Birdman Surprises at PGA. Is it a Three Way Best Picture Race?
Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 2:02AM 
The Film Experience has never loved the complacency of locked up Oscar races, so it is with great pleasure that I share the news (though you probably didn't miss it) that Birdman won the Producers Guild Award tonight. Do we have an actual race for Best Picture? Have you voted as to who should win yet?
This doesn't mean that Boyhood is in trouble, necessarily, but it's a fascinating curveball, especially given that Boyhood was such a feat of producing; Imagine bankrolling and shepherding a small scale but dozen yaer experiment when you had no idea how it would turn out or if it would work at all?!
As you know from my top ten list I do slightly prefer Birdman to Boyhood but let's forget about Oscar's unfortunate "side-taking" for a minute and face facts: either of those films would make thrilling, atypical and totally deserving Best Picture winners.
And yet... Perhaps it's not so much a two way race as a three way?
The Weinstein Co continues to push The Imitation Game hard. More impressively than the film's very healthy box office haul is that they've managed to turn one of its detriments into a positive. Despite the film's ever so timid nods to the LGBT community, they've made that big weakness a rallying point. Consider the royal pardon of Alan Turing in the UK in 2013 and this current campaign:
I'm not a huge fan of The Imitation Game but I don't mind this shameful "message" movie ploy. I really don't. The desired but probably unsuccessful end will justify the means, if you know what I mean. Do you?
The movie itself preferences celebrating vague / idealogically flexible "specialness" over the more divisive celebrate gay people and what they've contributed to the world that has often rejected and harmed them but even so. It's a good message to get out there even if it's relatively weakly stated in the actual film. Perhaps its timidity is why it's actually so popular. Consider that of all the Best Picture nominees I offered to my extremely conservative and religious family while visiting them before Sundance, this is the one they opted to see. They've never before been interested or willing to sit through anything that one might dub "gay". They all loved it and really glommed on to its repetitive quote.
Sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of that do the things no one can imagine."
Is the thing no one can imagine this film winning Best Picture?
Reader Comments (27)
With the PGA win and its likely victory at SAG tomorrow, I think Birdman is in an excellent position to take BP. I don't like the film, but I'll take it over The Imitation Game.
I had a feeling that Boyhood wouldn't be as embraced by the industry as it was by the critics, but I'm still a bit disappointed. It has been ages since I loved a film that was seriously in the running to take the top prize.
Completely agree with Mike. Has been forever since my favourite film has been ahead with Oscar. I wanted to love Birdman but it left me cold - Boyhood on the other hand: LOVED!
While I try not to take too much stock in these Oscar statistics (Didn't Argo teach us anything that ANYTHING can happen?), Boyhood only needs to be the first film since The Departed to win Best Picture over the PGA and SAG champ while Birdman has to overcome the lack of an editing nom to be the first since Ordinary People! That's a 26 year difference.
All I'm saying is I agree with Nathaniel. I think we have a real race but it's far from done and dusted. And at the end of the day, Boyhood will always be Boyhood: a landmark piece of cinema no matter what.
Yech. That Imitation Game quote is really inelegant and non-lyrical, isn't it?
I welcome a real race too but I'm RELIEVED it's not to the benefit of this boring British biopic. At least, not yet.
Well, if we're going to have a repeat of the Social Network/King's Speech Oscar season, at least this time it's two films that are unique and incredibly deserving. I don't dislike The Imitation Game, but having it in the History books as a Best Picture-winner just doesn't sit well, especially in the year where both Birdman and Boyhood (not to mention Selma and The Grand Budapest Hotel) are mentioned on the same list...
Harvey is pulling out all the stops, and why shouldn't he? The film is holding its own at the BO and people genuinely like it.
SAG voters all got a big, glossy brochure of TIG just before voting was to end, the screener was one of the first to arrive and he offered movie cash so you could see it on a big screen if the theater was participating. He made seeing the film the easiest of all the nominees and has managed to keep it in the conversation while others became old news. I'm not sure he is behind the move to pardon the 49,000 but I don't care if he is. It's a worthy cause.
But I also don't see it as a three way race. TIG is pretty standard fare and on the small screen (which is how most voters will see it for the final time) it comes across as much Masterpiece Classic as feature film. I wish GBH was the film being talked about as the third front runner.
This year, I feel the films register very differently from theater to small screen, far more than in the past and I wonder if this will have any effect on the voting.
Kris Tapley at In Contention has never stopped predicting The Imitation Game for the win...until now. He may be revising that after the SAG Awards.
This PGA win is excellent news for Birdman lovers like me!
Yeah, Henry, I was not thrilled to receive that glossy brochure on the day I voted...
I want Budapest or Birdman to win the most. I wouldn't mind Boyhood, Whiplash or The Imitation Game. Wouldn't really be happy about Selma or Theory of Everything. HELL NO: American Sniper.
"I want Birdman or Selma to win the most. I'd be pleased with Budapest, Boyhood or Whiplash. I could live with The Imitation Game. Wouldn't really be happy about Theory of Everything. HELL NO: American Sniper."
Of the three I'm pulling for Boyhood. I found Imitation Game nearly insufferable because of its identical underlying plot to The King's Speech of "this is the single most important personal struggle which decided the outcome of the Second World War." This one was at least more convincing than The King's Speech (cracking Enigma>not stuttering) but they shared their heavy-handedness (I think they even said "if we crack the code we win the war"...but of course then it still took two years?!?!). Plus there were a lot of weird/unbelievable plot points that, upon further investigation, were in fact false (SPOILERS: the code breakers didn't make the decision to strategically use the codes--MI6 did. Alan and Christopher did not bond over code-breaking. Turing was not the sole "great man" to think that using a machine was the best way to crack enigma: a group of Polish code breakers did it in the 1930s and Turing even named the machine not "Christopher" but after the man who did it first!! He also had a working partnership with an American who helped him build the machine. But I guess cutting out Polish and American scientists makes the "Hail Brittania!!" Theme more convincing! For what it's worth, Joan Clarke also looked nothing like Keira Knightly--which I do find important in the history of working women/women worthy of praise, and was in fact RECRUITED from college, not found via contest). Why these films find the need take a thoroughly compelling true story and fictionalize it is beyond me. I'll take Boyhood, more "true" than the "historical" films lumped on us for awards consideration. (Sidenote: apart from a few compelling scenes and images, Birdman was not for me).
@Paul Outlaw: LOL for a second there I thought I had written that and very confused at my own taste betrayal.
Heh heh.
I find this ad to be insulting to Turing and to all those who suffered because of this law. I might be more okay with it IF the film hadn't downplayed Turing's homosexuality, but mostly it feels awful to use such a tragic story to try to garner awards for a film that so fails to be truthful about the real events.
Am I happy that audiences are flocking to a queer film? Not in this instance. Not really. It was watered down so as not to offend mainstream audiences - so they aren't really seeing a queer story, they are seeing a war story because Cumberbatch is in it. And they aren't learning that much about the truth of the situation at all.
I really do hope the race is between Boyhood and Birdman.
Huge surprise indeed! Boyhood should have won. I believe that investing in a movie for 12 years without knowing what you are going to get at the end or if you're ever going to finish it deserves the recognition of your peers.
That add is embarrassing. You don't amend history by giving Oscars. Stop that. Besides, the movie is really weak.
I just saw The Imitation Game a couple of days ago, and I actually like it!
It's really quite heartbreaking,
Benedict is great, as usual.
But, what I love the most is Keira, she is so amazing.
and I can't believe that Birdman won PGA!
this doesn't seem to be a predictable race afterall
The funny thing about that tongue-twister of a line in the movie is that each character hears it once, and then can repeat it verbatim 15 years later.
I hated The Imitation Game so much, so heavy-handed, so ashamed of itself that it will make up nearly every single aspect to avoid telling the real story... I'm positive it will win best picture.
A Birdman Best Picture win would certainly prove the Academy is as irrelevant as everyone says it is. Of the 7 nominees I've seen, it was the only BP nominee met with overall negativity from my fellow audience members. But we all know Hollyhood sure does like to reward films about itself. How are those Artist and Argo wins holding up?
Yeah, I gotta say, given that The Imitation Game treated Turing's sexuality as a plot point above everything else and stripped him of it otherwise, I find this ad kinda gross. Honoring the man and honoring the film are mutually exclusive.
Probably looking at a Pic/Director split, yet again -- which I rather like.
I think Boyhood is seen more as a director's achievement than a producer's.
I'm ok with Birdman winning, but I would prefer GBH.
Hoping The Grand Budapest Hotel takes SAG ensemble to throw everyone for a loop. By far my favorite of the nominees and the fact it got in here when no such Wes film has been nominated before it makes me think it can pull an upset.
Maybe it isn't just the Picture/Director splits that are going to continue this awards era into uncharted territory, but that if Birdman somehow does win Best Picture it will be the first BP winner without an Editing win since Ordinary People.
I'm mixed on Birdman. Until the last 20 minutes where we had those horrid CGI effects and AGI's notion of what is a 'low-brow' attitudes from Riggan's psyche, I was actually enjoying it in a sci-fi twist of Noises Off. But Keaton, Watts, and Amy Ryan were the only people I really cared for. AGI has done well for himself with the Academy in the past, but kind of a shame it is with industry self-flattery this could be the breakthrough. It could be the kind of upset that causes The King's Speech/Tom Hooper kind of blowback.
"But I also don't see it as a three way race. TIG is pretty standard fare and on the small screen (which is how most voters will see it for the final time) it comes across as much Masterpiece Classic as feature film. I wish GBH was the film being talked about as the third front runner."
Actually, this description is one where you actually need to consider TIG a threat. Post-Braveheart with the screeners, the Best Picture winner lot has, a lot of the times, been films that work well on your TV.
The Imitation Game was trying and has always been trying. The King's Speech campaign was comparatively calm and effortless. It helped that HBC, Firth, and Rush have all been playing the awards game for years and Hooper had a lot of support due to his UK TV work like Helen Mirren in his corner.
Harvey needs to calm down and focus on winning Adapted Screenplay, as that is where it should be a shoo-in for and that is starting to feel shaky. I am starting to think American Sniper is the threat of that category with an also outside possibility that the Academy may pull a Spike Jonze-Her redux, and give PTA his first Oscar given there's probably some respect in the degree of difficulty of adapting a Thomas Pynchon work for the screen. Perhaps wishful thinking on my part, but I think American Sniper could easily pull The Pianist at the Oscars and snatch away sure things in categories, namely Best Actor and Adapted Screenplay.
But CMG: The King's Speech was winning (almost) everything all the way through the awards season and starred the Best Actor favorite. TIG walked away from the GG empty handed and doesn't look to be in the running for acting prizes. That could change tonight, but I don't see it.
Imitation Game. Yeah. I keep thinking, "Oh the movie you could've made."
When Inarritu honored the personal vision behind many of the movies up for PGAs last night, I assume he was not talking about "Imitation Game."
Henry: I don't think TIG as chance in hell for a Best Picture win. The King's Speech, comparatively, had a push that was not nearly as desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if on Preferential ballot if it was the film with the last amount of first place votes. I'm only pointing to The King's Speech because Harvey, who backed that film, is so obviously using it for TIG's blueprint to win awards. It made sense, to a point. The Social Network appeared in better position than Boyhood, but TIG is much weaker than The King's Speech.
I'm only saying Harvey needs to concentrate on getting the awards it should be winning, like Adapted Screenplay- especially given that the Wild and Gone Girl screenplays weren't nominated.
"Oh the movie you could've made."
Exactly! THIS is our Alan Turing movie - we're not gonna get another one - and that is so depressing. Turing deserves better.
I am afraid, the real fight is Boyhood vs. Birdman vs. American Sniper. Out of the nominees, I would be happy with Boyhood, Selma or Grand Budapest Hotel, winning. If not, "The Imitation Game", which is a correct film with plenty of good to great performances.
I DON'T want Birdman, Whiplash, The Theory of Everything and American Sniper anywhere close to Best Picture. I can tolerate them winning some performance awards or technicals, but they DON'T deserve Picture, Director or Screenplay by any means.
Foxcatcher also bored me to death, I could aprecciate Ruffalo's and Chaning's performances as Awards worthy, but, as much as I like Carell, his John du Pont is just the darker version of his "Anchorman" Brick and a good part of his performance is thanks to inexpressive make up.
So, my preference would be something like...
Picture: Selma
Director: Linklater or Anderson
Actor: Cumberbatch
Actress: Moore
Supp. Actor: Ruffalo or Hawke
Supp. Actress: Arquette
Original Screenplay: Grand Budapest Hotel
Adapted Screenplay: The Imitation Game
Song: "Everything is Awesome"
Animated: Dragon 2, Song of the Sea or Princess Kaguya
By the way, plenty of friends in common with Dean de Blois, if he wins (finally) the Oscar, for Dragon 2, my facebook feed is going to be quite bearishly monotonous...
Suzanne - I don't get your comment at all. For one, The Artist holds up pretty nicely, and many people still love it. But also, I think Boyhood is much closer in sentiment and taste to the Argos, King's Speeches, and Artists of the Best Picture winners than they are to Birdman.
Disclaimer: Boyhood and Birdman are both in my top 3 of the year. I will be thrilled with either winning.
My voter would go for "The Imitation Game " over "Birdman". "Imitiation" is the classic Hollywood historical drama- the romance is so chaste it could have been produced by MGM in it heyday. And by the end it had me close to tears. "Birdman" left me cold.