New York Film Critics pay a Price for Being First

The New York Film Critics pushed back their dates (now voting December 3) so that they could announce before the National Board of Review (December 4). They did it to be out front of awards season and to be the first “important” voice of the season. Or perhaps they did it to dampen the impact of the National Board of Review. Both have been around a very long time but the date change is a fairly recent development, borne out of awards season hysteria where every city with a population of more than 500 has a critics group that votes on awards. At some point you just tune it out because it hardly feels like it matters anymore who wins what where. What you look at is the consensus building around certain films.  It is also pointless to say the NYFCC are more prestigious than the NBR. As you’ll see from the chart at the end of this article, it really makes no never mind who they are. Their choices are not that different.  Perception and positioning is what matters. Very few films that won either the NBR or the NYFCC did not go on to win Best Picture.

The New York Film Critics want to be first — but they will pay a price for that. Yes, they will be out front. There is a good chance their choice for Best Picture will go on to be nominated for Best Picture.  This year, they will likely miss seeing The Wolf of Wall Street and perhaps American Hustle. Maybe they will be screened in time, maybe they won’t.  But either way, it is not supposed to be their jobs to influence the awards race. They are supposed to carefully consider the films of a given year and decide which film deserves to be called best. Therefore, their choice to push back their date threatens their whole purpose of existing in the first place.

When I hear the panic about certain films missing their deadline the only conclusion to draw from that is not that the films will suffer, but that the NYFCC will suffer for not having seen all of the films. How can they justify that?  Whatever their reasoning behind the movie must be more important to them. And so it goes.

A word on perception, which drives the Oscar race: Voters vote for what they think is good. What they think is good is driven by unpredictable buzz, hype and yes, perception.  The subjective vote is often driven by the zeitgeist – what feels sexy at the time.  How do we know that everything is subjective?  Just look at the split reviews for Ridley Scott’s The Counselor.  The consensus would sink The Counselor.  But there are still a handful of critics who praise it.   The trick of a publicity team is to raise perception by taking advantage of hype and buzz around a contender.  It is no easy task if the public or a rival studio make that film a target – as they often do when a film is a threat to win, or if the movie has far more bad reviews than it has good ones – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. You have to start, at the very least, with mostly positive reviews.

Either way, once the NBR and the NYFCC announce a winner that film becomes one of the frontrunners. I would be willing to bet that if The Counselor won one of those major awards it would be enough to get it into the running for Best Picture, even with the bad reviews.  It might not get the nomination in the end but simply winning a major award can shift perception dramatically. Those wins are put on the ads. They make people take notice.   They also put a target on the film’s back.

One of the most unpredictable things I’ve ever seen in film happened last year.   In the age of Twitter suddenly it was very very easy to spread information faster than ever.  The 2012 Presidential election united the factions on Twitter. A single journalist, like Andrew Sullivan for instance, is connected to thousands of followers. Those followers often take what he says and champion those beliefs.  Suddenly, for each top of the tree there are hundreds of thousands of branches.  It wasn’t long before anyone who loved Zero Dark Thirty, for instance, suddenly had to defend why.  It wasn’t long before people who loved Lincoln were apologists for getting history wrong and white people making films about white people.  Those movies were targets because they were winning stuff early.  Let’s face it – this was mob mentality run amok. Twitter was the conduit. And this is how it went down:

Last year, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty got it the worst last year but they were hardly the only ones. Argo benefitted from flying under the radar, staying mostly out of sight, being the one no one really thought was good enough to beat the other movies.  It never really became a target until it started winning awards and suddenly became a threat.

Timeline:

• September 16, 2012 – Argo loses to Silver linings Playbook at TIFF
• December 3, 2012 – Zero Dark Thirty wins New York Film Critics award for Picture, Director
• December 5, 2012 – Zero Dark Thirty wins National Board of Review Picture, Director, Actress
• December 9, 2012 – Zero Dark Thirty wins Boston Film Critics Picture, Director, Screenplay
• December 10, 2012 – Zero Dark Thirty wins Washington DC area film critics Picture, Director, Actress
• December 10, 2012 – David Edelstein writes in his review that “Dick Cheney would have loved Zero Dark Thirty”
• December 10, 2012 – Glenn Greenwald’s headline “Zero Dark Thirty: new torture-glorifying film wins raves“
• December 10, 2012 – Zero Dark Thirty torture debate
• December 11, 2012 – CNN: Did torture really lead to Bin Laden?
• December 12, 2012 – MSNBC Does Zero Dark Thirty promote torture?
• December 12, 2012 – New York Times – torture scenes open reopen debate
• December 12, 2012 – Hollywood Reporter – Zero Dark Thirty, how to sell it
• December 13, 2012 – Argo wins San Diego Film Critics Picture, Director, Screenplay
• December 16, 2012 – Argo wins Southeastern Film Critics Association
• December 17, 2012 – Zero Dark Thirty wins Chicago Film Critics Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actress, Editing
• December 18, 2012 – Argo wins the Florida Film Critics Picture, Director, Screenplay
• In a December 19 letter to the chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produced the film, three senators alleged it was “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location” of bin Laden.
• Friday, January 4th, 2013 – Naomi Wolf calls Kathryn Bigelow Leni Reifenstahl
• Critics Choice ballots due — January 8, 2013
• Oscar nominations — January 10, 2013 – Kathryn Bigelow, Ben Affleck and Tom Hooper not nominated for director.<–the snub
• Critics Choice Awards — January 10, 2013 – Argo wins Picture, Director
• Golden Globe Awards — January 13, 2013 – Argo wins Picture, Director
• January 13, 2013 — Ed Asner and Martin Sheen send letter to Academy voters to boycott Zero Dark Thirty
• January 15, 2013 – Kathryn Bigelow writes an op-ed defending Zero Dark Thirty
• PGA/WGA/SAG ballot deadline — January 25, 2013
• PGA Awards — January 26, 2013 – Argo wins
• SAG Awards — January 27, 2013 – Argo wins ensemble
• January 28, 2013 – Michael Moore launches defense of Zero Dark Thirty
• January 30, 2013 — Martin Sheen retracts statements against Zero Dark Thirty
• DGA Awards — February 2, 2013 – Argo wins DGA
• February 8, 2013 – Oscar ballots are sent out.
• February 24, 2013 Argo wins Best Picture

Now, you might look at this scenario and conclude that “they just liked Argo better.” Indeed, the bigger the awards voting body, the more agreeable overall the film has to be.   What you’ll note from the above timeline is that the Affleck snub happened concurrently with his winning the Critics Choice and the Golden Globe.  Zero Dark Thirty’s fall probably influenced the Critics Choice — but I’ll be that the Globes genuinely liked Argo better and that it would have won there regardless.  But Affleck’s snub and his winning those two big awards at the same time really did create an unbeatable Oscar story.

Could Zero Dark Thirty have won were it not for the controversy? I don’t think so. Could Lincoln have won without all of the dung that was flung at that film during Oscar season? The nasty rumors about Clinton’s appearance at the Globes, that silly congressman pointing out the flaws in the script publicly? We’ll never know but I’m guessing not.  Despite how the season went, in retrospect, Argo has almost everything a Best Picture winner needs except one vital factor: a sense of urgency to vote for it.  The Affleck snub gave it that sense of urgency and the film slam dunked a win.  It is a perfectly fine winner, in keeping with the Academy’s recent spate of Best Picture winners.

Divisive vs. Non-Divisive

Why Twitter has become more important now is that the chatter can make an undivisive movie suddenly divisive.  As we know with the broad consensus voting, any hint of divisiveness won’t fly. There has to be uniform likability.

The NYFCC and the NBR are tiny microcosms of voters compared to the bigger industry groups–

DGA-14,500
SAG-100,000
PGA-4,500
Academy-6000

In the NYFCC there are only around 40 film critics.  The National Board of Review has probably close to that number. In holding their awards early, they are influencing how the race might go – both groups awarded Zero Dark Thirty their prize for the best film of 2012.  But that doesn’t mean, when all is said and done, that movie will win Best Picture. In fact, it might put a target on its back for the rest of the season.

The Charts:
—was not nominated for Best Picture