The First Annual Schlocktology Awards

Preamble

The Baranov Institute of Cinematic Sciences is pleased to announce the results of the First Annual Schlocktology Awards. The committee — which consists, as it has always consisted, of one — convened over a fourteen-day deliberation period to evaluate nominees across seven categories of cinematic distinction.

The process was rigorous. The results are definitive. Appeals may be submitted in writing to the department, though the department, as readers are aware, has not responded to correspondence since 1997.

One proceeds.

Best Worst Performance

Nominees:

• Tommy Wiseau as Johnny in The Room (2003)
• Nicolas Cage as Edward Malus in The Wicker Man (2006)
• Neil Breen as himself in Fateful Findings (2013)
• Elizabeth Berkley as Nomi Malone in Showgirls (1995)

Winner: Nicolas Cage, The Wicker Man (2006)

The committee acknowledges that this category is, by its nature, contentious. Mr. Wiseau's performance in The Room is the foundational text of the discipline. Mr. Breen's performances constitute an entire subfield. Ms. Berkley's work in Showgirls has been the subject of three separate academic reappraisals.

However, Mr. Cage's performance in The Wicker Man represents something the committee has termed "transcendent commitment" — a state in which the actor has so thoroughly exceeded the material that the film becomes, in effect, a documentary about a man having a very specific kind of experience on camera. The bear suit. The bees. The utterance "not the bees" with a sincerity that borders on the devotional. One does not act this way by accident. One acts this way because one has decided that the film, however inadequate, deserves everything one has. The committee finds this admirable.

Most Ambitious Failure

Nominees:

• Battlefield Earth (2000) — $73 million budget, tilted cameras throughout
• Cats (2019) — $95 million budget, digital fur technology
• Moonfall (2022) — $140 million budget, the moon is hollow
• Showgirls (1995) — $45 million budget, seven Razzie Awards

Winner: Cats (2019)

The committee notes that ambition, in the context of this award, is not a compliment. Ambition is the distance between what a film intended and what it achieved. By this metric, Cats is the most ambitious film in modern cinema. Director Tom Hooper intended to create a visually stunning adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical. He instead created a waking fever dream in which Dame Judi Dench, rendered as a cat who appears to be wearing a fur coat over another fur coat, sings directly to camera with an expression that the committee has classified as "existential resignation."

The "digital fur technology" — a phrase that the committee insists be preserved for posterity — was intended to seamlessly blend human and feline features. It did not blend them. It layered them in a manner that activated what neuroscientists refer to as "the uncanny valley" and what the committee refers to as "the Cats Problem."

The film's budget was $95 million. The committee has no further comment on this figure.

Lifetime Achievement in Chaos

Winner: Neil Breen

This award requires no nominees. The committee recognizes Mr. Breen's body of work — Double Down (2005), I Am Here....Now (2009), Fateful Findings (2013), Pass Thru (2016), Twisted Pair (2018), and Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2023) — as the most sustained individual contribution to the field of Applied Schlocktology in the 21st century.

Mr. Breen writes, directs, produces, stars in, and edits every film. He plays characters who are, without exception, the most important person in the world. His green screen work defies the laws of compositing. His dramatic scenes involve the destruction of laptops at a rate that suggests a personal vendetta against the technology.

The committee does not fully understand Mr. Breen's films. The committee is not certain Mr. Breen fully understands Mr. Breen's films. This is, the committee believes, the point.

Best Unintentional Comedy

Nominees:

• The football scenes in The Room
• The basketball scene in Catwoman
• The "oh no" bird attacks in Birdemic
• The bear suit scene in The Wicker Man

Winner: The basketball scene, Catwoman (2004)

A scene in which Halle Berry — an Academy Award-winning actress — plays one-on-one basketball against Benjamin Bratt in a manner that the committee can only describe as "edited by a person who has never seen basketball." The camera cuts approximately forty-seven times in ninety seconds. The choreography suggests that both actors were filmed separately and combined in post-production. The scene serves no narrative purpose. It is, by every metric the committee employs, perfect.

Best Line Reading

Winner: Tommy Wiseau, "I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bullshit. I did not hit her. I did naht. Oh hi, Mark."

The committee considered other nominees. The committee then reconsidered. Some questions do not require deliberation.

Best Worst Special Effect

Winner: The birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

The GIF-quality bird animations in Birdemic hover motionless in the sky, occasionally diving toward actors who react to them with the precision of people being attacked by things that are not there, which they were. The birds clip through solid objects. They explode on impact, sometimes. They make sounds that do not correspond to any known species.

Director James Nguyen has described the effects as "state of the art." The committee respects his conviction.

The Schlock Talk Hall of Fame — Inaugural Class

The committee inducts the following into the Schlock Talk Hall of Fame:

1. Tommy Wiseau — for The Room and for never once admitting it was anything other than exactly what he intended
2. Ed Wood — for pioneering the field before the field existed
3. Nicolas Cage — for a career-long commitment to choosing commitment over restraint
4. The Chiodo Brothers — for Killer Klowns from Outer Space and for the cotton candy
5. Cüneyt Arkın — for fighting a man in a bear suit on a trampoline as though his nation depended on it

The committee congratulates the inductees. The committee will not be taking questions.

Dr. Vincent Schlock, Editor-in-Chief. Baranov Institute of Cinematic Sciences.