GUEST COLUMN: I've Farted Better Movies Than "CODA"

Will Smith should smack everyone who voted for this turd

***If you’d like to hear IMBW Junior Editor Jeff Maurer’s thoughts on how awards shows and Hollywood glamour encourage conformity, then check out his recent column in USA Today.***

The Oscars are Hollywood’s paean to outstanding achievement in film. Previous ceremonies have seen resounding triumphs that transcend art — such as 1996’s Fargo and 2007’s No Country For Old Men — elevated to immortality. With such lustrous history, it seems to be nothing less than a cosmic joke that last night’s Best Picture award went to the turgid cesspool of awfulness known as “CODA”.

In the interest of full disclosure, my editor has requested that I mention that I won a total of four Academy Awards for Fargo and No Country For Old Men. Despite my previous work in film, I feel that I am entirely capable of assessing last year’s films — and CODA in particular — in a fair and objective manner.

CODA is inarguably the greatest crime of the 21st century so far. If I had a gun with two bullets and walked into a room to find Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and the studio exec who green lit CODA, I would shoot the studio executive twice. Though I was appalled by Will Smith’s shocking act of violence that marred the Oscars broadcast, my reaction would have been entirely different if Smith had lined up everyone involved with CODA and given them all one, big Three Stooges-style line slap.

Where does one even begin when critiquing this nuclear shit from the bowels of hell? CODA is a Frankenstein’s monster-style unholy assemblage of parts, scavenged from other movies and sewn together in a way that elicits horror from all who gaze upon it. The only argument to be made that CODA isn’t a ripoff of Sound of Metal is that it’s actually a ripoff of Mister Holland’s Opus. The film — which is about an aspiring singer (hello, A Star Is Born!) in a deaf family (did someone say Switched At Birth?) — elicits sympathy for the deaf only in that one wishes they could become deaf so as to be spared the film’s trite dialogue and first-episode-of-American-Idol-quality musical performances. In a display of balls not seen since Jeffrey Toobin’s last Zoom meeting (HEY-oh!), the film’s plot largely revolves around — I shit you not — fishing regulations. Yes: fishing regulations. Imagine the “I’ll catch your shark” scene from Jaws if there was no shark and they just talked about regular fish stuff.

The film that CODA probably resembles most is Tiptoes, the 2003 epic misfire in which Gary Oldman plays a little person by walking around with shoes on his knees, Dorf on Golf-style. If you don’t believe that this movie exists, then I present to you the trailer below, but fair warning: If you’re a Film Academy voter, you may be tempted to shower the visionaries who made this masterpiece with ex post facto awards.

In Tiptoes, Matthew McConaughey plays a character who feels out of place in his differently-abled family. In CODA, Emilia Jones plays a character who feels out of place in her differently-abled family. How are these movies different? Actually, I rate Tiptoes as the superior film, since it features Peter Dinklage getting his fuck on in a hot tub and a merciful lack of jawing about fishing regulations.

CODA’s main appeal seems to be its subtitles. When Parasite won Best Picture in 2020, it was the first subtitled film to ever win the award. I’d surmise that when the “subtitles are boffo!” memo went out across Hollywood, the makers of CODA — having already commenced a film in English — suddenly decided that some of the characters just wouldn’t talk. Hence the incongruity of having deaf characters in a movie about singing (they wouldn’t be able to hear the singing, you fools!). Unfortunately, the Academy — whose credibility has been on a steep downward trajectory since 2007 — fell for this transparent manipulation with all the credulity of a toddler falling for the “got your nose” gag.

CODA is the work of an extreme narcissist drowning in her own sickness. I speak, of course, of the film’s writer and director, Sian Heder. In CODA, Ms. Heder’s has seen fit to flout film conventions, such as the convention of writing engaging characters and the convention of having a compelling plot. One wonders if this brash scorn for rules is borne of having previously disregarded precepts with impunity. Only an egoist clouded by her own self-absorption would assume she could thumb her nose at propriety without facing consequences.

As it happens, I live only a few houses away from Ms. Heder in Los Angeles. While Ms. Heder possesses the (undeserved) aura of a visionary auteur, she also possesses the camper van of a 1970s serial killer. This rust-addled incest trap has been parked in her driveway for nearly two years in strict violation of neighborhood regulations regarding the placement unsightly vehicles. When I brought the pertinent guidelines of the neighborhood charter to Ms. Heder’s attention — guidelines that require her to place the vehicle “in a location such that it is not visible from the street” — all she did was pull the camper van up in the driveway a little. As if that does anything. I also think that ever since I said something, she’s been purposely walking her dog over to my house so that it can shit on my lawn. Even more incredibly, she’s accused me of walking my dog over to her house to shit on her lawn, and yes I am doing that but only because she did it first!

When the Academy denied a nomination to Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of MacBeth — surely the most reeking discharge in today’s fetid sewer of a film industry — one might have hoped that they had regained the good sense that they’ve lacked since 2007. But by awarding their highest honor to a film that’s basically an unfunny remake of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, that hope has been dashed. Film, at its best, can inspire us to ask big questions; timeless classics like A Serious Man and O Brother, Where Art Thou? do exactly that. But a sloppy pile of hippo dung like CODA inspires only one question, and that question is: If a movie sucks, but none of the characters in the movie can hear it, then why on Earth should anyone give a shit?

For the lawyers: This was a bit. Ethan Coen had nothing to do with it. Also, I haven’t seen CODA.