Help my indie Oscar campaign for best actor

Hi, I'm Jonathon Williams, originally from Australia. I moved to beautiful America nine years ago in pursuit of following the crazy dreams in my heart. It has been an impossible dream to chase and one that has consistently thrown up challenges, whether in steady work, visas, opportunities, housing, artistic pain, setbacks, failures and more.

Please help my independent Oscar campaign for best actor for the 2023 Academy Awards. I have successfully qualified for next year's race and I'm in "For Your Consideration" for the best actor field.

The harsh reality is that it is a very expensive process to even begin to compete with the studios and mega-corporations. However, I feel that at the end of the day, art should be based on talent and not money or power.

I have successfully directed and produced a wonderful independent movie titled "I Want To Thank The Academy" which has received amazing feedback and support during our Academy Award qualifying run. I have spent over $7,500 to even be in a position to just qualify and I can't afford the video housing fees for the movie for members to watch and vote, or any press and PR opportunities that are much needed.

There are many worthy GoFundMe causes all over the world. People's needs are greater than this, I'm well aware of this. I don't want this to come across as a vain attempt at self-glory because that is the last thing people want or need. But, at the end of the day, there is a human story of someone trying to chase their God-given dreams, no matter the outcome.

From the outside looking in, people think that Hollywood is lights, cameras and action, along with glamor and glitz, but the truth is, for an independent artist, the struggle is immense. For this movie, I have spent thousands of unpaid hours producing, writing, directing, editing, acting, promoting and countless other roles out of sheer love of the dream. Once the pandemic began, I lost all work opportunities and began work as a gig worker.

I have delivered thousands of deliveries for Instacart, Ubereats, Doordash and Lyft. These jobs have allowed me the flexibility to work on my movie, whether editing, coloring, promoting and so forth.

We just completed an Academy qualifying run at Lumiere Cinema in Los Angeles that ran from December 16th-22nd, the very last show I scheduled for Academy members to come and watch the movie, hoping they may vote for me, or even watch the performance and unfortunately, no one arrived. That's the reality of cinema these days if you don't have massive names in your movie or a PR machine driving eyeballs to your movie. Also, people just don't go to the cinema as often and are just plain busy. The next opportunity is to set up a "Screening Room" in the Academy where members can view the movie and performance. There is a fee of $20,000 to house our movie in the screening room, but, after speaking to a member of The Academy they have greatly reduced this fee due to this movie being an "Independent movie and the budget threshold.

Our movie trailer is below and I hope you enjoy it and have a Merry Christmas.