Success Quote by Ennio Morricone

Calling it "a theft" is Morricone doing the rarest kind of Hollywood complaining: funny, specific, and strategically impolite. He’s not pleading for recognition; he’s indicting an awards system that treats a composer’s labor as ornamental until it’s politically convenient. The punch line lands because it’s half-brag, half shrug. "If it was up to me" admits the ego while exposing the absurdity of pretending Oscars are pure merit. Of course he’d give himself one every two years. Who wouldn’t, after writing the sound of an era?

The subtext is sharper: Morricone is pointing to the gap between cultural impact and institutional validation. His scores for Leone and beyond didn’t just accompany images; they rewired how audiences hear tension, heroism, and irony. Yet for decades the Academy largely kept him at arm’s length, as if innovation in film music should be enjoyed but not officially crowned. When he finally received the competitive Oscar for The Hateful Eight (after an honorary one), it felt less like a victory lap than a delayed correction.

Morricone’s genius here is refusing the saintly posture. He doesn’t frame himself as a wounded artist. He frames the situation as a botched transaction: something was taken, and everyone knows it. The humor is a scalpel. It lets him say what’s usually unsayable in awards culture: that "prestige" often arrives after the work has already changed the medium, and that the gatekeepers are always a beat behind the art.