One of the reasons that Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar to Crash and that movies like Chicago, The Artist, Driving Miss Daisy and Forrest Gump have won the Best Picture Oscar is that you have a lot of retro-minded sentimental deadwood voters in the Academy. By this I mean over-the-hill actors or below-the-liners who haven’t worked on anything since the ’80s.

No offense but the influence of these people needs to be respectfully minimized. The opinions of voters who are actively contributing to movies being made today or have at least have worked in some capacity within the last five or ten years should count for more than deadwood viewpoints. I don’t see how anyone can say this isn’t a fair way of looking at it. Seriously.

The basic idea is that the more important you are, the more your vote counts. Major contributors (actors, directors, writers, producers, dps, production dersigners) who’ve worked on any kind of semi-serious, semi-significant film within the last decade (starting in ’02) get five votes. Below-the-liners who’ve worked on any kind of semi-serious, semi-significant film within the last decade get three votes. Major contributors or below-the-liners who haven’t worked on anything since ’02 but who at least worked on films during a 15 year period prior to ’02 get two votes. And hangers-on who have a trunkful of memories but who’ve been out of the industry for all practical purposes since ’87 or before would get what they have today — one vote.

Why is that such a terrible idea? It’s obviously fair. I’m 98% sure if it my system had been in place in ’06 Brokeback Mountain would have won the Best Picture Oscar because the homophobic geezer vote would have been minimized. Tell me I’m wrong.