Now that we have had time to digest what happened at the Academy Awards, it is time to put the awards in some sort of layman’s perspective.

Let’s look at it from a perspective of us mainstream folks versus Hollywood, which includes those that cast the votes which decide who wins the Gold Statuette.

In the Academy’s perspective , the “Best Picture” nominees were “Brokeback Mountain” (26th), “Crash” (49th), “Munich” (64th), “Good Night, and Good Luck” (89th) and “Capote” (100th), in order of each movie’s box office gross — in other words, America’s opinion of these pictures.

In all, Hollywood’s five grossed $235,643,912 and averaged $26.3 million in profits. The figures in parentheses represent their standing in ticket sales that “us” ordinary folks paid to see.

Contrast the above with the top five picks according to the rest of America: “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” “The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe),” “War of the Worlds” “and King Kong.” These films grossed $1.41 billion and averaged $125.4 million in profits.

In fact, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” a film based on one of Christian writer C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, grossed more than all five of the Academy’s nominees combined.

One film critic, Dr. Marc T. Newman notes, “Instead of fretting over the agenda of Academy Award-nominated films ... we should pay closer attention to the vote that really counts. The election that gets the attention of studios is the one that occurs at the ticket booth. Eighty percent of this year’s Best Picture nominees are rated R, but 90 percent of the top-20 grossing films were rated G, PG, or PG-13. Many of those films opened opportunities to talk about virtues, the darkness of sin, and the importance of family and sacrifice.”

It seems as though Mr. Clooney was right when he declared to his Academy colleagues, “We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it is probably a good thing ... I’m proud to be out of touch.”

That phrase is really the essence of Hollywood’s elite.

John A. Milani, Sr.
Fayetteville, Ga.

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