John Wilson presents the Razzies

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A self-admitted movie maven and fan of the Academy Awards since the age of 9, John Wilson probably seemed destined for a career in show business. After attending high school, he enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, majoring in film and television. Once he had graduated, Wilson moved into the industry where his career focused on copywriting and marketing.

In 1981, Wilson hosted his annual potluck dinner on Oscar night. Strictly to entertain his guests, he decided it would be fun to present the opposite of the Academy Awards, with categories including Worst Picture and Worst Director. Indeed, Wilson’s potluck partygoers received the mock awards show with much enthusiasm. As a result, the Golden Raspberry Awards, commonly known as the Razzies, began to grow in popularity.

The first publicized Razzie ceremony was held in 1984, with UPI, CNN and local television coverage. Afterward, the Razzies began to insinuate themselves into the public consciousness and lexicon. Quickly, the award show rose from its humble beginnings as a simple potluck affair to its current status as an event which has entered and influenced popular American culture. In the meantime, Wilson authored two books: Everything I Know I Learned at the Movies (1995) and The Official Razzie Movie Guide (2004).

Preparing for the 31st Golden Raspberry Awards, John Wilson gives me the inside scoop about the origins and future of the irrepressible ceremony. Interestingly, he explains how he once worked for the Oscars while promoting the Razzies. Plus, he reveals inside trivia regarding winners of the not-so-coveted award and gives his thoughts on the latest crop of Oscar hopefuls.

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Josh Armstrong: How did you decide to create the Razzies?

John Wilson: The Razzies kind of arose out of several different things that all converged in late 1980. At the time, I had my first full-time, out-of-college job at a large trailer house that sponsored a film festival. The deal that I made with my boss was, if I did all the paperwork for the film festival, then I got first dibs on all the tickets. So between that, the fact that I went to a lot of movies anyway, the fact that I used to manage a theater when I went to UCLA – all those connections – I literally saw 260-some films in 1980. When you see that many, you begin to realize that the odds do not favor what the Oscars are always talking about; they favor the crud!

Specifically, there was a double feature that, in the fall of 1980, I saw at a 99-cent movie theater; those don’t exist anymore. I actually wanted my 99 cents back! [laughs] It was The Village People in Can’t Stop the Music and Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu, which are now two, somewhat decrepit Razzie classics. Driving home from the theater that night, I remember very clearly going over in my head, “OK, well, if there were an award for stuff that really sucked, those two would qualify.” The Formula, Raise the Titanic, Saturn 3 – I could name off the top of my head a dozen contenders.

Every year, I used to give an Oscar potluck dinner party at my home. In 1981, the Oscars were dealing with 1980 achievements. After the Oscars were over, at my party I set up a cardboard podium in my living room alcove. We hauled people up from the buffet table, and we were just riffing! It lasted maybe 45 minutes, if that. I think I spent maybe 50 bucks on it. The budget hasn’t gone up a lot since. [laughs] Everyone who was there, over the course of the next week – a lot of them were people I worked with, so I saw them every day – they just thought it was so funny. They thought it was so original; they thought it had such potential, that I sent out a press release later that week. We did get one article in the L.A. Daily News that year.

For the next two or three years, it stayed on Oscar night; it was part of a potluck dinner. It got fancier and fancier every year. By the third year, we were in a living room in Bel Air, down the street from where movie stars lived. By the fourth year, we realized you cannot compete directly with the Academy Awards; they’re the 8,000 pound gorilla. So, we moved it to the night before. We rented a grade school auditorium; we turned it into an actual stage show, as opposed to part of a potluck dinner party. The media interest just exploded that year. We got UPI, the wire service. CNN showed up. Several local stations sent television crews. I started doing radio interviews about it. It became clear that it had some potential. It’s just gotten further and further and further out of hand ever since.

JA: Why do you think this caught on so quickly, with the media being attracted to it?

JW: It’s a pretty simple concept. It isn’t something anyone was doing at the time. There have been others – in fact, we’re seeing, all of a sudden, two or three people trying to imitate it now. It’s inherently funny to even bother doing an awards show about stuff that really stank, and it’s the kind of joke that translates well.

One of the keys to its being as well-known as it is, is that on Oscar weekend, there are media types from literally all over the world, in LA, to cover that other show. The night before, they’ve got nothing else to do; they show up at ours, and you don’t really have to translate what the Razzies are. American movies, for good or bad, are known all over the world. American movie stars are known all over the world. Everyone gets the joke. And I also think that’s part of its appeal – it is a logical and near polar opposite counterpoint to the Academy Awards.

JA: Why was a raspberry chosen as the ceremony’s trophy?

JW: There’s an old English children’s rhyme. Children weren’t allowed to use the word “fart”, and so they substituted “raspberry tart” in a limerick that used to be sung by jump-roping children in the streets of London. In America, probably the closest translation is a “Bronx cheer”. A raspberry is literally the sound of putting your tongue between your lips and blowing a “blffffft!’”, which sounds like flatulence. When I registered the trademark with the Library of Congress, they also asked me to explain why “raspberry”.

And “razz” is short for “to razz something”. That word actually does exist if you look it up in the dictionary. “Razz” means to mercilessly make fun of or deride, which is pretty much what we do. [laughs]

JA: You said there are some imitators out there. As the years go on, what do you think will make your show stand out from them?

JW: Well, for one thing, it’s been around long enough that it’s become part of the lexicon. We’ve also noticed people say, without even offering an explanation, this politician or that sports figure or this famous person “deserves to win a Razzie”. I would think, at this point, it would be hard to do a blatant imitation of us and not have people see that’s what you were doing.

The main thrust of what we’ve done all these years, we realize it’s insulting, but we really go out of our way to keep humor at the forefront. The phrase I like to use is, “We consider ourselves a banana peel on the floor, not a slap in the face.” We’re not saying, “How dare you?”; we’re saying, “Why would you?” If you’re Halle Berry, and you’ve just won an Academy Award, and somebody hands you a script with 38 peoples’ fingerprints all over it that have re-written it 23 times, and it’s called Catwoman, why would you pick that script, other than that they gave you a lot of money? Which, yes, I get that is somewhat what the Oscars are about.

It’s interesting, this particular year, the general public doesn’t really seem to care for the Twilight movies. The people who are fanatical about it, the ones who fall asleep staring at posters of Robert Patterson over their bed, they hate us right now. But the general public really doesn’t like the Twilight movies any more than we do. And we seem to have struck an interesting nerve. The general public seems to “get” why we nominated it. The fan base of those movies, I’m getting all these angry emails from. I hope they’re 11 year-old girls, because they certainly don’t have a good command of English! [laughs]

I would argue we probably have a better sense of what the public really thinks about movies than the Oscars. The Oscars often give their awards to stuff that, while it may be deserving, the general public doesn’t even know what they’re talking about. They haven’t ever seen it. It’s never played in Paducah, Kentucky.

JA: At one time, you actually did marketing work for the Oscars, right?

JW: Yes. I worked on what’s called an “EPK”, an electronic press kit. This is a while ago. This is the year that I think Unforgiven won most of the major awards, the Clint Eastwood western.

What was interesting is another thing that the Razzies grew out of. I grew up in a family where both my parents were Depression-era children, who loved movies. One of the few nights of the year we were allowed to stay up late, because I grew up in Chicago, was the Oscars. From having watched it since I was about 6 years old, which is like half a century now, I know their whole history. I used to play a game with a co-worker where he’d name the year, and I could name him all five top Oscar winners from, you know, 1947. The Academy loved that about me when I worked on their press material.

I did not go out of my way to make clear which John Wilson I was, because it didn’t seem to be to my advantage to do that. When I finished the entire project, we were mixing the last piece. They were satelliting it to the place that was going to distribute it. I handed my client, the Academy person, a ticket to the Razzies. And whoa! It was like the Earth shifted! Suddenly, in that moment, you would have thought I’d crapped on her shoes! She turned white; she looked at me like I was a Soviet spy. She just was livid! And I’m standing there thinking, “You know, it’s because you take yourself like this that we’ve done this all these years.” [laughs] I didn’t say that to her. But it’s this idea that you guys are somehow sacrosanct when all you do is put on a pompous three-hour-long brag-fest every year. No! It’s inherently funny that what you guys do is so pompous! I timed it very well. They couldn’t very well fire me, I had finished the project! If I’d told them half-way through, they might have laid me off.

JA: Speaking of the Oscars, how do you feel about this year’s nominees? Any favorites?

JW: I’m trying to see them, because the Oscars, if you haven’t seen the movies, are even more boring than if you have. Last night, I went to see True Grit. I have to say that I’m really not a John Wayne fan, by any stretch; I never cared for the original version of it. I understand that this one is closer to the novel. But I thought this is one of the few cases where a remake was actually superior to the original, although it’s a slightly different perspective on the material.

I was very impressed with Inception; I think it was a brilliant concept, very well-executed. I’m thrilled that, what could be argued was an intellectual movie, made almost $300 million dollars in America. That almost never happens. Toy Story 3 was wonderful. The Kids Are All Right – people talked it up so much that by the time I saw it, it couldn’t have been as good as everyone told me. I want to see The Kings Speech. I probably will try to see Black Swan. You couldn’t pay me to go see The Fighter. Everyone I know says it’s wonderful. But it’s like, you know what, I’ve seen seven Rocky movies; I don’t want to see another one.

They have done a better job, the Academy, this year. Their whole “ten Best Picture nominees” thing that they did is a blatant shill to try and nominate more mainstream movies. They did it this time; they have, among the ten, at least four that the general public would be aware of because they made two, three, four hundred million dollars. So their little scheme works. But I personally find it bizarre. If you’re going to sit there and argue that there are ten best pictures, then there ought to be ten directors. There ought to be twenty screenplays. There ought to be ten actors. If you’re going to do it, go for it. I think it’s kind of rude to nominate ten pictures, but only have room for five directors to be acknowledged. I think that’s tacky. Not as tacky as us, but close. [laughs]

JA: I’m sure a lot of the people who thought Christopher Nolan was going to be nominated would agree with you.

JW: I remember seeing Memento and just thinking, “Wow! This is somebody who expects you to think, while you’re watching a movie. That is so refreshing!” I personally thought The Dark Knight was too dark and angry and kind of sick. I mean, it was very entertaining. But I was worried about my 11 year-old picking up the wrong messages from it. But, yes, I would say he is an unusually intelligent, mainstream, successful filmmaker. Sooner or later, they are going to have to acknowledge him. They’re going to have to nominate him for directing, not just writing. I believe they nominated the screenplay for Memento; I don’t remember if they gave anything but technical nominations to The Dark Knight.

Another one that, in general, I’ve liked most of what he’s done is J.J. Abrams. I thought the Star Trek remake a couple of years ago was excellent.

JA: How do you respond when some folks, especially online, suggest the Razzies don’t necessarily celebrate the worst films, but the biggest flops for the biggest stars?

JW: Our membership has essentially three branches. There are people who work in the business – I consider myself one of those. We have a director or two, some screenwriters, some composers, a lot of editors. Another branch is journalists who cover show business or review movies; we have some pretty well-known critics on our mailing list. But the bulk of our memberships – the growing part of it, because of the online sign-up thing that we now have – are average moviegoers. Those people are going to skew toward better known, bigger budget movies – you know, the real fiascoes that everybody knows were dogs.

The one big disappointment among the nominees, to me this year – financially, dramatically, and critically – was Jonah Hex. It really should have got more nominations than it did. It was a $47 million dollar picture that, worldwide, did not even gross $11 million. I don’t know what they spent marketing it. The acting is horrible. The writing is wretched. The cinematography is very pretty, but it’s pretty in a way that takes you out of the movie. I mean, everything about that movie just sucked! I guess it was such a box office bomb that not enough members saw it to give it many nominations. I think it kind of got away.

It hits on all of the basic Razzie cylinders. It lost a fortune. It was not really liked by anybody, and it was a really wretched movie. I think Megan Fox was so bad in it, you could tell from the trailer that she stank. And I think it got only two nominations. It should have been up for picture, screenplay, and director. Malkovich, even though people think he’s a wonderful actor, he was just embarrassing. [laughs] Every year, there’s one big one that tends to get away. It’s usually the one that was so bad almost no one saw it.

JA: Do you think the Razzies turn people away from bad films, or do you think maybe there’s some reverse psychology there: people see your awards and then check out the films just to see how bad they really are?

JW: I think it cuts both ways. By the time we’re saying something sucked, everyone knows that. It’s not like we’re breaking news, saying that something like Sex in the City 2 wasn’t liked or The Last Airbender was a turkey. I think there is an element of morbid curiosity. “Is it really as bad as these guys are saying it is?” At the same time, some people look at it as a yardstick of what not to bother seeing. But I don’t think that attitude is as prevalent as the curiosity factor.

JA: In other interviews, you’ve taken credit for saving the careers of such Razzie-nominated celebrities as Sofia Coppola and Michael Caine. Do you believe a Razzie nomination inspires actors to make better career choices?

JW: [laughs] In the case of Sofia Coppola, she was quoted as saying – and it was a European newspaper, so it might have been completely fabricated – she was quoted as saying, “Well, if that’s how they’re going to treat me, I’m never going to act again!” And we went, “Yay!” [laughs] By stepping behind the camera and writing and directing – which would be what she would naturally have been around her whole life as the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola – she has become a huge success. We have said we were upset that she didn’t thank us for Razzing her. I have to say, her performance in Godfather III is the single worst female performance on film I have ever seen in my life. I saw it at an Academy screening on the lot at Paramount. She’s so awful that when she was shot in the heart on the steps of the opera house, the whole audience cheered, and when she dropped over dead, they burst out in applause! This is bad acting at its very worst.

Now Michael Caine apparently doesn’t think we’re funny. I think he called us, “The barnacle on the butt of the movie business.” [laughs] I’m trying to remember if he’s actually ever won a Razzie; I know he’s been nominated multiple times. He had a tendency in the early years of the Razzies to just blatantly do stuff for money. I’m sure he resents that he missed his chance to pick up the first Oscar he won, because he was in the Bahamas filming “Jaws 4-F”, as we call it. I think it’s actually called Jaws: The Revenge. That was just a paycheck to him. And someone with his talent and his abilities, to do that…

I think it’s reasonable, when someone has genuine talent, to expect that they’re going to exhibit it in pretty much anything that they do. They’re not just going to be in a piece of crap to collect a paycheck. Somebody like Michael Caine or, at the end of his life, Laurence Olivier, who just cashes in before checking out, they deserve to be criticized for that. I’m lured to a movie if I see a name I think is classy associated with it. Yeah, I get kind of pissed when I’ve gone to see something because Alec Guinness was in it, and it’s just something made for money.

JA: How do nominees usually treat you? If you run into somebody who’s nominated, do they treat you well?

JW: I haven’t had that much interaction, not surprisingly, with the nominees. Generally speaking, the people in a position to acknowledge us or turn the other way, they tend to turn the other way. They try to ignore it; they try to pretend it didn’t happen. They pretend they never heard about it. [laughs] Every year that we continue, it becomes harder and harder for the public to buy that. I personally think when you blow it bad enough that you win a Razzie, you really can’t ignore it. Most of the stuff we’ve picked on, if you look back over our thirty years of history, occasionally something worse than what won didn’t win. But in general, the movies we’ve picked, we’ve got a pretty good track record.

Like I said, the public tends to agree with us. I found it fascinating last year when Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen took several top awards. Nobody came to the defense of that movie. It made four hundred-and-some million dollars. All those people saw it, and nobody defended it! And I think it’s funny now, the actors and director Michael Bay are making the third one. I just saw the trailer on the front end of True Grit last night. When the title came up, people booed! [laughs] They are now saying, “Well, we’re aware that people weren’t happy with the last one.” So it does reach the people in the decision-making positions. It has some impact – who knows how much.

JA: Is it true the all-time Razzie champ, Sylvester Stallone, has actually left you voicemails, asking why you make fun of him?

JW: For legal reasons, we have been told that we cannot say that we know it is him. Several years back, I did an interview with somebody at the same newspaper that had given us the very first article, all those years ago. It was talking about the fact that we were going to do “Worst of the Decade” awards. We were trying to raise funds. For some reason, this woman put my home phone number in her article. It was picked up by the New York Times; it ran all over the country.

I was getting crank calls. One of them sounded long-distance. Stallone was in Philadelphia making – I think it was Rocky IV at the time. I don’t know if, at the time, it was IV or V. He’s done so many of those. But it sounded like it was him. Somebody imitating him, they would say, ‘Yo!’, which this person didn’t say. And the point this person was trying to make was, “Why do you keep picking on me? My movies make money!” This was at the point where his career was finally starting to hit the skids. He had done Rhinestone, which is a truly wretched musical with him singing. And that argument was starting to dissipate for him.

I was interested this year; I thought The Expendables was a total piece of garbage. But the audience that embraced it didn’t realize he was ripping himself off. He was just going back and picking pieces from his own movies from 20 and 30 years ago and redoing them. For people who didn’t realize what a rip-off it was, yeah, it was probably a lot of fun – and for people who don’t know he has no sense of humor. The movie was so bad. It looked like he had a sense of humor, and he embraced that. He participated in pretending he meant it to be funny. I can’t claim to be his friend. But knowing his sensibilities and people who work with him, they all said, “Oh no, he didn’t make it to be laughed at. It was a serious action film for him.”

JA: Have you ever received a serious threat from a nominee or a fan of the nominee?

JW: No. The fan club types – I think they call themselves the “Twi-Hards” – the people who love those movies are kind of angry. We’ve gotten very – not threatening to the point where the police would need to be involved – but yes, very angry, very defensive, very borderline creepy stuff from people who feel we have tarnished their idols. But no, I’ve never actually felt physically threatened.

I have on multiple occasions lost work. Either the person I was working for, or someone who wanted to get me fired so they could get my job, have intervened and pointed out that I’m that John Wilson. But, no, I don’t think I’ve ever felt threatened, realistically.

JA: May I make a suggestion? Next year, hire Ricky Gervais to host your ceremony. I think he was auditioning at this year’s Golden Globes.

JW: Even as the head of the Razzies, I did think, especially in terms of legal liabilities, a couple of times he totally went over the line. If anyone has less of a sense of humor than the Academy, they’re the Hollywood Foreign Press. You could tell that the balding guy with the really badly-dyed red hair that was halfway back on his head, who kind of looked like Bozo’s grandpa, was the head of this organization, when Gervais joked that he helped him up off the toilet and put his dentures in for him. It will be interesting to see if they have Gervais back.

But there’s a subtext going on with the Golden Globes. It’s very interesting that it doesn’t seem to have permeated beyond the Hollywood community. The publicist who had worked for the Golden Globes for something like 10 or 15 years was fired. He claims it’s because he would not participate in kickbacks and attempts to influence the votes on the awards. He filed a huge lawsuit the Friday before the show aired this year. The courts are now saying that there is no way that they can adjudicate the lawsuit before the nominations and the ceremony next year. There’s a question whether there will even be a Golden Globes next year, because of this lawsuit. Apparently, under the terms of the network contract, they can’t hold the show if there are any legal questions about the veracity of the results.

JA: Do you ever wish you had a ceremony that celebrated good films, rather than bad ones?

JW: No, because everyone else is doing that. Why would I want to do what everyone else is doing?

JA: That’s a good point!

JW: I don’t think it’s a total exaggeration to say that at least fifty other award shows already exist doing that. That would just be redundant. Why not be at the opposite end of the room, going, “Yo! Over here’s the crap!”?