Then there's the problem that all the cassettes descend on the voters all at once. With this year's 248 eligible feature-length films, that could mean as many as 100 or more videos (not every moviemaker can afford this Oscar campaign perk) to watch in just over six weeks' time -- difficult even without the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

Thanks to this glaring failure, the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes may well be fairer than the Oscars. The time has come to make the judging process as rigorous as the ballot-counting process.

The academy already has taken baby steps in this direction. For instance, it cleaned up the nominating process in its short film and documentary categories. (Sources tell me that, at one point, the situation was so bad that academy members voting on documentaries would arrive at the theater with flashlights, then shine them 15 minutes into the running time of an entrant in a sort of Gong Show-like yea or nay on whether the screening should continue.)

The academy needs to devise a high-tech way of policing its members. Smart cards with photo IDs could ensure that all the movies were screened by each academy voter. Videocassettes and DVDs could feature special chips that tattle on anyone trying to take shortcuts. The videocassettes or DVD could be distributed all year long, as soon as the eligible movies open, in order to space them out for the benefit of voters.

Alternately, there's the most obvious solution of all: demand that voters see the movies in real movie theaters, where big-screen epics will be seen as they deserve to be, and attendance can be taken.

4) Formalize the ballot

A rash of rumors swirls every year about Oscar voting irregularities. These range from unsubstantiated scandals about down-on-their-luck academy members selling their votes to the highest bidding studio, or just handing over their unmarked ballots for promises of employment, to less tawdry tales about assistants voting for the boss, or kids marking up Dad's ballot.

Too much doubt and suspicion already undermine Oscar results. Who hasn't heard the urban legend that Marisa Tomei's name was said by mistake and someone else really won in her best supporting actress category? (Not true.)

Just as in a political election (or for that matter, the recent Screen Actors' Guild debacle), the more safeguards the better, even when it concerns Oscar. The academy should stop letting its members fill out the ballots so informally. Instead, it should set up polling centers around the country and overseas so it can confirm each voter's identity and ensure that each voter fills out his or her ballot. This needs to be done for both nominations and final balloting. Members unable to go to the polls two years in a row would lose their voting status.

5) Justice, Oscar-style

Spokesmen for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences repeatedly tell reporters that its honchos only investigate Oscar wrongdoing if they learn about it, and that in most cases they depend on journalists to alert them to it. But so far this year, despite all the Oscar trash-talking in the media, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences remains near-mute -- save for one "Important Note" published on its official Web site from the board of governors:

"This year as in the past, you may be importuned by advertisements, promotional gifts, dinner invitations and other lobbying tactics in an attempt to solicit your vote.

"Though the crude solicitations that occasionally surfaced in early years seem to be a thing of the past, we would ask each individual Academy member to be on guard against inappropriate attempts to influence your vote, and to register your displeasure with anyone who might make such an attempt.

"The more emphatically that all of us can convey to the industry and the wider public that excellence in filmmaking is the ONLY factor we consider on casting our Academy Award votes, the more reason the world will have to respect our judgment."

Pathetic, no? Time and time again, the academy has fought for its registered trademarks and copyrighted property and broadcast show more fiercely than it ever has for the Oscar process. There are the annual brouhahas over who is daring to sell a statuette, or which advertising is inappropriate. But where are the slapped wrists of those Oscar wannabes who break the rules?

Instead, Oscar's painful punishments are reserved for the messengers in the media. A few reporters covering the Oscar campaigns are privately complaining about being harassed by movie industry moguls with powerful publicity machines, or by Internet columnists, or even by other journalists.

The academy need only look to itself for the reason why there's so much bad publicity surrounding the Oscars right now. It's time for it to name its own version of a special prosecutor: a three-person jury that can act as an ombudsman to investigate and rule on any and all charges of Oscar misdeeds in a timely fashion. Any findings of wrongdoing by the jury would be made public. To avoid conflicts of interest, jury members would recuse themselves from matters involving anyone they've worked with within the last three years.

All complaints of impropriety could be made to the jury, who would know the names of the accusers but not reveal them to the membership at large or the public. The jury also would examine all media on a daily basis for Oscar transgressions and act on them as seriously if they were a formal complaint. Oscar justice could finally be done.

Recent Stories