{"id":13347,"date":"2020-02-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=13347"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:19:37","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:19:37","slug":"crooked-marquees-2020-oscar-predictions-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/crooked-marquees-2020-oscar-predictions-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Crooked Marquee’s 2020 Oscar Predictions (Sort Of)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\nfirst thing to understand about predicting the Oscars is that it\u2019s impossible\nto do because the awards make no sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe\nthat\u2019s unfair, though. Maybe a better way to say it would be that the Oscars do<\/em>\nmake sense, but that we\u2014the moviegoing public\u2014do not understand why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nAcademy Awards are bestowed annually by the Academy of Motion\nPicture Arts and Sciences<\/a> and designed to honor the work of filmmakers,\nperformers, artisans, and craftspeople from the previous year. That\u2019s the one\nthing everyone can agree on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\nthat, things tend to get confusing quickly, especially if you\u2019re an average (or\neven above-average) film fan. For instance, you might be wondering who is in\nthe Academy and voting on these awards. That is a good question, and the answer\nis: they will not tell you. While the Academy usually puts out a press release\neach year announcing the people it has just added to its ranks (they added 842<\/a> in 2019), there is no\npublic record of the group\u2019s total membership, neither in name nor number. It\u2019s\neasy to guess a lot of the members\u2014think of anyone who\u2019s won an Oscar, or who\nwould sit courtside at a Lakers game\u2014but there\u2019s no way to actually know who is\nvoting on these things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor,\nit turns out, is everyone in the Academy behind all those awards in the first\nplace. For instance, everybody\u2019s allowed to nominate a movie for Best Picture,\nbut only members of the respective branches are allowed to submit nominations\nfor that branch: that is, only actors can nominate actors, only composers can\nnominate composers, etc. However, in the final voting process, all members are\nallowed to vote in all categories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

About\nthat voting, too. For every category but Best Picture, the winner is determined\nby popular vote. For Best Picture, though, the Academy\u2014or rather, their\naccountants at PwC, who rest assured are now very closely monitored<\/a>\u2014use what\u2019s called a\n\u201cranked ballot\u201d or \u201cpreferential ballot.\u201d In this system, the voting members\nrank their picks for Best Picture (this year there are nine nominees) in order\nfrom favorite to least favorite. If more than 50% of the No. 1 votes are for\nthe same movie, then that\u2019s the winner. That never happens, though. What\nactually happens is that the votes are sorted by movie, the movie with the\nfewest votes is eliminated, and then that eliminated movie\u2019s votes are transferred<\/em>\nto the movie in that ballot\u2019s No. 2 spot. Then the whole process starts again,\nrepeating until one of the movies gets more than 50% of the vote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nexample: say you\u2019re an Oscar voter, and your No. 1 choice for Best Picture was Parasite<\/em>,\nwhile your No. 2 choice was Ford v Ferrari<\/em>. (You have eclectic tastes.)\nWhen the initial ballots are counted, Parasite<\/em> is in last place. That\nknocks Parasite<\/em> out of the running, and your vote for Best Picture goes\nto Ford v Ferrari<\/em>. Everyone else who voted for Parasite<\/em> also has\ntheir votes redistributed to their second-place picks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(Merrick Morton\/20th Century Fox)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You\ncan probably see where this is going. The practical effect of all this is that the\nBest Picture winner isn\u2019t most voters\u2019 No. 1 choice, but in fact the second-,\nthird-, or fourth-ranked choice for a majority of the voters. In other words,\nthe system isn\u2019t about rewarding the movie that people loved, but the one that\nthe most people said was just OK. And also, while the other categories\u2019 winners\nare selected by popular vote, their nominees are picked with this\nranked-ballot system within each branch<\/em>, based on the rules and guidelines\nthat that branch sets up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus\nthe Academy\u2019s own voting rules only occasionally specify that voters need to\nhave actually seen the stuff they\u2019re voting on. Based on the complete rules for\nthe 2020 ceremony (retrieved from here<\/a> just a few days ago),\nfinal voting for most awards is just \u201crestricted to active and life Academy\nmembers,\u201d no more qualification necessary. Only a handful of\ncategories\u2014currently Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, International\nFeature Film, Animated Short Film, and Live Action Short Film\u2014stipulate that\nvoting is only open to members who have viewed all of that category\u2019s nominees.\nThis is the only reason I can think of that explains why The Hollywood\nReporter<\/em> has been able to get so many voters to anonymously admit that\nthey often do not watch all the nominees<\/a>, though as you\u2019ll see,\nthat\u2019s actually the least terrible thing they admit to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because\naside from the logistics of the voting, there\u2019s usually no telling why<\/em>\nsome members vote the way they do \u2013 but again, THR<\/em>\u2019s interview series<\/a> has been frighteningly\ninstructive. An Academy member last year voted for Regina King for Best\nSupporting Actress in If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em> \u201cbecause she’s been\nfabulous on TV for years.\u201d<\/a> One member in 2018 picked Gary Oldman for Best\nActor, saying that his Darkest Hour<\/em> performance \u201cwas so good that I\ndon’t care if he hit his wife with a telephone.\u201d<\/a> And in 2014, a voter\nsupported Matthew McConaughey for Best Actor not so much for Dallas Buyers\nClub<\/em> but because they were \u201creally won over by True\nDetective<\/em>.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nis the kind of thing that makes the U.S. Electoral College look sensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately,\nwhen you see someone get up to accept an Oscar, the odds are very high that\nthey\u2019re only winning\u2014and that they were only even nominated in the first\nplace\u2014because they were able to drift to the middle of the pack, fly below the\nradar of the candidates at the extremes, and maybe have the good luck to be on\na TV show that somebody liked. That\u2019s it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nwhat does this mean for Oscar predictions, which is ostensibly the topic of\nthis piece? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It means that, in addition to already accepting that awards are not a testament to artistic success nor a promise of cultural longevity, it\u2019s worth remembering that the Oscars are basically engineered to give the award to the least upsetting, safest, easiest choice in any given category. This isn\u2019t just because the Academy membership skews older and whiter<\/a>, though that\u2019s of course<\/a> a factor<\/a>. It\u2019s because the system is built to rock the boat as little as possible, to mollify as many of its members as it can, and to burnish the brand of the Academy as the global representative of Hollywood product. Any \u201cpredictions\u201d that don\u2019t start and end there might luck into being accurate, but they won\u2019t be honest.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nthat end, I\u2019ve bolded my predictions and included my reasoning (well,\n\u201creasoning\u201d) below. Some helpful\/personal notes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n