The Big Picture - What Does 'Best Picture' Even Mean? | The Oscars Show (Ep. 117)

Episode Date: January 15, 2019

This week, we explore how the various guild awards can tell us who is in the best position to bring home Oscars (0:53). Then, we try and digest the deluge of ‘Green Book’ controversies (25:21). Finally, we try and place our finger on an answer to the existential question hanging over our show: What does 'Best Picture' even mean (32:42)? Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Links: This Is the Most Wide-Open Best Picture Race in Years, Sean Fennessey Green Book Director Used to Flash His Penis As a Joke, Anna Silman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. True Detective is back, and The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion are our guides as we navigate the twisting pathways of Season 3's plots, themes, and characters on The Flat Circle, a True Detective aftershow. Follow Jason and Chris as they chase down leads, explore each episode's cultural context, and discuss true crime cases that mirror the ones in the show. Join the guys live every Sunday night after True Detective on The Ringer's YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pages. I'm Sean Fennessey.

And I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Oscars. Amanda, we're going to jump right into The Big Picture's Big Picture this week. This is a problem in The Big Picture, do you know what I mean? We are less than six weeks away from Oscar night, and we are doing a new episode to talk about every other award that is happening in the known award season universe right now. They're coming fast and furious. Last night we saw the Critics' Choice Awards. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever watched

the Critics' Choice Awards? You know, I wouldn't rule it out, but I don't have a specific memory. Okay, okay. Wasn't it like on TNT for a while? I believe it was on the CW last night. Yes, but I think before that, I don't know, sometimes you pick up an awards show from time to time. Yes, you pick it up like you would pick up a common coal. Yeah. And you carry it with you for a few days. Here we are carrying it with us on this show this morning. The Critics' Choice Awards, I don't even fully understand.

I haven't honestly investigated it. It is obviously relevant because all of the major figures were there and were receiving awards. And, you know, it's interesting because I noted this on Twitter last night. Last year, 16 of the 18 major film categories matched, the winners of those categories matched with the Oscars. And so there is some credence to this. There is some, maybe some usefulness to this award show, even though I don't really care to watch it. Yeah, I think we should talk a little bit about last year and also 2016-17, two years ago, versus this one. I did do a bit of research into the Critics' Choice Awards last night. I was just curious. Fantastic. It's apparently decided by 250 members of the Broadcast

Film Critics Association. I think I got that right. Anyway. Why are we not in that group? We are broadcasters talking about film. You know, I was going to say the awards columnists for both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety are part of this organization and apparently voted. Maybe we should be stumping. Yeah. And otherwise, it's mostly kind of local critics and people on radio and local news stations as best I understood, but there are some general, there are a few names I recognized in terms of people who do some sort of journalism about the movies that are being awarded. Okay, then let me make an addendum. Yes. The Critics' Choice Awards is the only award show that matters. I think it'd be very important that you and I be a part of it in 2020. That's it.

I mostly just wanted to distinguish from the Golden Globes, which is done by a bunch of people who make up interviews. Got it. So anyway, that said, I don't really remember it being a huge deal in the Oscar buildup before the last couple of years. And has never been cited as a bellwether of any kind. Right. So it's interesting to kind of compare and contrast. What did you want to note about 1617. Well, you know, and this is maybe a more overarching theory, which we've talked about a bit before, but I think it is important to compare to the winners of all the guilds last year. And that's obviously instructive, especially as the makeup of the Academy changes every year.

I don't think you can go too far back, but I do really feel like this is a little bit of a La La Land Moonlight. I don't think that's a direct comparison, but kind of if you split, you know, the splits between comedy and drama and just kind of a lot of the different ways that people are thinking about the movies, it seems like some of those narratives graft onto this year a little bit more than say last year where everything was kind of locked

at this point in the award season. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, a lot of the acting awards last night were very similar to the acting awards at the Globes. And last year, you're right, there was this major air of inevitability, particularly around director and the acting awards. You know, Gary Oldman, Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Allison Janney.

We saw them over and over and over again last year. And this year, it kind of is starting to feel like Mahershala Ali, Regina King, Christian Bale, you know, we're seeing. And then now, of course, the most ridiculous aspect of the Critics' Choice Awards last night was Glenn Close tying with Lady Gaga. Amanda, have you seen the movie The Wife? I have not yet seen The Wife. Nor have I. I did receive a number of text messages from my father last night asking me what The Wife was and then confessing that he thought it was a TV show. So that's where we are. It very well could be. Yeah. Given that I haven't seen it.

Maybe we'll see the wife at some point in the future. Nevertheless, Glenn Close and Lady Gaga tied last night, which why even have an award show? What are we doing? I mean, I agree. Why even have a fake award show? Also, do you think that that means that if there were 250 members, that it was 125-125? Or does that mean that they were scattered all throughout the category and then it just happened to be like 72-72? I think it's the latter. I have to assume there were some Olivia Colman votes in there. And now I'm wondering whether these two are going to cancel each other out and then Olivia Colman wins at the Oscars. that's my new galaxy brain theory that could happen we'll have to we'll have to keep a close watch and we'll have to

eventually watch the wife okay to know for sure what we think is going to happen there um is there anything else that happened to the critics choice awards that was notable to you or interesting even though i assume you didn't actually watch it in full no i didn't but roma winning both best picture and best director was notable yeah if only because as we said at the end of our last podcast, Roma has not been in the conversation. We didn't talk about it at all until the very end because it was not eligible for either of the Best Picture awards at the Golden Globes. And it has been a bit quiet. So Roma obviously won all of the Critics Association or Critics Board Awards at the end of last year. But this is its first kind of glitzy awards show big win.

Yes. And I think that that is of note. It is. It's going to be very interesting to see how that plays because obviously a critical body is significantly different from the Academy. Sometimes it influences it. Sometimes it informs it. Sometimes it does not.

I suspect we'll be talking about Roma a lot more in the future. Let's talk a little bit about the Guild nominations. I think all of which are out in the world now. Some of this includes sort of the smaller guilds like editors and cinematographers, but we're going to focus primarily on the big ones, which are the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the BAFTAs, which is sort of the British Oscars. You know, the PGAs, the Producers Guild, is always a very interesting group of nominees. It usually gets pretty close to what the Best Picture nominees are going to be. These awards are given out pretty soon, January 18th.

And let's just go quickly through the nominations, okay? So this is for the Daryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. Black Panther, Black Klansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Crazy Rich Asians, The Favorite, Green Book, A Quiet Place, Roma, A Star is Born, and Vice. You noted, I think, a couple of weeks ago that this particularly tends to highlight successful films, which I think explains why Crazy Rich Asians and A Quiet Place are there. Two movies that I don't think are ultimately going to make it to the big show. But I don't think are ultimately going to make it to the big show. But I don't know.

Do you think that a producer's guild, which does, you know, has some, has a reasonable amount of crossover with Best Picture winners? Do you think that will be, signal some sort of like momentous bellwether? I think it depends on what wins. If Bohemian Rhapsody wins at the producer's guild,

then we're in trouble. Crazy town. And I think that that's in the realm of possibility. Because again, Bohemian Rhapsody is just a tremendous success. It has made a ton of money. And I think as you've noted, people really, the producer of Bohemian Rhapsody is really loved within, is loved within the circle. So people do like to vote for their friends and people like to vote for people they want to see succeed. So in that sense, if Bohemian Rhapsody wins, we're in trouble. I think if Green Book wins, we're in trouble because that suggests that many of the Green Book controversies, which

we're going to discuss later on and is my summary. But that suggests that people are not paying a ton of attention to them. Yes. Though again, the voting probably happened before the latest round of Nightmare. So I don't think it's a total referendum, but you know, it's not great.

We don't want to see that outcome. Shortly after the Producers Guild Awards, we'll have the Directors Guild, which is February 2nd. Here are the nominees for that award. Bradley Cooper, Alfonso Cuaron,

Peter Farrelly, Spike Lee, and Adam McKay. No women, as usual. And, you know, the DGA is actually

the most likely to sort of indicate not only the best picture, not only the best director winner at the Oscars, but the best picture winner. I'm very, very, very interested to see what happens here. I think if Cuaron wins this award, they're going to the mountaintop. And if he does not,

then I won't really have much of a sense at all of what's going to happen. I don't think Peter Farrelly can win this award. If he does, strap it on in much the same way that we need to kind of strap it on if bohemian rhapsody wins the pgas then then it means we're in the upside down a little bit um you know these these bodies are interesting because they're just much smaller they're much smaller groups um i want to talk a little bit about the wgas i attended a wga screening and moderated a conversation with ryan coogler and joe robert cole this weekend for black panther and it was interesting it was a fairly small crowd but it was a very engaged crowd.

And that's what a lot of these guild screenings are like. That's what a lot of these smaller groups are like. It's very similar with the foreign film group that ends up nominating films. These are very tightly knit groups. So we think of 8,000 people in the Academy. We don't realize that maybe only 200 people will be ultimately voting on the nominations

in certain categories. And the Directors Guild is always a fascinating bellwether to me because it's still the most white and still the most male and still the oldest in many cases. And so whether Peter Farrelly has an opportunity to sneak in here, I don't know. As you said, we'll talk a little bit more about Green Book. The one thing I do want to note about these awards is that A Star is Born is by far the most recognized film by every craft guild. It has been identified by the editors, the cinematographers, the WGA, the DGA, the PGA, all the way down the line. People think it has great songs, it has great costumes, it has great production design.

It hasn't won anything really at all. line. People think it has great songs, it has great costumes, it has great production design. It hasn't won anything really at all, but it's in everyone's mind in some way. It is not being overlooked in any way aside from not winning actual awards. What do you think that means? It's a great question. I think some of it is just this idea that I think we all thought that A Star is Born was going to sweep, A Star is Born was going to win everything. That was how we started award season. And so you get into the mentality of, okay, well, A Star is Born will win Best Picture, so I can nominate someone else for the directing. Or I can nominate, you know, recognize some other performance because it'll be handled in this. And there's a lot of just responsibility shifting in terms of, oh, I'm sure it'll win everything. So I don't have to advocate for it. And I think that's certainly hampered it in every award show we've seen thus far because it hasn't won anything besides Shallow. And I think also there is something to it's a really well-rounded movie. It does everything extremely well. And that's part of its power where it's just kind of like, oh, this is just, you did it. You made an old Hollywood movie and it fits together.

And as a result, certain aspects, whether it's an amazing performance or the script or the music, you know, the music does stand out. But beyond that, people aren't really isolating it because you don't have to. You can accept it wholesale. And when you divide awards up, which we do at the guilds and also in the context of the categories, I think it's suffering because people aren't thinking it in specific terms. It's just a perfect package. So it's being penalized for that, which is unfortunate. Yeah, it reminds me of a movie like The Social Network. I feel like it was very similar in that way, which we talk about all the time as kind of one of the great overlooked best picture winners of the last 10 or 20 years,

which was sort of, it was a big hit in this mold, sort of in the $150 million, $200 million mold. Very likable movie stars, had a lot of pop moments, you know, a lot of memorable things. You know, what's cool, a billion dollars is sort of the shallow of this year. And it didn't win best picture. I think for the exact reason that you're talking about, which is everybody was sort of like, oh this year. And it didn't win Best Picture. I think for the exact reason that you're talking about,

which is everybody was sort of like, oh, it's really good. You know, it's really good and I like it. But it didn't change the mental makeup of anybody in the Academy so meaningfully. And now we look back on it and we're like, it's really strange that that movie didn't win Best Picture. I suspect we're driving towards that direction here a little bit

you know i have a lot of feelings about what a roman win would mean maybe we should save them for february 24th anything else you want to note about the guilds i mean these things are rolling out essentially over the course of the next month and they're kind of like boring award season stuff but also they mean a lot for what happens at the Oscars. Can we talk a little about the SAG Awards? Yes. And the SAG Awards drama that is happening right now? Yes. This is really fun stuff.

This is breaking news. This is great. SAG-AFTRA, which is the Actors Union, released a statement today that I won't read all of it, but it's quite strong language. And they are really pissed off that the Academy is trying to prevent actors from presenting at the SAG Awards so that they can present at the Academy is trying to prevent actors from presenting at the SAG Awards so that they can present at the Academy and people will be excited to see them because I haven't seen them all award season. And let me just read this one highlight, which is, we have received multiple

reports of these activities and have experienced firsthand the Academy's graceless pressure tactics and attempts to control the awards show talent pipeline. Now, let me say one thing. This is what unions do. Okay. So respect to that. But otherwise, fam, no, go home. This is, you are just whining about award season presenters. This is the most actory stuff in history, by the way. You know that it's a bunch of people being like, I don't get my spotlight. How dare they? No, losing. You're losing. This is bad. This is quite a take. It's interesting because we've talked a lot about the kind of plummeting ratings for the Oscars. We don't talk about the plummeting ratings for things

like the SAG Awards. Those are on TNT, I think. They are on TNT. Yeah, that's what I was confused with. Who cares? Yeah, I mean, I get it. You know, the SAG Awards want to be special. Everybody wants to be special. We're here on a podcast. We want to be special, Amanda. You know, look at us. We have good ideas. We're presenting the best possible awards of the year. Who cares about the Oscars? Our thing comes first. You know, they're not. They're wrong. That's not true. Historically, the Oscars matters more. Calling the Oscars graceless is hilarious. It's amazing. I mean, whoever wrote this, you have a future in writing incendiary speeches. Yes. Get at us. Get at the ringer. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think this really is going to matter in any meaningful way. No, I just thought it was funny. And I also, I would just like to say, they're not the best nominations of the bunch. I believe that they overlooked Regina King. So, I don't know. I don't think that you get to issue any sort of outrage statement if you didn't manage to nominate Regina King for Beale Street Katak, I think automatic disqualifier. It's fascinating. I mean, maybe that means that Regina King won't win and we won't have that chalk we talked about at the top of the show. Hard to say. The SAG Awards are a little bit strange and always have been a little bit strange. We will be watching and talking about them

afterwards, which I believe is not next weekend, but the following weekend. We'll have an episode shortly after that to talk about whether or not the SAG Awards brought any more grace than the Oscars. Let's just talk very quickly about the BAFTAs. You know, the BAFTAs, as you've noted in the past, are similar to the Golden Globes in that they often reflect sort of what an international body thinks of American movies and what they think is meaningful in the world. We'll just focus specifically on Best Film. The five nominees for best film from the BAFTAs are Black Klansman, The Favorite, Green Book, Roma, and The Star is Born. I think that these are the top five movies in the Oscar race right now. Vice and Bohemian Rhapsody and a couple of other movies are kind

of on the outside looking in. Black Panther. I don't see a ton of new information here. I also feel like The Favorite is going to win because it's the BAFTAs. But if something like Green Book wins, be afraid of a Green Book win at the Oscars. Because just because it's the BAFTAs doesn't mean there isn't any crossover in these bodies. There are plenty of people that vote for the BAFTAs that also vote for the Oscars. Somebody like Gary Oldman, for instance, who is an Oscar winner, also is likely to vote for the BAFTAs as an English citizen, or at least a former English citizen. So any gut reactions to these five? Green Book in this group is playing the role of movie that explains America to an international audience. Black Klansman is also

doing that, and I'm happy to see Black Klansman there, and I hope that it wins instead of Green Book. If Green Book wins in this context, it is not as much of a red flag to me as, say, Peter Farrelly winning the DGA, just because there is that distance, even though there is some voting overlap. You know, again, Regina King, not nominated, so that's a good litmus test for me. If you can't get that in your nomination set for supporting actress, then I am not really taking you seriously. And, you know, we'll see next week whether the Academy manages to get it together. I suspect they will. We will see. January 22nd is when the Oscars are, the Oscar nominations are going to be announced. We'll of course be

here immediately after that announcement for show. Before we move on to Stock Up, Stock Down, let's just talk very quickly about the hosting situation at the Oscars. So much has transpired since we last spoke, Amanda. Chris and I talked a little bit about this on The Big Picture last week, but very briefly, the whole Kevin Hart thing went belly up. There was a fascinating interview with him on Fresh Air last week. I would encourage people to check it out. Kind of a really interesting tête-à-tête between he and Terry Gross, who I thought asked very probing questions, found ways to draw him out. I thought actually a lot of what he had to say was interesting, and he wasn't shooting himself in the foot as many times as he had. He got actually closest,

I thought, to the complications that so many comedians in the 21st century are facing, which is this idea that for 20 years they've been raised to think that edginess and pushing the envelope is the core element of comedy. And that when you remove that, you remove something fundamental about comedy. Whether that's true or not, this isn't a comedy podcast. We don't have to adjudicate that. But I did think that was a kind of a fascinating endpoint. They got beyond the nonsense of, should I have apologized? Should I host the Oscars? You know, all this stuff that, you know, we talk about and is interesting, but it's ultimately frivolous and they were getting at some bigger ideas. So if you haven't listened to that, I would encourage you to do so. You know, Kevin Hart officially said he's not coming back.

So may this be the last time we say the words Kevin Hart on this show? Is that fair? I'm sure it won't be. Okay. You know, there's always the chance that he shows up at least for five minutes on the telecast, especially if they don't have a designated host. Everything that you were just talking about, about comedy and change and apologies, there are a lot of big issues and things to talk about in the Kevin Hart scandal. On the other side, it is just an illustration of people just not knowing how to do basic PR and not knowing how to handle a situation. And there are so many times when this could have been fixed and handled so much better on both the part of Kevin Hart and the Academy. And no one has figured that out.

So that doesn't make me hopeful for the next six weeks in terms of everyone suddenly understanding the nuances and or just having common sense about how to handle themselves in public. Hart struck me particularly as somebody who had been living in a bubble for 10 years, riding on a bullet train of success. I mean, he really, his rise from stand-up comedian to one of the most important actors in Hollywood was meteoric. And you can see that he's making a lot of money now. And he's got a lot of people working for him. And he's in total charge of his thing. And ultimately, that backfired on him because you can see he was calling a lot of the shots on this stuff. And it didn't really work out that well.

It's interesting where he got to. I suspect that he probably did ultimately learn something about himself and the way to talk in the world and how other people feel. And he also probably still feels frustrated by what he perceives as a mob mentality on social media and elsewhere. This is just an interesting test case. It was a relevant moment in the history of award shows. And hopefully we're moving a little bit past that. I will note that the number one movie

at the box office this weekend was The Upside, the Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston dramedy. And that signals to me quite clearly that even though this was a movie that was buried and made almost two years ago, there's still just a huge Kevin Hart fan base and people are not abandoning Kevin Hart in any way. I think that's true. And this is also something that I want to talk more about when we get to Green Book. And that whole mess is just to me, it also illustrates that the whole world is not on the Internet and the things that we are discussing and that we feel are so established within the world of this podcast and the internet and critics. And it's a very large group of people who feel on one page and that is not representative of all of America, all of the world, and even all

of the voters. Not all of this information even makes it to them. Not everyone has a Twitter account. So I do think some of it is just there are people who knew that Kevin Hart was going to host and then they knew that he wasn't going to host. And that's about it. I agree.

The one thing that everyone has in common is that they've all seen Avengers Infinity War, which is why I think the Oscars wants the Avengers to assemble to host the show, sort of.

You know, Chris and I talked about this a little bit last week. I suggested this in a slack channel yeah i was gonna say a few weeks ago you did predict it um maybe i should have shared it maybe i should have emailed john bailey president of the academy and say hey man you've got an opportunity for tremendous synergy you know this is an abc disney venture disney's most valuable property in the world is the avengers we've got a new avengers movie coming in april or may

maybe just put all those people on stage together and get people excited about watching your award show. Whether they can actually convince, I don't know, Chris Evans, who doesn't even seem to want to be a part of superhero movies at all anymore, to do something like this. TBD, maybe if they keep the requirements low. So say, yes, but Chris Evans does want to be a part of making the world a better place. True. So you tell Chris Evans that he can go on stage and talk about, you what Kevin Hart said that was wrong and give people hope and whatever and Chris Evans is going to be on stage in a tux which frankly okay by me yeah I mean there's some complexity there too nothing like a white knight to come in and clean up Kevin Hart's mess uh but and I mentioned this last

week too there's just also this whole other access of people in the Avengers like we think of Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth and these very famous people but there's also like paul bettany and don cheetle and the guy who uh voiced ebony maw you know like and bradley cooper as rocket raccoon i think that this is honestly a good solution um i don't think that you'd ultimately get a great opening number or a monologue of any kind but what you get is probably a fairly well-oiled show full of very recognizable faces that people are engaged with. That's probably all they need at this point, right? I think so. It makes sense to me. In my knee-jerk reaction of like, there's too much superhero stuff, I was not wild about it. And then they are essentially

the closest things we have to movie stars right now. And you put them in tuxes or in, you know, nice apparel of their choosing and have them be charming on stage, which when they're allowed to be charming in the Marvel movies is delightful. Yeah, they're great. You know, let Chris Hemsworth banter for a while. So it's fine. You know, what else are they going to do? Yeah. And in history, you know, we've had these times where three or four people have hosted the Oscars at any given time. And those people are often like Cary Grant. They're very famous actors who represent a kind of warm feeling that viewers have about movies, about going to movies. You know, Ellen DeGeneres was a great Oscars host, but she really doesn't have anything to do with movies unless you enjoyed like

the 1995 comedy, Mr. Wrong, which I don't think anyone did. So I think it's a smart solution that probably should have been the first solution. This whole telecast thing has just been a mess. Like everything that they've done for the last nine months has been what a fiasco. Yeah. In a way, I'm glad it was not the first solution, if only because if they just announced right out of the gate, okay, now it's the Marvel Oscars. That changes how I, as a person who actually is interested in the Oscars and wants to watch them receive it and receive both the telecast and actually the voting. So, and I respect the attempt to acknowledge the Oscars

as something separate from the superhero, you know, monoculture that we have now. I think they probably could have gotten here sooner as a last chance, as a, as a last ditch solution. It's pretty good. Yeah. I feel like hopefully this is where we go because honestly, I just don't want to talk about it anymore. Like it's just not that important and it's not that interesting even relative to the frivolousness of the Oscars in general and what wins. And we'll talk a little bit more about best picture shortly. Um, I just, I just, I need them to just settle on something and just be done with it

so we can be done with it. Yes. Let's go to our next segment. We're going to go to Stock Up, Stock Down. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to 1, even 20 to 1 return. And it's already slowly going bust. Man, we would be remiss

if we did not recap Green Bookpocalypse. You know, a week ago last Sunday, Green Book, of course, won Best Musical Comedy at the Golden Globes. I can't believe it's only been a week. Eight days. That's unbelievable in terms of the narrative sense then. Continue. So two particular things have happened in the unraveling of the Green Book campaign. And then we'll talk about maybe how it's not unraveled. The first is Nick Villalonga,

who is one of the co-writers of the film and also the son of Tony Lip Villalonga, Beagle Mortensen's character in the movie. It was revealed that in, I think in 2015, he tweeted something at Donald Trump about seeing Muslim Americans cheering the fall of the towers from North New Jersey. What? Nope. Like, come on. This is ridiculous. Like you, that is something that you couldn't script. Now there, I do want to, it's easy for us to just say morally, intellectually, that's a bankrupt, that's bullshit, right? We don't even have to discuss that. The thing that is interesting to me, and I've talked to a couple of people about

this last week who are members of the academy is, was this something that a journalist found or was this something that an award strategist showed a journalist? And does that matter? Because the idea of campaigning in 2019 is fairly unexamined. There was a piece in 2017 in the New Yorker that looked at sort of the modern campaign. That's the last time we saw anything in depth about how this stuff works. And I'm very interested to know whether journalists and Twitter have gotten savvier and have almost made it their raison d'etre to come in every day and say, I'm going to get somebody, or I'm going to find something about this person who did something that I don't like? Or are there little birds sharing information? And maybe it's true that both things are happening. Yeah, it seems a little bit of both. I think an

important thing to remember in this timeline is that we had more or less written off Green Book until the Golden Globes. And, you know, you did point out there's a chance that it could win. It was starting to make more money. It was persistently showing up in the nominations. But we were like, this has been handled. And then on Sunday night at the Golden Globes, it was clear that it had not been handled. And it is not surprising to me that the Internet's attention was refocused in the way that it often is. It is possible that someone sent, you know, maybe you should look into the Twitter account,

or maybe you should read this interview from The Observer in 1999, which we'll talk about. But I think it was kind of inevitable. If the information is out there and you are, the target is on your movie, then someone's going to find it. Yes, I think that's definitely true, more true than it's ever been. Concurrently, or I guess maybe a day or so later, Anna Selman at The Cut went back and was reading some interviews with Green Book director Peter Farrelly and discovered a profile, I believe in Newsweek from 1998.

And in that interview, he revealed that he likes to expose himself on set. That is sort of a prank. Well, it liked in that we should give him the benefit of the past tense. It was a running joke. Yes. That is detailed. It's both in a Newsweek and an Observer article from the time. Cameron Diaz is asked about it and quoted in one of the pieces being like, yes, this is a thing that happens.

That's when I think she compares it to creative genius, which, you know, this is not Cameron Diaz's responsibility. So we're going to move past that. It does in one of the articles say that they had the routine worked out and he estimates he's done it 500 times. That's a lot. That's a lot. I think two things can be true once here. One thing can be true, which is that 1998 was a different time. Now, whether or not what he was doing at that time was socially acceptable, we don't have to negotiate that. It wasn't socially acceptable. But whether people would accept it is different. And it's likely that a powerful person in Hollywood who was making hit

movies and was doing things that you wouldn't deem socially respectable and they would do them and then brag about them is not shocking to me. This wasn't like a gotcha per se, but it was more of an underlining of how different things are now to me. Peter Farrelly very quickly came out and apologized for his actions. I didn't realize at the time that what I had done was wrong. Very clearly identifying that things have changed. I feel like we're talking about things have changed a lot in the context of the Oscars and in the context of the film industry

in the last three or four years particularly. You know, I don't think this is acceptable by any means. It is a little different than saying Muslims were cheering for the fall of the towers on 9-11, which is just like deplorable. But we don't even have to compare the two. Yeah. The thing I would say, and I agree with everything that you just said, that the Farrelly stories are from 20 years ago. I agree with the idea that things have changed. It is indicative of a relationship to power and success and insulation that, you know, we can only apply it to the time at hand. But I do think that if you are powerful and successful and no one has ever

told you that you can't do what you're supposed to do, that you remain in the bubble. And I think that it's instructive, even though it is certainly from 20 years ago and you can't apply it to the present day. And he did apologize. I think they're both instructive as much as anything. I agree. And it's not as though this were, I don't know, Stanley Kubrick or Akira Kurosawa doing this. It's Peter Farrelly who orients a lot of his humor around exposing oneself. Now, that doesn't make it any more acceptable, but it doesn't make it that shocking, I would say. Nevertheless, I feel like Green Book is fine. I feel like it weathered this storm and people don't care. The people who are going to vote for it are not going to change their minds because of this information. Yes?

I don't know. So I think it doesn't affect the nominations at all. This came out, I believe, on Wednesday of Oscar nominations week. And like I said, I just don't think that enough of the Academy is online enough to pay attention to this and to react accordingly. Should we add a segment to the show called, Are You Online Enough? That might be useful in some of these discussions. You know, I do think that really does matter. And to your point, I think the people who are online enough to have caught wind of all this information already knew that they weren't voting for Green Book and or they knew that they were voting for Green Book. So I think it will be nominated for in every damn category. I do wonder how it affects the actual

Oscar voting, because as you point out, there are a lot of people who are just going to vote for this. And there are a lot of people who are just going to not vote for this. And that's unchanged. You know, I always wonder about the middle snippet of people who just kind of catch something in the New York Times or on the news. And they're like, huh, well, maybe I'll, you know, the impressionable voter. And I don't know, we have a couple weeks and maybe, I don't know whether the block of committed Green Book voters is large enough on its own to propel it to best picture victory. And I think that this might affect some of the casual voters or some of you know the unexamined voters if it gets to them in time we're gonna have to wait and see and we're gonna know at least about the nominations about a week from now um let's just go to the big

race well mama look at me now i'm a star we're about Best Picture. Let's talk about it in a little bit broader strokes. I wrote about it yesterday on the site. The piece is essentially about what does it mean to be the Best Picture, which is an amorphous, ill-defined idea. Our producer, Bobby, noted that it's very much like MVP in various sports leagues.

There's sort of like, does it matter if your team is good or not? Does statistical glory matter? The same is true of the Oscars. Is it about innovation? Is it about definition of form? Is it about performance? Is it about vision? It's everything.

It's always been everything. Just for you personally, Amanda, what does Best Picture mean to you and what do you think it should be? This is so exciting. So here are a couple of things. What you just described as Best Picture being an ill-defined thing that we don't know and we're always kind of negotiating it. To me, on paper, in a perfect world, that's really exciting. And that's what the Oscars should be about, is that everything that makes it to nominations is excellent in its own way. We joked a few months ago about the concept of doing Best Picture, like the dog show, which is, you know, the best heist movie, the best blockbuster, the best costume drama,

the best something. The actual best of each type of movie makes it to best picture. And then you get to talk about what does actually make a best picture. That's exciting. That is why you and I do the jobs that we do. That's why we invest in this stuff, because we think it is actually interesting and matters to talk about what is good and what is not good. That actually never happens. Never. Because that's not what we're arguing about. One time it happened with Moonlight and I was like, holy shit, the Oscars changed forever. And then The Shape of Water won.

Yeah, right. So, I mean, it happens occasionally. In the piece, I cited The Apartment as a movie that I thought was really progressive and sophisticated and funny and odd and romantic and dramatic and traumatic. And that one in 1961. So every once in a while, the Oscars comes along and they're like, we're going to blow your mind with what a sophisticated group of people we are and what we're going to say is the best thing that we made this year. And then Driving Miss Daisy wins 30 years later. The Oscars can just do that. For me, I wish it were more about what direction the form was going in. I wrote a little bit about the kind of the concept of what a comic book movie is now to Hollywood. And I can sense a mild rolling of your eyes, but I'm going to cape for this right now. No, no, no, no, no. Continue.

Now, not all comic book movies are good. In fact, most of them are not good. I would say most of them are mediocre and not terrible. There are some that are terrible. But this year, we had a few that were genuinely great. I would put Black Panther in the conversation with any of the movies that we spent all this time talking about, especially seeing it again on the big screen this weekend, especially talking to Ryan Coogler about it at that panel that I moderated, I was pretty overwhelmed by how deep I thought it was and how much more it gave me to think about than many other films. And it wasn't just, you know, I don't want to denigrate another movie like, I don't know, Shoplifters, which made me feel a lot and

think about the idea of family, but that was pretty much it. I had an emotional reaction to it, but Black Panther has got so many things on its mind and it really seemed to use a form that people are responding to in movies right now. The same way that people would use Westerns or movies about King Arthur or musicals to say something about humanity and bigger ideas about the world. I thought it was using all that format to say so much about where movies are going and where humanity is going. That seems grand, but I do believe it. And that is what I think the Oscars should reward. I don't think that it really ever has, but it's kind of what I want to see.

I want to see, and who better than Ryan Coogler to say, like, this is the future of movies. I just don't think that's a bad thing. Now, whether or not Black Panther is your cup of tea, I don't know. I always have people in my mentions

like every day saying like, Black Panther is super overrated, dude. Which, fine. Okay, it's overrated. Overrated relative to what? It made like a billion dollars. So I don't know what necessarily what overrated means.

You've raised your finger three times while I've been giving this soliloquy so I will now cede the floor to you Amanda I was just gonna say and I think this will blow your mind but I agree with you what I know so but let me amazing yes I agree with you and I think I talked a little bit about what I think best picture should be um but know, that's in my dream world. So for me, Best Picture, it's two parts. Number one is that it has to be like truly great. It has to be a truly great movie. And you know me and you know that I have quite exacting standards.

And I think, oh my God, you just started laughing. True indeed. So I would say there are probably only three like actually great excellent films in the in the favorite pool okay and they are roma a star is born and black panther because each of those movies is as we were talking earlier fully formed knows what it's doing, has ideas, has performances, has the visual component, has connected with audiences, which is something I think that we should come back to, has had some form of success, but is just also, you know, some of it is just, you know, when you see it, this is a really excellent movie that will stand the test of time. And that's the other thing.

When I think about Best Picture, I think about what's the movie that we'll keep talking about. And part of the reason I was so galled about Shape of Water last year, and you mentioned this in your piece, but it's, I only think about Shape of Water to think about how no one thinks or talks about Shape of Water. And that doesn't mean that it's not an excellent, well-made film. It is technically and impressive and it has imagination and all of those sorts of things. But there are a lot of technically proficient, imaginative movies that just don't connect with people or that we don't reference back or we don't reference back as frequently as, say, The Social Network or Working Girl,

which was nominated for Best Picture. Sure, yes. No, I mean, you're right. You're right. The likelihood of there being an oral history of The Shape of Water on its 20th anniversary, I think is pretty low. That's not, and a movie like Working Girl,

when it turned 30 last year, people came out and they were like, this movie still means something to me. It still means something to the world. It was ahead of its time, but right on time. And I think that that's what the Oscars should do. They should capture that feeling in the world. So for me, it's less about a referendum on the industry, even though I think that that is really useful. And I don't think that you can be a great movie without being able to see the future a bit and knowing what people are

going to want from movies and what works. But for, and we talk about this a lot, right? Bill Simmons has a big thing of, you can't really judge the best picture until five years later. And I think that's true and very insightful. I think we could judge it a bit sooner if we really tried and put on our hats.

That's true. And that, and last year, Get Out or Phantom Thread or even Lady Bird would have won above Shape of Water. But for me, it is, you know, people really do use the Oscars as a guide to of what to watch, what to take seriously. It helps it forms canons for better or worse. And I don't know, for me, it is something that connects with everyone and that people still want to talk about. It's instant history. It is what people look at the most to indicate what movies were at that time. So when you go back and you look and you

see that the greatest show on earth, Cecil B. DeMille's movie won in 1951, you think this movie matters. And I mentioned this on the Godfather rewatchables. I'm in the middle of a really stupid project to try to watch every movie that's ever been nominated for best picture. There are a lot of them that I haven't seen. There are actually about 11 or so films that have won best picture that I haven't seen, many of which came in the 20s and 30s. But I'm trying to watch everything. And the thing that you realize when you watch everything is that a lot of these movies are not good. Not only are they not good, they're not important. They don't tell us anything. And it's not just that, you know, they've aged poorly or the industry has changed so much. So

something doesn't feel as revolutionary now. Certainly I'm willing to acknowledge some of that stuff, but some of this stuff is just like literally Hollywood pap. Like it's just not, it's nonsense. And a movie like the greatest, uh, the greatest show on earth winning indicates what the voters were like in 1951. It doesn't indicate what movies were like. And I wish that that would change. That is kind of where my mind is at with this conundrum that I think the Academy probably isn't necessarily thinking about, but should consider, especially as they lean into whether or not they bring back the popular Oscar. Well, I was about to say, can we jump into the popular Oscar? Because I do feel a lot of people will say, well, just why don't you? That's what the popular Oscar should be for.

And my main opposition to the popular Oscarcar is that it separates it from best picture because to connect with people and have people want to watch your movie is a skill and it's part of making a good movie and i don't think it should i do not think best picture should just be a list of technical achievements that are taught in film school. I get really annoyed at all of the end of year critics who are just like, here are my list of the aesthetically perfect camera angle movies that are and that take a lot of talent and skill and vision. And I don't mean to denigrate them, but there is more to making a movie

than just knowing where to put the camera. And I don't want to separate the popular aspect of a film from the movie. It should, a really great movie should be able to do both. You know, it's funny you say that because we opened the show essentially talking about the Critics' Choice Awards, and I don't think I'd realized one, quite how many awards there were, but also how much closer I think it gets to the idea of a populist Oscar ceremony. Because not only do they have the kind of traditional, you know, acting categories, the traditional editing category, the traditional

cinematography, like they hit all those technical achievements, but there's also a category for like science fiction. There's a category for horror. There's a category for young rising star, all things that over time, people like you and I have said, like the Oscars would be wise to kind of integrate some of these things into its show to get more people interested in its show. I don't think that that hurts the historical nature of the Oscars. In fact, the Oscars is kind of always adding and removing categories. This stuff is really fungible. And I don't really see why the Critics' Choice Awards should do a better job of representing a year in movies than the Oscars should.

But in some ways, I thought that it did. I don't think A Quiet Place is the best movie I saw last year, but I think it'd be interesting to identify what is useful and interesting about A Quiet Place at the Oscars. Nevertheless, I don't think it will be doing that. Let's just look ahead very quickly. So voting closed. It closed today. For the nominations. For the nominations, yes. Do you think there was any last-minute bids for Crazy Rich Asians or Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse? Prayer hands emoji? I mean, isn't Spider-Man, isn't your movie going to win? Your movie?

Yeah. The movie of millions and millions of people. That's great. Beloved by a vast audience. How is its box office, actually? Because it was disappointing at first, right? But it's building. It's well on its way to $200 million in America. That's great. Which for an animated film

is plenty. I'm happy for all of you. Thank you. You know, Phantom Thread was the surprise number of nominations last year. It was not recognized by almost any of these groups as significantly as we thought it was going to be. And then it came through, I think it had six nominations at the Oscars. It only won one, but

you know, there was a recognition of a master working at his best. And whether you think that's Paul Thomas Anderson or Daniel Day-Lewis or Leslie Manville, you can say that there will likely be one surprise. There will be one thing that happens where you're like, I didn't see that coming, but it's good. Can you suggest one surprise for me? I can. And this is really a podcast where I say things that you want to hear. And I don't know how that happened. I can see Ethan Hawke. Yes, that's what I was going to say. I can. Yes, let's go. Bring him to the promised land. He has been shunted aside for months. This is a great foolishness that has been delivered to those of

us who are paying attention to award season. We didn't plan this. He's just yelling. Ethan Hawke. Okay. Bring him to the Oscars where he belongs. No, I mean, he has no chance to win because that category is stacked and Christian Bale has been running roughshod over people. And I think with Rami Malek in there and Bradley Cooper in there, it's a tough category. But who cares if Vigo gets nominated? Just get Vigo out of there. We don't need Viggo. You know what has been interesting actually? You raised something in my mind. I was talking to a couple people about this last week too.

A movie that isn't going away is Black Klansman. And John David Washington and Adam Driver are not going away. They're at like every award show. They're getting recognized by every group. And I don't think that Black Klansman is going to win very many Oscars. But I do think that it's going to have maybe four, maybe even five nominations, which is pretty impressive for that movie. If John David Washington is the reason Ethan Hawke doesn't get nominated, though, I riot

in the streets. Can I just say, I don't know if you were watching this closely at the Golden Globes, but no one was sadder about not winning than John David Washington. And he was sitting between his parents, one of whom should be noted is Denzel Washington. And that was a tough, that was a tough moment for me. And I thought John David Washington was great in Black Klansman. I thought his, how I found out I got nominated for a Golden Globe story was far and away the winner of the Golden Globe.

How did he find out? I don't even know. So apparently he was at home and his dad came in and was like, oh, are you sleeping? It's on. Do you want to come out? And he has this awkward moment with his dad being Denzel Washington about whether they should watch the Golden Globe nominations being announced. And then they did. And then he's nominated and his dad goes nuts and his dad being Denzel Washington. And then he FaceTimed with his mom who couldn't be there because she was auditioning for a Hamlet in Chicago. So great, great storytelling.

I would love to have that again at the Oscars. I think it'll be Ethan Hawke just because there are so many actors voting and actors love Ethan Hawke. I love Ethan Hawke. I would be delighted. I really hope it's Ethan Hawke. Yeah.

I also really hope Paul Schrader gets nominated for Best Screenplay. He won last night at the Critics' Choice Awards, which I thought was interesting. Obviously, First Reforms has been a real critical darling. It has not necessarily been a Hollywood darling. Any other surprises? I don't think so. I mean, it would be interesting to see a movie that we haven't been talking.

Maybe, like, if Leave No Trace picks up a couple of nominations, I think that that would be a good thing. That's the kind of thing that the Oscars kind of coming out of left field does where Thomas and Mackenzie gets nominated for Best Actress or something or Debra Granik gets a Best Director nomination. That would be wonderful. I don't think it's likely. What else? I don't know. It seems, as you wrote in your piece yesterday, it seems too unsettled for a ton of surprises just because there are so many movies in play. The actor races, I mean, it seems like Christian Bale is a lock,

Mahershala probably a lock, Regina King, but even Regina King has been overlooked a couple places. So we don't totally know. A lot of things could happen. I don't know whether any of them would be wildly surprising. I agree. It's going to be very interesting. Please join us next week early in the morning. Oh, yes. Amanda will be very chipper, very excited to talk about these Oscar nominations. And until then, thanks very much, Amanda. Thanks, Sean. Thank you.