Failed Oscar Campaigns: "Cats" (2019)

Scene from Cats (2019)

As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

Cats (2019)

Directed By: Tom Hooper

Written By: Lee Hall & Tom Hooper (Screenplay), Andrew Lloyd Webber (Based on Musical), T.S. Eliot (Based on Poetry)

Starring: James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo
Genre: Comedy, Drama Family

Running Time: 110 minutes

Summary: A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.

- The Movie -

While few would call him one of the greatest directors of the modern era, Tom Hooper was a filmmaker that you couldn't count out in awards season. From the time that he won Best Picture with The King's Speech, he proceeded to become a prestige drama maestro, managing to land a few Oscar wins for his next two features Les Miserables and The Danish Girl. There was hope that he was going to be one of the most accomplished British filmmakers, able to turn these heavy stories into audience-friendly entertainment that could appeal to everyone. He fits in a box with David O. Russell, who may rarely achieve a state of greatness, but still knew how to reach the best actors and bring out something noteworthy.

Which is why Cats was once considered a serious Oscar contender. Future generations will judge harshly those who thought that Hooper could make a live-action adaptation of the world-renowned musical. They will not consider how Les Miserables, despite its divisiveness, became a box office hit with a Christmas Day release. They felt that he could deliver similar success with an even more abstract creation, one whose Broadway source material has sometimes been considered incomprehensible. The only saving grace was that the songs and dance were often earworms, capable of being stuck in your head.

It's not even a year later and the reputation of Hooper's Cats has reached legendary status and for all of the wrong reasons. Scholars have nitpicked over every last detail ranging from narrative to technical components which at times were baffling, worthy of bad movie memes. Anything that could go wrong did, and then it kept going. This is an example of why films should take their time, allowed to be delayed if one or two things aren't coming together. Otherwise, it becomes a film that was so much a mess that it even had a rerelease with better special effects before it was even a week old. 

This is the definition of a Failed Oscar Campaigns subject. It may have been a big Oscar contender at one point, but even before release things were looking grim for Cats, managing to be a low point even in the recent movie musical revival. Still, it wasn't a disaster that came and went. It still feels like new details are emerging, reflecting how toxic the aftermath actually was. Nobody is safe from this nightmare, sure to stain Hooper's career and be studied for how not to make a movie. It may have fans, but that doesn't mean anyone likes it for the right reasons. It's what happens when something that shouldn't be adapted ends up being, and its only achievement is maybe keeping the Broadway musical from reaching a broader audience.

- The Campaign -

The story begins like most of these do, with good intentions. It was a crossroads of ideas that had been in the works for decades. Andrew Lloyd Webber remains one of the most successful composers in Broadway history with shows like Evita, Phantom of the Opera, and Jesus Christ Superstar ranking among the longest-running shows and producing some of the most enjoyable Tony-winning music. At one point Steven Spielberg wanted to make an animated version of the film. Still, producer Cameron Mackintosh had faith that it should be presented as realistic as possible - an anomaly given that the anatomy of humans and felines are way different. Still, he kept looking for directors until he landed on Hooper, who had major success with Les Miserables, also produced by Mackintosh.

The ideas were to be very similar to the 2012 Oscar-winner. There would be on-set singing by all of the actors. They were going to use humans in hopes that they could rely on their physicality to reflect the beauty of the dancing. The issues came more in the how, which were eventually resolved in the need for hyper-realistic sets. Everything was built at a scale the overwhelmed the actors, making them look like they were cats. Even then, there would be complaints about consistency in this decision with others complaining that the wardrobe of these animals was terribly inconsistent.

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Still, it was nothing compared to their "digital fur technology," which would become the film's most notorious element. Hooper wasn't used to CGI, so he incorrectly used tracking to film the actors, meaning that the fur would constantly be jumping around while others would have human hands or feet. Even the faces were a bit obtuse and confusing. The whole design had a warped quality that made early marketing all the more interesting. They didn't debut with pictures of the cats, but the actors talking about going to "cat training" in order to learn how to act like one. Meanwhile, in another random moment that spelled doom, Hooper talks about how a crewmember suggested that Taylor Swift's Bombalurina use catnip in a scene and he didn't know what it was... despite "loving" cats and being a bit fan of the stage musical.

When the trailer dropped on July 18, 2020, all hell broke loose. Up until that point audience members were left to assume what these cats would look like. Turns out the digital fur technology had an appalling look by their standards. Even Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella singing "Memory" was met with some confusion. The effects weren't done and Hooper felt that there was "too much fur" on the actors' faces. The plan to present Cats backfired. It was so bad that some saw the teaser poster's tagline, "You will believe," as some vague threat by the studio. While the effects would be altered by the time of release, it was enough to get the memes going, where bad movie fans and theater geeks came together to wonder just what was going on.

No amount of new footage or marketing material could change course. Many took to exploring the legacy of Cats as a musical, commenting on why every character had a strange name. Why is Cats like that? The truth is that the July release was a small blip on the proverbial radar. It wasn't until November when the film was approaching its big debut that the news started to pick up and get much, much, much, much worse. 

On the one hand, some billed Swift's new song "Beautiful Ghosts" as an Oscar shoo-in. Even then, nothing about the film was done in time to make it eligible for the Golden Globes EXCEPT this song. Swift talked about working with Webber on it and how newcomer Francesca Hayward would sing it in the film. A few weeks later, on the cusp of its theatrical release, the song was disqualified from the Best Original Song category. It would become the first major Webber movie adaptation since Jesus Christ Superstar over 40 years ago to not have a song in that category. The big picture was now on the film itself, which... maybe could get a Best Special Effects nod?

From here, Hooper played the game of "Hold my beer" with himself whenever his past self would ask if things could get worse. The most noteworthy problem (shared prior to the Oscars, as I will get into the rest later) was that Hooper famously spent a marathon session editing the film the day before its world premiere. This didn't bode well, as many complained about Judi Dench's Ol Deuteronomy having human hands and a human in a jacket appearing in the background. There were other morbid details, but that would only derail what's important to this narrative. This was the cut that was released, famously mocked by the general public. Within the week of release, it was announced that a new cut was on its way with improved special effects. It didn't help the box office all that much.

There were those who took it seriously and hated it. People who had starred in the stage version of Cats called it disgraceful. There were even gag posts about veterinarians going to see Cats. Still, those who were along for the ride did something that's not encouraged but helped to form a bigger legacy for Cats: they filmed crowded theaters full of unsuspecting people discovering the madness for the first time. It was the birth of the cult movie status, and was the sole advertising aspect up to this point. Go see Cats because you'll have a great time with the audience. What could be cooler than that?

Well, things weren't looking good. Nothing about the theatrical release was working. It became a box office flop that is estimated to have lost $110 million. The effects continued to be mocked even as the lines became memes online for just how absurd and strange they were. Meanwhile, in a sign that proved a strong lack of confidence, actors in the film like James Corden and Judi Dench admitted publicly that they never saw their own movie. They also hadn't really attracted any awards attention up to this point, so things were in the can, basically. This was it for the film that many agreed should put Hooper in movie jail. It wasn't clear that he ruined musicals, but he definitely didn't help.

- The Payoff -

To be just, Cats did make it to the Oscars ceremony. Despite a total shut-out, actors Corden and Rebel Wilson (Jennyanydots) showed up to present visual effects awards. They were dressed, quite horridly, as cats. They batted around the microphone before saying that they were experts on visual effects, which got an uproarious cheer. Everyone knew that Cats was a joke, and yet it started the wave of backlash. Some considered it too mean, believing that the hard work shouldn't be blamed for the bad results. 

This is where things started to pile on. People involved with special effects complained that Hooper worked them too hard, rushing through production as quickly as possible. They had no time to make the models look attractive due to the haphazard approach. There were also those who complained that because of the software used, they had to shade out many of the cats' anuses, leading to an ongoing joke about "the butthole cut." Meanwhile, Hooper would continue to defend his decisions, trying to save a sinking ship as more and more special effects members came out, trying to distance themselves from the errors. 

Meanwhile, something miraculous happened. Out of the failure of Cats as a legitimate movie came the "Cats Rowdy Screenings," which were modeled after cult movies like The Room and Rocky Horror Picture Show. The idea was that people wanting to come together to make fun of the movie would be able to do so. They had their own jargon in place, even praising characters like Skimbleshanks the Railroad Cat and making fun of Jennifer Hudson's snot as she sang "Memory." The legacy was going onto the next phase of things quite swiftly, even as various actors admitted their own disappointment. Then again, the movie was accused of playing too much into the actors' egos, used mostly to get paychecks. Commentator Lindsay Ellis suggested that Cats was necessary, if just to make musicals more fanciful and unrealistic again, as Cats proved what the limits truly were.

As one can guess, it was also picked up by The Razzie Awards as a crowd favorite. Among its six wins was Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay, giving co-write Webber a Razzie on top of his recent EGOT. It wasn't all bad, as the only other award was a nomination by Nickelodeon's Kid Choice Awards for Taylor Swift as Favorite Actress. Still, things slowly became clear that it was going to live its life as a big fat joke. When running his Show Must Go On series, Webber would provide a commentary track for a 1998 version of the show where he suggested that he didn't like how they handled Corden's sequence as Bustopher Jones. It lead many to believe that he hated the film. 

Still, nothing compared to his parting thoughts of filmmaker Alan Parker, who directed Evita. On Twitter, he wrote that he "was one of the few directors to truly understand musicals on screen." While never outright making the comparison, some believed it to be a jab at Hooper's Cats, which he had become more vocally opposed to in later months. Considering that he hadn't said anything about Joel Schumacher's (The Phantom of the Opera) death as well, it's easy to see this as a massive piece of shade. Then again, Evita has often been considered the only adaptation of his to have been successful. 

Cats will always be a cautionary tale and one that set the bar high for modern misfires. It did everything wrong where even its release was clumsy. Still, it lives on as an example of why you shouldn't rush cinema, instead of allowing people who know what they're doing to put in the time and effort. It's too early to know if Hooper is going to work on another film, or if we're only going to get more salacious secrets from the Cats cast and crew. Whatever may happen, it's a once in a generation flop that shot for Oscar glory only to be laughed out of (some) theaters. It ended Webber's hot streak of Oscar nominations, and thus leaves the question about what happens next. What do musicals look like after this? One can hope they use better technology than digital fur to figure it out.