Samuel L. Jackson has, like so many of us, had it with the Oscars.
The Oscars do not, actually, define the best of the film industry, although they do try. Every year since the first ceremony in 1926, there has been what is now dubbed the Oscars snub. Some snubs keep us up at night. Michael Stuhlbarg comes to mind, who should have won best supporting actor for his performance in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, but did not even get a nomination. Most people just complain about their personal Oscar snubs on Twitter and to their friends who pretend to listen, and celebs rarely speak about them because they are, of course, trying not to talk sh*t about the award they hope to win one day.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Samuel L. Jackson, who has yet to win an Oscar although he received an honorary Oscar earlier this year, called the Oscars a “popularity contest,” a lesson he learned when he did not win for Pulp Fiction (he lost to Ed Wood’s Martin Landau). He also said that he thinks his closest shot at winning was for his performance in 2012’s Django Unchained. “Django was probably my best shot because it’s the most evil character I’ve ever played and they generally reward Black people for playing horrendous s—-,” Jackson told LA Times. Jackson was not nominated for the film, but his co-star Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor. Jackson’s critique of the Oscars continued and turned into a sharp critique of modern Hollywood:
This is the night Hollywood celebrates fucking Hollywood. That thing that we used to have when I was young, watching it and wondering, ‘What am I going to say when I get mine’ was the glamor of it all, the extravagance, the mystique that is Hollywood. Some of that’s gone. You’ve got movie stars who are influencers or people who live out loud, so you know way more about them than you used to know. But it should still be a celebration that you did something that’s great. Like I still say, there should be an award for the movie that made the most money.
Basically, Jackson would rather have fun than chase an Oscar. “I was never going to let the Oscars be a measure of my success or failure as an actor,” he told LA Times. “My yardstick of success is my happiness: Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? I’m not doing statue-chasing movies. You know, ‘If you do this movie, you’ll win an Oscar.’ No, thanks. I’d rather be Nick Fury. Or having fun being Mace Windu with a lightsaber in my hand.”
I hope he’s also having fun doing Capital One commercials with Spike Lee and Charles Barkley because I have fun watching them.
