My old friend Alan won an Oscar. Not a “big” one, but a technical award. He kept it on a shelf, and the first time I picked it up, I was shocked by how heavy it was. Unfortunately for Alan, his win didn’t translate into fabulous wealth and success. He ended up opening a studio and getting a contract to produce some shows to air on BET.

The shows failed and he got stiffed. He was deep in the hole with some unsavory characters who were not interested in why he couldn’t pay his bills, and since he had a new baby and needed both his arms, I loaned him a not insignificant amount of money and bailed him out.

He never recovered, and every effort he’s made since to regain his faded glory has fallen in the toilet. He told me he always wanted to pay me back, and some day he would. It’s been 30 years and I’ve never seen a dime. Maybe Polonius was right, but we make our choices and live with them.

The Oscars are now a battleground. I try to watch the movies nominated for big awards. I like most. Others not as much. Others not at all. Once in a while, I really love a movie, but not too often. Then again, I’m a groundling when it comes to the movies. I appreciate what I like, and may miss important elements that are valued by the cognizatti that just don’t mean much to me.

I’ve always suspected that people who do a thing, like make movies, see things that I do not. That’s true for lawyers. Why not for directors or cinematographers? So while they may give their award to an actor or movie that didn’t make my cut, who am I to say they’re wrong? More to the point, why would that bother me? I’m going to like what I like. They may put something on my radar by their statuettes, but they can’t make me like it. And if I watch a movie I like that gets no nominations, I won’t unlike it because of them.

Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded its top prize to “Green Book,” a feel-good period drama about a white man learning to be less racist through forced interaction with a black man. Immediately, many people called this out as a stain on the Academy’s record, proof voters remain out of touch with the current cultural climate.

Many movie lovers, myself included, were understandably upset and disappointed.

Last year’s Oscars came in the wake of #OscarSoWhite, a grievance that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a fascinatingly pompous name for a bunch of people who barely graduated high school, ignored movies by “people of color,” another fascinating name designed to offend no one who wasn’t white. This is what made Green Book winning* Best Picture such a curious problem. Black actors. Black issue. Black theme. But it was the white man’s epiphany about black life, so it wasn’t, as the kids say, “centered” on the black experience.

It was a movie. I saw it. It was a good movie. Whether it was the best movie, I dunno, but it wasn’t a bad movie such that winning Best Picture was a “stain on the Academy’s record.” I’m now learning that it wasn’t the first stain, either.

Among the most egregious examples: the best-picture Oscar for “Driving Miss Daisy,” a decision many critics have cited as one of the worst made by the Academy, not unlike “Green Book.” That same year, the Spirit Awards celebrated “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” Steven Soderbergh’s impressive debut that has been credited with changing the landscape of indie filmmaking. In 1994, the Oscar went to “Forrest Gump,” a film that has more recently faced criticism for its whitewashed version of United States history and conservative view of women’s sexuality. In contrast, the Spirit Award that year went to “Pulp Fiction,” a narrative-bending film that has become a touchstone in film history.

And there’s more.

And it’s hard to forget the infamous Oscars upset by the treacly racial reconciliation drama “Crash” over the groundbreaking “Brokeback Mountain.” At least Ang Lee’s tender romance will always have its Spirit Award.

Veronica Walsingham raises these “infamous” films to promote the Spirit Awards over the Oscars, because the Oscars keep giving awards to the wrong movies. The Spirit Awards, as she explains it, are like a People’s Choice Award for indie films. But the tacit explanation goes further, that they are unburdened by all the racist white cis people in the old Academy, who may wear ribbons on the gowns and tuxes, but end the evening at fancy cocktail parties with the rich and famous.

If we already have the Spirit Awards, then there’s no need to invent them. But Walsingham’s pitch is to forget the Oscars and make the Spirits the big deal award. Her rationale is that Spirit awards are given to movies for reasons she prefers as opposed to whatever reasons the Academy chooses. Her preferences seem to align more with political correctness, though the movies she likes better were good movies as well. But they just didn’t win the Oscar.

As Alan painfully learned, winning an Oscar wasn’t a guarantee of future wealth and success. Even if the Spirit Awards replace the Oscars, they won’t be either. You still have to make a good movie that people want to watch. And if you do, then people will watch them.

I loved Forest Gump, and even if it whitewashed history, I still loved Forest Gump. I may watch it tonight instead of the Academy Awards because it’s more fun to watch a movie I love than to watch a bunch of people complaining about the unfairness of it all. I wonder what Alan will be doing tonight?

*Years ago, they would announce, “and the winner is,” but they stopped saying that because it hurt the feelings of the losers, who knew they were losers because their name wasn’t announced, but were somehow supposed to feel less loser-ish about it by changing the announcement to “and the Oscar goes to,” since the winner knew he won and didn’t need the win publicly acknowledged.