Podcast: Which way will Best Picture & Best Director go?
Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 9:10PM Joe, Nick, Katey and Nathaniel gather themselves for their first post-Oscar nomination discussion of the new year. Today, directors, pictures, and a discussion of Oscar's diversity problem. Please join in the conversation in the comments.
40 minutes
00:01 Intro & Phoenix (for no apparent reason)
02:25 Bridge of Spies and Oscar tastes
04:30 Straight Outta Compton, Creed and Oscar's Diversification Initiatives
18:00 Cinematography and insular Oscar clubs
25:00 Mad Max vs The Martian vs The Revenant... is that good news for Spotlight?
30;00 The Big Short, Screenplays, Precursors and Early Signs
33:00 Ridley Scott. Who gets Best Director now?
Related Reading For Context:
Joe's 20 Actors of Color List
Nathaniel's #OscarsSoWhite Article
Ridley Scott on "Little Gold Men"
The Revenant's Production Design & Costume Design
Best Picture Chart
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes soon.
Reader Comments (23)
The diversity discussion is fascinating, isn't it? Because it happened two years in a row, we tend to ignore just what happened before that. I think the insularity is probably a biggest problem.
But then I look at the Emmys and see that half of some of their acting categories are visible minorities. I look at the Tonys and see that they've had years where director's line-ups are 75% women. I take a gander at the Pulitzer prizes and see they can have a category that's only women.
Argo got 7 nominations. The Departed only had five.
Arkaan -- i think the difference is the people in power. TV has very powerful women and people of color in high positions and that has definitely led to a more balanced awards.
I absolutely agree that the diversity problem in all categories should be addressed not just the top categories. We need cinematographers, sound mixers, costume designers and other craftspeople who bring fresh perspective to the work and the judging process.
The quickest way to address the issue is by having studios invest in, nurture, and produce, for lack of a better word, more Oscary movies with minorities. Studios need to get away from "white man in peril" story. People at the very top need to invite the world in.
I have been hugely disappointed in Spielberg and Scorsese for most of my adult life. They just can't get out of their storytelling bubble and stop living vicariously through their leading men.
I also want to note that I am surprised and a bit saddened that Carol's best picture and director snub didn't ignite more passion. I can't help thinking that if Carol had been a masterpiece about two gay men, its snub would have resulted in pages and pages of discussion.
I don't understand the Revenant bashing. You mention costume design. But why not? You don't critize the costume design forThe Danish Girl. You could buy those costumes in a thrift store. It's ok to not like a movie that much but it doesn't mean the craft isn't well done or deserves recognition. And the production design nom is fine too. They didn't just walk up a mountain and shot it you know. The shots are well planned and organized.
Dela - re: "Carol" concern, do you mean here specifically, or in the larger internet/press/film community? In case you're a recent reader/listener, check the "Carol" tag on the left menu. It's been written about very extensively here, there's no shortage of love or digital ink for it.
I saw Phoenix today! I'm having a Nina Hoss thing lately. Quite a fascinating actress. Great body language.
Dave, I mean in general. I wholeheartedly agree with this site's love and appreciation for Carol.
It is good enough to get six nominations yet shut out of the best picture race. That the auteurs of the director's branch couldn't recognize Todd Haynes brilliance is puzzling.
Peggy Sue, totally agree! She is equally good in Barbara.
Michael -- i agree with you on this. The technical aspects of The Revenant are impressive. I hope you enjoyed the interviews we had here on the production design and costume design. Because i enjoyed doing those interviews so much I felt bad when people online have been dissing those particular nominations but what can you do.
I think what often happens when a film is nominated in every category people immediately discount virtually every nomination because it starts to look like blind love rather than craft appreciation and people start to nitpick. I mean I know *I* do that and most films with 10+ nominations you have to wonder how closely people are looking or if they're just like OMGTHISFILM
The production design nomination for The Revenant is totally worthy IMO if only because it recognizes Jack Fisk. Can you believe this is only his 2nd nomination? After such masterpieces such as Badlands, Carrie, The New World, Mulholland Drive, The Master. He should've won already!
One thing that hardly ever gets a mention in the diversity discussion is the Oscar voting system itself. Branch members have 5 slots on their ballots but (at most) only 1 vote per individual counts when the nomination votes are collated so no individual Academy member can possibly exercise diversity in their selections. Surely a simple solution in the short term would be to give branch members 5 votes that count in each category at the nomination stage which would favour members who make an effort to watch lots of movies/completely fill their ballots over 1 film/1 individual voters, give a fairer view of what the consensus choice is for the 5 best achievements in each category and allow individuals to exercise a diverse vote that counts. Many other film/tv/music awards are applauded for greater diversity in selection but they members usually have multiple nominations that count. The oscar one vote that counts nomination system may also go some way to explaining many of the snubs/surprises each year where a certain film/performance/achievement appears all through awards season (where individual voters have multiple nominations that count) or rarely/never appears at all then suddenly goes AWOL/appears under the one vote oscar system.
@Dela - I totally agree with you on your points about diversity and the studios, and major filmmakers like Speilberg/Scorcese. So many films about Man against adversity. When was the last time either of these great directors did a film where they had a female protagonist?
Sadly, that has influenced a wide number of directors and screenwriters.
In the podcast you mention how hard it is for outsiders to break in or get recognition. This is just the awards body reflecting back how tough it is for women and visible minorities to get steady work within these guilds themselves.
Interesting to hear you guys talk about Best Picture films winning with less total nominations lately, but actually.....
The King's Speech - 12 (not 4, Katey!)
Argo - 7
So Spotlight would still be an outlier as a Best Picture winner.
@Tony: A great point and a great suggestion.
@Several Others: I think we may have conflated the downward trend in how many Oscars the recent BP winners have actually taken home with the more modest downward trend in their nomination tallies.
To be fair, Spielberg's next two films (after The BFG) have female protagonists - Ready Player One is shooting soon, and then he is making That's What I Do with Lawrence. It's possible he's noticed a lapse in his filmmaking and decided to make a change. He also was the head of the Cannes jury that gave Blue is the Warmest Color the Palme, and he's produced stuff like United States of Tara and Smash (and I don't think he has any direct involvement, but his company produces The Americans).
Scorsese, though - ugh. I've wondered for years how he's gotten a pass for having so few POC featured as significant characters in his New York-set films when people like Woody Allen and even Wes Anderson (whose films actually do feature characters from diverse backgrounds, but he reads as a stereotypically white, preppy filmmaker) are ranked over the coals. I suspect it's because the brodudes who dominate film criticism love him.
I actually quite liked the costume design in The Revenant. It isn't so much the initial designs themselves but the transformation of costumes and reuse of layering as the various trappers travel further and further off their ideal path. That level of transformation happens with the Americans, the French, and the two distinct Native American tribes featured in the film. It's a lot to invest in and keep track of.
Same with makeup. It's not just gore (which wasn't particularly great, to be honest). It's the decay in the weather. It's the relative health of the various bands of travelers. It's the diversity of realistic looks achieved and, again, the transformation at their trials and travels go further. It's scope and execution.
I hated the sound in the film, though, and for once am glad that a score was deemed ineligible for ridiculous reasons. It's not too often that I find an original score absolutely repellent. I thought, once again, an Iñárritu film had its music way to prominent in the mix to the detriment of the film.
You have some nerve lecturing minorities on how they should feel about the Academy's racist bullshit being one of the most lily-white vanilla voices on the web. I'll boycott the Oscars just like Spike Lee is doing. Google his open letter to the Academy. It's fire!
@X: I respect your opinion, but I don't personally feel we were lecturing. Even among us, we disagreed about how this came to pass or the "appropriate" response, and also acknowledged that, given this bleak and now repeated outcome, one can understand reactions all over the map, well beyond our own. We also pointed out how the voting might result in these all-white ballots even when no (or few) individual members think they're purposely excluding artists of color; Tony provided even more background to that problem in a previous comment. And we underscored how people need to revise their yearlong viewing habits and advocacy patterns within the film community, not just think the Oscar nominations will fix the racism (and sexism) that pervade Hollywood releasing and imbalanced film coverage all year long.
That said, I get what you're saying. And I definitely understand that four white critics are not necessarily the go-to group for first response to an issue like this. I've of course read Spike Lee's letter and Jada Pinkett Smith's tweets. This isn't the first year such boycotts have played out, either. We'll see what all the media coverage produces. If there are moments in this conversation that sounded snide or lecture-y in ways I don't remember from recording it, I apologize for that. But I thought this was a fairly earnest and rounded approach to these issues, given the advantages as well as the limitations of our particular standpoints.
Thanks, Suzanne, re: Scorcese. My own feeling with him is that he (to put it crudely) crawled up his own ass a long time ago and never left. This is the man who, when filming Casino, kept referring to Sharon Stone as "the girl." He's made some great movies in his day (I think Taxi Driver & Goodfellas are masterpieces), but long ago descended into self indulgence. Haven't truly enjoyed a film by him in a long time.
Great listen, and i appreciated the thoughtful discussion that went beyond knee-jerk reactions to get into the deeper issues at play.
I'd just like to point out that i think Straight Outta Compton is really a perfect microcosm of the issue and its complexities. You have a movie that's unequivocally about black experience, and the nominees for it are the white screenwriters - which, sure, it's weird - but what is most striking is that they were the people who wrote this thing in the first place. Isn't that exactly the issue? That it was white writers hired to tell a black story? And what are the Academy supposed to do about it?
And that's before you get into what you guys discussed, that the voters don't even see the names of the screenwriters anyway. Perhaps here's a case of people voting for more diversity only to be let down by the lack of diversity in the system itself.
I had some similar thoughts to Tony and while I don't disagree, after comparing Oscars and Critics Choice, I don't think it would change the results.
The Critics Choice does not use a preferential vote count (*) ; the voters should have been seeing movies all year; I would expect they are younger and they have six nominees per category but still they were so-white in the equivalent categories.
Before they change vote methodology, the awards bodies could run an experiment and ask their accountants to do a re-count with different methods and answer questions about how many non-white nominees would there have been if vote system were different. Of course it would be secret and there would have to be no-names mentioned or any category breakdowns.
(* Nathaniel, can you confirm the critics choice vote has three names per category and assigns points to each to produce a final tally.)
I really enjoyed this podcast. I've appreciated the insights into diversity that this site has presented in recent days (well, and before then, of course).
And I'm also mystified as to who will win Directing. I thought your discussion of the whole Scott/Martian/comedy side of things was terrific. But as he isn't nominated, who will get it? Inarritu again? But I do think there's a good chance that Miller will do the Lee/Cuaron manoeuvre and snatch the award along with lots of tech categories. I just can't see McKay or Abrahamson winning it, and McCarthy seems more like to win Original Screenplay, no?
And, coming back to the subject of diversity, it's worth noting that the last time the Academy gave their Directing Oscar to a white American male was the Coen Brothers in 2007. Yes, the last seven winners of the award have NOT been white American men!
X -- i can't formulate a response better than Nick's and yes the podcast group collected is lily white. we're guilty of that skin color.
But as for "vanilla voices" -- which is historically an insult directed more at taste and conformist opinion than skin color -- i can only assume you're new to the site. This site has never even remotely been a conformist mainstream site that fights to maintain the status quo but an independently run and maintained site with a diverse group of voices and when we've been dissed in the past it's usually because we don't go along with the majority viewpoints (in that we tilt gay and women's pictures friendly and also extol the virtues of films that don't make a dime at the box office.)
so i hope you come back sometime with an open mind but if not, no biggie. No voices, vanilla or otherwise, appeal to everyone.
Edward L see that's just what I'm talking about. The issue of diversity is so much more complicated and shouldn't be reduced down to 20 famous actors. Yes, that's the easiest thing to see but it never tells the complete story.
Vaus i CAN verify that we just get 3 votes per category (except picture where we get 5) but i CAN'T verify what happens after that because i don't know what mathematical system they use. I don't think there's enough transparency in the organization (obviously)
Samuel thank you for pointing that out. It really is a perfect embodiment of all of these complexities. I'm curious what the decision making process was with the producers (several of whom are black) to choose white screenwriters and how they're feeling to see the Academy called racist even within the context of actually nominating the movie as a result. It's all so... unfortunate. It puts people in these super awkward positions of arguing for and against things that i don't think most people would be comfortable arguing for or against in better circumstances.
Dela - but there have been a lot of think-pieces on Carol's snub. Like, so many I couldn't keep up with all of them. This site in particular has linked to many of them.