A Tale of Two Cities
One City:
The BAFTA voters chose to give just one award to Everything, Everywhere All at Once, while handing its four acting honors to:
Austin Butler, Elvis
Cate Blanchett, TAR
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
They reserved their top prizes for Best Picture, Best Director, and Adapted Screenplay to Edward Berger’s sublime All Quiet on the Western Front.
The BAFTAs took incoming, with sporadic charges of “racism” that they didn’t deserve. Sorry, but they didn’t, not after all they’ve gone through to make accommodations to their ballot process and in an effort to become more inclusive. (And how long will some people try to use this accusation as a gun-to-the-head for every vote on every performance or film?). What the BAFTA voters really seemed to do was push back on the idea that they were obligated to vote for people of color to deflect criticism. They seemed to be saying: Thanks for the nudge, but we still plan to pick what we like.
The Other City:
As Netflix was collecting its clutch of BAFTAs in London, it was readying to become the first streaming platform to broadcast a major awards show from L.A. Seems the SAG Awards had two choices. Wait out the catastrophic ratings numbers, which would take up a lot of oxygen online and result in many a think piece declaring the show dead on arrival — or accept an unknown but no doubt substantial sum of money upfront for Netflix to toss it up on YouTube and avoid all of that.
As the first prominent live awards show on YouTube, the SAG Awards became part of the daily churn. Making history is a big deal. Shattering glass ceilings also a big deal. Politics is ever-important because it is a tribal identifier. This is no longer a case of people gathering in their homes, eating food and having a party. This now involves large number of people hunched over their keyboards furiously supporting or rejecting the awards in real time.
It was obvious from the way the SAG awards went down, and how Film Twitter was plugged into them like an umbilical cord that they were more or less one and the same, an extension of each other, working in perfect harmony. Film Twitter loves Everything, Everywhere All at Once and so does the film industry. One reason they love it is because they like to see their votes move the needle forward for a marginalized, forgotten or unseen group.
After winning the PGA and DGA and setting a record number of SAG wins in 4 categories, the question now becomes how many Oscars will the film win? Predicting that is harder than it seems.
Let’s look at recent Best Picture winners and what they won at SAG vs. Oscar:
2021–CODA (PGA)
SAG Ensemble + Supporting Actor
Oscar Picture + Supporting Actor + Screenplay – 3 (it was only nominated for 3)
2020–Nomadland (PGA/DGA)
No SAG wins
Oscar Picture + Director + Actress – 4
2019–Parasite
SAG Ensemble
Oscar Picture + Director + Screenplay + International Feature – 4
2018–Green Book (PGA)
SAG Supporting Actor
Oscar Picture + Screenplay + Supporting Actor – 4
2017–The Shape of Water (PGA/DGA)
No SAG wins
Oscar Picture + Director + Production Design + Score – 4
2016–Moonlight
SAG Supporting Actor
Oscar Picture + Screenplay + Supporting Actor – 4
2015–Spotlight
SAG Ensemble
Oscar Picture + Screenplay – 4
2014–Birdman (PGA/DGA)
SAG Ensemble
Oscar Picture + Picture + Director + Screenplay +Cinematography – 4
2013–12 Years a Slave (PGA)
SAG Supporting Actress
Oscar Picture + Screenplay + Supporting Actress – 3
2012–Argo (PGA/DGA)
SAG Ensemble
Oscar Picture + Screenplay + Editing – 3
2011–The Artist (PGA/DGA)
SAG Best Actor
Oscar Picture + Director + Actor + Costumes + Score – 5
2010–The King’s Speech (PGA/DGA)
SAG Best Actor, Ensemble
Oscar Picture + Director + Screenplay + Actor – 4
2009–The Hurt locker (PGA/DGA)
No SAG wins
Oscar Picture + Director + Screenplay + Sound/Sound Editing + Editing – 6
Now, finally, let’s look at what movies won the most SAG Awards in the era of the preferential ballot:
2017–Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — 3
Best Actress, Supporting Actor, Ensemble
At Oscars: Actress, Supporting Actor, Ensemble
2011–The Help – 3
Best Actress, Supporting Actress, Ensemble
At Oscars: Supporting Actress
And in the eras before that, which of them won 3:
1999–American Beauty – 3
Best Actor, Best Actress, Ensemble
At Oscars – Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, Cinematography – 5
2002–Chicago – 3
Best Actress, Supporting Actress, Ensemble
At Oscars – Picture, Supporting Actress, Production Design, Costumes, Editing, Sound – 6
In a year as confounding as this, stats may or not be useful. The Academy in the era of the preferential ballot generally likes to split up the vote because there are more Best Picture contenders they more factions of voters like. They are now required to pick 10, by the way, so we don’t know how many films would have ended up in the race if they were still using the previous model. Most likely 9 or 8.
What this tells us, though, is that winning all of the awards EEAAO just won at SAG is going to be a feat nearly impossible to match at the Oscars. They’re going to have to love this movie more than they did The King’s Speech, Argo, and The Artist combined. Unless of course it’s going to be one long virtue-signal and then maybe they might. I think personally this attitude mostly applies to actors, which is why they can do so much damage in the Best Picture race. The rest of the categories, though? I’m not so sure.
We know that EEAAO is winning at least Picture, Director and Supporting Actor. But probably it wins Screenplay and perhaps Editing (although I have my fingers crossed for Top Gun Maverick on that). Maybe it wins SOME craft awards. But the real question is, how many other acting awards might it win?
Let’s look at movies that won two SAG awards and two Oscars from the same movie:
Just for fun, I wanted to go back to the awards calendar of 2011 to see just how different it was back then and it turns out it was REALLY different.
SAG Awards
2011–January 30
2022–February 26
PGA Awards
2011–January 22
2023–February 26
DGA Awards
2011–January 29
2023–February 18
BAFTA Awards
2011–February 13
2023–February 19
Final Oscar Voting Begins and ends:
2011–February 1–February 21
2023–March 2-March 7
These date changes are significant in terms of influence and it makes me wonder what impact they might have this year, with everything coming in later (BAFTA being the exception). 2011 was a year when one movie dominated, The Artist. It was one of those years when we had to keep hitting the snooze button. The only film that presented a challenge was Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which ended up winning the same number of Oscars, 5.
The second major factor is, and there is no easy way to say it, but inclusivity. This is something that has consumed much of Hollywood and seems to have given many voters their central guiding principle. This is activism in real time for them. The more change they make with the winners, the better they feel. Their vote MEANS SOMETHING. They will be seen as good people doing good things.
Both Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan hit the note hard (and legitimately) that they were both making history as the first Asian actor to win in their categories. That’s true at the SAG awards. Michelle Yeoh would be making history at the Oscars, not Quan but the point still stands.
If EEAAO won Picture and Actress and Supporting Actor in the era of the preferential ballot it would be unprecedented. If it won two acting prizes and Best Picture at all, regardless of category, it would make history. It’s extremely rare to win more than one acting category along with Best Picture. Two is possible, but also rare. The last time it happened was in 2004 with Million Dollar Baby and before that, in 1998 with Shakespeare in Love.
All things being equal — as in, if we were talking about four white actors winning the SAG and then winning the Oscar it might be slightly easier to call. But this isn’t a situation like that. It’s a time when the Academy and the industry is already under intense pressure to make the awards fair and equitable, but especially after what happened in the Best Actress category this year.
You simply have to weigh the two cities against one another:
BAFTA — complete rejection of “woke” voting or social justice voting. They went purely on merit.
SAG — complete embrace of inclusivity with the film they chose and two of the actors that won. The other two actors that won were white, but one was playing an obese gay man and the other was playing a really terrible, rotten, awful white woman who is transformed into a good person by the end, as she is transformed, or “redeemed.”
The questions you will have to ask are these:
Does BAFTA have enough influence in the Best Actress race to push through Cate Blanchett to win her third Oscar? Or do the actors have more dominance to push through the first Asian actress?
Does the film Elvis have enough broad support, along with the untimely tragic death of Lisa Marie, to put Austin Butler over the top? Or does Brendan Fraser’s win at the SAG trump even a Best Picture nomination?
Stats-wise, the combo of a Globes and a BAFTA is fairly iron clad.
Since 2000, only twice has a Best Actor who won the Globes and SAG lost the Oscar, all before the expanded ballot:
Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
And for Best Actress, since 2000, no actress who won both Globes and BAFTA has lost the Oscar. Make of that what you will.
A Tale of Two Cities.
Ordinarily, I would predict the following for EEAAO:
Picture
Director
Screenplay
Supporting Actor
But given the enthusiasm by the actors branch and the desire to make history, we could be looking at:
Picture
Director
Screenplay
Actress
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Editing
Maybe another crafts award…
But keep in mind the fact that the Daniels are producers, writers and directors. It isn’t that I don’t see them on the cover of Variety holding a whole bunch of Oscars — it writes itself — it’s just a matter of how the other city, BAFTA, will dilute what we just saw last night.
Here are the charts (Marshall is away so they aren’t proofed 100%)
