They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don’t They?
The PGA and SAG Awards: Birdman Now Leads the Oscar Race
By J. Don Birnam
January 26, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
There have been many rumblings that Boyhood could not win Best Picture. The reasons were several, some more logical than others. The most persuasive one I’ve heard is that in a preferential ballot, a movie with very little technical support can’t win because of its lack of votes from the below-the-lines branches.
That makes some sense to me. Yeah, Crash, The Departed, and Million Dollar Baby won without a lot of tech support, but back then a simple majority of number one votes was enough to win. If, for example, most of the 1,100 actors voted for one movie, that would be enough if the rest of the Academy split its vote. Today, however, you need a lot of #1 votes, but you also need to be high on the ballots that didn’t place you #1. So yes, Boyhood has a lot of passionate support, and therefore a lot of #1 votes, but if technical votes don’t come through, it may fall to something that does have a lot of below-the-line love. And there are two movies with clear broad support: Birdman, indeed, has nine nominations, including surprising sound nods, as does the Grand Budapest Hotel - nine nominations with no acting nods.
But there are some problems with that theory, too. Do you really think that someone won’t vote for Boyhood if they love that movie, simply because they do sound editing for a living? I don’t buy that. Here’s another problem: Birdman is arguably divisive. In a preferential ballot, you can simply forget about American Sniper and Selma for the win: some people will give them #1 votes, but it will be way down ballot on the rest of them to win. Birdman, to me, also seems that type of movie: a lot of people love and admire it, but it’s too out there for some people. So, in that sense, Birdman’s win at PGA - which also uses the preferential ballot - is truly surprising. And no movie like Birdman has ever won - it’s one of those quirky movies and there is simply no precedent for that.
I don’t buy theories like “something without a Best Director nod can’t win,” or “something with the fewest nods can’t win.” Those stats are too-number dependent and voters don’t look at correlation numbers before they vote. But voters do vote for what “they” “like” and in 87 years they have never ever liked a “quirky,” artsy movie. To me, that would be the most extraordinary thing behind a Birdman win.
In a preferential ballot, as we learned last year, Best Picture goes to the movie that everyone can like. The Artist. Argo. The King’s Speech. It has to be fun, unobjectionable. Yeah, Birdman is beloved and admired, and yes it’s about show business, but anecdotally some people seemed to really put off by it. If any movie was going to steal that thunder it was clearly going to be The Imitation Game - the usual saving of the world, love the flawed hero story. You saw me list Birdman is one of my favorite movies of the year - I like it and it would be a good win. Is the Academy really that quirky now? After Argo and The Artist?
All of this is a very long way of saying: I don’t buy it. My money is still on Boyhood or The Imitation Game. A DGA win for Birdman may convince me otherwise. We shall see.
The Meaning of Birdman’s SAG Win
Unlike the exact correspondence between PGA and Best Picture since the Best Picture expansion, SAG has never been a real bellwether, thankfully, despite its prescient award of Crash when everyone else went for Brokeback Mountain. SAG liked, for example,The Help, while The Artist won Best Picture. Sure, in runaway train year like 12 Years a Slave, one movie will win everything. But this is clearly not such a year - the critics all loved Boyhood but Birdman has taken a huge award in PGA.
But the win for Birdman is clearly meaningful. SAG+PGA is too hard to ignore. It’s not a runaway year when the critics and guilds agree, but to have those two groups agree is astounding. The SAG represents the largest branch of the Academy (yeah, the SAG has 100,000 members while the actors’ branch of the Academy only has 1,100 but still), and the PGA has the preferential ballot and the expanded nominee field.
Birdman is, by all measures, the current Best Picture frontrunner.
Acting Races: Set in Stone
Meanwhile, J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette took home expected Supporting Acting awards. These are two of the easiest calls for Oscar night. Not much more to say there.
Best Actress also seems a done deal. Although no one, including Academy members, has seen Still Alice, it does seem to be Julianne Moore’s “career award” year. Not since Marion Cotillard’s win for La Vie En Rose will a Best Actress win go to such a low-grossing movie (although The Iron Lady was close), and despite some saying that Marion could upset Julianne, don’t buy it. The narrative has taken over and Julianne deserves an award - she’s deserved it since Boogie Nights.
However, Best Actor remains in flux. Eddie Redmayne’s win at SAG is huge, of course, coupled with the Golden Globe. But don’t tell that to Viola Davis and Ruby Dee and Mickey Rourke. They all won SAGs only to see it go elsewhere at the Oscars. Michael Keaton’s speech at the Globes was memorable and Birdman, particularly if it is going to win Best Picture, will likely take home an acting award.
I happen to think Redmayne will win the Oscar. Like the Rourke/Penn split year, the SAG showed they loved the actor-comeback award, but Oscar did not. Here, if not even SAG could give it to Keaton, who has been labeled as unlikeable, then how will Oscar? On the other hand, Keaton is established (if not as a drama actor) and Redmayne.
So, Best Picture: What Next?
The DGA may tell us more in two weeks. I still think Richard Linklater’s 12 year epopee will net him the DGA and the Best Director Oscar. It’s just hard to believe that Boyhood won’t win - the narrative for it has been on for so long, it is hard to let go of those theories.
But there is a clear, recent, post expansion precedent for what we are seeing: The Social Network won every critical award under the sun, and then, when the guilds began to speak, it was The King’s Speech all the way to the Best Picture win. So, it can happen, but it will take prognosticators a little bit to get used to the idea.
More: voting for the Oscars hasn’t begun. And if there is a big question mark in people’s head about the Birdman wins - a buyers’ remorse of sort - it could still be Boyhood, or someone else’s year.
Last year, at this time, it really seemed open between Gravity and 12 Years - especially given the PGA tie. But by the time the Oscars came around, it had all settled into a Gravity/12 Years Best Director/Best Picture split. It is quite likely that we will have an agreed upon result in four weeks, as in-flux as the race seems now.
But perhaps not. Perhaps we will have an actually difficult-to-predict Best Picture year. After all the complaining about predictable years, how ironic would that be?