The Oscars and Me

For those of you who are just here for the picks, they're at the bottom. For those who like a story, read on.

My history with the Oscars goes back a long way. Not all the way back to the beginning of cinema, mind you, I’m not that old, but far enough that the Academy Awards feel stitched into the fabric of how I learned to dream.

One of my earliest Oscar memories is Sally Field standing at the podium, emotional and radiant, declaring, “You like me! You really like me!” It became one of those cultural moments that lived beyond the telecast itself. Even as a kid, I understood that what I was watching wasn’t just someone winning a trophy. It was someone standing in front of the whole world and saying, in essence: I showed up with my whole heart, and somehow it mattered.

That hit me.

The Oscars always felt bigger than movies. They were about arrival. About story. About recognition. About the impossible little human hope that maybe what you make, what you pour yourself into, might connect with other people.

As I got older, had graduated UCLA’s screenwriting program and was shopping my own scripts around Tinsel Town, another Oscar moment stood out: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck winning for Good Will Hunting. That one landed differently. These were young guys, my age, who had written something personal, powerful, and unlikely, and somehow it broke through. Watching them, I remember feeling that dangerous and wonderful thought: Maybe this is possible. Maybe screenwriters aren’t just invisible people behind the curtain. Maybe the words do matter. Maybe the work can carry you all the way there.

That was jet fuel.

The Oscars stopped being just entertainment and started becoming a kind of lighthouse. Distant, glamorous, maybe a little ridiculous at times, but still a beacon. They represented the outer edge of the dream.

Years later, life did that funny thing it does where it lets you brush up against the thing you once watched from afar. I had the chance to cover the Oscars as a reporter for an entertainment program based in Las Vegas. Suddenly, the ceremony wasn’t just this sacred event beaming into my living room. It became a working assignment, still glamorous, still surreal, but now viewed through a different lens. There was the machinery of it all. The frenzy. The choreography. The gift bags. The hustle surrounding the myth.

And yet, even then, the magic didn’t die.

If anything, being closer to it made me appreciate how much of Hollywood runs on belief. Belief in story. Belief in performance. Belief in image, reinvention, momentum, timing, luck. The Oscars are absurd in some of the same ways that all dream factories are absurd. They are also strangely beautiful. They ask us, year after year, to gather around and agree that stories matter.

I still watch with keen interest. I know more now, about the business, about the politics, about how many brilliant works never get nominated, how many deserving artists never get their moment under the lights. But I also know this: hope is part of the bargain. And so every year, some part of me still watches and wonders.

What would it feel like to be there? To walk into the Dolby Theatre not as an observer, not as press, not as someone watching from home with snacks and opinions but as someone whose work made it into the room? 

Will I ever sniff the inside of the Dolby Theatre? Who knows. But I’ve learned not to underestimate the long arc of a story. After all, I’ve gone from watching Sally Field teach me that being liked matters, to seeing Matt and Ben show that writing can change your life, to covering the Oscars as a professional, to now making work that is deeply personal and deeply human. Work about fathers and sons. About Parkinson’s disease and love. About time. About what we carry. About laughter, tears, and baseball. About what remains.

So yes, I’ll be watching. I’ll be dreaming. And I’ll allow myself one more crazy thought: Boys of Summer: Third Base for best documentary in 2027?

Hey, stranger things have happened.

The Oscars, at their best, remind us that a story can start in private longing and end in public light. That something made with love, grit, obsession, and a little madness can travel farther than you ever imagined. And if that’s true, then maybe the kid watching Sally Field and the young writer watching Matt and Ben were onto something all along.

Maybe someday, I won’t just be watching history. Maybe I’ll be walking into it.

Robert Cochrane, PhD teaches Cinema Therapy for his nonprofit, Yes, And…eXercise! The program features Oscar films including Star Wars, Rocky, Back to the Future, The Shawshank Redemption, Field of Dreams, and Inside Out. You can find out more about the program by clicking here. 

With that - here are my picks for this year (I reserve the right to be completely wrong):