Word: wilsone
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...Wilson who, almost three decades ago, founded the Razzies as a sarcastic and satirical counterpoint to the high-minded Academy Awards, throwing a spotlight on the worst of the worst - the movies that, however noble in intent, arrived in theaters as a waste of time and money. The awards program matches the Oscars calendar step for step. Early on Jan. 21, precisely 24 hours before the official Academy Awards nominations, the Razzies will unveil their nominees for Worst Picture, Worst Actor and Worst Actress, as well as finalists in other unconventional categories including Worst Screen Couple and Worst Prequel...
...first-ever Razzies ceremony - a truly improvised affair - took place in 1980. Wilson had recently completed film school at UCLA and accepted a job with a movie trailer company, where he worked on various films' media campaigns. The company had sponsored a film festival that year, and Wilson found himself forced to watch around 250 movies slated for competition. "When you see that many movies, the odds do not favor the stuff that the Oscars or Globes are talking about," he says, looking back on the hundreds of hours he spent wading through mediocrity. "The odds favor the opposite...
...where did the idea for the Razzies come from? Wilson blames attempting to host an Oscars party while living in the Pacific Time Zone. "The Oscars come on at five and are over some time around nine, and when you have that many people over, you have to have something to do, so I set up a cardboard podium and invited people to offer up nominees for the worst film of the year." The first Razzie statues were sculpted pieces of foam, and the inaugural Worst Picture award went to Allan Carr's Can't Stop the Music, a musical...
...next year (when Mommie Dearest walked away with Worst Picture), the Razzies started receiving modest mentions in the local press, as Wilson distributed press releases to newspapers across Southern California. By 1984, major newswires started running the story, and the official Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony was scheduled for the night before the Oscars. "When we moved it to the night before the Oscars it suddenly became this big deal," Wilson recalls. "Part of it is that you have all this press in town for the Oscars from all around the world, and the night before the show, they really have...
...Some recipients have been happy to get in on the joke. Showgirls director Paul Verhoeven appeared in person to accept the award for Worst Picture of 1995. ("He sat through the entire ceremony," Wilson says, "and then got up at the end and said, 'Obviously my film has entertained you, but not in the way I intended it to.'") In 2005, Oscar-Winner Halle Berry made headlines with an overemotional parody of her Academy Awards acceptance speech while taking home the Worst Actress award for Catwoman...