2023 Oscar Predictions: Is Barry Diller Right? Are Oscars and Hollywood Over?

Finding anyone in Hollywood or who covers Hollywood who will tell you the truth is nearly impossible. To be a truth teller you, as Dylan would say, “ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Those with nothing to lose are often the canceled, the disappeared and those like Barry Diller whose career is behind him. Trust me when I tell you that trying to tell the truth is like trying to climb a muddy hill in heavy boots. On Twitter they will gaslight you or struggle session you back into understanding and living with the lie. In media, journalists always tell the Emperor his clothes are beautiful. Everyone is looking out for their own best interests – their reputation, their platform, their status.

But the truth is the giant elephant standing in the middle of the room. Just because people are too afraid to talk about it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Just as it took a child in the Emperor’s New Clothes to point out the obvious and say the Emperor is buck naked, it sometimes takes people who are brave enough and who give no f*cks to say it.

And that brings us to Barry Diller.  Here is what Diller says about Hollywood and the Oscars:

If you just back up ten years ago, eight, seven, eight years ago, we had a big cable bundle that was getting every year priced higher and higher. Every year, the number of things we were offered were getting more and more in number, and we were paying more and more for them. And cable companies, the people who warehoused all of this, their margins of profit decreased. At just the same time, under their little noses, comes a company called Netflix, which says, ‘We’re going to stream things and deal directly with the consumer. And we’ve got a better proposition than you cable folks do. You can watch things whenever you want. You can watch all of it at once. It’s on demand, on your personal demand. And you just point and click and it streams to you, directly to you.’ And out of it, under the noses of the entire wisdom of the entertainment business, the ground completely shifts. And then along comes the pandemic, and that increases the shift because people stay home more, etc., etc. So there are more subscriptions, etc. The entire movie business crashes because there’s no movie theaters, because people can’t go to the theaters. And that whole infrastructure of– the hegemony, let’s call it, of Hollywood, which had ruled for 75, 80 years, it only took three or four years for it to totally disappear. Totally disappear in the sense that it’s over. There is no hegemony anymore of those, let’s call it those major motion picture companies. It’s truly finished. It is never coming back. 

And:

[The Oscars are] an antiquity. It’s from a whole other era. There really is no movie business anymore. It doesn’t exist. The whole motion picture role of, let’s say Hollywood producing about 125 movies a year, rolling them out theatrically, that’s over. And all award ceremonies were based upon this hierarchical process of a movie going to a theater, building up some word of mouth if it was successful, having that word of mouth carry itself over. And yes, there were people campaigning to get awards and to get appreciation for it. But it was all following a kind of regular path. That path no longer exists. So whoever shows up on that path, whether it’s through a movie that no one saw, through some sort of manipulation or not, and ends up in an awards ceremony that every year people watch less and less, just tells you that that way- I mean, there are people old enough, younger than me, but old enough to have been alive during the entire transition right now from a rising world, say, ten years ago to five years ago, four years ago, three years ago until the pandemic that was pretty predictable to one that is completely unpredictable. 

HOOVER: Is there a reform formula for the Oscars? 

DILLER: No. They are no longer a national audience worth its candle because that audience is really no longer interested. 

HOOVER: They’re not interested in the awards and the showmanship of the awards? 

DILLER: They’re not interested in the whole process of it. Just, by the way, the awards don’t reflect their interests either. It used to be that there was congruence between the movies that people went to see and the awards that were given to those movies that were most popular. Not that they were the most necessary or the least artistic or whatever, but there was a real correlation between popular movies and the giving of blessings on those movies and the people in them. But that disappeared a while ago, and the awards went to movies that nobody watched, nobody went to see. And then no one went to see anything because the pandemic came. So the whole house has kind of collapsed upon itself. And what I think is, is that the awards ceremony should be for the industry and not for consumers. And that would change everything. 

The short history goes something like this: Hollywood did to movies what fast food restaurants did to mom-and-pop diners in every town, the USA. The formula worked well: limited choices, familiar brands, and expectations met. This is what happened to Broadway with recycled ideas driving their business. Movies became about the franchise, about fewer choices with expectations met.

The only way for the Oscars to survive was to take a different road. The Harvey Weinstein model of the “Oscar Movie” meant they could keep churning out the kinds of movies voters liked – many of them made in countries that don’t rely on a Capitalist model as we do — and hand-delivering them to Oscar voters. All of us play a part in this process. It didn’t use to be so manufactured and micro-managed as it is now. Since everyone is getting paid, hardly anyone says anything.

Film Twitter is happy because all of their favorite movies are often represented and the whole thing happens inside a bubble that seems like a big deal if you are also in the bubble. Critics feel more influential than every so they aren’t going to say anything. Almost everyone who covers film or watches “Oscar movies” now exist inside the bubble so most of them either don’t realize anything is even wrong or like it as it is.

The problem is that the Oscars were designed to recognize high achievement in film and the highest achievement used to be strong box office. A movie was good, word of mouth spread and the industry rewarded the producer of that film. It was a hit and it mattered.

The Oscars, then, elevated the whole industry because they had something to aim for, a high bar to reach, while also entertaining the public. Now, this year especially, voters get a massive pile of screeners of movies no one wants to watch. Why, because they are often about suffering, or existential angst but always somehow adjunct to politics. Films for the Royal Court can’t tell any really good stories because the entire industry has walled itself off from the struggle of daily life.

One of the best films this year that wasn’t nominated was Mark Mylod’s The Menu. It is the perfect metaphor for what has happened to the Oscars. There is no joy in making the very best food with the finest ingredients if it is only attainable by the richest people in the world. To the Ralph Fiennes character, the joy has been completely removed. What he craves instead is to make the perfect cheeseburger for Anya Taylor-Joy who is a working class sex worker. She will tell him if it’s good or not. She is hungry. He wants to feed her.

The rest of it has no meaning, no point. Who cares what the food critic or the billionaire thinks? That’s the Royal Court and it is finite. It has no real-world impact.

Explained beautifully here:

The Menu was one of the organic successes this year with $38 million, along with A Man Called Otto ($54 million).These films were ignored by the Oscars because they were ignored by the tastemakers. We can all do better.  But we have to first recognize the problem to solve it.

When I first started, all of these things would be considered before the consensus was built and in fact, they’d be built off that consensus. We’d all think, wow, The Menu did really well that makes it one of the year’s success stories. Instead, movies that were hothouse flowers, or ushered through the season by people like me, held their place in the consensus.

Incidentally, that taste-making process is how Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis were in the consensus long before Oscar ballots were in hand. We are always tinkering with the ideal presentation for Academy voters to “get it right.” The Andrea Riseborough thing upended that process. But really, the process itself is broken and has to be re-examined.

There is no reason why The Menu should not have been considered in the Best Picture lineup. It was one of the films that made an impact this year among movie goers. The best way to fix this problem is to change the date on the Academy voting. Right now, mid-February is when they should be voting on the nominations, not the winners. By now we know what the big successes were for the year, what moved the needle, what resonated, what people remember. And that should be reflected in the Oscar nominations.

The Academy seems to be, I think, content with their new fate of abandoning the American public. But remember, we’re still in pre-revolutionary America and I personally think this will change. But for the moment, they’re aiming their product more internationally – which is also what is happening in our government at the moment, with the Great Reset. But eventually, I personally think the whole thing is coming down as it did after the last Gilded Age. When that happens, there will be, I predict, a renaissance in movies and storytelling.

The public and the Oscars have split to form new species over the past 20 years. What should happen is that the two come together again.  That is only possible if the extreme polarization we’ve been living through and the politicization of the Oscars go away. I feel heartened by the new Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movie Air. I watch this trailer hit 4 million views in a day:

This film is based on a new model of profit sharing invented by Ben and Matt called Artists Equity, which they say is a “creator-focused studio that can optimize the production process with shared participation in the commercial success of projects.” What I like about this is that it looks like an old-fashioned Hollywood movie that the Oscars should consider, provided the snooty gatekeepers can get out of the way and let the process play out the way it was designed: Hollywood makes movies for THE PEOPLE. If they’re successful they are awarded for that.

With that kind of innovative thinking, all is not lost.

So I don’t think it’s all the way dead as Diller believes. The old way is dead, perhaps. The “Oscar movie” is dead. The Weinstein model is most definitely dead. Film criticism might be over. Heck, even Oscar blogging might finally breathe its last gasp. But movies and movie theaters will live on and as long as the Oscars honors what plays in them, what people actually see — when you give them what they’re hungry for? Well, then, the whole industry will live to see another day.

I don’t think anyone knows what is going to win Best Picture. But there are a few clues to look for:

If: Top Gun Maverick wins anything major, either the PGA, WGA or the DGA, it’s winning Best Picture.
If: Everything Everywhere wins the PGA  or the DGA it is winning Best Picture.
If: We have three different winners of the PGA, DGA, SAG — it will likely go to the SAG winner.

Best Picture
Everything Everywhere All at Once or Top Gun: Maverick or The Fabelmans or The Banshees of Inisherin
All Quiet on the Western Front
Tár
Elvis
Avatar: The Way of Water
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking

Best Director
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Todd Field, Tár
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness

Best Actor
Brendan Fraser, The Whale or Austin Butler, Elvis or Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Paul Mescal, Aftersun
Bill Nighy, Living

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Tár or Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Ana de Armas, Blonde
Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans

Supporting Actor
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin

Supporting Actress
Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Hong Chau, The Whale
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Adapted Screenplay
Women Talking or Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Living

Original Screenplay
The Banshees of Inisherin or Everything Everywhere All at Once or Tár
The Fabelmans
Triangle of Sadness

Best Editing
Top Gun: Maverick
Tár
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Cinematography
All Quiet on the Western Front
Elvis
Tár
Empire of Light
Bardo

Best Costume Design
Elvis
Babylon
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Best Production Design
Avatar: The Way of Water
Elvis
All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
The Fabelmans

Sound
Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
Elvis
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman

Visual Effects
Avatar: The Way of Water
Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Makeup and Hairstyling
The Whale or Elvis
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Best Original Score
The Fabelmans
Babylon
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Song
“Naatu Naatu” from RRR or “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick
“Applause” from Tell It like a Woman
“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
“This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best International Feature
All Quiet on the Western Front, Germany
Argentina, 1985, Argentina
Close, Belgium
EO, Poland
The Quiet Girl, Ireland

Best Documentary
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
All That Breathes
Fire of Love
A House Made of Splinters
Navalny

Animated Feature
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
The Sea Beast
Turning Red

Animated Short
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
The Flying Sailor
My Year of Dicks
Ice Merchants

Live Action Short
An Irish Goodbye
The Red Suitcase
Ivalu
Le Pupille
Night Ride

Documentary Short
The Elephant Whisperers
How Do You Measure a Year?
Haulout
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Stranger at the Gate