Adam Carolla: ‘One Battle After Another’ Is an MS NOW ‘Fever Dream’
Podcaster blasts Oscar voters for putting politics above artistic achievement
“One Battle After Another” aligned so perfectly with Hollywood groupthink it immediately leaped to the top of the Best Picture race upon release.
And, Sunday night, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film fulfilled those predictions.
The film, which glorifies violence against the U.S. government, won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn).
Adam Carolla cried foul over the victory lap.
The podcaster/comic blasted the Academy for showering the film with wins, suggesting artistic quality had less to do with the results than its progressive agenda.
“It’s not a good film,” Carolla said. “It’s sad, but if you make a film that has a theme of White Supremacy and black activism and Sean Penn being a cartoon character, then you got a good chance of winning.”
“You make one about ‘F1,’ you’re not gonna win,” Carolla said of the Brad Pitt smash that earned a Best Picture nomination but had zero chance of actually winning the Best Picture trophy. He said Oscar voters are hardly invested in car culture, further hampering its chances.
In sharp contrast, “OBAA” was a “weird, MSNBC producer fever dream,” he said. “It wasn’t a good film, not just because I disagree with it politically, it was sort of all over the road.”
He mocked the film’s main characters who freed illegal immigrants from U.S. camps by any means necessary, including violent attacks.
Those freed Mexicans, Carolla argued, didn’t necessarily go on to better lives following their escape.
“You can’t just take Mexicans and scatter them into the wind … go, my brothers, be free! They’re not beagles,” he cracked. “That’s racist” to think so.
More than 20 years ago, my wife and I, who have no connection to the entertainment world whatsoever, moved to LA, where we made the acquaintance of a couple who were in “the industry.” He was a TV director and she was a writer. Not moguls or stars, they were among tens of thousands or more who make their livings in “entertainment;” perfectly nice, talented, hard-working folks. On Oscar Sunday they hosted a party and we were invited to watch the ceremony. At the party were ten or a dozen other persons like our hosts, not moguls or stars, mostly not from the movies but from TV and the music business, just the folks who pay attention to “the industry” while they do the day to day work of arranging for guests to appear on talk shows or license copyrighted music, for example. As part of the fun, our hostess had prepared a kind of game where each guest was to predict the winners in 12 or 15 of the prominent categories, with a prize of a bottle of wine to whoever got the most correct. I was at a distinct disadvantage since I had seen only two or three of the big pictures that year and had only the publicity, the promos, the advertising or word of mouth to go on. I did not win, but came in second. My hostess was impressed and curious and suspected I paid more attention than I admitted to. I was a good guest and demurred, calling my performance beginner’s luck. In fact, based almost entirely on how the movies were promoted, I simply imagined what the dimmest, wokest, most politically correct Academy member would “feel” was the right choice and picked that one.