When I asked you guys recently what you wanted more of, one of the most frequent responses was “Ask Drew,” and our video team was enormously grateful to hear it. Those guys do great work, and they work really hard turning out hours and hours of content every week.s
One of the things that I think is fun about doing this show is the tightrope aspect of it. We endeavor to shoot exactly one take of the entire thing. That's the whole point of how the questions are selected. The video team sees them, they pick the ones we read on the air, and I see them for the first time as you see me reading them. When we do it this way, it can create some interesting moments like the one that happens in this week's episode, where I answer a question, then turn around and read the next question and it's pretty much directly tied to the answer I just gave. No way the video guys knew what I'd say, so it's fun to see how it worked out.
Ava Duvernay's name gets bandied about a bit during the episode, so I guess I'll quickly address the idea of the Oscar “snub” this morning. The reason I don't cover awards in general is because there are so many reasons for people to get outraged about things, so many great films and great artists who were never given an Oscar for anything, and in the end, I just can't get worked up about it. I know it means box-office and it changes careers, and there's no avoiding that. But I'd rather just talk about the movies and the people who made them and not act like the validation of one small voting base, full of people who all have complicated agendas, means anything about art in the long run. Duvernay is a talented filmmaker who deserves a chance to do anything she'd like in the studio system. I have no idea if she'd ever want to play that game, but if so, I hope she gets the chance, and I'll bet she'd be great at it.
We also had reason to talk about what I presume is going to be one of this year's most exciting events, “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and considering how much I enjoy taking any opportunity possible to talk about “Mad Max: Fury Road,” that is okay by me. I like that this week's edition of “Movie God” is actually an inversion of the game, and I think while I was a little bit cornered about my answer, it's still the right one.
As always, if you have a question for us, send it to video@hitfix.com and not to me. We'll be back with our next edition once I get back from Sundance.