Things are changing fast in this country and probably the world. That is bad news for the people who have been used to being in power. They might not have noticed but we’ve just lived through something like a peasant revolt. Probably, they don’t see it that way. In fact, I know they don’t. They believe, as I once did that they are good people doing good things. The problem is that we build for ourselves a kind of utopia over the past 20 years. I was part of it. I helped build it. And for a long time, I believed that was the only reality on offer. I didn’t realize that I was in a bubble, which is where Hollywood and the Oscars are. That bubble has become authoritarian, punitive, suffocating and crippling to art and artists, not to mention comedians and journalists. The end result is that no one tells the truth about anything.
But time waits for no man, that’s for sure. If a group of people — say, aristocrats or a controlling oligopoly – abandons its majority, that majority will eventually move on. Blow right past them and rebuild a different culture and a new economy. I wish that the Hollywood we have now was not such an exclusive club, a niche market that no longer includes the majority. It’s probably worse than that. They see the majority as enemies of utopia who must be kept out at all costs.
That’s not the best survival model. It explains why there have been so many major box office bombs this year, including Joker, Furiosa, The Fall Guy, and others. It’s a shocking reality that it doesn’t even matter inside the Oscar bubble. There is no direct impact on how any of it runs. No one thinks about whether a movie made money or not because whether people saw a movie or not has no impact on the Oscar race.
It seems like the Emilia Perez controversy has fizzled. Perhaps people just didn’t have the stomach for complete personal destruction. I don’t think it will do that badly. It might even still win International Feature. After all, how far could the wildfire have spread? I think it still wins Supporting Actress and Original Song.
I would love nothing more than for Focus Features and Conclave to clean up at the Oscars and if you can’t bring yourselves to watch any of the movies, throw your vote to the one studio with courage. But otherwise, I would hope that if it isn’t Conclave, it’s Anora. A win for Anora is an indication of a pendulum swing afoot. No one looks at that movie for THE MESSAGE. It’s just a good movie and that’s why it might win.
A win for Anora means the industry is no longer counting heads (they are still). It means they judge the film purely on merit and not whether it was directed by a white guy or not. It means it doesn’t have to adhere to the DEI mandates that were implemented last year. Maybe Anora does – but it doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb when you watch the movie. A win for Anora is a win for merit.
I hope Mikey Madison can win, too, a la Annie Hall, but Demi Moore probably has this thing sewn up. The question is how many Oscars The Substance will win. Does it follow the rule of the Makeup category going along with Best Actor or Actress?
2023-Poor Things, Emma Stone
2022-The Whale, Brendan Fraser
2021-The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Jessican Chastain
2017-Darkest Hour, Gary Oldman
2013-Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey/Jared Leto
2012-Les Miz, Anne Hathaway
Those are some recent winners. It seems logical that it will go to Demi Moore/The Substance, which then means how many Oscars can Anora win? Sean Baker didn’t make the movie to win Oscars, which is why it’s mostly him behind the camera and cutting it, too. Academy voters don’t usually like to give awards to the same person for everything, but if they did, he would win Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Editing—four for one person. Probably that doesn’t happen.
To that end, all eyes will be on the last gasp of the awards this weekend before Oscar ballots are turned in. The BAFTAs and the WGA Awards. The nominees for WGA are:
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
A Real Pain
Anora
Challengers
Civil War
My Old Ass
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
A Complete Unknown
Dune: Part 2
Hit Man
Nickel Boys
Wicked
This will test the Anora consensus to determine whether it was a fluke. Anora is greatly helped by being the only Best Picture nominee in the lineup. Whether voters pay attention to that, I do not know. But a quick glance at their history tells me you must go back to 2018 when Eigth Grade defeated Green Book, Roma, and Vice to win. Before that, it was 2004 with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind beating The Aviator. Otherwise, all of the winners were either Best Picture nominees or Best Picture winners.
For Adapted, we have four Best Picture nominees, so it’s less of a thing. Conclave is not nominated, so it will come down to how much they love the movie. I see it between A Complete Unknown and Nickel Boys. Nickel Boys would be a win for the movie as a way to say, “We appreciate you.” A Complete Unknown would be a major win for a film that hasn’t been picking up much in the way of awards.
Prediction:
Anora -but it could easily be A Real Pain
Nickel Boys (which sets up a contest between Nickel Boys and Conclave) – but it could easily be A Complete Unknown
This has been a difficult year not just for me personally, but for the industry. It feels to me like it’s all hanging off a cliff and no one is allowed to talk about why. No one wants what happened to me to happen to them. And even if they could, I’m not even sure anyone inside the bubble of Hollywood knows it’s a bubble.
Here is what I predicted last Friday just before the big weekend:
Let’s just travel over to the fascists at Gold Derby and see what they’re picking. It’s wall-to-wall Brady Corbet for The Brutalist. If I was still over there, I’d be the only one predicting Sean Baker for Anora and perhaps the only one getting it wrong.
DGA Prediction
Sasha Stone–Sean Baker, Anora
Scott Kernen–Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
PGA Prediction
Sasha Stone–Anora
Scott Kernen–The Brutalist
I do not expect to be right, but I am not able to accurately predict this year because it is very off. And even if we come out of this weekend with a consensus, we can’t be 100% sure that it will be the same consensus at the Oscars because things are so crazy right now.
I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now. No one is ever sure when predicting the Oscars, unless we have an Oppenheimer-like year. I’ll just continue to predict as I think they might go:
Best Picture
1. Anora
2. Conclave
3. The Brutalist
4. A Complete Unknown
5. Wicked
6. Dune: Part Two
7. Nickel Boys
8. The Substance
9. I’m Still Here
10. Emilia Pérez
Directing
1. Anora, Sean Baker
2. The Brutalist, Brady Corbet
3. A Complete Unknown, James Mangold
4. The Substance, Coralie Fargeat
5. Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard
Actress In A Leading Role
1. Demi Moore, The Substance
2. Mikey Madison, Anora
3. Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here
4. Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
5. Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Actor In A Leading Role
1. Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
2. Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
3. Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
4. Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
5. Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice
Actress In A Supporting Role
1. Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
2. Ariana Grande, Wicked
3. Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
4. Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
5. Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
Actor In A Supporting Role
1. Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
2. Yura Borisov, Anora
3. Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
4. Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
5. Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
Writing (Original Screenplay)
1. A Real Pain
2. The Brutalist
3. Anora
4. September 5
5. The Substance
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
1. Conclave
2. Nickel Boys
3. A Complete Unknown
4. Sing Sing
5. Emilia Pérez
International Feature Film
France, Emilia Pérez
Brazil, I’m Still Here
Denmark, The Girl With The Needle
Germany, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig
Latvia, Flow
Animated Feature Film
1. The Wild Robot
2. Flow
3. Inside Out 2
4. Memoir Of A Snail
5. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Documentary Feature Film
1. Porcelain War
2. Black Box Diaries
3. No Other Land
4. Sugarcane
5. Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat
Cinematography
1. The Brutalist
2. Nosferatu
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Emilia Pérez
5. Maria
Film Editing
1. Conclave
2. Wicked
3. Anora
4. The Brutalist
5. Emilia Pérez
Music (Original Score)
1. The Brutalist, Daniel Blumberg
2. Conclave, Volker Bertelmann
3. Emilia Pérez, Clément Ducol And Camille,
4. Wicked, John Powell And Stephen Schwartz
5. The Wild Robot, Kris Bowers
Production Design
1. The Brutalist
2. Wicked
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Nosferatu
5. Conclave
Costume Design
1. Wicked
2. Nosferatu
3. Conclave
4. Gladiator Ii
5. A Complete Unknown
Sound
1. Wicked
2. Dune: Part Two
3. A Complete Unknown
4. The Wild Robot
5. Emilia Pérez
Makeup And Hairstyling
1. The Substance
2. A Different Man
3. Emilia Pérez
4. Nosferatu
5. Wicked
Visual Effects
1. Dune: Part Two
2. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
3. Alien: Romulus
4. Better Man
5. Wicked
Live Action Short Film
1. Anuja
2. I’m Not A Robot
3. A Lien
4. The Last Ranger
5. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
Animated Short Film
1. Wander To Wonder
2. Beautiful Men
3. In The Shadow Of The Cypress
4. Magic Candies
5. Yuck!
Documentary Short Film
1. Instruments Of A Beating Heart
2. Death By Numbers
3. I Am Ready, Warden
4. Incident
5. The Only Girl In The Orchestra
Music (Original Song)
1. El Mal, From Emilia Pérez
2. The Journey, From The Six Triple Eight
3. Like A Bird, From Sing Sing
4. Mi Camino, From Emilia Pérez
5. Never Too Late, From Elton John: Never Too Late
Have a great weekend.
