They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
The Oscar Race Post-PGA Tie - Can Gravity Pull it Off?
By J. Don Birnam
January 21, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
On Thursday, when AMPAS announced that American Hustle had received 10 nominations, including one in each acting category, the popular narrative was that that movie was the presumptive front-runner for Best Picture. Yes, Gravity also had 10 nominations, but with most of them coming in so-called “below the line” categories, it was assumed that Hustle was in the lead - albeit ever so slightly. Then, on Thursday night, the Broadcast Film Critics, the largest association of film critics in the country, gave their top prize to 12 Years a Slave. These critics have no overlap with AMPAS voters that I’m aware of, but people are people and we look to these awards for clues about what movies are resonating with individuals who watch them. But then, on Saturday, the Screen Actors Guild, composed of approximately 100,000 voting members, handed its top honor to American Hustle. The acting branch of the Academy is, of course, its largest, accounting for approximately 1,100 of 6,000 or so members. Presumably most if not all of those 1,100 are SAG members. After all this, one would be forgiven for thinking that12 Years a Slave and American Hustle are vying for the top spot.
Then the unthinkable happened.
On Sunday night, the Producers Guild Awards handed their top prize to both 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. Suddenly, the “it can’t win” narrative that had been espoused by most about Gravity - myself included - was shattered. People like to support winners. Could it be that, like Obama after the Iowa Caucuses, people think “hey, maybe it can win,” freeing them to vote for it?
The Producers Guild is composed of approximately 4,500 members, with significant AMPAS overlap. Indeed, one might argue that because it is far less dispersed than SAG, it has a higher predictive value than that voting body. Thus, the PGA has correctly predicted the ultimate Best Picture winner since 2007. Moreover, the PGA, like the Best Picture Oscar, is voted on via “preferential voting,” where voters rank the nominees instead of outright selecting one. Under that system a movie receiving the most overall #1 votes may still not win, unless it received an absolute majority, if it is not ranked high enough in other ballots. Thus, we can safely assume from the PGA result that both 12 Years and Gravity are sufficiently pleasing to a broad group of people, and that, conversely, Hustle is not universally loved. In other words, few people seem to have a problem with either 12 Years or Gravity, even if it’s not their favorite movie, but a lot of people seem to think American Hustle is over-hyped (or maybe just not that good).
One narrative for this season is that Best Picture frontrunner fatigue set in against 12 Years a Slave, allowing Hustle to take the lead. But if this is true, then the question becomes whether, if given enough time, the ultimate outcome of the race can change as people can reexamine more dispassionately what they think is the Best Picture. There may be some truth to these theories, but I would take also both narratives with a grain of salt. There are many examples of movies in recent years that have steamrolled the awards circuit from start to finish. The Artist, for example, was anointed the presumptive Best Picture winner since its May debut in Cannes, and was ultimately crowned victor without a hiccup almost a year later. Similarly, Argo won last year despite theories that its presumptive frontrunner status would spell its downfall because it wasn’t that good. People like what they like, and it was very easy to like The Artist and Argo.
To be sure, it’s worth noting that this year the Oscars are one week later than in the past few years, because of the Winter Olympics, thus giving voters more time to ponder their choices. But what this fact should really remind us of is this: voting for the Oscars hasn’t even begun - indeed, it won’t start for almost a full month. All the tea-leaf-reading from current “momentum” is in a sense vacuous. There’s plenty of time for people to step back and simply vote for what they like. Again, people do like to support a winner. They like to feel like the movie they’re voting for is liked by others - safety in numbers so to speak. Moreover, in this age of 24 hour news cycle and constant Internet feedback, I would wager that most Academy members would rather not rock the apple cart too much by picking something completely out of left field. Occasions like when Crash beat Brokeback Mountain after the latter won every single precursor imaginable, and the criticism that AMPAS received as a result, come to mind. But all that this means is that any of the three movies, respected by different groups, have a real chance.
So popularity matters, and past guild wins absolutely matter. Therein lies the beauty of this year: Oscar voters will just have to vote for what they like. They won’t be able to resort to a clear precursor domination streak to tell them what to vote for.
So what’s our best prediction six weeks away from the Oscars? A reasonable scenario to watch for is a three-way split among the top contenders for most prizes. Here’s a challenge, however: take an Oscar ballot and try to allocate major prizes amongst American Hustle, Gravity, and 12 Years a Slave without upsetting the apple cart in “locked” categories (i.e., Cate Blanchett still wins Actress - more on that later). It is nearly impossible to do this, as you will see by the state of my current predictions below. One can split the major awards when there are two movies, but it is much harder to do when there’s three.
More likely, then, is a two-way split. There is strong precedent for a split where Gravity takes a large number of technical Oscars and either Hustle or 12 Years take the top prizes. Last year, Life of Pi took home four Oscars, more than the Best Picture winner Argo, including for achievement in directing. The year before that, Hugo also took home several technical awards, but the Artist reigned supreme. Under this scenario, Gravity would be the victim of its own success - giving several technical Oscars to Gravity may make a voter more willing to award Best Picture to another movie. This would also make sense if one believes, as I do, that Gravity doesn’t feel “important” enough to win Best Picture. All the gravitas, so to speak, belongs to 12 Years. Of course, in recent history they have not gone for the “important” movie, choosing fluffier, feel-good movies instead. Under that theory, however, the win belongs to the facile American Hustle. Once more, Gravity is left looking in. It is a widely respected movie, but I do not know that it is “loved.” So, as things currently stand, I still am skeptical that Gravity can pull it off. My money is still on 12 Years a Slave.
The Directors Guild will soon announce their winner (and if Cuaron wins for Gravity as he’s expected to, watch out), but I expect the race to remain competitive and exciting throughout the year. The PGA tie guarantees that. At least it makes for compelling Oscar reporting.
A word on the state of the acting races.
Unlike the much more exciting Best Picture race, the acting races seem more settled. Cate Blanchett, Matthew McConaughey, Lupita Nyong’o and Jared Leto collected awards from SAG this weekend, to add to their impressive precursor awards, including Golden Globes for all save Nyong’o. I agree that Blanchett and Leto can start preparing their Oscar speeches - they both lack a serious contender and their performances are unarguably the best in their categories.
But I still sense room for shifts in Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. McConaughey, for example, has not gone head-to-head with Leonardo DiCaprio in any significant precursor, and it is hard to say which performance is best. I can even see Chiwetel Ejifor (who in my opinion gives a much more two-dimensional performance than the other two) winning, if the “spread the wealth” mentality takes hold. And Nyong’o has to deal with the undeniable force of Jennifer Lawrence’s popularity. Lawrence has all the goodwill and admiration, not to mention the box office power of the Hunger Games series. Again, it’s hard to decide which of the two gave the objectively better performance, but with several weeks between now and when voting begins, even Nyong’o’s gracious acceptance speeches may have faded from memory enough to let someone else sneak through. Stay tuned for more on these two races.
Final thoughts on what the nominations tell us about the Academy today.
The Brits still matter. The Oscar nominations show us that British influence in the Academy is alive and kicking. Philomena, the “most British” of the Best Picture nominees this year, did not score as impressively with U.S. precursor guilds as it did with BAFTA (the British “Academy”), but it landed several nominations with that group and, ultimately, a nomination for Best Picture, Actress, Screenplay, and Score.
The effect of timing. The nominations remind us that, like in political campaigns, timing can be everything. Watching the SAG award show on Saturday and knowing nothing else, you wouldn’t even know of the existence of a movie called The Wolf of Wall Street, and you would think that The Butler was a sure fire thing for multiple Oscar nominations. But Wolf landed several important nominations and The Butler was shut out. Arguably, Wolf’s late screening date made it too late for the SAG nominating committees to seriously consider, but gained steam just in time for Oscar nominations. This, by the way, points to an inherent limit in the value of precursors as accurate predictors of Oscar-night success. Timing affects what different groups even have access to or what most people have seen.
The effect of narrative/momentum. The 2014 Academy Award nominations also show us that, like timing, narrative and momentum can play a significant role. A minor yet poignant example is Sally Hawkins’ somewhat surprising (but entirely deserved) nod for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Cate Blanchett’s simpleton sister in Blue Jasmine. A few years ago, Hawkins broke in with a revered performance in the British comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, winning awards on both sides of the pond, but ultimately failed to receive even a nomination from the Academy. I suspect that the narrative that came out of that year (i.e., “the Academy unfairly snubbed Hawkins then,”) played a role in allowing her to sneak in now.
But nowhere is the evidence of narrative and momentum more evident than in the nominations tally for American Hustle. First, the movie’s stars all have significant career momentum and goodwill, and the Academy loves its stars. Second, there is the undeniable momentum of David O. Russell, who after the critical disaster of I ? Huckabees has made three consecutive Best Picture nominees, two of which have won Oscars for his actors (again, the largest branch of the Academy). The combination of “he’s due” and “he’s good” narrative that these facts create are hard to ignore and may factor in the waning days of the race.
I’ll leave you with my current predictions for Oscar night, which are of course subject to change as the final precursors speak. Check back in after this Saturday, when the DGA announces their winners, for an updated status of the race, and a discussion about just how likely it is to have a split between Best Picture and Best Director, as I am currently predicting. As you will see, I have American Hustle winning a single Oscar - for its costumes. Predicting such a stunning outcome makes me uneasy, and will likely change before Oscar night.
Best Picture – 12 Years a Slave
Best Director - Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Best Actor - Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Actress - Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Supporting Actor – Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Supporting Actress – Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Best Writing, Original Screenplay – Her
Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay – 12 Years a Slave
Best Editing – Gravity
Best Cinematography – Gravity
Best Production Design (formerly Art Direction) – The Great Gatsby
Best Costumes - American Hustle
Best Makeup & Hairstyling – Dallas Buyers Club
Best Original Score – Gravity
Best Original Song – Let It Go, Frozen
Best Sound Editing – Gravity
Best Sound Mixing - Gravity
Best Animated Feature Film – Frozen