Jeff Wells and Birdman: A Love Story

When the dust settles on Oscars 2015, when the trinkets and whistle blowers have been put to bed, few memories will remain of this year. One that will linger forever and always, though, is the love story between Hollywood-Elsewhere.com‘s Jeff Wells and Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman. Jeff has been a one-man champion for the film where others were mere admirers from afar. Older women in the Academy won’t go for it, Jeff proclaimed, after he was told in Telluride that a fellow journalist’s wife didn’t like it. It’s too divisive to win, went the mantra. But Jeff was there. Day in and day out, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health – not just championing the film but predicting it to win when no one else did:

The whole thing turned around for him last night when the industry embraced the film he’s been beating the drum for all season long. He’s knocked out its main rivals – like Selma. That was easy. Didn’t take much – just the insinuation that the film was damaging the legacy of its one white hero. Press picked that up. Lock and load. Next up, Boyhood. Okay so what can you say about a film that was made from nothing but heart, a good idea and 12 long years of dedicated, careful filmmaking, that dug deeply into the characters to reveal their vulnerabilities, fears, weaknesses and ultimately, strength – life is messy. Life is about the extraordinary in the ordinary. How to make that film seem … not as good a choice?

Call it a gimmick – which is funny considering Birdman could also be called a gimmick but who’s counting. None of these rumors started with Jeff but he went along with them because, well, they weren’t Birdman. Birdman – the film to rescue the mundane drudgery of Oscar season. Birdman, with that rat-a-tat-tat drum score, the magical realism, that insane boner on Edward Norton, that breathtaking performance by Michael Keaton – two women making out, Emma Stone sleeping with Edward Norton. Birdman makes you feel alive. Birdman makes you feel. And some movies you FEEL. Yet the pundits had abandoned it for Boyhood – why Boyhood? WHY? Why not Birdman!?

I can sympathize with Jeff – I was a Gone Girl girl. Nothing but Gone Girl. Gone Girl over all other things and if it had won the PGA last night I would be dancing like Kathy Bates in Misery when she finds out Misery is alive. It would have renewed my faith that yes, awards season is worth every nasty moment – that YES by god, my taste matters. YES people heard me! Yes my choice is their choice because if 6,000 people agree with me that makes me MATTER! But alas, my choice was kicked to the curb – one, twice, and now, three times. You lose, Sasha Stone. JEFF WELLS wins.

The kiss of death, it seems, for an Oscar contender is to be 1) a critics darling – everyone knows industry voters hate the critics and have no business telling them what a great film is (except when it’s The Artist or The Hurt Locker or No Country for Old Men). 2) to win the Golden Globe heading into the big guild votes (unless you’re name is Ben Affleck and you made a movie called Argo). Boyhood – the literal definition of the “little movie that could” suddenly becomes the lumbering frontrunner. Teams start to form and call themselves “anything but Boyhood.” People repeat the awards season mantra, “critics don’t vote for the Oscars” (except when it’s The Artist, The Hurt Locker or No Country for Old Men). Pundits crawl out of the woodwork declaring “I knew Boyhood could never win! It has no plot! It’s just a gimmick! Take out the 12 years thing and it’s just an ordinary movie.” Never mind the part where if you take out the continuous take of Birdman it’s really just a play. On stage.

Anyone who doesn’t see how ugly and twisted the Oscar race is must be on good meds or either just doesn’t take any of it seriously enough. You can’t care. The trick is NOT minding.

Kris Tapley believes the problem is putting Boyhood in the frontrunner’s spot to begin with – and in fact, he and Scott Feinberg and Dave Karger and Pete Hammond had not been on the Boyhood train. They had Unbroken out front and Interstellar at one point — Boyhood, they sensed, wasn’t an “Oscar movie.” Yet Boyhood kept winning. Now people will say “Oh well, that’s just the critics.” But there was no way to tell whether you were dealing with a Social Network situation (lord help us) or The Artist – where it didn’t matter what anyone said or how much money the movie made “they” were going to vote for it.

But no one gets to take credit for Birdman’s soaring to great heights except Jeff Wells. He’s been a devoted advocate from the beginning, come hell or high water, no matter what. Team Birdman IS Jeff Wells. At last his passionate advocacy and predicting has come together where no other pundit really saw it coming.

Look at this Guru’s chart from last week:

A few of us had Birdman in the #2 slot but no one had it to win. Over at Gold Derby before last night and even now no one has Birdman to win. In fact, I don’t think I can find a single pundit outside of Jeff Wells who WAS predicting it. It all sort of reminds me of 2005 when Jeff Wells was one of the few predicting Crash to win.

A love story like this one is worth paying attention to because it happens so rarely for us pundits. There is nothing like having the movie you love actually win against all odds. Birdman was deemed “too divisive” early on and yet I kept hearing people say how much they loved it, people I knew in “real life” not in the awards scene. I myself find it to be a very good film but after three viewings the only thing I take away from it is Michael Keaton’s performance> The rest feels like a stage play to me, and not a film I can revisit to find pockets of brilliance in it, not like Boyhood, not like Inherent Vice, not like Gone Girl. That’s just a matter of taste.

The one thing we all forgot and it’s worth mentioning for all time? The industry likes movies about the industry. What does Birdman say? It condemns critics, it laments the old world before super hero movies took over, it depicts a man who is aging out of the modern era of entertainment, a man who rejects viral videos and Twitter. It is about Hollywood clinging to its past while acknowledging it must move forward into its awful future. So many watched Birdman and forgot it was about the industry but the industry likes to look at itself in the mirror. Not the David Cronenberg or Robert Altman mirror but the mirror that strokes it gently, flatters it, takes the piss out of it in a humorous inside joke kind of way to the tune of:

Argo
The Artist
Shakespeare in Love
Chicago

Birdman settles nicely into that legacy and captures Hollywood at a moment where it doesn’t want to go forward and can’t go backwards. That frustrated place between what must be and what once was.

So let’s all raise our glasses and toast Jeff Wells for a job well done and a season won. Sure, we can expect lots more bullying posts about how everyone else got it wrong but he — he was right. He will rub our noses in it and ram it down our throats until we choke on it.

When the dust settles, when the new year commences, the awards will have been won. The decisions final. Time will sort out the rest. Most of the time Oscar season gets it way wrong. I predict this will be one of those years. We’ll know soon enough – well, not for another ten years anyway.

And the best part of all? We get to turn around and start all over again in a few months.