The State of the Race: The Changing of the Guard

Today’s nominations felt very strange. It wasn’t just leaving Lady Gaga off the list, which was surreal. If there was any contender this Academy in 2022 should have at their show, it’s her. It was also strange that Belfast, Licorice Pizza, and West Side Story all missed Best Editing but got Best Picture and Best Director. It was strange how the pieces scattered like someone knocked down a wall of dominoes.

But there was something else too — a distinct shift in the direction of film critics and away from the general public. There were two paths the Academy could have taken. One was to broaden outward, with, say, Spider-Man: No Way Home or No Time to Die, or even Lady Gaga. Another was to swap Spider-Man for Drive My Car, the film the critics put all of their chips behind. It was one thing for the Directors branch to go that way. But for that last slot in a ten Best Picture lineup was interesting. It was a definite sign that the Academy had changed and there probably is no going back.

Change is sometimes a slow boil. You barely notice it until you wake up one day and you notice that nothing is the same. That is more or less how it’s gone down in the past 20 years I’ve been watching the race. We have arrived at a definitive place. The Oscars no longer have any need for audiences. They have forfeited the argument of the purpose of film. In their first year of existence, they gave out two prizes: one for artistic achievement and the other for Best Picture overall. But they abandoned this idea, the same way they continue to abandon the need for a “popular film” category or a separate category for female directors. They continue to have faith in the industry to get it right and for voters to notice. Still, there has always been the argument about what the purpose of movies are and, thus, what the purpose of the Oscars are.

They haven’t really always been about the films themselves. It seems now, in our COVID times, with no actual people or crowds to bounce off of, the Oscar voters are now like the critics — completely isolated and insulated from actual people out there in the world who pay to see movies. It’s hard to make such a strong conclusion. After all, who knows. Maybe when COVID goes away there will be a renaissance of movies that are made and released with audiences turning out.

But it isn’t just that the Oscars have forgotten the people movies are supposedly made for. It’s also that the people have abandoned the Oscars. They’ve turned off and turned away. Maybe they feel they only reflect the singular viewpoint of the new Left, even if they don’t. Maybe a  night at the movies is too expensive. Maybe it’s too comfy and convenient to stay home where TV and streaming are abundant and flourishing. For all of the creative paralysis on movies and movie studios, television offers slightly more diversity in the types of films and television on offer so why wouldn’t viewers stay home? But still. There is a reason the people stopped trusting Hollywood and the Oscars.

This year’s slate of nominees is not surprising, give or take a Drive My Car. These are the same movies that have been kicking around since the AFI released their list. But what I wonder is, who is the audience for all of this? Who is going to care? Oscar fans and critics seem like easy sells, even if critics pretend not to care about the Oscars (they do care). We still have two months to kick around these movies — I wonder, how will they fare? I know by Oscar time last year, the movies and the Oscars were getting pretty badly beaten up by people who suddenly noticed.

Whatever wins will be that period at the end of the sentence like Nomadland was – proof that yes, the Oscars are dead. After all, they chose THAT movie. It is a 75% / 25% proposition of general public not caring anymore and an intense group still caring very much. The Oscars have opened a door to the international viewing public, thanks to streaming and that is likely their only path forward unless there is some kind of real revolution in this country where the “unwashed masses” have power again.

The first thought I had after the nominees were read today was that Film Twitter had somehow infiltrated the Academy and took the wheel, guiding them in their preferred direction. We still have many of the films we predicted in the race, like Belfast, King Richard, West Side Story, Dune, and The Power of the Dog, but something felt kind of “off” all the same. What was it? I couldn’t figure it out until I read Richard Rushfield’s Ankler column from today, where he writes:

• But Oscar has never been about picking the best movie of the year. (Science has shown, they’ve done that exactly four times in their 94 years.) It’s about the entertainment industry sending a message to the world. The message used to be “Come, global citizens! Experience the magic and wonder of movies!” And now it’s: “Aren’t we special!”
• In the past, death at the box office spelled death at the noms. But now apparently, it’s not even a speed bump; it’s a matter of pride.
• The extent to which The Academy has turned its back on public success as a factor is remarkable. I suppose you can blame the pandemic, but does anyone think this is a temporary condition?

No. It is most definitely not a temporary condition.

We have settled into the post-COVID reality, which means that without the public, without audiences, without the free market, the film industry is sucked into the same bubble as the film critics. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This is still a market: it’s just a niche market. It’s a way for a certain segment of the best and brightest to get their foot in the door before graduating to genre and superhero movies. But you know what the weird thing about right now is? Getting hired to direct or star in a superhero movie seems to be seen as a higher achievement of success than winning an Oscar, because that is where the money is.

Can that possibly be true? Is winning the Oscar like winning a scholarship? Is it like being top of your class? Yeah, maybe a little. It’s still worth winning one if you want to get famous and rich and then turn around make movies that land at Sundance and the whole cycle starts again? Some people still think so. Surely they do, otherwise they would not spend so much money and make such an effort to win one. Everyone needs validation, whether they get it from a gold statue or from RTs on Twitter or from a cable news host. I see you, I validate you, you are important.

It’s also important to remember that the entire Oscar industry, from festivals through to nominations, kicks around the same movies, more or less. The movies seem like the best sampling people can agree on, though they might decide to return to that old Most Artistic Movie and Best Picture divide, make them five per category, and then we can get back to cooking with gas. When you have five movies, and not ten, you no longer need the preferential ballot. Only the Oscars still use them. If the ten was meant to broaden the scope to allow for movies like Spider-Man, perhaps, to get in, that experiment has clearly failed. At least this year. And “failure” isn’t the right term. These are all great movies.

But let’s look at the race itself.

The Power of the Frontrunner

I am running out of arguments as to why Netflix should not win the Best Picture Oscar. It’s clearer than it’s ever been that the gates have been lifted and streaming is in the game. So why shouldn’t they win it? Why wouldn’t The Power of the Dog’s quality be matched with a desire to anoint Netflix as a major player? Filmmakers are escaping the constraints of free market capitalism and all of the obstacles in the way when studios release movies. Putting yourselves at the mercy of Twitter so that some scandal, or fake scandal can emerge that sinks your movie? Then, the pressure of opening at the box office can also sink a movie. Used to be if a movie bombed, it was harder to get it seen. But look, it didn’t matter with West Side Story or King Richard. The industry didn’t notice or didn’t care.

On the other hand, films with as many as 12 nominations have sometimes had a harder time winning Best Picture. Here are all the films that got 12.

When there were only five nominees in Best Picture:

1948: Johnny Belinda — 1 win (not Best Picture)
1951: A Streetcar Named Desire — 4 wins (not Best Picture)
1954: On the Waterfront — 8 wins
1959: Ben-Hur — 11 wins
1964: My Fair Lady — 8 wins
1964: Becket — 1 win (not Best Picture)
1981: Reds — 3 wins (not Best Picture)
1990: Dances with Wolves — 7 wins
1993: Schindler’s List — 7 wins
1996: The English Patient — 9 wins
2000: Gladiator — 5 wins

And when there were more than five nominees:

1942: Mrs. Miniver — 6 wins
1943: The Song of Bernadette — 4 wins (not Best Picture)
2010: The King’s Speech — 4
2012: Lincoln — 2 wins (not Best Picture)
2015: The Revenant — 3 wins (not Best Picture)

The King’s Speech is really the best example for a Power of the Dog win. Lincoln would be an example of the film losing. It lost to Argo, which was a runaway favorite after it won the Globes. The King’s Speech did not win the Golden Globe, but went on to ace the PGA/DGA and SAG Ensemble. The Revenant won the DGA the same year The Big Short won the PGA and Spotlight won the SAG.

To be The King’s Speech, The Power of the Dog will need to win the PGA. The other thing about all three of these examples is that, as you’ve probably guessed already, they all won Best Actor and dominated the season with that win.

It’s slightly less likely for a film to win Best Picture with 12 nominations than it is to lose with 12. But that might not matter.

So if it isn’t The Power of the Dog, what else could win?

Every movie has something missing, from a stats perspective. But any of them could bust a stat to win. Let’s look at the “no editing nomination.”

The only movie that won without an Best Editing nomination recently was Birdman, which really didn’t have obvious editing (because its “invisible” editing was mostly seamless). But still, a stat is a stat. The best shot would obviously be:

Belfast — because it’s the only Best Picture nominee with a SAG ensemble nomination, DGA/Best Director nomination, acting nominations

Then we have:
King Richard — no DGA or Best Director nomination, SAG ensemble nomination
Licorice Pizza — no acting nominations, no SAG ensemble

Then we have:
West Side Story — no screenplay nomination

Then we have:
Don’t Look Up — no DGA/Best Director nomination

So let’s look at which Oscars each of these films is currently predicted to win:

The Power of the Dog could win:
Picture
Director
Screenplay
Supporting Actor
Cinematography
Maybe Editing

That’s the minimum of what it could win. It could win even more, like Original Score or Best Actor, depending on just how much in love with the movie voters are.

Belfast:
Picture
Screenplay
Song
Maybe Supporting Actor

King Richard:
Picture
Actor
Screenplay
Maybe Supporting Actress
Maybe Editing

West Side Story:
Picture
Supporting Actress
Maybe Cinematography
Maybe Costumes
Maybe Production Design

Both Belfast and King Richard have SAG ensemble nominations, but only Belfast has a DGA nomination, which is probably the most important stat when it comes to winning Best Picture.

Either way, this is either 2010, with a win for Power of the Dog. Or it’s 2015, and it’s a win for the SAG ensemble nominee, which is Belfast.

I wrote this piece last night while still in a brain fog. I hadn’t really processed what I thought but I knew I had to put something out, even if there is already TOO MUCH out there. I guess I would say that the Oscars have been a bubble for a long time. This year, at least to me, they seemed to have not only accepted their fate, but embraced it.