The State of Oscar. 012920. Rebuilding The Oscar Season (Pt 1)

One of the great movie experiences I had in 2019 was Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut. Francis Coppola did a recut of the film, after the original, the Redux, and however many TV and airplane cuts, and you could see in the film that he had opened to the door to changing every single moment of the film. It wasn't just the ending that had changed so many times. It wasn't The French Section demanding to be seen after having been completely disappeared. In this cut, Coppola wasn't fixing anything. He took what he shot and the work of all the great people who had touched the film over the years and reconsidered every scene and the overall concept of the film down to the core.

After a shorter Oscar season, which still seems too long to many who are living in it — as opposed to working it — and the re-expansion back to late February due next year, it seems to me that this is the moment to take a look at the whole thing from a distance.

How would you build Oscar season today, if every option (othe…