Just Cause/Billy Madison/The Brady Bunch Movie/Mr. Payback

Roger Ebert - Host: [discussing the omission of "Hoop Dreams" from the 1995 Academy Awards nominations] Y'know, Gene, I was talking to Barbara Kopple, who won two Academy Awards...

Gene Siskel - Host: A great documentary filmmaker.

Roger Ebert - Host: And she said, "This committee is in love with talking heads and stock footage." And that's exactly what they are. These old-fashioned television-oriented films, with battleships bombing the beaches of Normandy while some deep voice says how many troops went ashore. They are not interested in living, breathing documentaries, and there's another problem, and that is: The committee that picks these documentaries is volunteers, mostly retired people, not most of them documentarians at all. But, they have four hours free, two nights a week, for eleven weeks, to see 64 documentaries, almost 100 hours of documentaries. So they go night after night, and they get to know each other, and they chat, and they arrive, and they leave. And until this year, they had a chairman. This year, the woman who was the chairman stepped aside for the year because she had a film that was in the running, and what do you know? They nominated it. It's the Stockholm Syndrome. They're so friendly, that of course they wanted to do her a favor. And every year, if you go back year after year and look at the nominees, you'll find one or two nominees that are FISHY, because the people that manipulate the committee are trying to get their pictures nominated. This situation stinks, it's rotten, and until the Academy reforms it, they have shame on their name.

Gene Siskel - Host: But Roger, let me just throw some of their objections back, 'cause I know that they're gonna...

Roger Ebert - Host: Okay.

Gene Siskel - Host: ...be listening and taking notes and everything. Number one, they're gonna say, uh, every branch gets to vote for its own work.

Roger Ebert - Host: Yeah, but this branch doesn't. The documentarians don't have a documentary branch.

Gene Siskel - Host: Okay. The next thing they're gonna say is, you Roger, and you, Gene, have not seen the 64 we voted on.

Roger Ebert - Host: Well, I've seen ONE of them that they nominated, and nobody smart enough to ties his shoes would feel that that film is better than "Hoop Dreams".

Gene Siskel - Host: And that was a pretty good film, by the way.

Roger Ebert - Host: And it was a pretty good film.

Gene Siskel - Host: It's predictable: They resent success.