They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don’t They?
The Directors Speak—Predicting a Best Picture/Best Director Split
By J Don Birnam
January 27, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But I still don’t buy it. Call me stubborn, but I still believe that Gravity is not the type of movie the Academy deems worthy of their prize, and that 12 Years a Slave will take the top honor. In other words, Gravity will win Best Director but there will be a Best Picture split.
A lot has been discussed in the awards universe this season about whether one can truly predict a split between Best Picture and Best Director. The argument for the split is that Gravity is a “director’s movie,” i.e., a spectacularly difficult movie to make and an incredible achievement helmed mostly by one man (indeed, Cuaron co-wrote, edited, directed, and produced the movie). Like Life of Pi before it, the argument continues, the Academy is likely to give Best Director to a movie they admire, but that they cannot quite bring themselves to anoint as their “Best,” perhaps because they don’t think it is as “serious” (whatever that means) as other movies.
Some, however, are skeptical that one can predict Best Director/Picture splits in advance. This group points out that these splits normally take people by surprise. Indeed, few saw Crash upending Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture after Ang Lee won Best Director. Roman Polanski truly surprised everyone and won directing for the Pianist when Chicago won Best Picture. And, of course, Shakespeare in Love’s triumph was one of the biggest shocks in Academy history. Moreover, this group believes, it is unlikely that Gravity is going to win something like six Oscars, including directing, and then lose Best Picture.
So who’s right?
Well, for one, the skeptics have a lot of strong points, not to mention years and years of Academy history, to back them up. For one, the Life of Pi analogy has its limits because Argo, the unarguable favorite last year, was not nominated for Best Director. A split there was preordained, so to speak—it was predictable from the get-go. No one doubts that if Ben Affleck had been nominated, he would have won. Moreover, statistics against a split are forceful - Best Director and Picture normally add up. In the history of the Oscars, over 70% of the movies that win Best Director go on to win Best Picture. If you look to more modern times, say from 1960 on, the number jumps up to north of 85%.
But where some see an 85% chance of a match, I see a not-insignificant chance of a split. In other words, splits are rare but they happen. Those who are skeptical about predicting splits point out that most people are unlikely to vote for one movie for Best Picture and another for Director, but the 15% shows that people do exactly that, at least sometimes.
The skeptics also underestimate how easy it is, in a very tight year like this one, for there to be a split. Assume, as most do, that the Best Picture race is very competitive this year and that there are 11 voters. Assume for simplicity’s sake that six like 12 Years a Slave more, but five prefer Gravity. All it takes is for one single voter to split his or her ballot to create the split, because the year is so tight. The example is, of course, over simplified, but aptly illustrates that even if we buy the argument that people are unlikely to split their ballots (which I do not) it only takes a handful of people to do so if the races are otherwise tight, to cause an ultimate split.
More importantly, stats are, in the end, just numbers. The Academy has broken “rules” in the past years left and right. Argo won despite not having a Best Director nomination, a feat achieved only by a single movie since the 1940s (Driving Miss Daisy). The rule that the winner of the PGA award wins Best Picture, unbroken since 2006, will be broken this year. The PGA awarded its prize to two movies, but both of them cannot win at the Oscars because the Academy has instructed its accountants to not permit a Best Picture tie by looking at who has the most #1 votes in the preferential ballot. I love stats, I truly do. But, in the end, voting for the Oscars is done by humans, not machines. They like what they like, and they vote for what they like.
In the end, the predictive value of stats and past wins depends on making crazy assumptions about people’s voting behaviors. It requires us to believe that your average Academy voter will say, for example: “Well, Gravity won the DGA, so I’m going to vote for it for Best Picture, because DGA winners are supposed to win Best Picture.” We know that the Academy voter last year did not pick up his or her ballot and think: “Well, Argo was not nominated for Best Director by the Director’s branch of the Academy, so I won’t vote for it for Best Picture.”
One thing that I have learned over many years of obsessive Oscar watching is that past wins and past Oscar ceremonies are helpful to tell us about Hollywood’s (and the country’s) taste in movies, but are less useful as strict regression-type predictive models. Thus, the fact that Gravity and 12 Years of Slave have been winning a lot of awards undoubtedly tells us one thing - people across the industry like those two movies, and so do audiences. But the fact that either has won this or that particular guild or prize is, in my opinion, of highly limited predictive value beyond that. They like what they like, and they vote for what they like.
And if one insists on pointing to precedent for a split along the lines of what I’m expecting to happen on March 2nd, then a very memorable year in Oscar history illustrates the point. In 1972, the Academy famously awarded Best Director to Cabaret, but Best Picture went to The Godfather. Not only that, but Cabaret took home eight Oscars - including two acting prizes - and failed to win Best Picture, a record that stands today. So 1972 is thus illustrative of just how Gravity could win several Oscars, including Directing, and still not win Best Picture. Cabaret, like Gravity, was well respected, indeed beloved by some, and a technical achievement on all fronts. But The Godfather had the “gravitas” of the being even more serious, more important. Similarly, 12 Years a Slave deals with a more serious topic (arguably) than the more subtle, nuanced Gravity. I believe they don’t like subtlety. The like it clear and in your face.
So, perhaps partly out of stubbornness, I still think 12 Years a Slave is going to win. Despite the fact that Gravity is a strong Best Picture contender, I still do not see it happening for that movie and am not ready to switch my prediction. And there are still a few minor awards to be given out. I hate to label the Writers’ Guild a “minor” award, but their wonky eligibility rules disqualify leading Best Picture contenders year in and year out (this year, notably, 12 Years a Slave) so their predictive value is limited, at best. And of course the Brits have to speak at the BAFTA awards as well. There is still some time for momentum to shift, or for the conversation and/or campaigns to push one contender ahead of another.
After all this, however, I would be remiss if I did not leave you with a word to the wise, caveat emptor if you will - if you want to win your ballot on Oscar night, you’re probably better off not predicting a Best Director/Best Picture split. The stats, ironically enough, don’t lie.
How Many Oscars will American Hustle Win?
So in the “will there be a split” debate, most of us assume that if there is, 12 Years a Slave will nab Best Picture. What, then, of American Hustle? In my last column, I had it winning one single, lowly Oscar, for Costumes. As the race stands now, this scenario is unlikely to play out at the Oscars. Despite losses at DGA and PGA, the SAG win and its nominations tally shows that the movie is liked. And the campaign for that movie is strong. So, at the very least, another win might come for Hustle in the Best Original Screenplay category, at the expense of the much wittier Her.
And, once more, do not discount the strength of this movie with the actors. There is still room for Jennifer Lawrence and even (gasp) Amy Adams to surprise us. Hustle is thus playing multiple roles in this race - wild card, dark horse, spoiler, and even frontrunner. It is hard to fathom that the movie that was the frontrunner just a few days ago will get completely ignored. Indeed, if one is looking at years like when Shakespeare defeated Private Ryan or Crash defeated Brokeback, then the “fluffier” movie, in this year American Hustle, stands to benefit. Indeed, the value of 1972 is limited in that sense - then, the movies were darker. Recently, as we know, more facile pictures (The Artist, Argo, A Beautiful Mind, The King’s Speech) tend to win. So do not forget Hustle yet.
In my next columns I will turn to the technical races and the shorts and foreign language films. Those can kill your ballot on Oscar night.