Razzie Head Creates Oscar's Evil Twin

Tim Lammers, Staff Writer

EVERYTHING OSCARS

Sure, Oscar has been shining brightly in the spotlight for the past 71 years. But for the last 20, his evil twin has been lurking in the shadows.

And his name is Razzie.

Known as the official statue dishonoring the worst in movies, the "Razzie" is the product of the "Golden Raspberry Foundation." The movie razzing draws laughs from journalists and movie fans alike every year, but perhaps the funniest thing about the awards is that the whole thing started by accident.

Razzies The dishonors began in 1980, when UCLA Film and TV School grad John Wilson had a couple of dozen friends over for an Oscar party. After the golden statuettes were handed out, Wilson and company completely improvised their own ceremony, which singled out the worst in film.

Wilson said the objective of the night was really nothing more than just plain fun -- but then something strange started to happen.

"I sent a press release after the fact, and one paper picked it up," Wilson said in a recent interview. "The following year, two papers and four radio stations grabbed it -- the third year UPI, the fourth CNN, and it just snowballed and has gotten out of hand since then.

"Certainly, when I started it I thought it was very funny, but I don't think I realized for the first couple of years the possible international interest in the thing."

And with the interest in the foundation growing, so too has the foundation itself. Approaching 500 members, the group consists of anybody who wants to participate. For the most part, the membership ranges from industry professionals to movie journalists to devoted movie fans.

Razzies Among the more prominent members is filmmaker John Waters, which personally strikes a funny bone with the founding father.

"I'm most pleased with him because he deliberately sets out to make bad movies," Wilson says with a laugh.

But not everybody has Waters' sense of humor. By and large, Wilson says, the entertainment industry pretends that the Razzies don't exist.

Famed actors like Faye Dunaway have thrown "Mommie Dearest"-type tantrums because of them (oddly enough, for being razzed for "Mommie Dearest"). And major targets like Sylvester Stallone simply wish that the awards would just go away.

Whatever reaction he gets to the dishonors, Wilson wants to make one thing clear: The motivation behind the Razzie awards is anything but mean-spirited.

"The undercurrent of this is that it is not meant to be hurtful, it's meant to be humorous," he says. "The expression I like to use is that 'We're not a slap in the face, we're more a banana peel on the floor.' We're not saying, 'How dare you?' in most of these cases; we're saying, 'Why would you?'

"Take someone like Robin Williams, for example. He's a beloved actor and Academy Award winner. Why would he make two wretched things like 'Bicentennial Man' and 'Jakob the Liar?' What's wrong with being funny? He has an enormous gift for that. Why does he have to be serious?"

The Making Of A Razzie

The award itself consists of a gold spray-painted plastic raspberry atop a mangled Super 8 film reel. Each trophy now has an inflation-adjusted estimated street value of about $4.27.

And while that's obviously an embarrassingly low value to place on anybody's work, there have been a few people over the years who have not only accepted the award, but specifically requested it.

Cosby "The most prominent one is Bill Cosby," Wilson says. "He made a picture (that) he himself trashed before it opened called 'Leonard, Part 6.' He was nominated in three categories -- for writing, producing and starring in it -- and won all three."

But accepting the awards was not nearly enough for Cosby. He arranged for the awards to be custom-made of 24-carat gold and Italian marble at the studio's expense, Wilson says.

"He then took it on the old Johnny Carson 'Tonight Show' and bragged that he swept the Razzie Awards," Wislon says with a laugh. "That was a wonderful moment."

If that wasn't monumental enough, in 1997, Hollywood screenwriter Brian Helgeland accepted his award, too, for writing Kevin Costner's "The Postman." But what made the situation unique was that he won an Oscar the same week for co-writing "L.A. Confidential."

"He said he was going to put both of the awards on his mantle to remind himself of the two ends of the Hollywood experience," Wilson tells me.

The crowning moment, however, came when the all-time top Razzie winner -- "Showgirls" director Paul Verhoeven -- actually showed up at the ceremonies to accept his award. Wilson says the filmmaker took the razzing in stride.

"It think it's partly because he's European. I think Europeans tend to have a lighter sense of humor than American filmmakers," Wilson says. "He was able to take it in stride, have fun with it and accept it in the spirit in which it was intended."

Of course, not everybody shares Verhoeven's enthusiasm. In fact, some of the biggest detractors this year are the fans of the movies nominated.

Among those firing distasteful e-mails Wilson's way are devotees of "Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace" (a worst-picture nominee) and a Kevin Costner fan group (he's nominated for worst actor this year and worst actor of the century).

Phantom Menace There have been e-mails from worst-picture nominee "The Blair Witch Project" fans, too. But those have come in the form of both criticism and praise.

"The people who saw it before the hype went into the stratosphere thought it was a fairly original film. And the people who saw it after the hype -- after it was on the covers of Time and Newsweek -- don't get what all the fuss is about," Wilson says.

"Personally, I'd say on its own merits, if you separate it from the hype, I don't think it's a dreadful movie. It was very cleverly marketed, I have to give it that."

Whether or not the fans are upset about "Blair Witch's" worst-picture nod, it apparently doesn't seem to matter to Haxan Films, the company behind the project. Wilson got an e-mail from them, too.

"They suggested that (the film's producers, as well as co-writers/directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez) might attend the ceremony," Wilson says. "What possible harm could it do to them? And given the demographic that the film appealed to, they would probably look cool in the eyes of the moviegoers." (Full List of Nominees)

Setting Himself Up For A Fall?

As a film-school grad and a viewer of more than 4,000 movies, no one can really dispute Wilson's right to be the head "RAZZberry." But if he were to get his druthers and make a film himself one day, would he be able to show that he has learned from everybody else's mistakes?

It all depends on whether the industry would give him a chance to do that in the first place.

"I've had several ideas over the years, but it's just that real life gets in the way," says Wilson, who is both a husband and a father. "It would be interesting if I were to announce that I was the one who does the Razzies and put a script out there to see if anyone would touch it. That would be an interesting experience."

This year's Razzies will be handed out the day before the Oscars, March 25 in Hollywood.

--Additional reporting by Bill Carlson

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