The Producers Guild ballots were turned in on January 30th. Whether or not those voters had time to absorb the Emilia Perez disaster is not knowable. The Directors Guild, however, ends voting on February 7th, just three days from now. We have no idea what film is our Best Picture frontrunner because we’ve been caught in a state of tragedy, scandal and chaos.
The Emilia Perez story exposes the rot and corruption in the Oscar race. If you aren’t seeing it that way, you aren’t paying attention. This movie was ushered up the ranks by all of the bloggers, and no one said a word. Why? Because it’s expected that we all fall in line under specific circumstances. A musical with a transgender star and cast with all women of color about a social justice issue that was lauded at Cannes becomes a major player before a single ticket is bought. In fact, the movie has made zero dollars in the United States.
It’s amazing how it was hand-delivered like a bespoke item sold on Etsy. Netflix spends big on Penske Media Corp. The trades, all of them also owned by Penske, along with the predicted consensus Gold Derby, also owned by Penske, then wins Best Picture at the Golden Globes, also owned by Penske, beating the much better film, Anora, which did not have the deep pockets of Netflix, but won the top prize in Cannes.
The corruption, though, is the frog in boiling water – slow at first, then all at once. It is the movie Conclave. It is about trying to find some sort of honesty and decency in a corrupt process. That all of these hypocrites have now thrown Emilia Perez under the bus after pushing it through the Oscar race is the corruption exposed in the Edward Berger film. It’s almost too perfect, isn’t it? I’m not saying that I wasn’t part of the corruption, too. I was. Money changes you. You come to rely on it. You design your life around it. I had just bought a new car right before the Rebbeca Keegan hit piece posted in the Hollywood Reporter. And so I felt the pain immediately when nearly all of the studios pulled their ads.
And yes, I would be lying if I said I did not have a vested interest in Conclave winning awards. I do. I would like to see this studio rewarded for having the courage and decency to stand apart from the rest of the industry in punishing this site for a tweet — and rewarding the terrible people who are in the business of destroying lives. I would love to see them win every award in the race. I would love to see the movie sweep.
Ralph Fiennes’s brilliant performance shows the inner conflict between doing the right thing and pleasing the tight-knit community. So yes, he must hide the secret that the pope who won fairly and squarely is, in fact, either intersex or a biological female. The book, however, wasn’t written in the time when these labels—trans, intersex, non-binary—meant anything. The book and the film are about an honest versus a corrupt process. Would the Oscar race play out like the Conclave?.
This isn’t the first year that we headed into the PGA and the DGA without knowing how they’ll vote. To make matters even more confusing, the Screen Actors Guild won’t happen until after Oscar ballots are turned in. The Critics Choice Awards likely have some impact, in so much as they give, say, Zoe Saldana a chance to give a speech that might make or break her win. My advice to her is to keep it short, don’t cry and carry on, don’t beg. And don’t throw Karla Sofia Gascon under the bus. Be gracious, be humble.
We don’t know what will win Best Picture there either, and since the PGA and DGA happen the next day, the whole thing could be upended. And we also don’t even know if a new consensus will form after the big guilds. It’s all a crap shoot. What we have to deal with now are the movies themselves. What movie do people like?
Here are the Best Picture winners since the expanded ballot, sorted first by critics’ scores and then by audience. It’s probably overkill, but it’s more or less to prove a point.
By critics:
By audience:
I would bet, without doing the research, that if you went back for the ten years previous you would find the opposite effect – you would see a lot more films liked by audiences than by critics. There is no question that “critics,” so-called, dominate the Oscars now. They aren’t really critics. They are the hive mind occupying Film Twitter, which works for Penske Corp and has their predictions on Gold Derby. It’s all once CONCLAVE of people who decide what films should be elevated and much of that has to do with power, status, and money — just like the film CONCLAVE.
Be that as it may, our Best Picture winner should be in the 90s or thereabouts from the critics. Ideally, you have a high audience score, too, but that obviously matters less and less, as you can see from the charts above. People have stopped seeing the movies — with a few exceptions.
Here are the Best Picture nominees with one column sorted for audience score and the other for critics — note how I’m Still Here and Emilia Perez are in the same spot no matter how you sort it. You can chalk that up to the fans of I’m Still Here, which slightly distorts the results in both directions.
The Producers Guild has roughly 8,000 members. They have a ten-picture ballot using the preferential, or ranked-choice, system. That means passion will drive their vote for the first round. My experience running experiments means that the film that comes in at number one almost always wins, unless it is a divisive movie. La La Land beat Moonlight because it did not have those second-round high numbers like Moonlight did. What will push a film to the top of the ballot is goodwill. Even if they don’t like the movie the best, they push it to the top anyway out of love or an activist’s desire for social justice, whatever it is. Films that will do well in that way include Wicked, Nickel Boys, Anora, I’m Still Here, and Conclave. Films that won’t do as well are Dune Part Two, A Complete Unknown, The Substance, and Emilia Perez (which would have done well if not for the scandal).
The Brutalist is, to my mind, a huge question mark. I think it gets a goodwill vote. But it will also get a HATED IT vote, which hurts it on a preferential ballot. That’s why I hate this process. It rewards films that aren’t big swing movies. It has to be because big swing movies are often divisive.
The Brutalist is missing a SAG ensemble and an ACE editing nomination, which has never happened to a Best Picture winner in their shared history (1917 won PGA without those but it had almost nut cuts and mainly one actor). So that’s why I am not predicting that film. Could it still win? Of course. We have seen precedents shattered in recent years because of the 3,000 new members. They have led to somewhat unpredictable results. Predicting the Oscars means knowing your consensus. Once you know them, you can study how they vote. But we don’t know these new members quite yet.
So where is our consensus likely to head? Looking at the chart below, we can conclude that a film needs to be Oscar-nominated to win the PGA, and at least in the era of the preferential ballot, it must be on the AFI top ten of the list. Paring it down, our contenders are:
Anora
Conclave
A Complete Unknown
Emilia Perez
Wicked
The Brutalist
Dune Part Two
If we pare it down even more, which films also have the DGA? Winning the PGA without the DGA is harder that winning Best Picture without a directing nom (like Argo).
Anora
Conclave
A Complete Unknown
Emilia Perez
The Brutalist
Most likely, the film that wins PGA and Oscar will also have a SAG nomination. It’s not absolute. Three times since 2009 a film won without a SAG ensemble nom. But let’s just stick with it for now — with both DGA and SAG ensemble, plus AFI:
Anora
Conclave
A Complete Unknown
Emilia Perez
That’s four of the most likely to win. Is there a way we can reduce these movies down? Sure, we can remove Emilia Perez. Now we have:
Anora
Conclave
A Complete Unknown
All three of these films have good reviews and great audience scores. Two out of three have a Best Actor contender and the third, Anora, is driven by a strong Best Actress contender.
These three films will need Best Director or Best Screenplay to win Best Picture. If Brady Corbet is the stand-alone Best Director winner (I am not sold on that, but it’s possible). That leaves us with screenplay only. Anora is favored to win in Screenplay (or a Real Pain), and so is Conclave:
Anora
Conclave
And if I wanted to pare it down even more, I might say Ralph Fiennes wins Best Actor, which takes Conclave’s chances down for winning Best Picture since Actor and Picture don’t match. Or Anora wins on passion. Or Conclave wins because of how well it mirrors what we’re living through, and perhaps it makes people mad. Or at least it makes them want to yearn for or fight for something more transparent in the process.
This could all be completely wrong. The PGA and DGA could produce The Brutalist. What makes me hesitate on this film is the ACE/SAG thing, but also the audience score. It could also be A Complete Unknown but I hesitate because of the critics score. So it’s a toss-up friends, your guess is as good as mine.
PGA prediction: Anora
Alt. Conclave, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown
For Best Director, my gut tells me that A Real Pain is likely to win in Original Screenplay and thus, Anora will take Picture and Director. Until I see that the PGA and DGA do differently, I haven’t been able to shake the idea that Anora will win. could be wrong, we’ll see!
DGA prediction: Sean Baker, Anora
Alt. Brady Corbet, The Brutalist (he could win this on ambition alone, like Alfonso Cuaron and ROMA).
I’ll be curious to see how it goes. In the meantime, I hope those who follow in my footsteps continue to help the Oscars to make the process less about bloggers and publicists and more about audiences.