'They have no excuse to be as bad as they are'
The Golden Raspberry awards aren't just a refreshing antidote to the Oscars, they can help sell films too. John Marrs talks to the Razzies' founder, John Wilson
John Marrs
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 February 2009 12.22 GMT
"Cremating cinematic crap for 29 years" may not be a motto the Academy Awards will be clamouring to use any time soon, but it works just fine for the Razzies.
Designed as the antithesis to the Oscars, the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation has been mocking Hollywood's below-par cinematic output for almost three decades.
Created by John Wilson in 1980 as a whimsical finish to his annual Oscars party, word of mouth has enabled it to become an annual fixture on the awards calendar ? albeit one that few actors either appreciate or attend. As one-time Razzies nominee Michael Caine once put it: "They're the pustule on the butt of Hollywood."
"We are promoting something the industry does not appreciate," explains an unrepentant Wilson, 54, a Los Angeles-based freelance film trailer copywriter. "They try and ignore us like a fart in a church. We focus on big-budget, big-name, well-known movies because they have no excuse to be as bad as they are."
A shortlist of these bad films are decided upon by some 650 paid-up Razzie members in 19 countries ? including a handful of celebrities Wilson won't name. This year, it culminated in a ceremony on 21 February, the day before the Academy Awards, with Mike Myers's Love Guru emerging as the big, erm, winner.
"I like to think we can take credit for some performers who've won a Razzie and then never graced the screen again," says Wilson. "Sofia Coppola received the most votes ever from members for The Godfather: Part III and never appeared in another film. So she turned to writing and directing and won an Oscar for Lost in Translation.
"We also saved Michael Caine's career. He was nominated for Jaws 4 and he hasn't done anything truly wretched since," he notes.
But the lampooning and lambasting of celluloid duds can often have an unexpected side-effect ? they can reignite a spark of interest in the object of a Razzie's ridicule. "Showgirls was rereleased by its studio, who promoted it on their posters as the winner of an unprecedented seven Razzies," says Wilson. "And one of the 27 writers of Catwoman ? which went home with four awards ? attended the Razzies and thanked us for boosting its DVD sales."
"Winning a Razzie probably boosts DVD rentals because of the curiosity factor," says Stuart Kemp, the Hollywood Reporter's UK bureau chief. "People will actually want to see just how bad it was to merit a Razzie."
Helen Cowley, editor of DVD rental subscription service LOVEFiLM, agrees. "The Razzies make people aware of films they wouldn't have gone to the cinema to see," she explains. "Gigli (nine nominations, six wins) was absolutely huge for us ? if subscribers hadn't wasted £10 to see it at the cinema, they rented it from us. The Razzies get people taking about films."
Halle Berry's attendance at the 2005 Golden Raspberry awards ceremony (she was named worst actress for Catwoman, three years after winning a best actress Oscar for Monster's Ball) was a landmark Razzie moment.
"Her speech was a parody of her Oscar speech ? it was priceless," says Wilson. "Halle is the perfect example of how to deal with winning a Razzie ? admit it, embrace it, enjoy it and move on. Don't get irritable, ignore it or dismiss it as irrelevant."
"Winning [a Razzie] should be seen as a cool badge of honour," says Ted Casablanca, celebrity gossip columnist from E! News. "It's a mistake for an actor not to endorse it. Razzies aren't a kiss of death for a career ? it puts actors who may have slipped people's minds back on the map. It's a lot worse being forgotten about."
But not all actors are quite as amenable as Halle. Sylvester Stallone, nominated a record 30 times, reportedly left a voicemail on Wilson's answerphone, asking why he was picking on him. And Ben Affleck broke his award live on TV when presented with it.
But Wilson denies the Razzies do any harm. "We're funny, not cruel," he says, "but I guess if you win one, you probably think we're horrible. We poke fun; we're the banana peel on the floor, not the slap in the face. We're not saying '**** you'; we're asking 'why?'. Oscar night is all about air-kissing and back-slapping, so it terrifies the industry that there are people like us out there."
But Stuart Kemp downplays the Razzies effect in Tinseltown. "Hollywood doesn't take an award celebrating failure seriously at all," he says. "As a film community, it takes the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the Guild awards seriously because those nods celebrate craft and skills.
"Any industry is about the people who operate in it and for it, so it's not a bad thing to expect people to have a sense of humour. But people working in the movies take their responsibility to produce good work seriously. So when it goes wrong, some are offended by ridicule," continues Kemp.
Wilson adds: "Sally Field famously said during her 1979 Oscar speech: 'You like me, you really like me!' We're saying to our winners, 'We don't like you, we really don't like you.'"
After the self-congratulatory scenes of Sunday night, there is, undeniably, some value in that.
