The Press Box - We Actually Fixed the Oscars | The Big Picture (Ep. 510)

Episode Date: August 9, 2018

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, Bill Simmons, and Amanda Dobbins discuss the recent announcement about upcoming changes to the Academy Awards and debate how to usher the ceremony into the new era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennacy, editor-in-chief of the Ringer, and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most famous and successful podcasters and editors in the known United States. I'm very excited to be joined by Ringer Culture Editor Amanda Dobbins. Hi, Sean. And Bill Simmons, the podfather. I'm actually a director. You're a filmmaker. I directed the Wickhiker in 1987 for my school. A 40-minute parody of The Hitchhiker on HBO.

When will that be premiering? You'd be horrified. Okay. There's an entire cemetery scene that I'm that proud of. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, so maybe we'll be celebrating that movie next year at the Oscars, which is what we're here to talk about. Yeah.

There was an announcement this morning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Twitter account, and I'm going to read to you what it said. Great. Changes coming to the hashtag Oscars, here's what you need to know. And then three bullet points. One, a new category is being designed around achievement in popular film. Two, we've set an earlier air date for 2020. Mark your calendars for February 9th. And three, we're planning a more globally accessible three-hour telecast.

Now, we can examine all three of those aspects. The first and foremost, a new category is being designed around achievement and popular film. My first question about that is, what the fuck? Amen. What does that mean? And we can talk about specifically how they arrived at this. But, like, Amanda, what was your immediate reaction to seeing that? anger? No, I was what the fuck. I, you know, I, this is really frustrating because it's a bad solution to a real problem that they need to solve, which is that popular movies are good. Many of them certainly should be at the Oscars, and they never are because the Academy has its own weird standards and in voting. And so they've found the worst possible solution.

whereby they're going to insult popular movies, non-popular movies, anybody who cares about movies, and anybody who has ever actually watched this interminable awards show because they care about watching famous people. Yeah, I feel like it kind of misunderstands what the Oscars is supposed to be and what movies are supposed to be. Bill, I feel like every time we do the rewatchables, you're always like, let's take a look at the Oscars from that year and see what was worthy. And we get pissed because we're like, oh, they didn't reward the right movie.

But inevitably, in those times, especially for movies in the 80s and even the 90s, they're really popular movies. So the Oscars are not a place where only small stuff like Moonlight gets rewarded. Theoretically, like Titanic won best picture. Gladiator won best picture. Gone with the Wind, one best picture. So like, where is this coming from? Yeah, it insinuates that popular movies can't be good. I don't understand so many things about it.

I'm not 100% against it yet. Okay. Because they said designed. me it's a work in progress. It was almost a floater reminds me of in sports. Amanda, there's sports where people play games against each other. So sometimes people want to make a trade and they don't make the trade yet, but they float out the trade. And it's kind of a little thought bubble to see what people think. And if people go nuts, all of a sudden, their trade disappears. I wonder if that's

what this was, where you just floated out. What's the reaction? Everybody, Amanda's reaction, Sean's reaction, my reaction was all the same. What the fuck? What is this? It's been fairly universal. The reaction's been pretty negative to this because it seems amorphous. There's no definition around what they're trying to say. With that said, some of the most successful things that have worked with awards and things like that are things where it's intentionally ambiguous. We have this in the NBA, which is the sport where they play professional basketball.

There are five guys on the court, right? There's five guys. Yes, LeBron James. Got it. No, but they have the most valuable player. Yes. Nobody's ever really 100% understood what it meant. Does it mean the most outstanding season?

Is it the best player on the winning team? And we all kind of interpret it. We argue about it and we go crazy about it every April. My guess is they want that to happen with this category. Counterpoint. The counterpoint is it's probably going to be a disaster. My other counterpoint was we already have that category and it's called Best Picture. And we argue about how do we define what the best movie of the year was?

Was it, you know, artistic craft? versus was it something we actually had fun watching versus, I don't know, did actors like it? So, you know, I think in many ways. What do you do with Black Panther? Start there. Popular, great movie. Conceivably, could it win both? Could it win both awards?

What happens there? We're almost getting too far ahead of ourselves. Black Panther is definitely the centerpiece of the conversation. And I think it's a lot of the anxiety around some of this is built into the year of Black Panther. to borrow a bit from our show The Press Box, I think the most overworked Twitter joke on this was the prize, the award for most popular film of the year

is a Ferrari in a house in Malibu. You know what I mean? It's money. Like that's what you get when you make the most popular movie. That was the overworked Twitter joke, really? I like that. Everybody was like, guess what? You get to be rich when you make Avatar. However, Black Panther is really interesting, right? It's the most complicated and successful Hollywood story in a long time. It's made, over $700 million, which makes it one of the five most successful movies in American history, just from a purely financial dollars perspective. And it's really good.

And it's really good. And everybody acknowledges it's really good, made by a master filmmaker with great performances, and people love it. And it's also, it crosses those bars that we're talking about, about kind of what's an academy movie. There's some dumb Marvel fighting stuff in it, but it's really, really well made. And I think as far as I can tell, and before this announcement was made, I was kind of working on a too early prognostication Oscar column.

And the only lock for me is that this was going to get nominated for Best Picture. So if there's a most popular film category, will the Black Panther then kind of essentially get ghettoized into this new category at the expense of Best Picture? How do you decide what popular is? Is it a benchmark of money made? I think that's probably what they're going for. Is it like it has to make $100 million? Well, they wouldn't have to give out an award if it was that, right?

Because inevitably, or you're saying just in terms of nomination. That's the criteria for popular. Who knows? I mean, the way that we do things now. Is it rotten tomato scores? Like, this is so fraught with disaster. This is why I think it never happens. I think they back away from this.

I agree with you. It had the feel of maybe we'll see how this goes. The keyword was designed. Right. That means work in progress. That means, oh, we couldn't design it. A couple of important things to note about this. One, we just learned, according to a report and variety,

that the reason that this is happening is because ABC, which is the broadcast partner of the Oscars, approached the Academy after the record low ratings of this year's telecast and said, you guys are becoming increasingly irrelevant and you have to do something to fix this. That's a little pot and kettle, but we'll get back to that. Certainly. It's very complicated for a broadcast network to be accusing anybody else of becoming irrelevant in 2018.

But is it good for a broadcast partner to essentially be changing the traditions of a complex and historic organization like the Academy on the flip side. In 2009, the Oscars already tried to do this. They tried to... They added the movies.

They added the movies to the Best Picture nomination. They increased it by as much as 10, and they tried to make it more big 10 because they missed out on nominating the Dark Night. And that was seen as some sort of sin. And in that time... And it was. It was.

And in that time, there's an inflection point, right? In 2009, that's the year of Avatar. Avatar gets nominated. It's the biggest movie at that time. It doesn't win. It loses to the Hurt Locker, which is this beautiful little... little ex-husband, ex-wife situation between James Cameron and Catherine Bigelow, but also

it's the small movie triumphing over the big movie. And that's kind of an inflection point for the way the movies and the Oscars are going for the next 10 years. So I feel like they kind of already blew their chance to fix this. Or they fixed it, but incorrectly. Yeah. I just also think it's such a misguided attempt to try to fix ratings and misunderstands how everyone watches TV and movies and event awards shows at this point. They did already try this. It didn't work. And then 10 years later, how people engage with television is even more confusing and it's

much harder to build a consensus. And I don't think it follows that just because a lot of people want to see Aquaman or whatever, that they'll just turn on the TV. Aquaman. Is that a movie? Yes. Yes. December 2018.

Yeah. Sean's been tormenting you with it. Is Vincent Jason? No. No, it's Jason Momoa. Cal Drogo. Oh, I love Jason. Oh, boy. Okay. See?

Oh, man. Joe Bravin himself, Jason Momoa. See you at the Oscars, Bill. Right, exactly. There we go. Oh, wow. But I don't think, even though Bill is so excited about Aquaman and will be there in December, that necessarily, that enthusiasm transfers to, yes, I will turn on an awards show for three hours on a Sunday night. And so I think they've just, they've alienated the people who actually were watching the shows,

which is what you need more and more. Are you in this era of too many choices? You need people who are really committed to your thing. You need the super fans. And I don't really know that they'll get that many non-Oscar viewers by including superhero movies. But they'll get more conversation. They'll get more arguing would be the goal. Yeah, but like, do you want Rotten Tomatoes comments on, or I'm sorry, IMD comments on network television?

No, I'm not saying you. The you in that case was ABC. I went through this with my book, and I do think, like, you have to look at what the Oscars means ultimately. You're handing out awards for the best movies of the year, but you're still trying to capture the totality of the year and what happened during it. When I'd wrote my MBA book, it was really hard to, was, you could figure out some things of who mattered in what season, right? You have the whole season, you have the playoffs, who played in the finals, who won the title, who won the MVP, the MVP voting. They have the all-MBA teams where it's basically the top 10 or 15 guys in the league. So you have somewhat of a snapshot.

And I could get a really good sense of, all right, that was the year this happened and that happened. We don't really have that with the Oscars. You go back in time. And if you're just looking at the Wikipedia page of the 1975 Oscars and Jaws is basically dismissed in it, that's not a good representation of the year. So from that sense, like, it does bother me that we have best action short or best live action short and best foreign film. but we're not a best comedy. And comedies are just thrown away. If they had said we're actually this year

we're adding best comedy, best action movie and best thriller, we're adding those three things to the Oscars, I think that would have been a better idea. I'm not saying they should have done that either. You know what's so complicated about that, though? The Oscars was starting to democratize itself already. In the last five years,

they've added a lot more members, they've gotten a lot more diverse, they've added a lot more women. And so the things you start to see are things like get out, Get Out being nominated for Best Picture is inconceivable 10 years ago. But Get Out should have won, which was even more inconceivable. I agree.

And maybe five years from now will have. But what this raises actually is, will a movie like Get Out then be discarded or not nominated in this category because we have this other like filler category for movies that have made $200 million or more? I don't know. It's actually quite a dangerous precedent if they set it up like this because then you might actually only get 12 years a slave or only get Spotlight as your best picture nominees.

And I don't think that's a good thing, especially. if you're interested in that snapshot that you're talking about. The Dark Night thing, it's like what is not being represented right now? Comedy is, I think, really successful movies get overlooked to some degree. Like we saw it with Get Out last year. It's being successful is almost the detriment. You mean like boxoff is successful. Yeah, it's almost like if you were too successful, it's a detriment.

It's better if you snuck into things like three billboards. There was no chance that Dunkirk was going to win Best Picture last year, which is weird. Because it kind of checks every box that a Best Picture movie should have. but for some reason we're in a different time in the Oscars. So 1990, Pretty Woman, should that have been represented in our totality overall look of the Oscars? Like, if the Oscars is a snapshot of the year in movies,

and Pretty Woman is not in the Oscars, does that matter? I don't know the answer to that. I would vote yes, but just because I like Pretty Woman. I would vote yes, too, but I don't know if I'm weird out. You know, my definition of best, everyone's definition of best film doesn't always align with the Oscars and the Academy at this point. So I would agree yes. And you also kind of argue for this.

I'm in the yes camp, but I don't know if I'm off and I just, I care about this stuff more than most people. I wish all this stuff was in there. I wish they handed out. I always thought the biggest missed opportunity was the Golden Globes comedy or musical category. I really like that category. But then they'll put in like the fucking Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Taurus movie.

Was that the Taurus? Yes. As a comedy? Right. So you don't care about this category. That category should be cool. Comedy or musical, you could argue, could be an Oscar category. If they took it seriously, I kind of wish it existed.

I just think that the identity of the show has taken on this weird, fusty identity. Like, this is actually an award show that gave 3-6 Mafia an award on stage. You know what I mean? This is like this is an award show that nominated Borat for Best Adapted Screenplay. Like, we're not that far away. from it being a little bit more populous than we think it actually is, which is why this seems like such a self-owned.

They just shot themselves in the foot by being like, well, we realize we're irrelevant. You can't do that. Like, that's the surest way to make sure that people think you're irrelevant is by doing something desperate. Are we sure the askers are irrelevant, though? They're definitely not irrelevant,

but I think the thing you've got to look at is... It's almost like how people say the NFL, the NBA's beaten the NFL, and the NFL the Hall of Fame game gets seven million people. Absolutely. It is trending down, though, just like the NFL. Training down a little bit. It's a modest trend down,

but in 2014, 43 million people watched the show. Last year, 32 million people watched the show. That's pretty bad, considering that the Oscars is the Super Bowl of pop culture. I mean, it is the biggest live event that we have. Right. But, I mean, all TV, live TV is trending down, except for the Super Bowl, which is essentially a national holiday at this point. It's like Thanksgiving and February.

Actually, should be a national holiday. It pretty much is. You just don't have to spend it with your parents. It's great. It's the best one. No wonder 100 million people watch it. They should play a football game at halftime of the Oscars. That's the solution.

Nice. They should just have food. Like a whole buffet spread. A lot of people do this for the Oscars. Just do more of it. Yes, that's true. Anyway. Yeah, I kind of think, I don't know that you can get the ratings back to what they were for the Oscars anymore.

And I don't really think that that is entirely indicative of a problem with the Oscars or with movies, which have their own problems. I just think it's kind of like TV has changed. And we have to acknowledge that. And I think that trying to rearrange the ceremony in order to get back to heights or standards from 10 years ago is nonsense and will backfire. I disagree with my esteemed colleague. Okay, let's go. You think it should try to get back to that place? I would have tried to fix the actual telecast first before I word about the categories.

Let's talk about that. The thing that is crazy since I was a little kid with the Oscars was taking all the best stuff and cramming it into the last. 17 minutes of the show. I don't disagree with this. They give away one award early. It's usually supporting actor or supporting actress. And then you wait. And then you wait.

And then all of a sudden they're rushing through it. You're not even going to commercials between best actor and best actress. It's crazy. There should be 10 minutes of commercials between those two categories. And meanwhile, there's 10 minutes of commercials between best cinematography and best music

and a freaking foreign short film. The Oscars was so... That's not a real category. No, I made that. The Oscars were so dushy and entitled about this is our celebration. You're lucky to be here. Everybody's treated equally. We think all of these people, whether you're creating sound or editing or camera, you're all the same.

Nothing's better. And that's bullshit. All of us watch these categories. We care about those last five. And they push them to the very end. I would have fixed that. So I think that's, I agree with the latter part, but not the former part. Which is the former part?

The cool part about the Oscars, not the cool part. One of the cool parts about the Oscars is that this is like an award show that awards people who have are like crafts people. Like the Grammys is actually just like you just made a record and we're rewarding you. Giving an award to a costume designer on TV is fascinating to me. It's great that they do that. It's a visual thing. And the Emmys, they do it. They call it a technical Emmys and they show it two weeks before the Emmys.

Sure. But to me, the problem with that is not giving away awards to people for five minutes in the middle of the show. It's doing a nine minute montage about the magic of movies. It's about doing an interpretive dance on the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music. Like, that shit, we don't need. They think that that's the stuff that keeps people involved in the show. And it does not. So that, we should just cut that out.

It does. And then it leads to them shoving all the stuff to the end. See, all this stuff, we could fix the Oscars here in seven minutes. We could fix the actual telecast. We could take an hour out of it right away. I agree with that. We could stagger the awards. We can put the best actress in the middle of the award show instead of the tail end or the best actor or best director. They're just keep me interested every 20 minutes with a major award.

And get rid of all the movies. Are great. God, remember Clark Gable? Oh, oh, remember here's a director montage. Oh, it's like, shut up. Just show the freaking awards. I agree with this. I mean, just get rid of the montage.

It's pacing. Pacing, edit. Like, make a good product. My question is it for. So much of this. Name all the people in your life. Who is it for? No.

What age group? Your mom? No. Your older uncle? No. My 13-year-old daughter? My 7-year-old mother? I will say, I went through a real phase with the Oscars as all nerds do from, I guess, you know, 8 to 13.

That was like the major event and you take all the specials. You get the E.W. You know, that's how. I had the same experience. Right. It's like why we're here. It's very sad. But, and I liked the montages then.

So I think to answer your question, it's for a 10-year-old. who's just like the magic of movies. It's not a lot of 10-year-olds understand it. You know those 10-year-olds now are watching YouTube? It's maybe not for 10-year-olds, though 10-year-olds take something away from it when they see an image on screen that they react to

and they're like, what is that? I have to find out about that. But as our producer, Zach Max points out, what those are really for is Hollywood itself. Like, they're self-serving self-ratification. It's pure masturbation. And that's okay. Like, the whole award show is,

masturbation, but we like to watch that. There are parts of it, though, that are just so gratuitous to the point of disgust. This year in particular, I think, because the telecast was four and a half hours and so many of the awards seemed like a fait accompli, it was a little torturous. It just went too far. It was four and a half hours?

Yeah. That's how long that was? I think I blacked out at one point. I remember how long it was. It was four and a half hours because Amanda and I did an after show immediately afterwards, and it was a war. We were upset. So I'm a big proponent of the 150

minute rule. I wrote about this in my book, that nothing should be longer than 150 minutes unless there's a fantastic reason. I support this, though I would go to 90 minutes, but continue. Well, for sports, football would be really hard to do it in under 150. Baseball is two and a half hours. That's perfect. Basketball is two and a half hours. Great. The Oscars, I just need to, I need the reason it needs to be more than 150. I can see three. We've seen like the Emmys do it in three, which is a way more complicated show with more awards and more directions to go. And they just pull it off. And I like the way the Emmys moves. I'm not always happy with the Emmys, but it moves really nice. So I just look at the Oscars.

I'm like, that thing should start at eight and it should end at 11. And the best category should not be stacked at the end. Let's start there and then try to fix it from there. I'm the proponent of more, not just more hours in the telecast, because I don't think a six-hour telecast is a good viewing experience. I should hope that. We did a post on the site about other categories. they should add. The idea of just a popular movie category is dumb, obviously. But why not make this like a five-night event? Each night is one hour and there's one major category at the end of the hour-long episode, but you get a lot more fun stuff. You get to do breakthrough performance. You get to do best scene. How would you have people go every time? Yeah. What else are these people doing?

I don't know. It sounds like the Democratic National Convention where, you know, they do it over five nights and then everybody just watches five minutes of the speech the next day on YouTube. So the format that we use to decide the most important thing in the universe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually think the Emmys thing of having the thing the week before, the Creative Arts Emmys is a really good idea. And I've been to it. We've got nominated.

We won one one year. Mostly categorized they didn't know. But it also allows the Emmys to have the show that it does, which I think, would we agree the Emmys is the most successful just from an entertainment standpoint of the three? or no? Just from Pace? Well, I would say Golden Globes, which is the fours. But the Golden Globes says nobody cares about actually who wins.

That's true, which actually, you know, liberates it. They bastardize the actual words. I wouldn't say that people care about the Emmys that much either, though, to be honest. The Oscars is the only one that, I think, has a place in people's imaginations. The Grammys is a joke. The Grammys is a popularity contest. And the thing I've heard the most about this this morning is that this is sort of the gramification of the Oscars.

True. I agree with that. I think the Oscars is the only one where we can remember. off the top of our head who won each year. If I said to you, who won the 1998 best drama for Emmy? I have no idea. You'd have no idea. And most people wouldn't.

And if you knew that, you'd be pretty weird. I'm going to guess somebody can fact check me on the internet that you could guess. You could guess. ER, maybe NYPD Blue. And you could guess West Wing the year, but you wouldn't be sure. But if I said who won the movie in 1999, you would know. And not just because you're movie freaks drawn fantasy.

Yeah. So I would start there. And if they added, like if you had the second night the week before, but then that's where you could throw in best comedy, best thriller, maybe do it that way, maybe make the Oscars. This is another thing for sports. I wish we had smaller Oscars for the less relevant movies. You mean like physically smaller?

It's physically smaller. It's just tinier. It's not as big. And I make the other asker bigger. Yeah. You make it, yeah. So it's like, oh, I won the Oscar, but it's. It's tiny.

Yeah, it's a smaller asker. I'm for that. I've always thought we should do the same thing that you've pitched for the Hall of Fame. to the Baseball Hall of Fame here, which is like we should create a shrine. A pyramid. Yeah, the pyramid. But like there should be levels. There should have floors that you go to.

And if you're Merrill and you've won three times, you know, you're at the top level and you get to elevate a level if you win a second Oscar. You know, there should be some sort of like notification about that when someone wins. I get to say like, with this win, Merrill Streep ascends to the eighth level. She sits there alone in a category one history. It does. Yeah. It does.

May she go to Zinu, you know? Well, didn't, if we're trying to fix the Oscars, the go-to idea that everyone supports, and none of us know why it hasn't been yet, is the voting. Why it's not public? That's true. Why can we find out who won by how many? I would kill for that.

I'm so interested in that. So they have it for the NBA MVP, and there's some years where, you know, somebody won by 40 votes or 50 votes or whatever. And I don't know. I would love to know how close. I would love to know how many votes three bill, words be get out by. Yes. It's also like, really amazing to me. Like, show it to me. Show it to me.

Show me how you, like, why would you want to vote in private? But if they're just trying to generate discourse, that's a great way to start, the votes. I agree. And I thought we were headed that way because the Academy was kind of paying attention to the fact that we hated their taste and it wasn't representative. And the movies that everyone was excited about weren't getting nominated. So, you know, they got a bunch of new members. Obviously, they tried to deal with Oscars So White. It seemed like they were starting to pay attention to this stuff. and to how people actually want to engage with the Oscars. And today seems like a turnaround.

I think the elephant in the room is not so much Black Panther as it is superhero movies, which basically screwed up Hollywood. It's screwed up what Hollywood thinks people want. It screwed up the sense of success at the box office. And superhero movies are still, like comedies have been nominated before for various categories. superhero movies, with the exception of the stray Logan for adapted screenplay, don't get nominated. And this feels like an, like I wonder if this will just be like four superhero movies and Jurassic World. Like I don't, what's going to go into this category?

So then call that popcorn movies instead of popular movies. It's popular opens the door for get out movies like that. Popcorn movies is just like 17 bucks. I'm taking my kids. Yeah, but some movies are both. Like, Jaws is both. Yeah, but Jaws is a unicorn. Black Panther are also a unicorn, I would argue.

What about Gladiator? What about Lord of the Rings? What about Avatar? Yeah. Titanic? These movies happen all the time. There are cultural phenomenons that millions of people respond to. Miami Vice, certainly not.

And to the person who tweeted at me that they want to know if Miami Vice would be eligible for this award. The answer is no, because no one likes Miami Vice except for two people to work at the Ringer, who shall go unnamed. And Confair own his family. Okay. There you go. people have been asking me what we think would have won in the past this award. Yeah, I'm ready to go through every year. You want to talk about some of the years?

Well, I think a great example is Jaws. If we started in 1975, Jaws gets the first one. And then if you go 77 Star Wars, I mean, it's pretty easy. The thing is, Star Wars didn't win for Best Picture, though. It did not. Yeah, so it wins for that. All the Spielberg slash Lucas. collaborations.

You can figure out like half of them. What about some recent history? Let's go. Give me some movies. Last year. Yep. Here are some nominees.

Okay. Logan. No. Star Wars The Last Jedi, which I think it's actually quite strange that it was not nominated for Best Picture. Mm.

They see it. Get out. It? Spider-Man Homecoming? Thor Ragnarok. And Amanda's favorite movie. Yeah, I was waiting for this. Thank you.

Wonder Woman. Oh, God. Here we go. That movie's not aging well on cable. It's fantastic on cable. I laugh every time. It's delightful. It's now comedy.

It's a romantic comedy. Actually, it's their best comedy category. Maybe Wonder Woman wins for the accents. It was a delightful romantic comedy. It opened up the genre to new audiences, gave us great performances. Everyone's allowed one bad take a year. Mine apparently was that Home Alone is not,

I thought it was not a Christmas show. This year. That was my bad take for 2018. That was a scorching, flaming disaster of a take. It was a disaster. And the internet responded in kind. It's a kid's movie. Okay.

But Amanda thinking Wonder Woman was the third best movie of 2017 was her one bad take. If I recall you put defiant ones at number three on your list, so we're just going to agree to disagree. That was great. We're going to have some, you know, fun at number three. Fantastic. Let's talk about 2016. My vote would have been for The Last Jedi, which I think is very good. Really?

Also, Get Out, because I think Get Out should have won best picture. So it's, it raises the concept. complication of this issue. You know? So we're talking about making something for mass appeal that's really well done is basically what this award is. Yes, but that should also be best picture. That's the hardest thing of all to make something that is a lot of people like that's

also really well done. So I said to Sean, so all right, for Andre the Giant, we could have nominated it for sports Emmys. Okay. Or we could have nominated for the primetime Emmys. Those are our two choices. You can't nominate for both. So we decided to do primetime Emmys.

Great. There's five that were nominated. We had the most watched documentary there and one of the best reviewed. And we were like, let's roll the dice and we'll go with prime time. We were one of the front runners. We ended up not getting nominated. Now we can't be nominated for sports Emmys. I'm still fine with the decision.

So my question for the Oscars, if they did this and it's like you had to nominate yourself for either the popular category or best film, but you can't be in either. Tell us ahead of time, which one do you want to be nominated for? And Get Out's going to say, we want to be dominated for Best Picture. Screw the other one.

And Logan's going to be like, put us in the popcorn category. So this would be a great discourse driver because the question about Black Panther here is, is Black Panther's best chance at an Oscar, an Oscar win? Is it going into the Best Picture category or going into this new, fangled, popular film category?

And that would create a lot of conversation. that would create a lot of discourse. If you care about the work you did, you want to get the best award possible. Absolutely. And Black Panther would be like, we think we should win Best Picture. Let's go in that category.

And that would open up the popcorn category, which should be called the popcorn category. I don't like popular. And I think then you're just going to have the chasm that you have in Best Picture now, which is all of the, everyone will submit in Best Picture who actually has a chance at Best Picture.

But if the taste keep going as they do, then it'll be a bunch of indie flicks in Best Picture and it'll be all of the bad superhero movies and popcorn because they just were only going for second place. I'm back in on this now. So it also opens the door for Black Panther. Yeah. Submits for popular award instead of Best Movie.

And everybody's like, you wusses. You just go for the easy Oscar. You losers and people get mad. I'm all for a discount or saying to R being able to get traffic out of stuff. That drives all my interest right now. What is a good argument that we could write about? That would be great. Someone on Twitter named Daniel Joynow asked,

made a good point here, which is that this is actually, we've already seen this before and we know what this looks like. And unfortunately, this is kind of what happens to Pixar every year because Pixar has its own little cordoned off category for best animated feature.

And it wins nine out of ten times. They always make either the best or the second best animated feature every year. And then the main category is very unlikely, the best picture category, is very unlikely to nominate this movie, even though, like, Coco is just significantly better than Darkest Hour. Like, it's just, it's not even a conversation. It's just a much better

movie that affected more people that is an artistic achievement. Amanda don't talk. I agree. I agree. Everyone's slandering me on this podcast. I agree with time limits and that Coco is good. Okay. Thank you. So given that Amanda doesn't like animated movies, but given that... I don't either. Okay. But we, everybody knew that Coco was going to go directly to the best animated future category. So it's not really even considered. And I worry that we're going to end up with like really an even significantly worse best picture category. And that can't be considered a win because it's still going to be the last award given at the end of the show. You know what I call it animated features, Amanda?

Tell me. Cartoons. I agree. That's also what I call them. It's a 90-minute cartoon. It's fine. Coco was still very good. Coco is a great cartoon.

Coco was certainly better than Darkest Hour. So much better than Tom and Jerry. I have made a grave error asking you two to be on this episode of this show. Listen, movies or movies with actors or you have cartoons. South Park's a cartoon Simpsons is a cartoon Coco is a cartoon This is going right to the

Home Alone Christmas movie Hall of Fame Bag Cates It's really good They're cartoons They're really well done awesome cartoons I'm sorry But here's my point

Even a cartoon I agree it's cartoon It's the best version of a cartoon It's a movie cartoon And because it's the best version of a cartoon and is also in film form It should get to be in best picture

and not in some weird category that I don't care about that is going to be cut from the broadcast because Bill's going crazy and is only allowing four awards on the ceremony. But you would care. You would care if you had to submit for one or the other. I would care at that point. That what would you care?

I would care who won. If it was like, so last year, get outs in the real category and it's like it versus Logan versus, I think Star Wars would have submitted for best movie. Star Wars out. So it's like basically It versus Logan

I'm interested. I am too. I do think there's a particular skill toward making a movie for a lot of that can succeed for a lot of different people

of a lot of different ages is its own kind of skill. I always used to argue about this with writing. The hardest thing when you get your point as a writer to a certain point

of your career is being able to write really good stuff for all. kinds of people versus the 20 people who think the same way you do. I totally agree with you, but I think that's the hardest thing to do. And that's why I'm kind of like, I don't want it's really hard. Yeah, but I don't want it stuck in the lesser category.

If you can actually do that, please make more movies that we all like. Please make movies that the three of us can go and see together. So you guys don't yell at me about Wonder Woman, you know? Did you respect it more? I mean. A Wonder Woman would be going around for that category. Do you respect it more? Mm-hmm.

Save it over here and three billboards. Yes. What was a harder achievement? Well, I'm afraid of horror movies, but everyone else said that I couldn't go see it because it was so scary. Oh, so you didn't see it. Everyone liked it so much. It was fantastic. Yeah.

I like it. It's really good. And I just think it's a harder movie to do than three billboards, which is the same kind of trope we've seen over and over here. I mean, it's once again, the inherent conflict of the Oscars is it's a completely subjective act and they're trying to make it a sort of numerical estimation. And that's just, it's impossible, right? So the general nature of it is difficult to ascertain. But in 2016, I wrote a column before the Moonlight Lala and Oscars, before the nominations came out.

And it was like, it was pretty a glib pitch, but it was a little bit sincere, which was they should just nominate Deadpool. Like, they should just nominate Deadpool for Best Picture. And part of the reason I was making that case was because it was informed a little bit by what you're talking about, Bill, which is that this should be an accurate representation of what movies are at this time. It was also with the sense that, things were really trending downwards.

And I was like, people are not going to watch this show. The slate of nominees, especially from the 2016 group of movies, was pretty obscure. It was a very low box office total. And there was no, it didn't feel like there was enough controversy larded inside of this. And I was like, Deadpool, for as stupid and violent and ridiculous and self-congratulatory as it seems was new. It was like an innovation on superhero movies. And I thought it was really clever.

Turns out the 2016 Oscars didn't need Deadpool to be interesting. They were really interesting because of what happened with La La Land and Moonlight. Unfortunately for them, that didn't help the ratings because by the time that happened, it was 1215 on the East Coast. Which goes back to problem number one. Pacing. Yeah. I agree with you. Can I throw out one more idea, Ari Pacing?

Yeah. So I was reading about Julia Roberts. And I came upon, I had not remembered that at the 2000, won Oscars when Julia Roberts won for Eric Brachvich. They had made a joke at the beginning of, okay, well, Bill's shaking his head and we're not going to relate this. It's a rough Oscar. Okay.

Anyway, at that ceremony, at the beginning of the ceremony, they had promised a television to the person who gave the shortest speech. Oh. And I had forgotten this, and Julia Roberts' speech, she says, she gets up there and she's like, I've already got a TV and it's pretty big, so I'm just going to talk for a while, which is iconic. Shout it to Julia Roberts. Yeah, that's great.

But I do like the idea if you can shorten the speeches. I hate it when people get played off. But if you can incentivize short speeches in some way, maybe you give a best speech Oscar after the fact. I don't know. They should put a countdown clock on there. Oh, on the screen for us. You get one minute to deliver your speech.

So you have to write to one minute. Guess what? I want to hear Julie Roberts give a speech. I don't too. If I'm likes in the Oscars for that long. I agree with you. But I just think we should gamify the shit. The Jetsky bit that they did this year,

which they eventually gave to Mark Bridges, shout out to him, costume designer from Phantom Played, what up? That was really fun. That was one of the best moments from that telecast. I have Julia Roberts third that year.

Okay. Who is one and two? Laura Lina, you can count on me. It was unbelievable. And that movie still holds up. I don't know how Fenton. You like that movie. I love it.

I love Kna Fonner. That's outrageous that she didn't win. But whatever. Number two, Joan Allen and the contender. She was awesome in that movie. She is good. That movie's really good.

I get it. It was a career achievement for Julia. People love Julia. They wanted her to win the Oscar, but that has not held up. I'm sorry. Sorry, Julia. I love you. We're doing a rewatchable about Julie this week.

I'm a huge Julia fan. She should not have won the Oscar for Aaron Barclam. By the way, I would have given her the Oscar for Pretty Woman. I don't know who else was in there that year, but who else could have been Pretty Woman? It's a great point. I'm going to look that up. You guys talk. I'm going to look that up.

Sean, you keep going on. Is there like an all-time Travis. you that you think a movie should have been awarded and this would have this award would have solved for that the popular award i was thinking about this there are some obvious ones right like gravity is a really obvious one and i think get out though i again i hate answering this because i think that all of you should just be in past picture uh that is my firm philosophy but get i thought get out should have won last year or certainly was one of films i was not for the shape of water when was the last time that you thought about the shape of water me uh oscar night last year that was that was

awful before the Oscars, and now it's reprehensible. But I have a personal pick, which is Skyfall. Interesting. I like that. Which is an incredible movie. I recently purchased it on Amazon. I'm now the owner of Skyfall because it's the only way you can watch it regularly. And it's fantastic. And I love those movies.

And that's a great example of just the peak craft of that particular genre. That's just an incredible Bond film. And it probably wouldn't win Best Picture. But Adam Damon, who's writing about this, said that in 2006, I believe it's 2006, that Casino Royale, it's a sin that that that was not nominated and that that would have won this award going away every time. I like that movie. I love that movie. So there's something about Mary is a good example for me. One of the funniest comedies ever, hugely successful.

You could argue it was one of the best three movies that year. They just weren't going to nominate it. Hugely inventive, memorable. No sign of it in the Oscars. wouldn't even know what happened. You want to adjudicate Julia in 1990? Yeah. Kathy Bates and Misery One.

I like that. I'm not mad at that. That's cool because that is a popcorn movie. That is a movie that people really liked. It was a box office success based on a Stephen King book. And it was a moment, too. Like there was a cultural currency to misery jokes. There were references to that on the Tonight Show all the time.

There was a parody of it on the telecast, as I recall. This is all fine. Okay. That's all fine. I listen to your case. There's like five movies in the last 45 years where somebody went from, I don't know who that person is to that is the biggest star in the world. Yeah. And that was one of the five.

What you're describing is a category that I want, which is breakthrough performance. Right. That is that to me. Oh, like MTV. MTV does that, but I think that's a genuinely good idea. Wouldn't you have given Timothy Shalomey breakthrough performance last year? You wouldn't have given him best actor because Gary Oldman would. was always going to win best actor, but you sure as hell would have given a breakthrough performance.

Yeah, but again, we're talking about, like, we're re-engineering categories to fix the fact that the academy has bad taste. Great. No, but let's fix it. I mean, I guess. This is a podcast. They should fix themselves. Don't blame the movies.

Blame the Academy. Fix yourselves. That's what I have to say. To borrow another sports thing that works in sports is rookie the year, which is another way to snapshot. I agree with you. By the way, my wife watched call me by your name over the weekend. And I was, I was working on a piece for the ringer and half watching it. He's really good in that movie.

He's fantastic. Yeah, he's really good. He's come around. He's really good. Timothy Shalame, come on the BS podcast. No, he's really good in it. I'm still not sold on the movie, but I think he's great in it. Okay.

I love that movie. But I think that's a good example. A breakthrough performance for that year, 100% it's him. I thought of another popcorn film that's important to me. Good. Devil Wars Prada. Okay, you guys have discussed this at length. We did a rewatchable's on it.

And Merrill got nominated for it, but it was not. included and... But that should have been nominated for the real Oscars. I agree with you. Again. I wouldn't put that. But that's a good popcorn

or actual Oscars question. I would have departed. It's another one. Departed obviously goes in the Oscars bucket and wins. But also could have thrown itself in the popcorn thing and just try to sweep it. This also totally changes like future movie history.

One of the reasons that Departed wins is because there's this long history of Martin Scorsese not winning. And so even though this isn't taxi driver or Raging Bull or Goodfellas, it was a makeup. But if you won a popular film Oscar

for your third movie in 2022, maybe you don't get to have a departed moment in 2030. Smaller Oscar. A little baby Oscar. This also is really the only way a Fast and Furious movie can win. I still think Fast Five is the greatest action movie

of all time. I agree with you. It's just an incredible achievement. There's a little movie called Terminator 2 that would like to talk to you about that take. A little dated. Okay. Fast Five.

Brazil, it's an amazing achievement. It would have won the Popcorn Award that year. Let's wrap this up with a conspiracy theory. And here's my conspiracy theory. Yes, great. We didn't talk about the host, by the way, before you wrap it. Oh, okay. Let's talk about the host, too.

But I'll give you the conspiracy theory first. The Oscars air on ABC. ABC approached the Academy to make these changes. ABC is, of course, owned by Disney. Disney is the most successful film company in the world. and no one stands to benefit more from having all of their films all over the telecast than Disney.

Does Disney on the Fox Library 2 now? Well, it is about to, yes, for $70 million. So they get double. So you're talking every Marvel movie, every Star Wars movie, every Pixar movie, which are the most successful movies in the world, and soon every X-Men movie,

and soon Deadpool. I don't know if this is a conspiracy theory, Sean. Yeah, I was literally going to say, is this a conspiracy theory, or is this just reading between the lines appropriately? Yeah, this is a good theory. putting on your comments. So it's a fact.

We have proved it here on this podcast. I would say that's pretty smart. Okay. You'd be like if Netflix created some, Netflix buys the Emmys and then create some award for best streaming drama and best streaming just other adding Emmys to it. The host thing's interesting. I have no inside info.

I've not talked to Kimmel about this. I really doubt he's going to do it again. I'd be absolutely flabbergasted. And I don't know what the episode. tighted it's for him to do it anyway. And despite the ratings thing, he kind of came out like gold because both times people were like, oh, he killed it. He was great.

He's great. Doing it three in a row. He's such a smart dude. Like, there's just a no win point of inflection now. And I don't see him doing it. And my question is, who does it if he doesn't do it? I would bet anything it's going to be a female host. I don't know who that female host is.

I don't think Tina Faye would do it. Probably not an ABC. I don't know if they're going to be. They do a combo host. I don't think Tiffany Haddish is big enough yet. I think that would be really, I don't know, that would be, that would be astonishing if she went. What if Amy Schumer was announced tomorrow? I don't think, I think she's too polarizing.

That would be a disaster. Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea. What about Lena Dunham? Yeah, that would be polarizing as well. I'm not really sure what they're out is other than Ellen, and my prediction is that Ellen host. We've seen that show before. We're going to see it again. Is there anybody you'd want to see?

Well, when you brought up... Gal Gadda. Yes, she was great. She was fantastic handing out candy during the segment last year. It can't be who you'd want to see. It has to be who is realistic to host the Oscars. Right.

Because then you've got to cross off like Sam B. People always throw these names out. It's like they're not hosting the Oscars. I wasn't going to go throw those out. No, I'm not saying you were. When you said Tiffany Haddish, I was reminded of Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph at the Oscars last year,

which was the three best minutes of the Oscars, in my opinion. That was great. And you could bring a one, two of, but you're right. They are not named brand enough. I've always wanted Will Ferrell and Kristen Wigg to do it. I always thought that would have been a good show because they're live performers. They're very famous. They have movie credibility, but they're kind of not really in that nominee echelon.

They demand respect. There's a lot you can build around it. There's a story to tell there. And it's like a nice reunion story, too, from Saturday Night Live. I think they're too ironic. It's an awkward in their humor. We should get rid of all the self-satisfied aspects of the Oscars and get rid of the montages. But at the end of the day, it's an award show where people in the industry are handing that awards to other people.

And at some point, if you, you know, they kind of tried it with Franco and Hathaway. Very different experiment. Yes, but in the sense of we're going to mock this a bit and we're going to kick the tyros of the idea and isn't this silly. I actually agree with Amanda. The real Will Ferrell rarely comes out. And in the Oscars, I think he would default toward being Will Farrow. And there has to be some sort of weightiness to that job. That's why one of the many reasons why Franco was so bad.

Does there, though? I mean, the most historic Oscar host of all time is probably Billy Crystal and Johnny Carson, obviously, before him. Johnny Carson was the best. So, you know, I don't know if those guys were really weighty. Those are guys who were just kind of emcees. They made you feel like you were at the right party. I think that the show has changed a little bit, though. Carson had more like kind of gravitas than anybody on TV or movies.

But we got to think about how to eventize this show. We can't think about what worked in 1978. Krista was an actor who could also sing and people and do comedy and was kind of a unicorn. I don't know. I don't know what the right answer is. What's your dream realistic one? Like to me like Chappelle would be the best one. He'd never do it.

That's a great one. Yeah. I just think that would be the most excited if they're like Chappelle so snowsker. I'm like, what? That's just because I like to. to watch Dave Chappelle talk, but like, one, I don't think Dave Chappelle has any meaningful relationship to movies. Oh, I don't think he would do it.

Two, he's made some at least. Honestly, it becomes much more about Dave Chappelle than it does about the show. Great. We need our ratings to go out. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Who's the most famous charming person? Ooh.

Because that's what you need. You just need someone. Most famous charming person. To just be like, I'm so glad you're here, you know, that you want to spend time with. We just ran a piece about Glenn Powell. so like Glenn Powell's taking out my whole brain, but he's not famous enough yet. I don't think he's going to cut it.

No, I don't think that that's going to happen. Wow. You know, someone on that level. I said that I don't think that he is there yet, but in terms of the charming real estate, I can't think of anyone else at the moment. Glenn Powell and Zoe Deutsch together? I mean, I did like set it up.

I honestly don't have an answer. I don't either. I'm not sure. That's why it's going to be Ellen. This is the meeting right now going on in the Oscars room where they're like, they just keep looking at each other. They're like, should we call on?

No, no, no, no. 10 more minutes. Yeah. And then Oprah, that checks a lot of boxes. I don't know. I mean, that's not a, that feels like a one, Oprah is undeniable and an incredible broadcast personality, but like it feels like one generation too late.

Who's 40 years old and it's ready to take over the show? You also don't want her hosting. You want her actually reading every single winner. That's true. You're like, Bill Simmons! Hey, give it our refrigerators. Jamie Fox. Oh, wow.

He would be good. Yeah. He would be good. Won an Oscar. It's funny. Can sing and dance. True. One of the last Hollywood personalities is who cares about being a great entertainer.

Has he hosted the Oscars? I don't believe so. Best Espies host ever for whatever that's worth. Oh, Drake. Wow. No. I can't believe I just didn't think about Drake until this moment. Should we bring Drake?

Yeah. Drake hosted in the... I fixed it. I fixed the Oscars. Drake so many people will watch Drake if he hosts the Oscars. And he's very charming. That's how you get... The biggest concern that ABC had was...

the huge dip in the 18 to 34 age bracket. And if you want to bring in some millennial viewers, you love me. You bring in my feelings. So Drake's hosting, all the movies have to determine ahead of time whether they're in the real category and the popcorn category.

And the show's three hours. Yes. And we automatically give an award to Timothy Shalding. I'm in. We solved the guys. This is so great. And best breakthrough becomes an award. It's perfect.

Okay. Great job, Sean. Thanks so much for coming on the big picture. Thanks, John. Thank you.