The State of the Race: Why the Producers Guild Determines Best Picture

When this website first began its grand experiment of cracking the code of why some films make it into the Oscar race and why other films don’t, there were three major forces determining Best Picture: the public, film critics and the DGA. All three of these forces have faded and become far less influential than they used to be. The reasons for this have to do with the changing tide of Hollywood itself, what Lynda Obst calls “the new normal,” the tectonic shift of events that reverberated once the Academy pushed their date back one month, and the advent of the internet.

Large sectors of public started liking movies the Academy didn’t; awards were chosen and decided upon long before the public even got involved with those films; and critics changed from a powerful lobby of high-minded opinion-shapers to a sea of indistinguishable voices that seems to matter less and less as the years wear on. One thing remains the same: the critics and the Academy still tend to be on the same side, they like the same kinds of films; and while the majority of moviegoers are often left to fend for themselves, their tastes are now reflected by populist ceremonies like the VMAs and the People’s Choice Awards.

The DGA’s story is a little different. There used to be no bigger influencer than the DGA where Best Picture (and of course, Best Director) was concerned. In the early days of the Academy, the producer was the most important player in the Oscar race. That’s why Best Picture came and comes at the end of the night. Those were the days of Louis B. Mayer and Zanuck and the like. The directors were much like the other important players, the writers and the actors but weren’t the gods we see them as today. I think it’s mostly safe to say that the French had the biggest impact on how we view directors because the rise of the DGA happened roughly at the same time: the end of the 50s, into the 60s and most importantly, the 70s. The concept of a film director as film author, or “auteur” was how great films were distinguished from “entertainment,” although of course the two would frequent;y and inevitably cross paths.

The DGA (founded in 1936) has been around as long or longer as any other major guild, but their influence on the Oscar race began to have significant effect around 1948. For the next several decades, DGA winners would signal which film was headed for the Best Picture win. Of course, there were always splits between Picture and Director for various reasons. Sometimes they had to split because the Academy couldn’t decide which film was best. Sometimes they split because one film was clearly more of a director’s movie than a producers movie. Sometimes they split because the Best Picture winner did not have a Best Director nomination. Either which way, the influence of the Directors Guild was profound and important.

In 2012 things began to shift dramatically. It was a simple decision, to move the ballot deadline to occur before the DGA announced their awards. For many years the DGA would announce and then the Oscar voters would have their say. While it’s true that 2012 presented the biggest difference between DGA and the Academy in Oscar history and we haven’t seen that kind of freaky mismatch since, the fact remains that we are now seeing pure Academy choices detached from the directors branch without any DGA influence at all.

Here are the deadlines for voting per the big guilds:

Ballot deadline for Producers Guild – January 4th
Nominees announced for Producers Guild January 5th
Ballot deadline for Academy – January 8th, 2016
DGA ballot deadline – January 11, 2016
DGA announces nominees – January 12, 2016
Oscar nominations – January 14, 2014

At the same time, adding to the Oscar/DGA disconnect, the Academy expanded the Best Picture slate from 5 to 10 for 2009 and 2010. From 5 to an unknown number between 5 and 10 from 2011 up to today. That means that we’re always dealing with a preferential ballot of more than 5 Best Picture nominees. Now the PGA is the only guild that matches the Academy in terms of using a preferential ballot with more than 5 nominees. The DGA, SAG, the WGA, the Golden Globes and BAFTA all use 5 nominees and none use the preferential ballot.

These two forces combined have shifted the power and influence away from the DGA. They remain the best bellwether to confirm the Best Director winner. But where Best Picture is concerned, the PGA now rules. In fact, they rule so hard that starting in 2009 producers have been the voting body that best determines where the Best Picture race is going.

2009 – Avatar won the Globe but the Hurt Locker won the PGA and then Oscar.
2010 – The Social Network won the Globe and everything else but the King’s Speech won the PGA and then Oscar.
2011 – Hugo and The Artist won the Globe, The Artist won the PGA and then Oscar (not surprising).
2012 – Argo did not seem like it was going to win Best Picture until it won the Critics Choice and the Globe. But that wouldn’t matter until it won the PGA, which it did, and then Best Picture.
2013 – Gravity and 12 years a Slave won the PGA for their first ever tie. 12 Years won Best Picture, Gravity Best Director.
2014 – Boyhood won everything until it got to the PGA where Birdman stunned everyone by winning that and then going on to win Best Picture.

While all of these wins also had a corresponding DGA win, the PGA came first and the DGA seemed to merely confirm what the PGA voted as the winner.

One of the biggest reasons for the PGA’s influence is that their membership numbers closely mirror the Academy’s and they are comprise many different types of voters — old, young, male, female; film and TV. There are roughy 6,500 members of the PGA and around 6K for the Academy. It doesn’t take a math whiz to see that roughly the same amount of people voting on a preferential ballot of more than 5 nominees are going to come out with roughly the same titles and winners.

The PGA has the luxury of a 10-slot nomination ballot, as opposed to the Academy’s, which only has 5 blanks to fill. I think this ultimately makes the PGA’s choices for Best Picture better than the Academy’s because it is more varied. Last year, for instance, three of the best dark movies – Gone Girl, Nightcrawler and Foxcatcher did not get a Best Picture nomination with the Academy.

To find your way to Best Picture you have to find your way to the PGA and figure out how some films wind up there and others don’t. This is where the date change comes into effect. Pushing the awards back from March to February meant that everything got pushed back. Thus, whereas in the old days the Christmas season would be prime time for finding “Oscar movies,” now, it all happens much, much earlier during the film festivals. That mostly takes the public out of the equation. The public figures in now as ticket buyers only. Sure, a Cinemascore rating of A always helps but for the most part the Oscars are STILL USED as a way to make more money for the movies. Thus, “Oscar buzz” can still translate to money at the box office.

Money at the box office does not impact the Oscar race because by the time the films hit the theaters most of them have already been accepted or rejected by the critics and industry voters. Moneymakers ordinarily do not seem to impress critics nor industry voters the way they used to. Thus, a film can make NO MONEY at the box office and still win Best Picture. This argument was settled when Avatar and The Hurt Locker battled it out and continued when 12 Years a Slave beat Gravity — and Gone Girl was not even nominated. The money doesn’t matter because this part of the film business has officially become “niche.”

Grantland’s Mark Harris has never liked how the pundits decide (based on what films publicists are pushing) what will be the candidates for the Oscar race. He has long objected to the way films are corralled into the winner’s circle. The problem is that you’re dealing with a massive consensus of thousands of voters. That consensus starts building with the critics awards and the pundits predictions. They thin the herd, as it were, so that voters have a smaller screener pile to deal with. The lower level precursors evaluate the movies and help Oscar voters decide which ones are worth their while and then the elites of the industry get involved in the voting.

The size of the guilds are simply too large to overcome, thus, there can’t really be many surprises beyond that first PGA consensus decision. After the PGA calls it, the race is mostly all over but the shouting.