Pt 1: Winners. Trivia. Stats. (How'd you do on your predictions?)
Monday, February 29, 2016 at 12:15PM It's time to sift through the debris! Let's clear away the rubble of Oscar night and seek out interesting trivia of note, check back in with our prediction triumphs and foibles, and more. We'll frame this with a complete list of winners if, by some extraordinary circumstance, you've missed knowing about them. If so can you account for your actions last night? What on earth is more important than the Oscars? (Except that event to help out citizens of Flint, MI poisoned by their own GOP led government so, well done, Ava DuVernay and others)
But first the sordid topic of punditry! In many ways this was a difficult year to predict the prizes with three(!) genuine upsets on the big nights (Mark Rylance, Sam Smith, Ex Machina) a Best Picture race that was truly difficult to read given precursor disagreements and the Best Film of the Year sidelined altogether (When it comes to the Academy's treatment of Carol... quoth Abby "I can't help you with that."). If you check in with the Oscar Chart Index, you'll see an overview of how well I did but it breaks down like so... I completed aced the Best Short categories (go me) but otherwise flailed about hopelessly because I had predicted 6 Oscars for The Revenant and 3 for Mad Max which is the opposite of what occurred. Not even my wishful thinking helped me get over my fear that Oscar just wouldn't know what to do with a genre achievement that gonzo. [more after the jump...]
The SPOTLIGHT team freaking out with joy. As well they should have.
Glenn already discussed how rare Mad Max: Fury Road's Oscar haul was historically but here's another historical concept proposal: I think this is the Academy's biggest achievement in ignoring their natural biases about in-your-face genre achievements since The Silence of the Lambs 25 whole years ago.
Okay let's get to the trivia
THE HEADLINERS
Picture: Spotlight
As noted whilst live blogging, Spotlight is NOT the least winning Best Picture ever, misinformation I knew would spread like wildfire though I don't quite think I was able to nip it in the bud in time last night as I saw people tweeting it quickly. Best Picture winners that have fewer than three shiny statues are:
Wings (1927) 2 Oscars from 2 nominations
The Broadway Melody (1929): 1 Oscar from 3 nominations
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 2 Oscars from 4 nominations
Grand Hotel (1932) 1 Oscar from 1 nomination
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) 1 Oscar from 8 nominations
You Can't Take It With You (1938): 2 Oscars from 7 nominations
Rebecca (1940) 2 Oscars from 11 nominations
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) 2 Oscars from 5 nominations
Spotlight (2015) 2 Oscars from 6 nominations
Spotlight is in real good company there. If you ignore Greatest Show and Broadway Melody that is a mighty fine group of classics!
Kind of elegant that SPOTLIGHT took the first award of the night, the last award of the night, and nothing in between.
— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) February 29, 2016
Before Spotlight even entered the race there was talk that no journalism picture had ever won the top prize. People have quibbled with that but it's true-ish. It Happened One Night (1934), one of the all time great movies, was about a journalist (Clark Gable) pursuing a story (Claudette Colbert) but journalism wasn't really the topic.
Two of the four producing winners on Spotlight are women. The first female to ever win this prize was Julia Phillips for The Sting (1973) -- lovers of Hollywood dirt MUST read her trashy autobiography "You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again". Female winners have stayed relatively uncommon. Spotlight's Nicole Rocklin, Blythe Pagon Faust fill out the top and only ten women to have won this prize. Previous winners: Phillips, Lili Finn Zanuck (Driving Miss Daisy), Wendy Finerman (Forrest Gump), Donna Gigliotti (Shakespeare in Love) Fran Walsh (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), Cathy Schulman (Crash), and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), and Dede Gardner (12 Years a Slave). No female solo producer has ever won this prize though plenty of solo male producers have.
Good luck charm: Michael Keaton has now headlined two back-to-back Best Pictures (Birdman and Spotlight) though curiously he wasn't nominated for Spotlight despite deserving the actual Oscar. His next film is The Founder, a biopic about the man who started the McDonald's fast-food phenomenon. Should we be taking that seriously already?
Update From the Comments
Best Pictures are winning fewer and fewer Oscars these days. Begone Sweeps! Jonathan in the comments suggests that the average overall is 5.3 but this decade not one Best Picture has managed it! Interesting.
Actress in a Leading Role: Brie Larson, Room
Actress in a Leading Role, Part Two: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Alicia Vikander is only the second Scandinavian actor to win gold if you can believe it. (Kevin O' Keefe helpfully notes that she is "also the first robot to kill her creator and emerge into the real world to win a competitive Oscar." But surely not the last.) The four most famous Nordic movie stars of all time are surely Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullman*, and Max Von Sydow. Of the quartet, only Bergman ever won an Oscar (three actually) though the others were nominated. Garbo was later granted an Honorary but Von Sydow and Ullman, both still alive and working, would be great choices for Honoraries (hint hint Academy). *For some reason almost all famous Scandinavian crossovers are Swedish. No Danish actor has ever been nominated for an Oscar and Liv Ullman is the only Norwegian.
I haven't done the research on this because I shudder to think how difficult it will be but this might be the closest the two female winners have ever been in age (Alicia is 27, Brie is 26). These Libras were born exactly 363 days apart from each other on October 3rd, 1988 and October 1st 1989. These are fairly common ages for actresses to win but it's always worth reiterating that Hollywood has terribly sexist double standards. George Chakiris was Alicia's age when he won Supporting for West Side Story (1961) and he's the second youngest male winner of all time in the acting categories (Timothy Hutton Leading Actor of a Supporting Win in Ordinary People at 20 will probably keep the record forever)
Update: the closest age female winners were actually Streep & Lange who were 33 when they won for Sophie's Choice and Tootsie (also both arguing leading roles) and born only 63 days apart.
Actor in a Leading Role: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Actor in a Supporting Role: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Mark Rylance has been nominated for an Emmy once previously and seems bound to win at some point if he keeps up the TV work. He's halfway to an EGOT now, since he has an overachiever's three Tony Awards and a surprise Oscar. (More on Leo soon but everyone knew his win was coming). Rylance becomes only the second acting winner from a Spielberg film after Daniel Day Lewis's Lincoln. (Murtada ranked all the Spielberg related nominees here -- that was fun!)
AUTEURS & SCRIBES
Director: The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu
Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short, by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
Original Screenplay: Spotlight, by Tom Mccarthy and Josh Singer
Iñárritu becomes only the third director after John Ford (1940's The Grapes of Wrath and 1941's How Green Was My Valley) and Joseph L Mankiewicz (1949's A Letter to Three Wives and 1950's All About Eve) to win back-to-back Directing Oscars. Curiously no director has ever accomplished the feat of helming back-to-back Best Picture winners.
Tom McCarthy and Adam McKay join a very long list of famous directors who have Screenplay Oscars like Screenplays are a consolation prizes. They're NOT of course (don't misunderstand) but sometimes that's the best certain auteurs can ever hope for -- especially the singular iconoclastic auteurs like the Almodovar's and Tarantino's of the world. This is, for example, the only Oscar Todd Haynes might ever win (he usually writes his own stuff, Carol being an exception) so we hope he gets one at some point!
Adam McKay, who co-wrote Ant-Man, becomes the first Marvel screenwriter to win an Oscar albeit not for a Marvel film. Joss Whedon was once nominated though (co-writing Toy Story)
Update from the Comments: Though he wasn't a winner last night we believe that Tom Hooper is the first director to serve Oscar winning performances in three consecutive films (The King's Speech, Les Miserables, The Danish Girl). Other directors have more Oscar winning performances but usually they didn't spring from consecutive pictures.
Reader Comments (46)
"No Danish actor has ever been nominated" What about Viggo Mortensen?
I've been saying for months that next year's Best Actor award is going to Keaton for that McDonald's biopic. The only things conceivably standing in his way are a) Nate Parker, b) a real sneak attack by Daniel Day-Lewis or c) if the film sucks.
I was pretty much spot on with the biggies. I though The Big Short would be the more palatable hot button issues film for Best Picture and held out hope that Carol could triumph in Adapted Screenplay. Otherwise, Director, Actors, Actresses, Original Screenplay, Animated, Documentary, that almost-sweep of tech prizes for Mad Max, Effects, and Score were right. I went too auteur in the other categories, especially in Song; I thought it might be the kind of year where they actually listened to all the nominees, not just checked off their favorite pop singer of the moment.
I never stopped predicting Rylance since he's so damn charming and beloved by Brits and theater actors alike. Inarritu campaigned more than the other four directors combined and Ex Machina's effects are inescapable
Now, whether I agree with most of these wins is an entirely different question. Since Carol didn't win all of its categories, plus Best Picture and Best Director on a write-in ballot, I'm not satisfied..
Woops my bad. Looks like Viggo is only half Danish and born in the USA to boot!
This doesn't have to do with this year in particular, but mulling over stats in my head after the show last night it occurred to me that only *three* times in the last 17 years has the Best Actress winner's film won a single other Oscar - and *two* of those times it was a makeup Oscar for deglamorizing her. Brie Larson continues this alarming streak representing the only award for her film.
I didn't do full-fledged predictions this year (my family's Oscars pool was cancelled over the Oscarssowhite controversy - yes, my family consists of old-school liberals) but I was surprised that so many professionals predicted Stallone would win. The stat that only Marcia Gay Harden and Christoph Waltz (for Django) have won Oscars without corresponding SAG nods is so pervasive, and in each case, there was a significant reason as to why they weren't nominated, whereas there wasn't in Stallone's case - they just didn't like him or the film enough to nominate him. I figured the Supporting Actor trophy had to go to Bale or Rylance, the only two nominees with a SAG nod, and of the two, Rylance won the BAFTA and a sizable number of critics' awards, plus Bale had won so recently.
Paul Outlaw - what is Daniel Day-Lewis appearing in this year?
@ Suzanne: nothing that I know of, that's why I said a "real sneak attack" (it would have to be something like an unannounced Eastwood picture).
@ Jonathan: yes, Brie follows the traditional Best Actress stat...but it's not her fault...
There are three more Best Picture winners with fewer than 3 Oscars:
Wings (1927/1928): 2 Oscars from 2 nominations
The Broadway Melody (1928/1929): 1 Oscar from 3 (unofficial) nominations
You Can't Take It With You (1938): 2 Oscars from 7 nominations
A couple of other pieces of trivia:
- This is now the eighth year in a row that the Best Directing award has not been won by a white American male.
- The 2010s is currently the decade with the lowest average number of wins per Best Picture since the 1930s. I seem to recall the podcast recently touched on the recent lower winning totals. This is how it currently looks:
1920s (two films): 1.5
1930s: 3.1
1940s: 4.4
1950s: 6.6
1960s: 5.8
1970s: 5
1980s: 5.7
1990s: 6.6
2000s: 5.5
2010s (after six films): 3.5
Average from all 88 winners: 5.3
which means that all the Best Picture winners this decade have had lower than average total wins.
Jonathan: That is indeed somewhat alarming. In the same period, 13 of the Best Actor winners were in films that won at least one other Oscar.
@Paul
Washington can beat Parker and Keaton if Fences sees proper release at the end of the year. Especially because Viola is a huge threat no matter what her rivals are serving up.
Though the black British actress from Loving will be a strong alternative candidate, but her campaign could fraud her into supporting.
Also, has there ever been a decade whose first six Best Picture winners had such low Oscar tallies? "The Artist" is the most winning of the lot so far but only with 5! The others are 4, 4, 3, 3, and now 2. Moreover, no Best Picture winner so far this decade has won the most Oscars of its year without tying with another film.
And with the loss of "The Revenant," I think we can say Oscar's love affair with the epic has faded. The last epic to win was "The Return of the King" 12 years ago - the longest stretch of time without a winning epic in Oscar history.
Whoops, Edward L. beat me to it. Thanks.
Morricone is the oldest oscar winner of all times
Tom Hooper has now directed an actor to an Oscar in 3 consecutive films. Has any other director pulled off that trick? I can't think of any. Even Wyler appears to have missed out on that particular stat.
No Danish actor has ever been nominated? Huh. Here's hoping Mads Mikkelsen gets a role or two that could change that statistic.
Jonathan: Your stat about no Best Picture winner this decade winning the most Oscars without tying with another film is especially fascinating. As well as the days of the epic seemingly being over (for now at least), the days of the sweep for a Best Picture winner are a thing of the past (for now) too. Since Slumdog Millionaire and The Hurt Locker no BP-winning film could be considered a sweeper. A far cry from the '80s and '90s, when we had regular sweeps with films such as Gandhi, Amadeus, Out of Africa, The Last Emperor, Dances With Wolves, Schindler's List, The English Patient and Titanic (which averaged 8.25 Oscars each!).
Michael C -- that's a great question. i shall research
Michael C.: I'm not sure any other director has achieved that. The closest I can find so far are John Ford, who directed Oscar-winning performances three years in a row (1939, 1940, 1941), though he made other films between them, and Elia Kazan, who directed seven Oscar-winning performances across four films in a five-film run from 1951 to 1955.
Ken S -- i should've specified the language. I mean no Danish actor from Denmark. Viggo was born in NYC.
As far as win tallies go, we appear to be in an era where the awards are increasingly split between prestige blockbusters that sweep up the tech prizes (e.g., Mad Max, Gravity, Life of Pi, Hugo; Grand Budapest Hotel doesn't quite fit into this group though it performed a similar function) and more low-scale prestige dramas that have sufficient cache to be considered worthy choices for the top prizes but whose technical merits are not judged to warrant those sorts of awards.
I went 13/20 in my predictions (I didn't predict the short categories). This was the most interesting award season I can remember, and it's the only time I can remember being genuinely surprised by who won Best Picture.
Nathaniel: Sorry, didn't mean to jump in re: Michael C's question! Hope you can find something I've missed. I find it hard to believe that Hooper is the first person to direct Oscar-winning performances in three films in a row, though it may be that he is.
It's fairly obvious already BONN is next year's best pic nominee,maybe Viola as Best Actress.
Did anyone wonder if Freeman announcing the prestigious Best Picture was chosen before or after the backlash.
Mark -- I predicted that Freeman would present best picture in these comments several weeks ago. I suspect he was chosen after the backlash, but I don't doubt he was on the shortlist before it.
@Edward L.: I've perused the usual suspects (a few years ago I actually created a chart of every director to direct multiple Oscar-winning performances, so that helped), and I'm pretty sure Hooper is. Ford, Wyler and Kazan all had wins in fairly close proximity, but this being the studio system they had other movies released in the same year in between.
Thought so if they had to pick someone why not go left field and choose a woman Whoopi.
"Dear Mark, because women are less important than men. Love, The Academy"
Sean C: Thanks!
My two favourite films, Carol and Brooklyn, left empty-handed so I was very happy when Spotlight won the big one. It's a very good movie, not as good as All the President's Men, but pretty close.
I have zero enthusiasm for the performances of the four acting winners.
The McDonald's movie looks perfect, but I got the feeling they just don't like Keaton or maybe he's terrible at PR. Otherwise, how do you explain last yearand this one?
@ Peggy Sue
Last year: Biopic/impersonation/illness/British
This year: Category confusion/crowded movie/Bale
Peggy Sue - Last year was because Eddie Redmayne was playing Stephen Hawking and I don't think the Academy was ever going to resist that (and he was the only nominee in his category playing a fictional character which, as we learned again last night with Sly, puts you at a disadvantage). This year, looks like the members of the Academy really responded to Mark Ruffalo's big "It could have been any of us" speech in Spotlight and rallied behind him instead of Keaton's more subtle work in the film (the fact that people said Ruffalo was the one whose performance most resembled his real-life counterpart probably helped too). So, we'll see what happens next year (the fact that it's a biopic performance, and a leading one at that, might bode well for him).
You're right guys, but my point is very simple: They like you or they don't and I got the feeling they don't like him. They don't like Jake or The Turner either.
I think they like him (more than) enough. Otherwise, why nominate him in the first place after all these years? And give his movie the big prize two years in a row...
Damn those Swedes :D The closest us Danes have been is - as someone already mentioned, Viggo Mortensen.
And there's also Gale Sondergaard. Born in the US by Danish parents.
But Denmark did beat both Sweden and Norway to the first overall Oscar win when Max Ree won best art direction for Cimarron in 1931. That's always something! :D
Interestingly, the actresses wining for 1949, the year Streep and Lange were born in, were also very close in age and again, born in 1916, both 33 when they won. Mercedes McCambridge was 107 days older than Olivia de Havilland.
Other cases of both winning actresses born less than one year apart: 1945 Joan Crawford and Anne Revere, 1957 Joanne Woodward and Miyoshi Umeki, 1999 Hillary Swank and Angelina Jolie.
what movie is the BONN movie?
I got 11 out of 24, or 58% according to GoldDerby (God what an annoyingly designed system they have!). I did think Kate was going to join Leo up there, and I picked Stallone, and George Miller for Director.
Very very happy for the upsets, though. Keep surprising us, Academy!
I am in love with Rylance's win. I want to kiss his win on the lips.
I only got 16/24 this year, which means for the fourth straight year my correct predictions have gone down. (That said, I still won the pool at my Oscar party; everyone else did poorly this year, too.)
I'd guessed 20/24 at the 2013 ceremony, then 18/24, then 17/24, and then this year 16/24. Are the Oscars getting less predictable for other folks too, or am I just slipping?
"as we learned again last night with Sly, puts you at a disadvantage"
Rylance was hardly playing somebody as well-known and recognizable as Hawkins or Thatcher or even Gerda Wegener.
I believe the lady who co-won for the EX MACHINA effects is only the second ever female winner of that category (for when you get to that category). Also, most Australians ever (Sixel was born in South Africa, I think).
@Sean c. & @Edward L: William Wyler did direct acting winners in three consecutive movies: Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives and The Heiress. He did make some war documentaries in between, but when it comes to narrative features, Wyler is equal to Hooper in that regard. In fact, he even surpasses him, because the three movies mentioned yielded 5 Oscars winning performances. Surely that record won't ever be beaten. Of course Francis Ford Coppola could and should have joined that elusive club in 1972-1974 but the actor who should have won in 1974 (The Conversation's Gene Hackman) wasn't even nominated!
Dieter: Thanks! I'd noticed the documentaries but stupidly didn't think to discount them. I might have known Wyler had done it! Well done for spotting.
I can't agree on Hackman, though! He's good in The Conversation, but Nicholson, Pacino, Carney and FInney were all, in my opinion, better that year!
This is also the second consecutive year where the powercouple, Liev and Naomi starred in Best Picture winning movie, and both costarred with Keaton!
Apparently I am very good at predicting the actress nominees and the actor winners.
So sad for Rampling and Winslet.
Here's an interesting stat: This is the third year in a row in which three of the four acting winners are first-time nominees (and for the second year in a row, the fourth winner was someone who was overdue).
The Danish contingent can take comfort in the fact that Sweden and Denmark both have three Foreign Language Film Oscar wins. Sweden have had fourteen nominated films, but Denmark are only one behind them with thirteen.
Gentleman's Agreement, which won Best Picture, was about journalism.