It’s time to begin again our occasional series of chats with smart people about the Oscar race. Some of the names might change from take to take, but the idea will remain the same: a few questions, some thoughtful answers. Participants are not given any other requirements but to share their thoughts or not. Some are bloggers, some are critics, some are journalists – all are deep thinkers.
For our debut selection, we have Ryan Adams from Awards Daily, Damien Bona from Inside Oscar and Inside Oscar 2, Brad Brevet from Rope of Silicon, Erik Childress from Cinematical and efilmcritic, Marshall Fine from Hollywood & Fine and Huffington Post, Mark Harris from New York Magazine, Pete Howell from the Toronto Star, Craig Kennedy from Living in Cinema, Michelle McCue from We Are Movie Geeks, Guy Lodge from In Contention, David Poland from Movie City News, Steve Pond from The Wrap, Katey Rich from Cinemablend, Anne Thompson from Indiewire, Jeff Wells from Hollywood-Elsewhere.com.
1. If you could change one thing about the Oscar race as it stands now what would be? Shorten the Best Picture entries back to five? Kill all of the Oscar bloggers? Get rid of publicists? Or…?
Adams: My annual gripe: overhaul and normalize the convoluted process for selecting the Best Foreign Film nominees. (“Kill all of the Oscar bloggers?” Only if we could do it cinematically, like Ten Little Indians or Final Destination. Or… best season of Survivor ever? Anyway, unfeasible. These days trying to kill all the Oscar bloggers would be harder than slaying the Hydra.)
Bona: Although I do not like having 10 Best Picture nominees ‚Äì it cheapens the value of a nomination and, for us folks, lessens the challenge and the fun of making predictions ‚Äì that‚Äôs not the aspect of the Academy Awards I would first and foremost change.¬† No, I would get rid of the Animated Feature Oscar, something which I‚Äôve been advocating since the category‚Äôs inception in 2001, that glorious year when “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius” went into the Academy’s official records as an Oscar nominee. This year there are 15 eligible feature cartoons, and 3 will be nominated ‚Äì meaning that 20% of the possible contenders will be finalists. That’s the equivalent of having 56 of last year’s 281 eligible movies nominated for Best Picture.
Moreover, the elephant in the room is (no, not Dumbo) the fact that most movies nominated for Animated Feature (and a number of the winners) have no business being anywhere near the Kodak Theatre on Oscar night ‚Äì they simply are not good enough. To look at the list of nominees in this category is to see a litany of mediocrity ‚Äì Brother Bear, Shark Tale, Happy Feet, anyone?¬† At best, something like Finding Nemo is a pleasant enough time-killer, but it remains a children‚Äôs movie, with a consequent juvenile level of wit and creativity that renders it unworthy of a serious award. (If a particular cartoon is considered by enough Academy board members to be something really really outstanding, then just give it a damn special award.)¬†¬† It‚Äôs all part of the dismal trend over the last couple of decades of the juvenilization of American popular culture. When I was a teenager, what we cared about were films like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and A Clockwork Orange ‚Äì full-length cartoons were for people who hadn’t yet entered 5th grade and the parents who were forced to take them. Now days, high schoolers, college kids and adults are flocking to cartoons and, even worse, supposedly serious film critics are treating these things as if they were real movies. It‚Äôs disheartening.
Brevet: I think ten best picture nominees is great and Oscar bloggers are great as well, but I wish Oscar bloggers would realize the power they have, not in terms of changing things, but in terms of starting a discussion. Will Lesley Manville be in the supporting category? No. But if everyone had suggested it early on, started a discussion and looked at it as a legitimate topic of conversation and adding their opinion rather than just saying, “So and so is discussing this as an option…” then maybe we’d be talking about her winning supporting instead of debating Leo, Bonham-Carter, Wiest, etc.
Childress: Eliminate the supposed power of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. Whether everyone in the group is a junket whore or not (at least 40% are recognized quote whores) the perception is rather clear to those paying attention. And their insistence on being such prognosticators of the Oscar winners has given them more weight than they really deserve. Everyone included in this survey could come up with a list of nominees that likely WILL be nominated. Does not always mean that they should. They want to be the Golden Globes (now a 30 Rock joke) but they are just a glorified version of the National Board of Review’s celebrity winner party.
Fine: All good suggestions – but I would shorten the Oscar season considerably and pare back the number of voters to streamline the process. Get the Oscar nominations out there on Jan. 1 – and present the Oscars before the Golden Globes come along to muddy the water. Eliminate the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn from the mix altogether. If there was a way to do them BEFORE the Nat’l Board of Film Buffs, er, Review, that would be even better. Stop letting critics, bloggers and others dictate the race and let Oscar lead
Harris: If I were dictator of the Oscar race (as opposed to the Oscars themselves), I’d outlaw prognosticating about a movie you haven’t seen. When journalists write about all the nominations “True Grit” is going to get months before the movie has screened, we become publicists. If all we’re here to do is insist for months that all the nominations are all going to go to movies that look like the kind of movies that get Oscar nominations, then all we’re doing is reinforcing the notion that the movie itself is irrelevant. That’s too cynical, even for the Oscar race. It’s also not true.
Howell: I wish the Academy would boldly intervene in the nominating process and try to increase the number of documentaries, animated films and foreign films that receive Best Picture noms. Right now, it’s considered almost miraculous if these type of films get BP noms, even with the expansion to 10 slots.
The idea has been tried elsewhere. The Grammys instituted nominating committees to guide choices, after suffering such embarrassments as Jethro Tull being nominated for Best Metal Group or some such. I’d like to see the Academy try a similar scheme to expand the voters’ horizons.
Kennedy: No matter what you do to the rules, there’s still going to be a soul crushing, months-long death march leading up to the nominations and eventual awards where the same boring handful of names get tossed around, each one coming into favor a moment before being replaced by something else. That will only change if the talk stops focusing on what people think will be nominated and turns instead toward what ought to be nominated. There are lots of wonderful films that come out every year, but we’re all too quick to try and narrow them down to a nominatable few.
McCue: The Best Picture race has to go back to 5 ‚Äì it was what once made the Oscar race magic. Opening up to 10 just cheapened it. This is not the People‚Äôs Choice Awards – this is AMPAS voters deciding on Best Picture. Secondly, let‚Äôs get back to reality by having REAL movie stars host the Oscars. Tom Hanks or George Clooney for a start. Those two can rock a tuxedo and it would class up the joint immeasurably. I would most certainly get rid of all the BLABBING EVERYTHING BEFORE HAND!!!!! How ’bout we keep it all a SURPRISE!?!?!?!? Or at least until the weekend beforehand. I don’t like knowing all the where, when, why, and how, the sets, the hosts, the presenters….blah blah blah. Let me get excited and anticipate it. Let me sit down in front of the tv about to FREAK OUT because I don’t know what‚Äôs about to happen!!!! You want ratings???? That will get you ratings……
Kill off all the bloggers? Oh heavens no – they’re what make the Awards world go round.
Lodge: Your first answer is mine too, I’m afraid – I’m keen to return to five-wide Best Picture race as soon as possible. Partly for the obvious reasons of reduced prestige: a Best Picture nomination is something even the year’s anointed favourites should have to fight for, and by guaranteeing most of them a berth alongside a handful of filler titles, it introduces an element of complacency to the race even at this early stage. Four years ago, that gasp-inducing snub for “Dreamgirls” was one of the most exciting moments of my Oscar-watching life – The Ten denies us such knife-edge drama. And yes, the broader field does expose the limitations of the Academy’s collective taste: I didn’t think “The Blind Side” was necessarily the worst of last year’s nominees, but it was a perilously vanilla choice, and a waste of a slot that could go to something more left-field. As long as it continues to suggest that the year’s ten best films are all in the English language, for example, the new system is a failure. Finally, moving away from the Academy, I hate the way the broader field has changed the way Oscar analysts discuss the race: there’s that much more talk of “slots” than before, and a renewed emphasis on commercial performance that I find self-defeatingly cynical.
Poland: Move it to the last week of January. Only those of us who make money from a longer season want a longer season. It’s a year-end award. It should be within a month of the year’s end. The way it is now, we get two months of crap movies at which point we expect the world to gear up to celebrate movies, most of which have been out of theaters for an extended period. All the old excuses no longer apply.
Pond: I’d make everybody calm the hell down. Failing that, I’d change it to give myself more hours in a day, or more days in the week. It’s still November, and I shouldn’t be this frazzled and tired until at least January.
Rich: Pull some kind of magic trick to make it so the studios stop feeling pressured to release everything noteworthy in the last few months of the year. This year is actually better than most, with summer movies like Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone, Inception and Toy Story 3 in the running, but with the glut of prestige movies in November and December, not only do I feel overwhelmed but really good movies, like Nowhere Boy and Made in Dagenham, get totally lost in the “King’s Speech/True Grit/Black Swan” hubbub. It seems like with screeners, with VOD and so many different ways to release movies, the old model of fall movies = prestige movies should be gone by now.
Wells: I would urge everyone to start treating the Oscar telecast as merely the end of the journey — an exciting, enjoyable, sometimes irksome, sometimes gratifying ceremony in which certain heavy-predicted favorites have their night in the sun. And that’s all it is — just the end of the road. It’s not the destination that counts as much as the journey. Invest in and celebrate the season as a whole, and at the risk of alienating advertisers, start talking more about personal passions and what the critics groups and the bloggers and the ubers and early adopters are saying, and do as much as possible to INGORE THE DEADWOOD and just stop talking about what “they” — i.e., the older, sometimes clueless set that is ALWAYS bringing up the rear in terms of receptivity to the best that’s out there — think. They should be listened to, taken note of, tolerated if they don’t decide something that’s excessively stupid, and that’s all. The deadwood sector of the Academy does one thing and one thing only — they choose default winners that tone the whole thing down in terms of vision and hipness and coolness.
2. Do you think 2010 looks like a split year between Picture and Director, or do you think the Oscar race for Best Picture will follow the Director as it has been doing for a few years now?
Adams: Can I change one more thing about the Oscars? How about if winning Best Director becomes the automatic determining factor for winning Best Picture? Because a split almost always means: “Congrats on being the best director of the year; sorry we’re too fusty and gutless to admit your movie is the best too.” That said, all signs could be pointing in too many directions this year for the two to sync up.
Bona: A split between the categories will always be the exception rather than the rule, and generally the odds are against it occurring. However, The King‚Äôs Speech‚Äôs Tom Hopper conjures memories of Shakespeare In Love‚Äôs John Madden ‚Äì another not-terribly well known Englishman who worked mostly in British television and whose Oscar-contending picture could be described as “literate,” ‚Äútasteful‚Äù and “classy.‚Äù¬† Even if The King‚Äôs Speech does win Best Picture, it would not be surprising for a filmmaker with a stronger directorial presence — say a David Fincher or Darren Aronofsky ‚Äì to take home the Oscar.
Brevet: Split at the moment, though King’s Speech is losing steam, which is the reason I think this question is being asked, since Fincher looks like directorial frontrunner. But will True Grit and the Coens move in? Will Black Swan surprise? Will The Social Network be the default?
Childress: I think there is a definite chance of that happening. Many seem to already by crowning David Fincher as this year’s winner when I think there is no clear frontrunner for the big prize. The Social Network is very much in the running but so is The King’s Speech and there will be those crowing for True Grit, Inception and even Toy Story 3 to break the long-running animation block on Best Picture. Maybe it’s Fincher’s time. But maybe it’s Christopher Nolan’s too. To say one film is definitely going to win both this early is very premature.
Fine: I don’t know if it will be split between Picture and Director but I think it will be split between Social Network and King’s Speech. Unless one of the unseen films – True Grit, How Do You Know – suddenly comes on strong, I think those are the two that will fight it out. I don’t believe The Fighter or Black Swan will be
Harris: don’t know. I do know that we all tend to predict that it’s going to be a split year about four times as often as it actually happens, so I wouldn’t jump to say 2010 is that kind of year.
Howell: Excellent question, but I think it’s too soon to tell. I think it’s going to take five years before we really know what the effect of 10 Best Picture nominations has on other categories. Right now it looks as if the presumed “Top Five” noms are matched with the five director picks, but that’s based on just one year’s experience. It could all change this year.
Kennedy: It all depends on what film is finally anointed as the Best Picture winner. If it’s a director-driven picture like Black Swan or The Social Network or (presumably) True Grit, then I think the director will also be rewarded, but if the academy chickens out and goes for a softball like The King’s Speech or The Fighter, there will be a split.
McCue: It would seem that we’re headed for a split. A Best Director Oscar could go to David Fincher THE SOCIAL NETWORK (or, depending on which camp you’re in, a makeup for the one he was denied in 2009 for BENJAMIN BUTTON) or Peter Weir for THE WAY BACK and who’s overdue. Now Best Picture this year is a bit of a buggar – it usually comes down to what AMPAS members saw last and what grabbed them emotionally. Will THE FIGHTER, THE KING’S SPEECH, TRUE GRIT, THE TOWN or even RABBIT HOLE fit the bill? With its Holocaust/Nazi Criminal plot, will Miramax’s THE DEBT trump all? In a year filled with so many inspiring films, I’d say it’s a good bet that the 83rd Academy Awards will see a Picture/Director split.
Lodge: What you’re essentially asking here is, “Will ‘The King’s Speech’ win Best Picture?” Because as much as many people (to my increasing bafflement) seem to really love this safe, stolid royal biopic, I suspect rather fewer people are keen to see Tom Hooper win an Oscar before David Fincher, Mike Leigh or even David O. Russell. (It would certainly aggravate me even more than a Best Picture win for the film, since I think so many of its problems stem from Hooper’s suffocatingly mannered attempts to render the material cinematic.) When you look at the Picture/Director splits in recent decades, it becomes clear it happens when there’s a heart/head divide among the voters: when there’s one film they recognise as a more significant or substantial cinematic accomplishment, but another that they personally find more moving and/or rousing. They resolve this by directly rewarding the former film’s creative motor with the Best Director prize (‘Reds,’ ‘Born on the Fourth of July,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘Traffic,’ ‘The Pianist,’ ‘Brokeback Mountain’) while letting their secret, perhaps even guilty, favourite win out in the top category (‘Chariots of Fire,’ ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ ‘Gladiator,’ ‘Chicago,’ ‘Crash’). It’s no coincidence that, with the exception of Ridley Scott, the latter group of films are all directed by unremarkable journeymen like John Madden or newcomers like Rob Marshall. Tom Hooper fits the mould perfectly. So my answer would be that, yes, a split is eminently foreseeable if ‘The King’s Speech’ remains our de facto Best Picture frontrunner for the rest of this long season – but I’m not convinced it will.
Poland: Completely depends on what movie emerges as Best Picture. I think the only real candidate for BP that would have a chance of losing Director is King’s Speech… but only because Tom Hooper is unfamiliar and there will be some showy work from others who have been here before in the category. But there is no Lifetime Achievement candidate in the group. It will likely be all young-ish men or men who have already won the statue.
Pond: I think a split between picture and director became more likely last year, when they began tallying the final vote differently in those two categories. Obviously it didn’t happen then, because The Hurt Locker started rolling and winning everything. But I think it’s going to happen with some regularity as long as we have the 10, and this year looks like an ideal year to create that split. Fincher for director, something other than “Social Network” for picture — makes perfect sense to me.
Rich: It depends on The King’s Speech, which is still a very viable contender for Best Picture but simply doesn’t seem like a Best Director winner to me, not with the likes of David Fincher, Christopher Nolan and even Darren Aronofsky all angling for their first statues. Tom Hooper did a great job directing the movie, but he’s still really young and will have his time. I know we’ve yet to see the Social Network campaign really take shape, but Fincher seems like a solid prospect to win Director, no matter how the movie does in the Picture race.
Thompson: I really don’t like the list of ten. It serves no valid function, as far as I can see, except to feed the hopes of a lot of films that won’t win much of anything. And it lessens the impact of gaining a nomination.
Wells: The King’s Speech is fading, and will eventually fall to the wayside in favor of The Fighter and/or True Grit. Either way it’s Fincher, Fincher, Fincher for Best Director.
3. The King’s Speech took the number one spot by pundits to win Best Picture before it was reviewed by mainstream critics. Do critics still function as the tastemakers or have they been passed over?
Adams: Critics are still the best arbiters of taste, and ignoring their opinion demonstrates a disregard for matters of taste; simple as that. On the other hand, pundits and critics exist to measure different cinematic factors for different purposes, don’t they? Some of us look to critics for recommendations on what movies are worth seeing. But we look to pundits as referees and scorekeepers in pursuit of another form of movie pleasure altogether. Critics appraise a film’s value. Pundits oversee the auction to determine if that appraisal is reflected in the actual market price when the gavel comes down. (The Antiques Roadshow Theory of Film Evaluation. We need the educated experts to alert us to a treasure that might otherwise get stashed in the attic. But fat lot of good that estimate is going to do us if we can’t find a sophisticated buyer/voter who wants it as part of his Academy collection.)
Bona: A year ago at this time, before the critics’ awards began rolling in, most prognosticators saw Up In The Air as the clear front-runner. That all changed when The Hurt Locker began racking up critics’ prize after critics’ prize, and a somewhat dimly remembered summertime flop suddenly had end-of-the-year sizzle, presenting the Oscars with a whole new scenario (further complicated by Avatar’s emergence as a genuine cultural phenomenon) The pundits analyze the races but it is still critics who set the pace, and who serve as consiglieres to Academy members.
Brevet: Critics will always be the tastemakers for the industry, but never the general audience. I think online folk sometimes forget not everyone who likes movies reads movie news websites and bloggers.
Childress: The critics awards (the legit and the junket/foreign press ones) set the trends. The numbers don’t lie on that front. Many of those critics who saw The King’s Speech at a festival prior to it being screened for locals are part of critic groups and will likely be casting praise on it with their ballots as well. By the time the Oscar nominations come out it could easily be the most awarded film amongst the precursors.
Fine: Critics only function as tastemakers for arthouse films that don’t have the money to buy an audience. They can make the difference there but blockbusters are strictly about word-of-mouth – online and elsewhere – at this point.
Harris: “The King’s Speech” is the pundit frontrunner. That’s something, but it’s not everything. In terms of their importance to the Oscar race, yes, critics, collectively, are still significant tastemakers–more significant than pundits (sorry). Critics’ awards, not pundit predictions, are what put “The Hurt Locker” at the front of the race last year. If a month from now, we’re looking at the awards results from two dozen different critics’ groups and a movie other than “The King’s Speech” has dominated, that will matter. Remember, Oscar voters don’t particularly like us telling them what’s going to win months in advance; they do not see themselves as irrelevant to the process. So if anything, the incessant drumbeat for one movie in November creates a kind of “prove it to me” hurdle with some voters.
Howell: Not sure about your definitions here. A lot of critics liked The King’s Speech, me among them. Does this make us pundits? Exactly how are you defining “pundits”?
I wrote a review of the film during TIFF which was published in The Toronto Star. I will expand upon it and assign a star rating when it is released next month, most likely after a second screening (which I often do). Does this make me a pundit in September but a critic in December?
To answer the second part of this question, I think critics still do play a valid tastemakers role, especially at this time of the year, but it’s more of a herd thing. If most of the critics are raving about or panning a picture, the public will often pay attention — although usually more for the raves than the pans. We can steer many people towards The King’s Speeech, but not many away from Jackass 3D.
Kennedy: The King’s Speech is a nice little middle of the road film with some solid performances. The only reason it has favored status among the Oscar chattering class is because it has so many of the hallmarks of what we think of as a Best Picture film: English accents! Period! A pedigreed cast! Harvey Weinstein! A Toronto audience award! My mom would like it! Otherwise… eh. And why are we even talking about it? Because of Oscar. That goes back to the first question and what is wrong with the whole process. Way too much ink is spilled on nice-but-middling films because they might win gold.
McCue: Long gone are the days when Pauline Kael’s School of Criticism reigned supreme. Many decide on a film right in the theater from the minute they see that first trailer. I heard negative rumblings all around me over the weekend to the BLACK SWAN preview that showed right before BURLESQUE. These regular moviegoers were definitely bothered by the oddness of the story. They didn’t need a critic or pundit to tell them what they had already decided – they wouldn’t be seeing this eccentric thriller.Time will tell if all the early goodwill from both the pundits and critics for THE KING’S SPEECH will be enough to push it to Oscar glory.
Lodge: We can hardly say they’ve been passed over just months after ‘The Hurt Locker’ became arguably the most critic-dependent Best Picture winner in Oscar history. With such a low public profile and boasting no major insider names, the film would never have emerged victorious without that full head of steam the critics gave it by almost unanimously handing it their year-end awards. The sweep was no accident: the critics knew they had to rally behind this one film if it was going to register with industry voters. But the narrative was different that year: the highbrow critics had something to rally against in the shape of the populist behemoth that was ‘Avatar.’ (Repeating the ‘Titanic’/‘LA Confidential’ dynamic of 1997: would that Oscar race have had a different outcome today? I think it’s possible, which is essentially admitting that I think critics have more influence on voters now than they used to.) ‘The King’s Speech’ isn’t exactly a critics’ movie, but neither does it pose the same kind of threat to their cause. Without that dramatic “us-versus-them” element in the season, the critics are less likely to unite behind one film next month; I suspect their awards will be more scattered than last year’s, and therefore less influential.
Poland: In the era (or is it error) or Oscar Pundits, when did a film wait for mainstream review before being pronounced as an Oscar frontrunner? Oscar candidacy and serious criticism have little to do with each other… unless you embrace the BFCA junket squad, in which case legitimate criticism is even less of a standard.
Pond: Critics still have that function, but it’s been diluted — not by pundits, but by more critics and other ways of getting the word on a movie. Pundits are reading the tea leaves, not brewing the tea.
Rich: But a lot of mainstream critics had seen The King’s Speech at Toronto and written early reviews– a lot of that festival buzz came from major critics reviewing it or at least chattering about it– so I don’t see that as a good example of critics not being tastemakers.
Wells: Bloggers function as the conversation starters & the biggest (certainly the most persistent) advocates of this or that artist or film. Certain high-end critics call the shots as far as taste is concerned, but the conversation is what matters these days, and not so much the views of those venerated few who are presumed to know more than the rest of us. Some of them do know more than most, but they’re still fickle critics and don’t really know anything for sure.
4. Do you buy into this idea that there are some films that are just too weird for the Academy, or do you think that if the movie is good enough, if it succeeds at what it’s trying to do, that they will recognize it (like they did Dr. Strangelove, for instance).
Bona: Well, sure, there are some successful films that are too oddball for the Academy, and for critics too. Paranormal Activity would be an example. I think what you’re getting at, though, is whether there are films that are darlings of reviewers but are still too outre for Academy voters. The critics’ awards are much more conventional than they were in the late 60s/early 70s, but there are occasionally still critical favorites that the Academy – other than, sometimes, the Writers and Directors branches – can’t get a handle on. Different sensibilities are at work. Mulholland Drive won Best Picture from the National Society and the New York and Chicago critics. From the Academy, one measly nomination (for director David Lynch). I think seasoned Oscar-watchers knew there was no way Cate Blanchett was going to win Supporting Actress for I’m Not There, her Golden Globe notwithstanding. Blanchett’s cross-gender performance was an impressive stunt, but Todd Haynes’s Dylan fantasia was simply too peculiar for the average Academy voter. On the other hand, a few years ago District 9 would not have been mentioned in polite Oscar circles (though of course its presence as a Best Picture finalist was due to the expansion of nominees), and No Country For Old Men would never have won Best Picture in the days when Johnny Carson or Billy Crystal were hosting the Oscars. Little by little, the Academy is showing some cinephilia chops.
Brevet: I’m not sure “weird” is the word as much as “accessible”. Brokeback Mountain, for example, lost out because of it’s theme, voters skipping it, etc. This sounds like a question referring to Black Swan, which I don’t think will face the same issues, as much as its differences may get in the way… My opinion of course.
Childress: Any film labeled “too weird” by Academy voters have likely already received their share of scorn from critics and moviegoers as well. No Country for Old Men and its divisive final act was good enough for Best Picture. Charlie Kaufman scripts got nominated three times and finally won. Even David Lynch got a Director nod for Mulholland Drive. I think if the consensus that a film is good enough, no amount of quirk or weirdness will prevent it from getting some major nominations. We will, of course, see how well Black Swan does when all is said and done.
Fine: For better or worse, yes. Oscar voters may follow critical hype up to a point – they’ll nominate the occasional weird film but they’ll never give it the award.
Harris: I think the Academy is less esthetically conservative than some claim. It’s easy to mistake the subsection of the Academy that shows up for Oscar screenings with the overall membership, which is younger and artier and more varied than a lot of the Oscar-screening demographic. So you hear, in advance, “The Academy didn’t like it” or “Academy reaction was muted”–and then every year, there’s at least one of those movies, usually more than one, that’s too dark/too weird/too gay/too foreign/too arty/too brutal/too pessimistic/too low-grossing to be nominated that gets nominated.
Howell: Is it “buying in” to state the obvious? The Academy historically avoids or marginalizes docs, comedies, animated films, foreign films and anything considered avant-garde or “weird.”
The choice of “Crash” over “Brokeback Mountain” for Best Picture in 2006 was one indication of this; supposedly many older Academy types couldn’t stomach the idea of a “gay” BP.
I wish it weren’t this way, but it seems to be. I’d be delighted to hear strong argument to the contrary.
Kennedy: For the win I do think there’s something to the idea that Oscar is skittish about movies that are perceived as being “out there.” It’s not because the voters on the whole are stupid or conservative or mainstream, it’s that any large voting body seems to mostly favor the least controversial choices most of the time. It’s just the nature of democracy. It’s a big rush to the middle. Once in a while a Lincoln or a Kennedy sneaks through, but more often than not we get Millard Fillmores. It’s less about the inspired choice winning and more about the film that offends the least number of people. Having said that, you can often count on edgier films sneaking in as nominees and that’s probably even more likely with the 10 BP slots.
McCue: Weird, yes, but not enough for the Academy to totally ignore it. Sometimes just the nomination itself is reward. BLACK SWAN may only see a few technical nods, plus a nomination for Natalie Portman’s performance and possibly Mila Kunis. It’s not out of the question that film doesn’t make the top 10. There were more than a few slack-jaws when apparent Best Picture nominee, DREAMGIRLS, was excluded from the category nomination morning. All it saw was two in the acting categories and various technical ones, with wins in Best Supporting Actress and Sound Mixing. The musical / drama may have been a crowd-pleaser, but not Oscar material like BABEL, THE QUEEN, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and eventual winner THE DEPARTED. Same could be said of BLACK SWAN. It’s not really the type of film that screams Best Picture and may put off many Academy voters.
Lodge: I don’t think it’s an idea ‚Äì it‚Äôs a fact. How many Oscar nominations does David Cronenberg have, after all? Yes, the Academy occasionally takes a chance on something a little eccentric, as they hopefully will this year with ‚ÄòBlack Swan.‚Äô But as bracing as Best Picture nominees like ‚ÄòDr. Strangelove,‚Äô ‚ÄòApocalypse Now‚Äô or even ‚ÄòA Serious Man‚Äô are, their pedigree isn‚Äôt particularly exotic and they subvert themes with which Academy types are at least familiar in the first place. We‚Äôre not talking the extreme end of the arthouse here: the very existence of a film like Yorgos Lanthimos‚Äôs ‚ÄòDogtooth‚Äô (a film which many critics, myself included, would insist is ‚Äúgood enough‚Äù for the Best Picture race) emphasises that some films are indeed too weird for the Academy. And it‚Äôs not just a matter of visibility: you could send screeners to every Academy member and force them to watch it ‚ÄòClockwork Orange‚Äô-style, and they still wouldn‚Äôt vote for it in a million years. Inter-sibling sex and cat murder will just never float Ernest Borgnine‚Äôs boat.
Poland: “Too weird” is too stupid. No Country was “too weird.” There are specific things that clearly turn Academy members off, but they show up in the most and least mainstream of films. “Weird” is a lazy pronouncement to make.
Pond: Considering that I used the phrase “too weird for Oscar” in a headline recently, I guess I am forced to admit that I buy into the idea. I do, however, think the conservatism of the Academy at large is often overestimated, maybe by me as much as anybody. The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men and The Departed is not a safe, conservative string of Best Picture winners, and nominating A Serious Man last year was a pretty daring move.¬† That said, there’s a big difference between a nomination, where a smallish group of passionate voters can put you over the top, and a win. I do suspect that some films may be too adventurous to win Best Picture, though not too adventurous to be nominated. (Your example, Dr. Strangelove, may have gotten four significant nominations, but it went 0-for-4 on Oscar night.)
Rich: Because it happened so recently I think we all tend to overlook that the Academy really went with two very weird movies– No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood– that would be considered soooo not their style by conventional wisdom. And that’s especially true now with the 10– A Serious Man, District 9 and even Inglourious Basterds had a lot of oddball things that the Academy of the 90s never would have gone for. I do think to some extent they can recognize what a film is trying to do and reward it, but there’s got to be some kind of entry for them, whether big box office or stars or a director they’ve liked in the past or something. This is why I hang on to hope for Black Swan, which is incredibly weird but features previously nominated Portman, the classy world of ballet and all the metaphors about the artistic process, and Aronofsky, who definitely got their attention with The Wrestler. Black Swan has a much better chance than, say, I Am Love, which only has Tilda Swinton as something the Academy is familiar with, but otherwise is a little too weird and foreign for them to engage with.
Wells: “Too weird for the Academy” is a deadwood issue. DON’T INDULGE THE DEADWOODS. Ignore them as you would an obnoxious bad-tempered child. Or put them in the cellar.