Predictions Friday: Shaping the Oscar Conversation

The climate for American cinema is changing dramatically. I’ve been blogging the entire Oscar year from start to finish since 1999 and generally, by now, we would have been tracking several promising films that have already open. Our method back in the day was as follows: Wait for Thursday night’s reviews to post online from Roger Ebert, Owen Gleiberman or Lisa Schwarzbaum and Kenneth Turan. This was even before Manohla Dargis or A.O. Scott were influential voices as they are now. The reviews would carry great significance because our top critics would begin to shape how the film was going to “play” in Oscar season. We would then watch to see how the movie “opened,” whether or not it made a respectable amount of money the following Friday. The hits would end up on the Contender Tracker, and the misses would ride off into the ether. Over the years — as film criticism became what it is today, and the traditional outlets began to matter less and less, and the hierarchy began to matter less and less and the box office began to matter less and less — the Oscar game became more about spotting Oscar contenders long before they ever got into the hands of critics.

Even then, though, we still had many films we would track  as they were released in Spring and Summer to check and report on reviews and box office. This year is one of the first that I can recall in which there are almost no films to track heading into the festival phase of Oscar season. There isn’t even really a popular phenomenon like Mad Max: Fury Road that launched in the beginning of the year. Part of that is because of the diminishing need to track films via critics anymore. Metacritic, for instance, follows the publication, not the critics, so we see new writers in rotation being featured who are less familiar, instead of people whose opinions have proven to be reliable in shaping the Oscar conversation, the way veteran critics used to do. Many of the people who shape that conversation now are bloggers, not really established critics. What they think may matter in a different way, probably, because they factor in what they think Oscar voters will do. Critics don’t; nor should they be expected to. Many movie writers today are too busy trying to find something new and interesting to say about yet another sequel or superhero movie. The Oscar conversation will surely expand in the coming months but wow, is it ever quiet right now.

What shapes the conversation these days, more than anything else, is what happens at film festivals. Believe it or not, the public used to be involved in the Oscar race. The audiences reaction mattered almost more than any other industry outsiders, even film critics. Now it seems that moviegoers are almost deliberately kept out of the loop until the films win awards and then some of the ticket-buyers think, oh I might as well watch that – it won all of those awards. The Oscar Best Picture winner is almost always one that anyone can sit down and watch and like, if not love. But in recent years, most people across the country don’t have the chance to see these top-tier films because they’re opening in limited release in big cities. Spotlight was one of those. When was the last time a big movie the public already saw and loved heading into the Oscar race won Best Picture? Maybe it was Argo in 2012. But 12 Years a Slave, Birdman and Spotlight? These are movies that seem to be curated for for smaller audiences in art-houses, movies that maybe the majority of people in America will get around to watching months later, when they’re available on Amazon or Netflix.

If the Oscar circle is getting smaller, and the Oscar race is mostly decided at festivals — Cannes, Sundance, Venice, Telluride, Toronto and AFI, maybe New York, how does the Oscar race get shaped and by whom? Here is a quick primer.

First, Oscar bloggers make our predictions, and we advocate for our favorites. Even when we’re pretending not to advocate we advocate by default, depending on which names and titles we end up featuring and talking about the most. Some of us are unabashed about our advocacy; others try to pretend advocacy doesn’t exist. Many of the big outlets are in the Oscar game now, like The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The LA Times, Village Voice, TIME, etc. The trades are still key — with Scott Feinberg at Hollywood Reporter, Kris Tapley at Variety, Pete Hammond at Deadline. There are prediction sites like AwardsWatch.com, AwardsCircuit.com. And of course, the two who’ve been here since the days of dial-up internet access began, the Ma and Pa of the Oscar scene, for better or worse — that would be me, here at AwardsDaily (formerly Oscarwatch) and Tom O’Neil over at Gold Derby. Columnists like Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, Anne Thompson at Indiewire, David Poland at Movie City News, Mark Harris and Kyle Buchanan at New York Mag’s Vulture, Film Journal’s Tomris Laffly, Nigel Smith at The Guardian joined the fray. Even Fivethirtyeight.com has gotten into the game, and many many more.

Beyond these online voice, whenever I see nominees and winners on stage I see the mostly invisible work of publicists who pushed them, backed them, controlled the message — the talented strategists who really ought to be standing on stage with the filmmakers accepting the award. Rare is the nominee or winner that appears out of nowhere thanks to critics or bloggers alone. It can happen, but it’s rare. Generally, the Oscar game is a game of publicists — and, make no mistake, it’s been that way for decades. They’re all really good at what they do. In order to gauge a film’s chances on Oscar Night, it’s as important to know who is behind a film or performer, handling the PR, as it is to watch how well that film played with audiences.

You will have to decide for yourself whom to trust when it comes to knowing whether a film is going to be a winner or not. Last year put the bloggers and pundits to the test with three Best Picture contenders that won three different guild awards. That’s never really happened in quite the same way as it did last year. How did we here at AwardsDaily know that The Revenant was not going to win Best Picture? For years we have pioneered the careful consideration of past precedents and stats. Above all, on the face of it, we knew The Revenant was too divisive. There are certain formulas and indicators we have come to rely on and one of those — maybe the most important of all for the Best Picture race — is that a divisive film cannot win Best Picture, especially with the preferential ballot in play. The people who predicted The Revenant would win BP (and that was most everyone) did so without understanding the way the preferential ballot works. Factoring in the basics of ballot ranking and placement, whenever I did a poll of my friends on Facebook, each time I ran the numbers the test Spotlight came out the winner. Even with a quick poll, it didn’t matter how many people I added, or which people were surveyed — the result was always the same.  More rigorous mathematical models designed by our own Marshall Flores and Dr Rob, using two different methodologies, came to the same conclusion. Despite all the noisy fervor for The Revenant, Spotlight always emerged quietly as the one movie that almost everyone could agree on. It was the publicist’s job to make what was mostly a muted film seem extraordinary — a task they accomplished with class and sensitivity by emphasizing Spotlight’s powerful backstory. By guiding the voters’ focus much more toward the victims of sexual abuse than the journalists, they elevated their film to a level of emotional importance that’s nearly always a hallmark of a Best Picture winner.

For our official prediction, we held tenaciously to The Big Short because it had won the Producers Guild, and that meant it was the only film that had won with a similar preferential ballot. But it was probably true, in the end, that it won with the producers because of Brad Pitt and the star factor. What we chose to ignore, and our biggest mistake heading in, was that Spotlight had beaten The Big Short at the SAG Awards. That meant it was more popular with actors. The actors branch outnumbers several other branches put together, and hence they rule the Academy, never forget that.

Shaping the Oscar race is easier than predicting it. Predicting what a consensus will do is harder — particularly in a year like 2015, with three frontrunners instead of the usual two. You think you know how it’s going to go, but people can surprise you. There are things going on beyond anyone’s control, like whisper campaigns. One of the things Spotlight did very well to seal the deal was to drive home the point (which they did when they accepted their award for ensemble at the SAG Awards) that their movie was about the “good guys” and The Big Short was about the “bad guys.” For that matter, even The Revenant was about the “bad guys.” People will almost always vote for the good guys over the bad guys in the Oscar race.

Shaping the race also means knowing what the voters will eventually go for and what will repel them. Trying to get actors to nominate Andy Serkis for Planet of the Apes was a losing battle. Ditto Avatar’s Zoe Saldana. Ditto anytime anyone tries to get a vocal performance nominated. Actors value their own faces and their real selves. Makeup and prosthetics are acceptable; motion capture and digital effects, not so much. Their job as actors and stars is to be seen, to put themselves fully on display. They don’t want to be replaced or selected out of the process or, god forbid, simulated. Maybe they will be someday but they certainly aren’t going to help things along any faster that they can avoid.

On the other hand, pushing a film like Mommy or I’m Not There or Beasts of No Nation or The Fits, or Indignation or the upcoming Moonlight can never hurt, because by the end of the awards race those films have more exposure and recognition than they did when the race started. Maybe that translates to more money and opportunity for the filmmakers  in future endeavors.

In other words, you probably can’t make “fetch” happen no matter how hard you try. And I try. Every year I try. But in the end, the focus must always be on the reasons the critics and the Globes and the Spirits and the Oscars give out awards at all. It’s about the art. It’s about cinema. It’s about the passion for keeping the spirit of vision and risk taking alive and well. It can’t just be about being “right.”

But let’s face it. We all like to be right, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. So let’s get on with it, shall we? What we have learned in the past week:

• We saw a trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival with Amy Adams and Jeremy Rennder, and found out a bit more about the tone they’re going for. Might this be Amy Adams’ year? Looks good.
• We just saw a teaser for Allied with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. Looks good.
• We saw stills from Morten Tyldum’s Passengers, with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. Looks good.

What else do we know?

We know that many people really really love Hell or High Water but that it might not be an Oscar movie, despite that.

We know that Sausage Party has, ahem, entered the animated race as perhaps “too vulgar” for the Academy, but nobody knows anything for sure. It’s possible, still.

We know that Indignation opened to very very good reviews – scores of 100 from Kenneth Turan and David Edelstein, not to mention a 90 from Joe Morgenstern. Looks good.

We know that Meryl Streep and Florence Foster Jenkins look to be another impressive work from Streep and we must count her in.

We know that Jenelle Reilly at Variety was floating the idea of Hugh Grant maybe getting a supporting nod. We know that Kris Tapley was floating the idea of Ralph Fiennes getting a nod for A Bigger Splash.

We know that Oscarssowhite is going to be a strong force heading into the season and we know that there will be the inevitable backlash that goes along with that. It is something that can’t be forgotten.

We know that the election is having an impact on how people talk to each other, how they think, how they feel. We don’t yet know where we will end up by November. How does that impact Clint Eastwood’s chances? How does it impact the Jessica Chastain movie Miss Sloane? Birth of a Nation? Political context will matter.

We know that Hollywood continues to evolve in strange ways and that adjustments will always need to be made.

We know that movies are being test screened, like The Girl on the Train. We also know to pay no attention to reactions from test screenings.

And we know that we are roughly two weeks away from having a real ball of dough to work from.

Here is how we see thing now.

Strongest overall contenders, seen and unseen:
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Loving
Birth of a Nation
Manchester by the Sea
La La Land
Silence
Arrival
Sully
20th Century Women
Fences
Moonlight
Miss Sloane
Allied
The Mercy
Passengers
The Founder
Florence Foster Jenkins
The Girl on the Train
American Pastoral

Director:
Martin Scorsese, Silence
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Ang Lee, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Nate Parker, The Birth of a Nation
Denis Villeneuve, Arrival
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Jeff Nichols, Loving
Mike Mills, 20th Century Women
Stephen Frears, Florence Foster Jenkins
Mike Mills, 20th Century Women
Clint Eastwood, Sully
Robert Zemeckis, Allied
John Madden, Miss Sloane
Denzel Washington, Fences
Morten Tyldum, Passengers
Tate Taylor, The Girl on the Train

Best Actor
Nate Parker, The Birth of a Nation
Tom Hanks, Sully
Joe Alwyn, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Michael Keaton, The Founder
Denzel Washington, Fences
Chris Pratt, Passengers
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Andrew Garfield, Silence
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Logan Lerman, Indignation
Ewan McGregor, American Pastoral
Colin Firth, The Mercy
Brad Pitt, Allied
Michael Fassbender, Light Between Oceans

Best Actress
Viola Davis, Fences
Amy Adams, Arrival
Ruth Negga, Loving
Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train
Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins
Madina Nalwanga, Queen of Katwe
Alicia Vikander, Light Between the Oceans
Rachel Weisz, Denial
Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Jennifer Lawrence, Passengers
Emma Stone, La La Land
Sally Field, Hello My Name is Doris
Marion Cotillard, Allied
Lily Collins, Rules Don’t Apply

Supporting Actress
Sarah Gadon, Indignation
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea
Lupita Nyong’o, Queen of Katwe
Rebecca Ferguson, Girl on the Train
Kristen Stewart, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Laura Dern, The Founder

Supporting Actor
Ralph Fiennes, A Bigger Splash
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Liam Neeson, Silence
Tracy Letts, Indignation
Timothy Spall, Denial
Jeremy Renner, Arrival
Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins

Animated Feature
Finding Dory
The Red Turtle
The Little Prince
Zootopia
Moana
The Secret Life of Pets
Kubo and the Two Strings
Trolls
Sausage Party
Angry Birds

Early days yet, Oscar watchers. Stay frosty. We’ll almost there.