Why did Sixto Rodriguez reject the Academy Awards?
The musical career of Sixto Rodriguez barely took off after the release of his two albums, 1970s Cold Fact and the following year’s Coming from Reality. In fact, by 1976, he’d quit music entirely. That was until the release of the 2012 Academy Award-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man.
The film was directed and written by the Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, who’d first come across the singer’s music whilst travelling through Africa. Rodriguez had barely made a dent in the cultural milieu of his native America, but in South Africa, he was a big deal.
However, very little was actually known about Rodriguez in the African country, and there were rumours that he had actually passed away. Bendjelloul’s film charts the attempt by two fans of Rodriguez’s from Cape Town, South Africa, to track the musician down and quell the rumours of his death.
The documentary premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win the World Cinema Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award, World Cinema Documentary. This success was followed up with a BAFTA win for ‘Best Documentary’ and then the greatest prize of all, an Academy Award for ‘Best Documentary’.
However, despite the film’s success, Rodriguez actually decided to skip the Academy Awards ceremony, even though Bendjelloul practically begged him to attend. The musician felt that if he were to participate in the Oscars, then it would take the limelight away from those that made the film itself.
He once spoke of his decision to snub the event, saying, “We also just came back from South Africa, and I was tired. I was asleep when it won, but my daughter Sandra called to tell me. I don’t have TV service anyway.” It’s moments like that that prove the humility of the man himself, being the subject of an Academy Award-winning film but sleeping through it anyway.
With Rodriguez not there, it was left to Bendjelloul to praise him on stage. Upon collecting his prestigious Oscar, he was sure to offer his gratitude to the man who made it possible. “Thanks to one of the greatest singers ever, Rodriguez,” the director said.
The success of the film was undoubtedly responsible for the upturn in fortune for Rodriguez, and he found a new worldwide audience. However, without the musician himself, Bendjelloul would have had no story on which to base his film, so perhaps the two are forever indebted to one another, even beyond death.
Check out the film’s trailer below.
