THB #651: El Fuego Triste

I was planning on doing the second part of my 2025 projections today… but it’s going to have to wait. Real life happened. And writing about what might happen next with Netflix or other stalwarts of the industry seems… at this moment… unimportant.

Today was the most significant day on the most significant week of the Oscar season before nominations are announced. And now, it is a week of mourning.

The only good news is that, given the scale of this horror show, relatively few actual lives have been lost. But 15,832 acres burning so far in Pacific Palisades alone. And that is just the biggest of 3 major areas on fire. 135,679 LADWP customers without power.

I didn’t really want to send my teenager off to school today, but his school is near downtown LA and is still well clear of the fire. And as his day started, it occurred to me that while there was no danger of a fire where he is, what if there was some other emergency? How much of Los Angeles’ infrastructure is available to do what it does every day in the 2nd most populated city in America?

I moved to Los Angeles in - gulp - 1988. There have really been 2 events that changed the face of this city. The Rodney King-inspired riots in 1992 and the Northridge earthquake in 1994. There have been a lot of events that were of major significance in the 30 years since, including what was named The Camp Fire in 2018 documented brilliantly in Bring Your Own Brigade… but none with quite the expansive nature of Northridge and The Riots… and it feels like, the fires if this moment, which have not really expanded so much as sparked in multiple locations, first by the ocean and turning up in multiple inland locations.

It’s hard to tell what these things will become as you are in the midst of them. I just spoke to a friend who is not in an evacuation zone, but close enough to be preparing in anticipation of perhaps being evacuated. I was having a similar conversation about the same thing with another friend yesterday at just about this time and their family was evacuated within an hour of that chat. So it’s still a moving target.

The Oscar push, which was loaded to the max this week, has evolved from inconvenienced to seriously considering the morality of celebrating while all this is happening… not just to Los Angeles, but to the rhetorical Us. Malibu got a relative break this time, but The Palisades are just as laden with the industry successful, if not more so. And Altadena, which has become one of the hip places to land outside of the ever-hip Pasadena.

I would love to see The Academy delay the start of Oscar nominations voting until next Tuesday or so. It’s not their normal response. I had this fight all the way back in 2003, when The Academy still listened, when the Iraq War started just before The Oscars that year. They wouldn’t push a week. Show went okay… but they should have pushed.

Nominate from January 14th to 18th, announce on the 21st. Next event is Feb 10 (the lunch). Everyone can handle this.

Give this all a little space. Respect.

Critics Choice did the right thing…not sure if they really had a choice, as the show is at the Santa Monica Airport. But they/we moved from this next Sunday, the 12th, to Sunday the 26th. So the group loses the illusion of influencing the Oscar voting. (The nominations are scheduled to close before the awards show was set on the 12th anyway.)

And as much as I hate to be a strategic ass, handled well, Critics Choice could make a big step forward as the Globes killer by making the show a tribute and a real honoring of the industry. Joey Berlin has done a remarkable job building this organization and getting it on TV… but it/we are not taken very seriously. Enough respect to participate. Not enough to become the #2 event of the season. This is an opportunity.

And if The Academy were really smart, they would build something quick and emotional to take advantage of the moment as well.

But any such effort would need to be, however strategically smart, heartfelt and not half-ass or it could do the opposite and be a black eye. The community is vulnerable. It won’t be funny in the next 3 weeks. It won’t be comfortable. It will still be tragic. It will still be a loose nerve… and that is even if things don’t get any worse.

My first instinct is to suggest that these fires will redefine the Oscar race… but we still have an inauguration coming. I’m not interested in chewing on this too hard today. But The Season of the Freak™ is still freaky… gloriously freaky… sadly freaky…

And today, it is all too human.

I’m going to see Se7en in IMAX now… to cheer up a little. And you?

Until tomorrow…