After the brutal let down of this year’s Oscar race, which mostly amounted to yet another year of dashed hopes and diminished expectations, it’s time to remember Rule #1 of How to Win Best Picture: never let your film become the frontrunner until after the Golden Globes. It’s a harsh and painful rule. Publicists measure their success by whether or not the films they’re handling are on the list. They want to be on the list and some will badger bloggers to make sure their films are on the list. Bloggers in turn put films on the list because they are being pushed by certain publicists and they know those publicists will push those films hard until the bitter end.
Sometimes it’s unavoidable. This past year’s Boyhood was the perfect example of why you don’t want to become the frontrunner, but you could pick almost any film any year with the exception of a few titles. There are some films that get put there and stay there. I would argue that those films are under-regarded even during Telluride because people think, they’re good and all but something better will come along. The Artist was one of the lucky ones in that regard: it started strong at Cannes and nothing more Academy-friendly ever came along to knock it off its perch. It started as the frontrunner and it ended as the frontrunner. Ditto Slumdog Millionaire. Too many of us (unfortunately) miscalculated Boyhood as a film like The Artist rather than a film like The Social Network. Even those who were skeptical were not putting their sites on the divisive Birdman but rather on The Imitation Game. But the Imitation Game was handicapped by looking too much like The King’s Speech, thus perception was nowhere near sexy enough for voters.
What all of us forgot — almost everyone I know from the people who really try to be as objective as possible without getting their hearts involved — is that the industry prefers movies about themselves almost more than World War II/Nazi movies. We forgot what the race is really about. That was unfortunate because had many of us put Birdman in the frontrunner’s spot out of Telluride, Boyhood would have looked like the underdog and might have taken the race. That would depend on whether or not the whole “films about Hollywood gazing at its own self” narrative caught hold. If so, voters might not want to be that predictable. As it was, Birdman offered the perfect solution to people who didn’t want to watch Boyhood let alone vote for the film that was “winning everything.”
You could apply this comparison to most Oscar years. The bottom line is that, most of the time, you do not want to be the frontrunner. It’s a punishing place to be. The second you land there the hate begins, not with people who cover awards, not just with people who vote for the awards, but to people almost everywhere. It is the nature of humans to root for the underdog. Alas, the real underdog WAS Boyhood. It just got put in the top spot by people like me — and I regret my part in that.
What’s so bad about Birdman winning, you might ask? Nothing. Not a damned thing. It’s a perfectly fine choice. I was asked to speak at a film class at Woodbury University to young college students. They were asking me about Best Picture and generally the conversation always goes the same way. No one can figure out why certain movies win when everyone else thought another movie was going to win. The first time I had this conversation was when Fellowship of the Ring took on A Beautiful Mind. Surely, the epic saga blockbuster would win. No, it was going to be the year Ron Howard made good on his promise as a child star and Russell Crowe became a legend. I remember the conversation again when it was Avatar and The Hurt Locker (a choice I agreed with). And a month ago I had it about Birdman and Boyhood. This class thought Boyhood was the far superior film, though they didn’t mind Birdman winning. They liked it — it just wasn’t better than Boyhood in their minds. And unfortunately for Birdman, and for films like it that win in a year like this one, you win the battle but you don’t win the war. The second the lil’ movie that could becomes the winner, suddenly people begin to think REALLY? That? It’s hard to explain the Oscar race to people.
That’s the nature of the race. That is why it is competitive and why so much money is spent. If it were a done deal it would be so boring no one would bother. But it is a real race because it is not based on best — it’s based on perception.
Usually whenever a publicist wants their film in the number one spot during the early phase it’s in the hopes that it will generate enough buzz to make more money at the box office, to help drive some awareness, especially when they know they have a potential dog on their hands. Take Unbroken from last year and how well the publicity team played that. They kept the movie not only from being seen but from being reviewed once people saw it, because they knew it would get killed by critics — and for the most part, it did, except for a few who gave it a break. That didn’t stop many a pundit from putting that movie, which looked so good on paper, in their number one spot early on TO WIN the whole game. Many even had it in the number one spot until it was actually seen by them. Out of the gate, as far back as its rousing Sochi Olympics promo, it was on everyone’s list, even for Best Director.
There is a big difference between wanting to be right and wanting the race to be right. Oscar bloggers, some critics and fans of the race fall into those two camps. If you are someone who wants to predict exactly what “they” will do, and not seek out the best of the best, you play the game one way. If you want the best films and filmmakers to get recognized because that means the film industry is really thriving, that art wins, then you will be the very definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I myself am in that category. Dumbing things down to predict what “they” will do would be akin to watching Dancing with the Stars to me. Or The Bachelor. Instead, I choose insanity.
If you push a movie or a contender that you hope will either get nominated or win then you are helping a publicist make money. Sometimes the disappointment comes when you push and push and push and then they lose — not only are the films and filmmakers let down, but the publicists are let down. It seems crazy to see the race that way but those are the people who really do measure their careers on nominations and wins. I honestly don’t think some of the contenders themselves even care that much anymore. I care because I want the best art and artists to win — even if it is just a matter of opinion. I don’t get a pay boost for wins the way publicists do. My career isn’t measured on how many wins or nominations I get from the people I push.
And remember, pushing hard for someone talented who is ignored by the industry is never a waste of time. Any amount of publicity for anyone anywhere is a good thing for that person and a good thing for art. Measuring their success by what a bunch of entitled rich pampered white dudes who are shut off from normal is where the mistake lies. Though clearly the Oscar race needs both those who pretend to be objective (and are wrong anyway but can be right) and those who make no pretense at objectivity (and are sometimes right but mostly wrong).
Now that the new year is beginning, we are just a couple of months away from films starting to get talked about. They will fall into two camps. The should bes and the wills. The should bes out of Cannes last year were, for me, The Homesman and Maps to the Stars. The only one that made it out of Cannes this year to head into the Oscar race was Foxcatcher. As an Oscar blogger you can either take the should bes and write about them anyway or dismiss them out of hand because you know “they” will never go for it. That is how you define the two camps of Oscar watching on a “professional” level.
I would argue, though, that nothing is ever that purely divided. For instance, those who pretend objectivity often get caught up in advocacy if they love a movie enough. They might put a documentary contender in the Best Picture slot, knowing it has less of a chance of getting nominated than a pig sprouting wings and flying out of the barnyard. You might call a performance the best performance of a certain actor’s career. You can pretend to be objective all you want but at the end of the day advocacy often bleeds through the lining.
Here we are at the beginning. We’re about to watch as an elegant, elaborate ship of opportunity and variety is shoved into a tiny hole and stuffed into a bottle. As Richard Rushfield tweeted at the close of this year’s Oscars, “that was fun. Can’t wait to do it again.”
Thus, herewith, the Oscarwatching rules for 2016
1. Thou shalt not forget that there is no such thing as the Academy anymore. The guilds decide Best Picture, but specifically the Producers Guild. The time frame is too short for any sort of change-up in the race, thus when you talk about “they” you must say “the industry voters,” not “the Academy voters.”
2. Voters care less about women than they ever have. Not only was Ava DuVernay shut out this past year but Kathryn Bigelow the year before. The worse offense was snubbing Gillian Flynn for adapted screenplay while nominating that terrible terrible screenplay for American Sniper. That’s no reason not to advocate for them. The movie has to be about a male protagonist. The last time a film won Best Picture that wasn’t about a man? I don’t really remember Crash that well but I’m pretty sure it was an ensemble piece. The last time a film won Best Picture that centered around a female character? Would you count Million Dollar Baby? Or would you count Chicago? Either way, it’s been at least a decade.
3. Never underestimate the power of a film about people who make films but specifically if a film represents those artists in suffering or martyr mode who are then recognized. Do many industry voters feel like losers who are preyed upon by critics and superhero movies? Yup. That isn’t a lot different from a silent film star in a world of talkies or producer who has been shunted aside but then helps frees hostages from Iran.
4. If you are the frontrunner out of Telluride you are probably not going to win Best Picture. Whatever movie that played at Telluride that people liked but would never think of as the winner? That’s your real frontrunner.
5. You have to be seen by at least the conclusion of Toronto.
2014-Birdman (Venice/Telluride)
2013-12 Years a Slave (Telluride)
2012-Argo (Telluride)
2011-The Artist (Cannes/Telluride/everywhere)
2010-The King’s Speech (Telluride)
2009-The Hurt Locker (Toronto the year before)
2008-Slumdog Millionaire (Telluride)
2007-No Country for Old Men (Cannes)
2006-The Departed (opened in October)
This is due to the Academy rolling back the date for Oscar Night by one month. In so doing, they have removed the public entirely from he equation. The race is decided now by “the people in this room” without the public even seeing the films much of the time. Before they changed the date, movies had more time to open and be seen and generate buzz before heading into the race and winning. American Sniper might have actually been your winner for this past year if the date change had never been put in place. Good, bad, you decide.
6. Forget it, Jake. There is not much of a difference between the Spirit Awards and the Oscars anymore. This is because the Oscar race is dominated by the creative juice of indies. The big studios put out movies this year that were earmarked for the Oscar race but they didn’t fit the model of what voters are seeking. Some of them bombed outright and some were “too whatever” to get chosen. So essentially you’re looking at one big rolling industry of the same people voting for the same awards.
7. The critics are still viewed as knowing less about what defines a great film than the industry, or so the industry thinks. This is confirmed in years like this past one where the industry rejected the critics’ choice outright. Sometimes there is unification but not often and not lately. Think of it is as the industry’s way of fighting back. How Michael Keaton dresses down that theater critic in Birdman? That reflects reality. Birdman reflected the reality of what many people in Hollywood must be feeling: futile, just wanting to do good work but having no one to appreciate it, a changing world of viral videos, a no man’s land of superhero dreck.
8. The Oscar race is about much more than who wins the trophies. Whole careers can be made just by getting awards buzz. In fact, without awards buzz now it’s harder to get the right people even to watch your movie. This is especially true with documentaries which are almost always the best films offered up in any given year, ditto foreign language films.
9. Nobody knows anything. Not me, not your most trusted “objective” bloggers, not the studios, not the publicists… knowing which way the wind is blowing is easier than knowing which way it WILL blow.
10. The trick is not minding. The best thing to do is shrug it off. Or, as my friends the Mormons would say, “Turn it off. Like a light switch.” At the end of the day this is a Maltese Falcon. It doesn’t mean much of anything unless it means something and it rarely does.