There have been many solutions offered up to “fix” the Academy, and it sounds like they’re moving in the right direction to freshen things up a bit with their nearly 100 year old institution. They are planning to hopefully up their Best Picture nominees to ten, something we’ve been championing since they changed it in 2011. This is a really good solution since they’re close to ten nominees every year anyway. Why not just make it an even ten? It’s either that or get rid of the preferential ballot and add a new category like “best effects driven motion picture.”
Writer and filmmaker Rod Lurie has come up with an interesting solution in a guest column at Hollywood Reporter – I don’t know if they will consider it or not – probably not but it’s a wonderful idea:
In order to immediately deal with this situation I’d like to offer up a radical solution: Nominations should no longer be determined by the entire membership. Instead every branch of the Academy should appoint a blue ribbon committee select its nominees. The Academy president would appoint a “foreman” for each of the committees. (Note: I volunteer!) Each committee would consist of an equal distribution of members who have been in AMPAS for up to 10 years, up to 20 years, up to 30 years and then over that. All committee members would commit to seeing most of the eligible films every year. (It’s impossible for anyone to see all of them.) The blue ribbon committee members would have a voting day in which they would debate, cajole and argue the cases for various films. Then they would vote to determine the five nominees. And then all Academy members would choose a winner from among the nominees, just as they do now.
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This is how the Tony Award Nominees are decided, and the Tony’s are pretty diverse.
Agreed. I think that the entire Foreign Language film branch needs an overhaul. At this point, filmmakers are at the mercy of their government. We’ll probably never see a Jafar Panahi film nominated. 🙁
For me the key quote from Rod Lurie’s column that just speaks volumes on how much of a joke the Oscar race is summed up perfectly with this… “The other day I ran into several of my fellow Academy members at Art’s Deli. All men, all 70 or older, all white. Each but one said they didn’t even bother watching F. Gary Gray’s terrific Straight Outta Compton. The one who had seen it dismissed it with a wave of the hand. “Too loud for me,” he said in full-on Larry David mode. “I didn’t make it all the way through.”
Nuff said!
Thanks. That’s interesting, not as many as I expected.
Absolutely! What’s interesting to me is to watch the reasoning shift. If it’s really a small number of people, then it wouldn’t change the demographics much. It may be a worthy secondary goal of having people with specific types of film careers though.
As of 2012, the LA Times said it was about 500 members who were outside the U.S. That’s obviously grown some with the new invitees that have been brought in since then.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/02/oscar-voters-from-britain-to-brazil-academy-members-span-globe.html
They don’t have stats on that do they? I mean, how many members are outside the US, or a member per country breakdown.
I assume they’ll state the total number of emeritus members next year. However, some number crunching may be required to figure out how the change altered each branch. I don’t know. They’ve clearly had people contacting them who are upset about not getting screeners or losing their status in the industry. It seems like they’re saying “It’s okay, no one will know you can’t vote!”.
Re. above. Yes, there seems to be a lot of loopholes in the new rules. It may only affect the status of a small number of members, the ones who have well and truly left the industry for good.
Reading the new FAQ, my first thought is that Harvey Weinstein (and others like him) are going to be able to drive a truck through these rules. “Active” is being defined as one credit per decade. That doesn’t have to be in your original field. And doesn’t have to be in consecutive decades. And doesn’t even have to be a screen credit just a show of employment.
Seriously, Harvey, HIRE ME! And together we’ll build a cottage industry that assures that not a single one of your reliable old voters ever loses their ballot!
I suppose they could teleconference them in. But you’re right: One of the problems with so many proposals is that they often end up contradicting key parts of other proposals.
You’re right about this. Definitely won’t fix every problem. But we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If they can fix even SOME of the problems, they should go for it!
So they are implementing a diversity plan that doesn’t include a transparency plan. What could possibly go wrong?
My guess is that most people attending campaign events will be active voters, especially given how loose they are being with their definition of “worked within the decade”.
It is sort of funny that their policy on screeners is that they will “ask our members who run these companies not to make an issue of it.” But they’re apparently not willing to ask these same members who run these same companies to do better with diversity hires, or making more films abut women. Instead, they fall back on the old line that the Academy doesn’t make the movies!
FYI, AMPAS just posted some answers to questions:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/academy-answers-questions-new-initiatives-859103
“Rest assured, your status — whether active or emeritus — will not be shared with any other outside entity”. They’re not going to say who has lost voting rights. Expensive campaign events full of people who can’t vote? Too funny.
I’m torn too. I think it’s an interesting idea, and I appreciate someone thinking about things rather than just having a massive hissy fit in public. Reducing the ridiculous level of campaigning is a worthy aim. I’m just not sure how it would work in practice. Who has the most spare time to do this? People who aren’t working. Also, thinking about it, AMPAS has emphasised looking overseas for new members. A committee of people sitting in LA would surely undermine that international diversity?
SAG nominations are even more of a dumb popularity contest, and they make so many poor choices. Double nomination for Helen Mirren in Woman in Gold and Trumbo, anyone?
Yeah, the last branches I’d try to emulate are Documentary and Foreign Film.
“so this is how freedom ends… with thunderous applause.”
NO!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas. Quality control. Let us pick the nominees you’re supposed to like. Let us decide what you are going to like.
Democracy is not pretty. It is not politically correct. It does not conform to what either the left or the right or any other group wants. It is the will of the people. And if you don’t like the will of the people, then do what you can change opinion.
Right now, those people who are Academy-selected to be worthy artisans in their fields pick the nominees for their categories, and everyone votes for the Best Picture nominees. Don’t like that? Expand the number of Best Picture nominees, start phasing out people that have not participated recently. I’m not crazy about those decisions, but they were reasonable reactions to controversial omissions which attempted to address their respective problems without violating the basic spirit of things.
Taken on a one-by-one basis, were there any snubs in the past two years that really made us think the Academy is a bunch of racists? No, but they are old, white, and male. Of course, they won’t embrace STRAIGHT OUTOF COMPTON, but that’s not really who Ice Cube made the movie for. So, efforts are made to get the voting base younger, more diverse. That’s fine, and it is the right response to this controversy.
But guess what, there’s no guarantee you’re gonna like how the new group votes. And you know what, that is exactly how democracy is supposed to work.
“They are planning to hopefully up their Best Picture nominees to ten”
Really? That’d be great news!…
Did anyone from the Academy actually make that statement? Was it included in the diversity statement, and I missed it?
Then again, the extras are largely blamed for George Gershwin losing his only Oscar nomination to the execrable “Sweet Leilani” for Best Song of 1937. And the reason Walter Brennan won 3 Oscars in 5 years (because he came from their ranks)–not that Brennan wasn’t a legend, but that’s really putting the thumb on the scale. But good points overall.
More like the Emmys model.
SAG still recognises diversity way more than the Oscar.
Isn’t this what I suggested after Oscar nominations were announced and Oscarsowhite furore. I said they have a dedicated committee, especially for big categories like BP and acting, which selects the nomination or at least gives a short list to select from possible nominees. This idea came to me because SAG has a committee of about two thousand which pick the nominees. SAG has always been more diverse than the Oscar and it would be prudent to learn from how they pick their nominations.
It is interesting to note that the Emmys used to do blue ribbon panel of judging between 2006 and 2014 (correct me if I’m wrong). I know it’s not perfect, but I endorse Rod Lurie’s “Emmy-like blue ribbon panel” proposal.
By the way, I don’t think the solutions are going to make the voting process 100 percent problem-free. But change is change.
I like the idea of a nominating “committee”. A large committee though nothing small like a jury.
I thought they could make it so that if you want to be a member who nominates then you’d have to attend academy screenings where they’d mark you down as present and then if you saw enough of the movies, say like 70-80% then you could enter a nominating ballot. So it wouldn’t be a chosen “committee”. It would be enough people who definitely did the work of watching the films and therefore get the privilege of choosing who should be in the running. You’d have to take that seriously in that case. If you really didn’t give a crap you wouldn’t put in the effort.
The group he’s talking about is too small and I could see it even being worse than it is now. If you got a persuasive person in there then everyone could end up voting for that person’s favorite just like people on a real jury can be turned. I’ve never been put on a jury but I always thought if I did and it was serious business and I had to, I’d get them all to say ‘not guilty’, just in case.
BAFTA made way better decisions back when it used longlists. Like, remember when Drive was one of its five Best Film nominees, and couldn’t even get past Extremely Loud & Incredibly Shite and War Horse to make Oscar’s top nine?
Also, juries ftw. But they’ll never do that. Literally never.
I’m so torn about this idea. For all the great examples of a process like this working other places, the academy’s track record with committees has been pretty hit-or-miss. The old documentary committee is an example. Or the foreign language committee, where they had to then go and add a second executive committee on top of it to “save” all the films that the first committee snubbed!
Is it $90 per year? You may have just made a voter out of me 🙂
I’m a Spirit Award voter, too, and the only things that influences my vote are the films and performances. Sure, there’s some that bide by herd mentality, but we each have our own ideas and likes, so why not do what you want? Most of my picks (for the Spirits) only win maybe 10% of the time, but I don’t care: I went with my heart, gut, and head and picked what I wanted.
As an actual Spirit Award voter, the Oscars do literally NOTHING to influence my picks. I’m voting for Beasts of No Nation this year for Best Picture, Director, Abraham Attah as Best Actor (unless when I see James White, Christopher Abbott really blows me away), most likely Cinematography, and maybe even Idris Elba as Best Supporting Actor.
Last Year I voted for Whiplash in 4 categories, Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, and Film Editing, even though I was really torn on that last one between it and The Guest. Adam Wingard did such a kick-ass job on that one, but I decided the nomination would have to be enough.
Exactly LOL! I pray to God I don’t live to see that travesty that EVER happen….. ;P
We could go even further: every category gets 10 nominees : 5 straight whites + 1 black + 1 latino + 1 Asian + 1 Native American + 1 LGBT
Oh shit there’s no room left for handicapped people, gotta add some more spots!
“The Independent Spirit awards and SAG Awards use nominating committees…”
Furthermore, If you’re passionate about movies, if you want to support independent film, and if you have 90 bucks, you can vote for the Independent Spirit Award winners.
You just go their website, very briefly say who are, and send them $90.
In return you get a nice package of screeners in mid-January (12-15 movies, often with some key major titles missing, but all Spirit nominees). It still work out to about $6 per movie.
And then you get access to the online ballot. As JH says, the nominees have been pre-screened and selected by industry expert committees, so there is never a head-scratcher or undeserving nominee. No matter who wins a Spirit Award is going to be worthy (although some years many of us have bemoaned the fact that the Spirit Awards still seem to gravitate to the most high profile and often the most “oscary” nominees)
The results of the Spirit Awards are always a distinguished and significant set of winners, wouldn’t we all agree?
Which just goes to show, being a rich producer with a stack of cash who wants to consider himself part of the movie business by throwing some of that cash into the hands of talented artists does not make that producer any more qualified to vote for “The Best” than any movielover who has only $90 to chip in.
It goes to show that any group of devoted movie lovers who care enough to spend time to watch movies and back up their devotion with (sometimes hard to spare) $90 can produce a set of award winners that can equal or even surpass the choices made by the Academy.
It all depends on creating a system of carefully selecting which films make it into final competition.
The Academy’s system has proven to be moribund and way overdue for overhaul.
New groups emerge to challenge the taste and attitudes of a stubborn establishment institutions — so if the establishment elders refuse to adopt new progressive systems they risk becoming obsolete.
Yes, it was a shock for to me a few months ago that during the late 1930s and 1940s the Academy had 1000s of voting members who were nothing but background extras off the street.
Which, ok, is not a great idea. All the same, the Oscars still managed to give us winners like Gone With the Wond, Rebecca, John Ford, Frank Capra, Greg Toland, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, on and on.
— so even with 1000s of extras off the street filling out Oscar ballots, the winners were still worthy. How could that happen? I suspect the extras simply loved movies, and I feel sure their numbers represented refreshing diversity.
“Much like the Foreign Language COMMITTEE, I’ve always felt that there should be some sort of committee responsible for the major categories (Picture, Director, Acting, Writing, Cinematography) to ensure that there are no egregious inclusions/excursions.”
Except, there are almost always egregious exclusions from the foreign language nominees and the documentary nominees 🙁
Wow…
This isn’t good, every academy member should a voice in the process not just some committee, otherwise it’s no longer the Academy awards we love to hate!
I prefer my own solution: if a category doesn’t feature any “diverse” nominee, then add a spot for the most-voted for “diverse” nominee, that way you make sure there is “diversity” in every category while letting voters vote for whomever they choose, and you don’t take away spots from rightful nominees.
The Independent Spirit awards and SAG Awards use nominating committees… The former certainly does a great job of recognizing diversity… the latter, less so.
Yeah. Well Broadway has a much smaller selection for awards season compared to the hundreds of films eligible for Oscars. However, it does send a powerful message when the Tony committee says that there aren’t enough women in lead roles to nominate five. I believe, and I could be wrong, that they also have a ratio set in place–if there’s five eligible nominees total, they only nominate three (so it’s not a participation award). This may have changed.
So, basically implement the LAFC model? That should go well.
I’ve always been on board with the idea of juries. Like the critics circles and especially like Cannes, juries are capable of making better decisions because smaller groups allow for individual voices to be heard more clearly. Would it demolish the idea of a clear “Academy type” of film? Yes. Is that a bad thing? No!
I think Lurie is on the right track here, but I think it’s a giant step away from where they currently are.
My (better) idea is to have short lists in all of the categories. To achieve this, they have to do one of two things: move the nomination process earlier or move the telecast later. But basically you start with the standard nominating process that they have now, but instead of announcing nominees you announce a short list–for Best Picture, I can imagine 20 or 25 films making sense. In all other races, I think 15 would suffice. What this achieves is narrowing down what was a field of ~200 films to a watchable 15-20. Voters then have guidance, established by the Academy itself rather than by critics/Globes/guilds, as to what they should be paying attention to. From there, announce nominees as usual.
There’s no way that in a field of 60 short-listed actors that there isn’t diversity-including more than just white & black, but also Latin, Asian and European actors as well. Same with directing, writing and the crafts.
Rod Lurie is cool. He actively Tweets about Oscars every year, and it is evident he watches all the screeners he gets. I like his idea, and I think he should be on a committee too!
The nominating committee is also not obligated to fill up every slot. Of course, they often fill up every slot (look at the musical revival nominations). I know that a few years ago, they decided there wasn’t enough best actresses in musicals, so they only nominated four.
Much like the Foreign Language COMMITTEE, I’ve always felt that there should be some sort of committee responsible for the major categories (Picture, Director, Acting, Writing, Cinematography) to ensure that there are no egregious inclusions/excursions.
This year, I suspect that Carol and Straight Outta Compton could have rounded out a top 10 thanks to a committee.
Michael B. Jordan and (especially) Idris Elba might’ve made Top 5s.
Last year, Ava DuVernay and/or Oyelowo could’ve made it, etc..
The only thing is most of the people who have been part of AMPAS are mostly white and male. But…this could weed out members who haven’t done shit in so many years. If the members of the committee are chosen by their merit and how they champion film and what they continue to do in their field then I am okay with that.
This is pretty much how the Tony Award nominations work. Broadway theatre awards are a different animal, because the nominating committee can and does see every eligible show, but…food for thought.