Since 2009, the Producers Guild and the Oscars have both used the same preferential ballot process to choose their winners. No other awards group does it this way. The SAG Awards voters do not (not for Ensemble or any other category), the Directors Guild does not, the ACE Eddies do not, the BAFTA does not. Almost every other group tabulates their ballots with a simple plurality system: each voter selects one film, and whoever gets the most votes after one round of voting wins. It’s entirely possible that a film in a five nominee field can win with as little as 20% + 1 of the votes under a plurality system. But under the preferential system, a film needs to be highest ranked on a majority (50% + 1) of ballots to win.
Some films have no trouble winning, no matter how the ballots are counted: Argo and Birdman are two recent examples of this. But from 1945-2009, Oscar used a plurality ballot with five nominees. That means that it’s difficult to compare our current circumstances to any years before 2009, when larger divergences between the guilds and the Academy occurred more frequently than it does today. The shortened awards season (since 2003) along with an expanded Best Picture field and a preferential ballot (since 2009) has resulted in the PGA aligning itself with Oscar methods and hence becoming the precursor that has matched Best Picture 100% of the time. And it’s been the only one.
Since 2009 – SAG Awards Outstanding Ensemble missed matching Best Picture:
2009 – Inglorious Basterds
2010 – The King’s Speech
2011 – The Help
2012 – Argo
2013 – American Hustle
2014 – Birdman
So far, it’s literally been a 50/50 split where SAG matches Best Pic every other year.
And now, DGA:
2009 – The Hurt Locker
2010 – The King’s Speech
2011 – The Artist
2012 – Argo
2013 – Gravity
2014 – Birdman
And now, PGA:
2009 – The Hurt Locker
2010 – The King’s Speech
2011 – The Artist
2012 – Argo
2013 – Gravity 12 Years a Slave
2014 – Birdman
The thing is, I could add a bunch of stats in the mix right now that could bolster perceptions for either The Big Short or Spotlight. Granted, it’s much easier to make a case for The Big Short, since it won the big one, the PGA, but there is always that chance for that stat to break for the first time. After all, it very nearly did when Gravity and 12 Years tied.
Spotlight’s strength is its universality. It doesn’t require audiences to concentrate or “work” to understand, and films like that are traditionally the kinds of films that win. But it is at a disadvantage because it is not a big studio movie. An Oscar win for Open Road would be a very big deal and would help define them as a force to be reckoned with, like Miramax back in the day and The Weinstein Co now, not to mention the past two years of Regency victories. The Spotlight team have also sewn up the “message” part, which is the one ace in the hole The Big Short has as well. Thinking about Spotlight as a movie about journalists is like thinking about The Big Short as a film about Wall Street execs. You can either look at the small picture or the big picture. Who’s moving the narrative onscreen as opposed to the victims who are mostly kept offscreen. Both publicity teams are making sure voters know what their message is about but Spotlight got the chance to frame it on a big stage in front of a bunch of actors, 1600 of whom also get an Oscar ballot.
Here is a good video about how preferential voting works, based on Australia’s voting process.
The funny thing is, there were differences between which films voters had to choose from on the PGA and the SAG Awards ballots — big differences and an unpredictable factor in play: diversity.
At SAG-AFTRA, there was:
Spotlight – PGA/SAG/DGA — winner
The Big Short – PGA/SAG/ACE/DGA
Beasts of No Nation
Straight Outta Compton
Trumbo
SAG voters seemed to want to send a message to the industry and likely many of them voted for either Compton or Beasts of No Nation. Let’s first dispel the notion that the Oscar diversity fracas is the cause this — because the SAG nominating committees had already named Beasts and Compton long before Oscar voters failed to do so. There was likely broad support for each film among SAG-AFTRA membership, and this split left the two Best Picture contenders to duke it out.
Whether the AFTRA factor of journalists and TV broadcast news personalities came into play doesn’t matter. It just means that however Spotlight got the advantage, they grabbed that advantage. There was enough of a smear campaign going on against The Big Short as being too white — which is false and absurd since Trumbo and Spotlight have whiter all-white casts — but the story is the story and that story got traction, and it might have played a part here. This is sometimes how a plurality ballot can make a difference. Smear campaigns and surges can work when more than 3 or 4 movies have nearly equal support. It’s a little harder to do with a preferential ballot because ballots get dealt back into the deck as films get eliminated during the counting process. And the movies were different too.
PGA:
Spotlight
The Big Short — winner
The Revenant
Mad Max
Bridge of Spies
The Martian
Brooklyn
Sicario
Ex Machina
Straight Outta Compton
In the case of the preferential system, the ranking makes all the difference. No one really saw The Big Short as the Best Picture frontrunner heading into the race – in fact, it was not considered a threat in any way. Voters did know that Spotlight, Mad Max:Fury Road, or The Revenant might be strong frontrunners. If you’re a person who puts Spotlight at #1 on your ballot (as you can see happening with most journalists covering this race), The Big Short probably isn’t going to be your #2. It’s more likely to be something like Brooklyn or The Martian or Bridge of Spies. If you like Mad Max or The Revenant, those are likely to be right at the top as the most loved, since they are both considered spectacular epics and came into the Oscar race with the most nominations. But if either those movies are your #1 choice, there is a good chance that a flashier film like The Big Short will be a #2, and maybe Sicario a #3 and maybe even Ex Machina. There probably isn’t going to be a lot of people who put either The Revenant at #1 and then Mad Max at #2 – those are both #1 movies if anything.
The Big Short will come into the race with a fair amount of people who place it as their #1 on their ballot. Even if it didn’t come in at #1, let’s say it ranked #2 or #3, and Mad Max and The Revenant came in at #1. The Big Short can still benefit from being a #2: as ballots get transferred, Big Short’s #2s pile on to its #1s and it emerges as the winner. Spotlight was a #1 movie with many voters. If it was a #2 movie, it’s probably more likely to be the #2 on ballots that ranked Brooklyn, The Martian, or Bridge of Spies first than it would be on ballots with The Revenant or Mad Max in first place.
Now, we look to the DGA where once again there are five nominees and plurality is used to count votes. But this time, the choices are different than the movies nominated by the SAG Awards committee. Now we have Mad Max and The Revenant back in play:
Adam McKay, The Big Short PGA/DGA/SAG/ACE
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight PGA/DGA/SAG
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road PGA/DGA/ACE
Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant: PGA/DGA/ACE
Ridley Scott, The Martian: PGA/DGA/ACE
The thing about Best Director is that after you factor in the BAFTA, you really need a set of three specific precursors to win the Oscar, and maybe the DGA for directing unless we’re in for yet more stat-busting (which is entirely possible, mind you). This stat held even in 2013 when Ang Lee was the only one who had DGA/BAFTA/Oscar nominations. So who has that trifecta of nods this year?
Adam McKay, The Big Short
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant
You have to go back to 2004 to find a year when an Oscar Best Director winner didn’t have a BAFTA Directing nomination: Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby.
Logic would dictate that only McKay or Iñárritu can win the DGA. But the problem with that supposition is we’re once again dealing with a plurality ballot where two other films might be splitting up many of the votes (The Revenant and Mad Max). Since voters are only selecting one film on their ballots, there is no #2 choice at the DGA that can be reassigned as it was at the PGA. It’s theoretically possible that Tom McCarthy could actually win the DGA, even though in all of history so far no film has ever won the SAG and the DGA without winning the PGA. And without a BAFTA nomination for directing, McCarthy really does seem to be a longshot here. But its SAG Awards Ensemble victory proves, for the first time this season, that Spotlight CAN win over a large voting group.
I think it’s a significant victory for Spotlight to have won SAG Awards Ensemble for two reasons. First, it shows that the preferential ballot really benefited The Big Short at the PGA, but when in a head-to-head match-up (even when taking the diversity push into account), Spotlight came out ahead with a mix of people whose ballots fell in five directions and stayed where they laid. Second, the SAG Awards Ensemble win gave the Spotlight team a chance to really hammer home their message, which was twofold: we’re “the good guys,” and a vote for us is a vote for the victims and the disenfranchised. By shaping their narrative that way, it forces a concerned liberal voter to make a choice about which victims are more important, which ones to care about. Should voters care about the 7 million families who lost their savings and pensions after the fraud-riddled Wall Street meltdown happened? Or should they care more about the thousands of victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests, abuse the Catholic Church covered up. Dazzling directing, writing, and acting vs. a clearly understood plot, a slow burn, and a steady procedural.
Both films are about corruption. One is high farce and non-traditional filmmaking, while the other is a straight-up somber drama and very traditional filmmaking. Both films are about victims. It just depends where your sympathies lie and whether that is enough to push a film strong enough to break an unbreakable stat. In both films there is that moment when one of the characters says, “They knew and they let it happen.” Mark Ruffalo says the Church knew about the molesting priests and they let it happen. In The Big Short, Steve Carell says the big banks knew their exotic financial instruments and speculation could implode the economy, but they let it happen because they knew the government would bail out them out (at the taxpayers expense).
It’s been a cynical awards season that has pitted one film against the other to see which victims matter more, which tragedy counts and which doesn’t, and has even counted white actors in the attempt to figure out which story is more worth investing your emotion and your vote in. It’s pretty disgusting, honestly, especially considering that both of these films reflect real, global, and in some cases ongoing tragedies.
In one film, good people saved the day. Goodness triumphed. Justice was served. In the other, the good people were beaten by a rigged game. Justice didn’t triumph. The bad guys won. They are both hard-hitting in the end. It is my personal disappointment that so many people I know have come out attacking one film and not the other, as if a film about people on Wall Street can’t have a deeper meaning beyond that one detail. They are different movies that appeal to different kinds of people. They are both excellent.
As of now, the most prominent pundits covering the Oscars like Anne Thompson, Greg Ellwood, Dave Karger, and Steve Pond all think Spotlight will win. They very well could be right. None of them, however, are predicting a Tom McCarthy win because they think it will be George Miller. Spotlight is more Academy-friendly. The Big Short will be seen as too much for Oscar voters, perhaps, like so many films have been over the years. In terms of that PGA stat, of winning a majority consensus with 7,000 voters, however – you’ve still got a helluva fish out there, with a mouth about this big.
Your guess is as good as mine, friends.
