We only have a couple of weeks left until the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony finally airs, which means that we will get a chance to watch all of this year's most prominent nominees duke it out for Oscar gold. It has been a long road to this year's ceremony, with plenty of great movies coming and going along the way. Alas, for Roman J. Israel Esq. director Dan Gilroy, the road has been far, far too long, and it needs to get shorter in the coming years. In a recent interview with CinemaBlend to discuss the Roman J. Israel Esq. home release, Gilroy explained:
I hope to God it doesn't get any longer. I'm telling you when you start in August, and it goes right up until March? When does it end? February? March?... I mean dear God, please put a moratorium that it can't get any longer. Like, don't make it any longer because it's too long already. It's like a sports season that never ends, and it's insanely time-consuming and, and you know, you're blessed to be in the middle of it, and you're blessed to be honored, and it's a beautiful thing to be recognized by your peers. That's all great. It's just; it's just there's also, you know, a business side to it.
There's arguably a certain amount of credibility to his statement, depending on the amount of endurance that you have to make it through this time of year. Oscar season is incredibly long, as the ceremony now airs over two full months after the end of the eligibility cutoff. With some exceptions here and there, most "Oscar bait" movies tend to start debuting in August and continue hitting the big screen until December 31, and then the Oscar consideration campaigns run from January and February until the ceremony in March. For someone like Dan Gilroy, even with the fun and fanfare of it all, it's exhausting.
Of course, this is particularly important for someone like Dan Gilroy because he has a stake in this year's Oscar race. Denzel Washington is nominated in the stacked Best Actor category against heavy-hitters like Phantom Thread's Daniel Day-Lewis and Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya, plus a few other actors who aren't named Daniel. When we asked Gilroy why Washington (already an Oscar-winner for his work on films like Glory and Training Day) deserved to return to the ceremony this year as a contender, Gilroy explained that Washington transformed for this movie in a way that he has never done for another role in his career. Now, we will get to see if that transformation paid off when The Oscars finally air.
Roman J. Israel Esq. is now available on Digital HD and Blu-ray, so if you have yet to check out Dan Gilroy's ethics-based thriller, then make sure to read CinemaBlend's full review of the film and watch it for yourself! Beyond that, make sure to watch Denzel Washington vie for the Best Actor Oscar against the other nominees when The Academy Awards airs on Sunday, March 4 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
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