Podcast: Oscar's Diversity Initiative, PGA Win
Sunday, January 24, 2016 at 7:30PM Nathaniel, Katey, Joe and Nick, talk about this week's tumultuous Oscar season events and somehow Dolores Hart former actress/current nun, keeps popping up in conversation.
30 minutes
00:01 PGA goes to The Big Short. Will SAG?
03:00 Hollywood & Racism
08:40 AMPAS new diversity plans
16:30 Oscar Stats, Prestige Math, and Future Oscar Races
22:20 12 Years a Slave (2013)
25:00 Who might lose their Oscar vote?
Related Reading For Context:
• Academy press release Diversity initiative
• PGA winners
• Birth of a Nation (2016) at Sundance
• Penelope Ann Miller's statement
• Mother Dolores Hart "From Hollywood to Holy Vows"
On the Next Podcast:
We all share our top ten lists!
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes soon.
Reader Comments (13)
Candace Bergen was nominated in 1979, so she's okay.
YES! Every year when mentions of Delores Hart resurface, my heart expands in glee! I want to see THAT ballot.
You all sound so fatigued - thanks for another podcast.
Kathleen Turner was nominated in 1987 - so she should be safe, but I would love to see her ballot.
I think she would be dead honest, but with a sassy bit of humour.
I love Steve Feinberg's series on "honest oscar voters", this year should be interesting.
Great conversation. I wish the media (specifically the Hollywood Reporter) would take a cue from you/your panelists and actually explore systemic racism instead of framing this issue as "Are Academy voters racist?"
I hope Straight Outta Compton wins the SAG, if for no other reason than to see Jason Williams finally recognized for his brilliant work.
I keep thinking about Bridget Fonda. I'm not sure I need to see her ballot necessarily, but it's too bad she has to lose her membership privileges. Come back to movies, Bridget!
Jason Mitchell New Moon Son Mitchell.
Suzanne -- she can always exert influence on her husband's ballot!
Not to mention her dad, who's a lifetime member!
If you have been part of the film making process at any time in your life, you still understand and appreciate what goes into making a film, so I don't see why you shouldn't be able to vote on different aspects just because you haven't worked in a while. The Academy should just invite more diverse members every year.
@3rtful: Oops, thanks for catching that. That's what happens when you're posting at 6 a.m.!
Always good to listen to the team.
Re the Academy changes: It is yet to be seen how they define "active". Maybe a short film about a local issue would count, even if it just has an on-line release or is shown to other members? Some people can put a lot of effort into stretching the rules.
I hope it makes people question what screeners they choose to watch and which they put aside.
Nathaniel stated just what I was thinking: "it's a numbers game."
Not to lose folks in the math, but if there are, say, 25 films in the BP race and only three are focused on African-Americans, then mathematically, there's a 19.75% chance that none of the "African-American pictures" (for lack of a better term) wind up as nominees. And that's if there are ten nominees; it's even higher if there are fewer, as there have been for the past two years.
I say this only to support the idea that the solution will be to get more people considering more of these films as Best Picture contenders (and for that, we'll likely need Hollywood to make more of them).
Just to add: with 8 nominees, the probability of no African-American pictures jumps to 29.5%.
(I'm just guessing that approximately 25 films were in the BP race, however peripherally. I have no proof for this, obviously. And I am counting Straight Outta Compton, Creed, and Beasts of No Nation as "diverse" films that were in the conversation. These numbers are not science and are just meant to illustrate that when you start out with a dearth of diverse films in the conversation, the probability of #OscarsSoWhite happen really escalates. Of course, any bias on the part of Oscar voters would affect these results.)