The creative arts have long had a difficult relationship with money. Somewhere along the line you have to suck up someone with a checkbook, be it the local banking dynasty or a bunch of Patreon subscribers. Most artists don’t have the power to tell their supporters, like Ben Affleck does in ‘Shakespeare In Love’, ‘You can stay as long as you keep quiet. Pay attention, and you will see how genius creates a legend.”
Affleck’s financier timidly refers to himself as “the money,” but such reluctance is rare in real life. Most patrons of the arts use the practice to publicize themselves, promote their favorite causes, or artificially wash their pasts. If they don’t take advantage of it, why would they cough up the money at all? Out of disinterested love for the arts? Go away.
This brings us to Apple, whose angle when it comes to financing movie-making seems simpler: it provides the money for movies and TV shows to be made, and in return is allowed to distribute them exclusively through its subscription-based service. based TV+ streaming service. In-house Apple Studios has a ton of shows and movies planned, but only a handful have been released (“The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray” is the most notable) and none of them have won awards so far.
As it stands, Apple, like many other distributors, pays money to make money. And the better the movies and shows are, the more people subscribe and the more money it makes, so the company should be encouraged to stay out of the way and let the experts do their job the best they can. This all sounds fine.
CODA is the first film distributed by a streaming service to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
IDG
It is of course not that simple. Apple’s investment in TV and film is not only a strategic move, but also a prestige game: Like the Medicis, the company knows that being close to art is an effective way to polish its brand. (Okay, the Medici might not have said it in those words. But they would have understood.) Apple relies on being seen as a hip cultural force. Supporting an Oscar-winning film is a great way to sell more phones.
That’s why I’ve been slightly annoyed – only slightly, not enough to get up and punch someone – by the number of references to “CODA” as the first Academy Award for Best Picture win for a streaming service, namely Apple TV+. As purely corporate news, I think that factoid is somewhat interesting. But when it comes to artistic credit, what the Oscars should be about, how much can Apple have?
Take ‘Ted Lasso’. While that award-winning show isn’t an Apple Studios production either, Apple TV+ gave the show life in October 2019 with a full-series order based on a pilot written by Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence. And according to Variety, the show had been in the works on Apple TV+ for over a year before going green, so Apple clearly played a big part in the final product. When “Ted Lasso” is credited to Apple, the company can take credit as a financier and creative advisor.
Obviously, Apple had nothing to do with making “CODA”, just distributing it. The film was completed long before Tim Cook came along. Apple bought the rights two days after the world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Festival. At least for this project, Apple acted as a film salesman, not a filmmaker.
“Ted Lasso” isn’t a homegrown Apple Studios production, but Apple had more of a stake in its development.
Apple
But there’s a deeper problem here, which is that the financial backing of a film should be kept as separate as possible from the artistic decisions made during its making. And the more money is involved in those decisions, the more the outcome is jeopardized. If a lender provides the money and stays in the background — like Tom Wilkinson’s lender after Ben Affleck finishes yelling at him — do they deserve more than due credit for their support?
The Apple TV+ project is an exciting project that is starting to take hold. (“Severance” is absolutely fantastic, and you should definitely keep that in mind.) But the credit for “CODA”‘s Oscar triumph — which was historic in ways completely unrelated to streaming technology — isn’t just that from Apple. It belongs to a whole bunch of people who put their passion into the project before Apple came along. Apple deserves credit for believing in it, bringing it to a wide audience, and releasing it with “open” captions that show not only dialogue, but sounds and music as well. But the creative process was complete long before Apple came along.
Movies don’t exist to promote technology companies. And you’re not Shakespeare, you’re the money.
Update 5:00 PM ET: Added context about Apple’s role in the “CODA” release.
This post How Much Credit Does Apple Make For ‘CODA’s Academy Awards?
was original published at “https://www.macworld.com/article/627271/different-think-apple-studios-coda-academy-awards.html”