On Saturday, the ACE Eddies will pick their winners in an incredibly competitive year. It might turn out that in a few years we’ll look back on this year and think: well of course that was going to win. But right now, when we’re in the middle of the race, it’s a little complicated.
We know that there is a tight connection between editing and Best Picture. We know this because we know the editing “stat” is mostly rock solid. Sure, Birdman disrupted it, but that was mainly because Birdman didn’t really have noticeable editing, even if it was masterful. It was so beloved by the industry by the time it hit the PGA that nothing was going to slow it down, including that stat.
In general, not having an Best Editing nomination does seem to impact a movie’s chances to win. But the thing is it’s easy to slip into what I have been doing lately, which is to look at how weird this year is and to think all bets are off. And perhaps that’s true. So much has changed, from the schedule of the rollouts, to the publicity train, to the membership of the Academy and social pressures. Nothing is the same as it was twenty years ago, that’s for sure.
I personally wanted to predict Belfast to win the ACE. I wanted to predict Licorice Pizza to win in the Comedy category, but I changed my predictions to what I thought had a better chance based on stats. If those films did win, though, or even if one of them won, it would be extremely odd. That’s because the hard and fast stat of the ACE Eddies is that they don’t pick winners without a corresponding Oscar nomination. This has been true in the era of the expanded ballot, and was largely true even before the Oscars were moved up from March/April to late February. You have to go all the way back to 1983 when War Games won the Eddie but wasn’t nominated for an Oscar to see the stat not hold. So you can pretty much take that one to the bank: it seems to be among one of the most reliable stats we have.
As a result, I ended up changing my Eddie predictions to two films that had Best Editing nominations:
Dune, Don’t Look Up
The other three with crossover are:
King Richard
The Power of the Dog
tick, tick…BOOM!
Certainly any of those are good calls. If anything other than these films win on Saturday, then we know for sure we are in a very strange stats-busting year.
In terms of trying to figure out what film will win Best Picture, from a stats perspective The Power of the Dog has the most factors in its favor. Every movie is missing at least one stat we usually use, but Power misses the least:
The Power of the Dog: No SAG Ensemble (WGA ineligible)
Belfast: No Best Editing nomination at Oscars (has it at BAFTA and ACE)
King Richard: No DGA or Best Director nomination
Don’t Look Up: No DGA or Best Director nomination
CODA: No DGA or Best Director, no ACE or Editing nomination
West Side Story: No Best Editing nomination (No ACE, no BAFTA), no SAG Ensemble
Dune: No Best Director, no acting nominations or SAG Ensemble
Licorice Pizza: No Best Editing nomination, no SAG Ensemble
Nightmare Alley: No DGA or Best Director, no Editing nom or ACE, no acting or SAG Ensemble
Drive My Car: No DGA, SAG, ACE nominations, no acting nominations
From a stats perspective, The Power of the Dog missing a SAG ensemble is less of an issue (though it’s still worth considering) than Belfast missing editing.
When you look at what films won the SAG Ensemble, had a Best Picture nomination, but missed on almost everything else you can see a pattern:
This is an unusual year, to be sure. You can’t count it out but it’s good to remember what kind of precedent that would break.
The next few wins should tell us a lot, though it won’t quite take us all the way there. We still could have a surprise waiting on Oscar night when it gets to the top prize. Unfortunately, the Writers Guild won’t clear things up much since The Power of the Dog and The Lost Daughter are ineligible at the WGAs, along with Belfast. So if CODA or Licorice Pizza wins there (as expected), they still might not be the Oscar winners in the screenplay categories. However, if CODA doesn’t win there, that might be a sign of weakness. Parasite, Moonlight, Spotlight: they all had WGA and won Oscars for Screenplay.
I guess we’ll take it as it comes, my friends.
Here are all of the charts in the expanded ballot era.