feel bad for the people in Hollywood. It’s been almost two weeks now since they had an awards show to celebrate their own magnificence. By now, they must all going through some kind of withdrawal.

I have to confess, I’ve never understood the appeal of award shows. Taste is an individual thing, so why would anyone care what some committee likes? If the Grammys decide to give an award to say, Nora Jones, am I supposed to throw out all my Dropkick Murphys CDs and replace them with her unique brand of heartfelt, bittersweet claptrap?

Look at the Academy Awards. I don’t get why anyone would watch it, and yet it’s like the Super Bowl for women and stylishly gay men. People actually have March Madness-like Oscar pools in their offices and get together at each other’s houses to watch the show. What are those parties like? Four hours of “Ssh! Quiet everyone, quiet! The winner of ‘Best Achievement in Sound Editing’ is going to start thanking people!”

Besides, the people who get the most adulation at these shows are the actors and actresses. With all due respect, is there anything less deserving of an award than acting? Truthfully, how hard is it? One of the reasons Miracle was such a great movie was that they used real hockey players, and they were believable at acting like…hockey players. How would it have worked out if they instead hired the cast of Mystic River and tried to teach them to play hockey? A hell of a lot funnier than Mystic River, that’s for sure.

Frankly, acting is something anyone can do. I’d like to see Sean Penn try to be more convincing than me calling in sick to work every Red Sox Opening Day. Phil Hellmuth can make a the best poker players in the world fold when he’s holding a 2 and a 7 off-suit, but Ben Affleck, an actor, couldn’t bluff David Schwimmer on “Celebrity Poker Showdown.” And there’s no one in Hollywood who could out-act Bruins legend Wayne Cashman, whose wife never knew he was a drunk until one night when came home sober. Now that’s acting.

I stopped paying attention to who won what Oscar the year they gave the Best Picture award to Dances With Wolves instead of Goodfellas. A couple of years later, the same maniacs said Shakespeare in Love was a better movie than Saving Private Ryan, and for me it was “Fredo, you‘re nothing to me now.” But my major beef with the Academy Awards is that sports movies never win anything.

I try to see every sports movie that looks at all promising (which is to say any one that doesn’t star a dog that shoots baskets), but it isn’t easy. I have two young sons, so most of the movies I go to are about computer-animated superheroes, boy wizards or talking sea sponges.

So on the rare occasions that my lovely wife and I spring for a baby sitter and leave the heirs to my dominion at home in order to head out to the local googleplex, I have to be selective about what I see. I like stupid, sophomoric comedies as much as the next guy, but not at the theater. Stuff is just naturally less funny when the guy next to you won’t shut up, the guy behind you won’t stop kicking your seat, and the usher won’t let you bring beer in. The DVD was invented so I can sit in my den, drunker than Wayne Cashman watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and laughing until my spleen hurts.

As a general rule, in order for me to actually go to a theater to see a movie, it has to have one of four things:

1. A helicopter (all action movies have helicopters)
2. A sword
3. A laser beam
4. Sports.

In other words, no Kate Hudson, no Sandra Bullock, no “…based on John Grisham’s bestseller,” and never, ever starring anyone from “Friends“.

But mostly I like sports movies, and the last twenty years or so have been a golden age of sports movies in Hollywood. Slap Shot. Rudy. Hoosiers. The Rookie. Remember the Titans. Miracle. All of them gems. But no one who hands out the awards seems to care. The last sports movie to get nominated was Field of Dreams back in 1989. The last one to win anything was Rocky in 1976.

So this year, Hollywood finally ends the drought by honoring Million Dollar Baby, a film about…Foxy Boxing. I guess the great hot oil wrestling movie still waits to be filmed.

I was skeptical about a female boxing movie, but Million Dollar Baby won every award and the critics loved it. Plus it had Clint Eastwood, who, in spite of his Bridges of Madison County temporary insanity, still makes you think he might pull out the Magnum and gun down a couple of perps. It had Hillary Swank and her potential hotness. It had Morgan Freeman in the all-important sports movie role of “Mysterious Older Black Man Who Gives Wisdom and Spiritual Guidance“ (see Bagger Vance, James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams and Charles S. Dutton in Rudy).

But I’d forgotten one important point. If the critics love a movie, it’s either pretentious, incomprehensible baloney or so depressing it makes you want to drive into a bridge abutment on the way home. Or in the case of Million Dollar Baby, both. I’m not giving anything away here, by now everybody knows that the ending doesn’t exactly make you walk out of the theater humming the theme song. And I don’t demand that every boxing movie end with Talia Shire yelling “You did it!” in slow motion. But pardon me if I go out for a night’s entertainment hoping to be entertained.

So I’m planning on skipping the Oscars again next year. Let me know if the Farrelly brothers’ Red Sox movie wins Best Picture.