Predictions Friday – Never Forget the Preferential Ballot

When people predict Best Picture, they are almost always thinking about it wrong. Almost always. They are seeing it the way it used to be back in the day, not the way it has been since 2009. The way the ballots are now tabulated makes a big difference, though, in how the race goes down if it is a divided race or a united one.

And of course, you can’t assume what kind of race it is until the Producers Guild announces their winner. At this stage of the race we have no clue and I can promise you, though it’s always been true it is more true today than it ever has been that critics can tell you next to nothing about how the race will turn out.

Without the preferential ballot, La La Land probably would have won Best Picture. Probably The Revenant would have too. It’s harder to say for sure about 12 Years a Slave and Green Book because there was already a split going on. With Revenant and La La Land — especially La La Land — there was unity mostly all along the pike. The trick with predicting those years was to understand how the preferential balance would break in the redistribution rounds, and to spot what movie would benefit.

For all other categories except Best Picture, whatever nominee wins the most votes wins the Oscar. With Best Picture, you have a first count of number one votes. If no movie attains at least 50% of the ballots +1 in that first count, then there is a redistribution of the ballots for movies that get eliminated — until the magic percentage is reached. In general, it’s probably true that whichever film can gather enough steam in the subsequent rounds of counting will need to place 2nd or 3rd on a substantial number of ballots. If the film isn’t 1st on enough ballots, then it has to also be 2nd and 3rd – in other words, placed high on most of the ballots. So the winner each year, no matter how things shale out, will always be a movie that, on most ballots, lands at 1, 2 or 3.

That means when looking at the Best Picture race you should think about that. What are the top three movies? What are the top 2 movies? Can you tell what’s actually popular from the hype?

But movies don’t play in a vacuum. Knives Out, for instance, didn’t really start to rise until it opened in theaters (imagine that! it helps when people see a movie and talk about it liking it). It’s already made a lot of money and suddenly begins to look like a strong contender for a Best Picture nomination where it didn’t really before. The way previously unreleased films are talked about now that they’re available on Netflix will impact both The Irishman and Marriage Story.

Publicity is now in overdrive. The publicists have a version of the race they’re selling, so do critics. So do bloggers like me. In the end, a consensus vote will decide it. And it won’t be entirely clear how that will coalesce until we hear from the Producers Guild.

When you are predicting Best Picture, you have to think about what movie voters will want to push to the top of the ballot. You also have to think about which director will start winning awards. Is it going to be Quentin Tarantino finally? Is it going to be Martin Scorsese? Is it going to be Bong Joon-Ho? Or what about someone else entirely, like Sam Mendes for 1917. Maybe it’s Rian Johnson for Knives Out. Maybe it’s Greta Gerwig for Little Women. Watch which director racks up wins – and assess whether that director’s film also win Best Picture?

Here are the rules we know, more or less, for the era of the preferential ballot, 2009-now:

1) If a film wins PGA/DGA/SAG ensemble it is likely winning on the first round Picture, and winning Director.

2) If different films win the PGA/DGA/SAG ensemble then you’re in a recount situation and most likely a split between Picture and Director.

3) Voters need something to VOTE FOR. They aren’t going to anoint anyone for Best Picture on a preferential ballot. They just don’t vote like that. Moonlight won because there was urgency to vote for it in the last act of the race. Green Book won because there was urgency to vote for it because people liked it, for starters, and because it was getting so badly attacked. Look for the reason people will VOTE FOR the movie you are predicting. That it’s “good” isn’t enough.

4) In today’s climate, with an historic election hanging in the balance and impeachment looming, etc., it might not be something that exists outside the realm of politics. It might be. It might not be. But that aspect can’t be ignored.

5) The newest members of the Academy could be key in a preferential ballot type system because it all comes down to how they rank their choices. What does that mean? It’s hard to say but I feel a sense that the critics matter less in that case than the old guard raised on a climate that had fewer but more well respected/established critics.

A quick poll on Twitter told me that my followers are convinced that the top vote-getters will be:

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Irishman
1917
Jojo Rabbit
Marriage Story

Other films that pushed through included Parasite, Knives Out, The Farewell, and support here and there for Ford v Ferrari.

But let’s say, for the sake of our purposes today, it’s just these five that are the top vote-getters, and then there are 8 or 9 total nominees. Let’s say, in addition to the top tier movies, you also have:

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Irishman
1917
Jojo Rabbit
Marriage Story
Little Women
Parasite
Joker
Knives Out

That would, indeed, leave out two of the best films of the year – Ford v Ferrari and Dolemite Is My Name, but let’s assume voters are going to do just that – which is not outside the realm of possibility.

Each of these movies will have to have gotten in with roughly 200-300 number one votes — at a minimum. That means enough voters picked this movie as their favorite of the year. The first thing I notice about this list is that, other than Parasite, and one could argue Knives Out, this is a very white white white lineup. If that happens, we can expect a shitstorm extraordinaire.

Right? So even the shitstorm that erupts around the nominees can impact how the preferential ballot will break and for what movies. Remember how La La Land was hit with a “Ryan Gosling teaches black people about jazz” or some such that erupted? Well, the film that benefited from that was Moonlight because there was an urgency for the mostly white voters to not be thought of as racists, especially with Trump in power. Ditto The Shape of Water. It was clear that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri might have won Best Picture in a split vote scenario but it too was hit with a shitstorm involving race, so The Shape of Water, with its inclusive cast and a disabled lead character, was where voters felt more comfortable putting their vote – that shitstorm helped there to be more urgency to vote FOR The Shape of Water because they felt more guilty voting for Three Billboards.

This is a system that is harder to game than the ballot with just five nominees, where the most votes wins. That was the old way. In this new way, you can’t even count on passionate love if the film is divisive or made divisive as La La Land was. It was raised up early on, hyped within an inch of its life and had nowhere to go but down.

It is much better to glide under the radar with lowered expectations heading into the race, like Moonlight did, for voters to suddenly feel compelled to pull a film from obscurity and give it the win.

We don’t know yet what the two frontrunners will be. We don’t even know who the Best Director frontrunner will be.

Monday’s Golden Globe nominations will make a lot of this fog more clear. We’ll know we have a Best Director frontrunner in the Best Director category. It will be down to five names. We’ll also know from the Screenplay category which film might be considered stronger. And, as always, watch for the acting nominations across the board.

Last year on December 7, the Globe nominations had already come out and that made predicting much, much easier. I had all 8 Best Picture nominees predicted. So by the end of the big announcement on Monday, we’ll know a lot more.

But for the fun of it, let’s do a quickie prediction tally on the precipice of the Globe nominations:

Best Picture:
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Acting, Directing, Writing, Crafts
1917 – Acting, Directing, Writing, Crafts
The Irishman – Acting, Directing, Writing, Crafts
Jojo Rabbit – Acting, Directing, Writing, Crafts
Parasite – Maybe Acting, Directing, Writing, Crafts
Marriage Story – Acting, maybe Directing, Writing
Dolemite Is My Name – long shot across the board but maybe Acting, Writing, Crafts
Little Women – Acting, Writing, maybe Directing, Crafts
Joker – Acting, maybe Directing, maybe Writing
Ford v Ferrari – maybe acting, Writing, maybe Directing, Crafts

Strongest challengers:
Knives Out
Uncut Gems
The Farewell
Hustlers
Won’t You Be My Neighbor
Waves

Best Director:
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Sam Mendes, 1917
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Bong Joon-Ho, Parasite
Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit

Strongest challengers:
Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
James Mangold, Ford v Ferrari
Todd Phillips, Joker
Rian Johnson, Knives Out
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Safdie brothers, Uncut Gems

Best Actor
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
George MacKay, 1917
Eddie Murphy, Dolemite Is My Name

Strongest Contenders:
Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Robert De Niro, The Irishman
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
Paul Walter Hauser, Richard Jewell

Best Actress:
Renee Zellweger, Judy
Lupita Nyong’o, Us
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell or Saoirse Ronan, Little Women

Strongest Challengers:
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Ana De Armas, Knives Out

Best Supporting Actor:
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Wesley Snipes, Dolemite Is My Name
Sam Rockwell, Richard Jewell

Strongest contenders:
Jamie Foxx, Just Mercy
Tracy Letts, Ford v Ferrari
Al Pacino, The Irishman

Best Supporting Actress:
Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Margot Robbie, Bombshell
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dolemite Is My Name
Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit

Strongest contenders:
Florence Pugh, Little Women
Shuzhen Zhao, The Farewell

Original Screenplay:
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino+
Uncut Gems, The Safdie brothers+
1917, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Sam Mendes
Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach
Dolemite is My Name, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski

Strongest contenders:
Parasite, Bong Joon-Ho, Jin Won Han
Ford V. Ferrari , Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Queen & Slim, Lena Waithe
Bombshell, Charles Randolph
Waves, Trey Edward Shultz
The Farewell, Lulu Wang
Us, Jordan Peele

Adapted Screenplay
The Irishman, Steve Zaillian
Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi
The Two Popes, Anthony McCarten
Little Women, Greta Gerwig
Joker, Todd Phillips, Scott Silver

Strongest contenders
Hustlers,  Lorene Scafaria
Motherless Brooklyn, Edward Norton
Just Mercy, Daniel Destin Cretton, Andrew Lanham

Cinematography:
1917
A Hidden Life
Ad Astra
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Irishman

Strongest contenders:
Ford v Ferrari
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire+
Little Women
The Aeronauts
Jojo Rabbit

Editing:
Ford v Ferarri
The Irishman
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
1917
Knives Out

Strongest contenders:
Joker
Parasite
Jojo Rabbit
Waves
Marriage Story

Production Design:
1917
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Knives Out
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Strongest contenders:
Ford v Ferrari
A Hidden Life
The Aeronauts
Little Women
Ad Astra

Sound Mixing:
1917
Ford v Ferrari
Rocketman
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Sound Editing:
Ford v Ferarri
1917
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Avengers: Endgame
Captain Marvel

Costume Design
Dolemite is My Name
1917
Rocketman
Little Women
Jojo Rabbit

Visual Effects
1917
The Irishman
The Aeronauts
Ford v Ferrari
Ad Astra
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

That’s about all I got, Oscarwatchers. Let’s see how wrong we are on Monday.

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