How to Win an Oscar

Have a space on your mantle that needs sprucing up? Want to be the envy of all your pets? Need something you can hollow out and use as a pepper shaker? Well then, why don't you just win an Oscar? It's easy and fun! We'll show you how to do it the MRFH way!

Step 1

You have to star in an "Oscar vehicle", which is to say, a drama, suspense or adventure piece. If you're in a comedy, kid flick, horror, sci-fi, animated, or even a relatively ground-breaking piece of cinema, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. See: The English Patient, Schindler's List

Step 2

Some good Oscar vehicles are biopics (stories of a real person's life), courtroom films, or musicals. A true life story about Julie Andrews' court battle over song copyright infringement, for instance, would be ideal. See: Erin Brockovich, Chicago

Step 3

To hedge your bets even further, star in a movie that's either a period piece with lots of fancy costumes and elaborate sets, or a gritty ghetto morality tale about the dangers of drugs. A heroin addict in 17th century France would be just ducky. You could also be in a movie that makes some sort of clumsy gesture of reconciliation toward an oppressed people/race/minority group. See: Chocolat, Braveheart, Traffic

Step 4

Jack up your chances by playing a mentally or physically handicapped person. People will fawn all over you for this, even though you - a perfectly healthy actor - got the role over someone with this actual disorder. The Academy Award is repeatedly astounded by an actor's ability to walk strange, talk funny, or babble incoherently for long stretches of time. See: Rain Man, A Beautiful Mind, Forrest Gump

Step 5

Another sure-fire way to win is to die by the end of the movie. A martyr's death is grand, but if that can't be arranged, have your character either be unjustly murdered on the eve of his greatest happiness, or whither away from a terminal illness. Terminal illness characters have the best screen time to give long meandering speeches about life that will make the audience sob like school children, so this is a pretty good way to go. See: Gladiator, Philadelphia, Ed Wood, Leaving Las Vegas, Dead Man Walking, Titanic...

Step 6

Have some memorable catchphrase or speech associated with the film so that the common public can remember which movie it is. See: "Show me the money!", "Life is like a box of chocolates"

Step 7

The Academy loves either ultra-happy endings or "spiral down into a pit of shame and despair and hopelessness and cookie dough gluttony" endings that symbolize the doom of mankind. They simply cannot make up their minds which way is better. Preferably, a happy ending where someone good dies. See: Monster, The Pianist, Shakespeare in Love

Step 8

When you go to the Oscars, don't forget to be a complete jerk. Do something weird, like wearing a bizarre outfit, french kiss a relative in front of the camera, make some extreme political statement, and overinflate your ego to the point where it might legally challenge Godzilla for domination over Tokyo. See: Roberto Benigni, Michael Moore, Bjork

Step 9

Have some victory speech planned that consists of (1) you crying or looking constipated, (2) you thanking everyone you've ever met, even though the audience just DOES NOT CARE, (3) thank God, even if you're a satanic chicken worshipper, (4) start snapping at the band music when it swells up to get you off the stage, and (5) act like a magnanimous prick, as if you actually accomplished something bigger than curing cancer or bringing peace to the Middle East. See: Halle Berry barking like a dog during the 2001 Oscars