New Oscar Records (via the 94th Ceremony!)

We trust that you'll let us know if we got anything wrong. Feel free to add things you noticed in the comments 

We've reviewed the Oscar ceremony, but we also have to talk records broken or interesting trivia. CODA broke a ton of records (not all of them flattering) by taking Best Picture with just three nominations. But there's a lot more than just that... 

list of winners if you haven't seen that

PICTURE

• CODA is now the lowest grossing film of all time to win the Best Picture prize with a recorded gross of $1 million (globally). It's also, not coincidentally the first film distributed by a streaming service to ever win Best Picture. The previous lowest grossing winners since modern box office tabulations began were The Hurt Locker which had earned $17 million in US domestic release ($49.2 globally). Nomadland, which arrived during the pandemic, was something of a hybrid between theatrical and streaming earned just $3.7 in domestic theatrical release ($39.4 globally). 

• CODA is the first film *of the modern era* to win Best Picture with only 3 nominations. All others had 5 or more (Departed and Green Book both won with just 5). Though Grand Hotel won the Best Picture Oscar on its sole nomination, there were fewer categories in the early years. "The Modern Era" is a debatable concept, depending on how old you are or where you draw the line, but we think of it as the time frame where the award categories we are all used to now were all finally in place. That dates back to 1981 when the Makeup and Hairstyling category joined the fray and Visual Effects (which had a much longer history) was about to settle into (mostly) regular nomination patterns. The "Expanded Best Picture Era", which is more accurate to how things are now, though the data is quite small for "trivia" if you will, began in 2009. 

• CODA is the first film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar without having received either a Editing or a Directing nomination (since the editing category came into existence). 10 Films have previously won Best Picture without an editing nomination: It Happened One Night (1934), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Hamlet (1948), Marty (1955), Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Godfather Part II (1974), Annie Hall (1977), Ordinary People (1980) and Birdman (2014). 3 previous films have won Best Picture without an Directing nomination: Wings (1928), Grand Hotel (1932), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and Argo (2012)

• CODA is the first film about deaf people to win Best Picture. Other films about deaf people have been nominated for Best Picture including Children of a Lesser God (1986) and The Sound of Metal (2020).

ACTRESSES

From Jessica Chastain's instagram

• Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) is the first Best Actress winner playing a evangelical preacher. Burt Lancaster won Best Actor playing an evangelical preacher in Elmer Gantry (1960). 

• Ariana DeBose becomes the first female member of the LGBTQ+ community to win an acting Oscar. Jodie Foster (1988/1991) and Linda Hunt (1983) were not "out" as lesbians and Angelina Jolie (1999) was not out as "bisexual" at the time of their Oscar wins. The only previous "out" actor to win was Sir John Gielgud (Arthur, 1981)

• Ariana DeBose's win makes "Anita" the first female role to ever bring two different actors Oscars. The only other roles were male roles, The Joker (Ledger/Phoenix) and Vito Corleone (Brando/De Niro)

ACTORS

• Will Smith is the first actor to win the Oscar after slapping someone live on the Oscars (but more on this later obviously)

•  Troy Kotsur is the first deaf male actor to win and the first male acting winner for a role using American Sign Language. The other winners whose performances were in ASL were in the actress categories: Jane Wyman (1948), Patty Duke (1962), and Marlee Matlin (1986), the latter of whom is the only previous deaf acting winner. One previous man won for a British Sign Language performance, John Mills in Ryan's Daughter (1970).

CRAFT AWARDS

• Billie Eilish (born in 2001) is the first Oscar winner born in the 21st century! The second youngest living winner is Finneas (her co-winning brother who was born in 1997). Interestingly enough the third youngest living Oscar winner is H.E.R. who was born in 1997 and won last season in the same category, Best Original Song. She's one month older than Finneas.

• Billie Eilish and Finneas are the first brother-sister siblings to win an Oscar together. Pairs of brothers have won together in several categories together but never a brother/sister. Because Hollywood is often a family business, several other siblings have won though not together including the most legendary brother/sister movie stars, Warren Beatty & Shirley Maclaine. 

• With 13 nominations and another loss, Diane Warren extends her reign as the most nominated songwriter never to have won an Oscar. Her nearest rival in "always losing" is a VERY distant second. That would be the songwriter Mack David (1912-1993) who was nominated 8 times including for "Bibbidy-Bobbidi-Boo" from Cinderella and the title song from Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. 

• Hans Zimmer now holds the record of longest time inbetween wins for a composer at 27 years for The Lion King (1994) to Dune (2021). The previous record was held by Henry Mancini for Breakfast at Tiffanys (1961) to Victor/Victoria (1982)

NOT A RECORD BUT RARE / INTERESTING

• "No Time To Die" is the third consecutive James Bond song to win Best Original Song. This is a truly bizarre development since, for literally 50 years (1962-2011), Oscar voters all but ignored Bond tunes (many of which were deserving) to the point that they were even rarely nominated.

• Jane Campion is the second consecutive woman and third woman overall to win Best Director (after Kathryn Bigelow for 2009 and Chloe Zhao for 2020). She's also the only woman to ever be nominated more than once for the category. She's the second New Zealander to win the category after Peter Jackson. 

• As previously discussed during the nomination period, Sir Kenneth Branagh holds the records for nominations in the most amount of categories (8). He finally won his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Belfast. 

• Power of the Dog is the first film to win Best Director ONLY since Mike Nichols took the prize for his work on The Graduate (1967).

• Dune won six awards, the most of the night. It is not remotely the first film to win the most Oscars at a ceremony but still lose Best Picture... but year in and year out we learn that Cabaret (1972) is probably never going to lose its record of 8 wins without taking Best Picture. 

• Billie Eilish and Finneas are only the second pair of siblings to win an Oscar in Best Original Song. The first was the Sherman Brothers who won for "Chim Chim Cheree" from Mary Poppins (1964). 

• Judi Dench lost her 8th bid at the age of 87 but her nomination sure is notable. She is the third oldest acting nominee ever after Christopher Plummer (who was 88) for All the Money in the World and Gloria Stuart who was 87 (but closer to 88) for Titanic. No actor in their 90s has ever been nominated.

• CODA is only the seventh Best Picture winner to ever triumph in ALL of its nominations. The others were: Wings (1928, 2/2), Grand Hotel (1932, 1/1), It Happened One Night (1954, 5/5), Gigi (1958, 9/9), The Last Emperor (1987, 9/9), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, 11/11).

• Best Picture champs used to win more Oscars but the days of sweeps or near-sweeps seem long gone. We think this is good news as longtime proponents of spreading the wealth since one film is rarely the best of everything in a given year. CODA continues the 21st century tradition of Best Picture winning 4 or fewer Oscars. Here are the past 22 years...

CODA (2021) - 3
NOMADLAND (2020) - 3
PARASITE (2019) - 4
GREEN BOOK (2018) - 3
THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017) - 4
MOONLIGHT (2016) - 3
SPOTLIGHT (2015) - 2
BIRDMAN (2014) - 4
12 YEARS A SLAVE (2013) - 3
ARGO (2012) - 3
THE ARTIST (2011) -5
THE KING'S SPEECH (2010) - 4
THE HURT LOCKER (2009) - 6
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008) - 8
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) - 4
THE DEPARTED (2006) - 4
CRASH (2005) - 3
MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004) - 4
LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE KING (2003) - 11
CHICAGO (2002) -6
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) - 4
GLADIATOR (2000) - 5

Awards Yet To Be Broken

Only 'celebrity' category remaining that has never been won by someone in their 20s
Director

Only 'celebrity' category remaining that has never been won by someone in their 80s
Director, Supporting Actress 

Only non-gendered category that has never been won by a woman
Cinematography. And that didn't change this year with Ari Wegner's work on Power of the Dog losing to Greig Fraser's work on Dune

Only categories remaining that have never been won by a Black person
Director, Cinematography, Editing, International Feature, and Visual Effects

Only categories remaining that have never been won by an Asian person
Lead Actress

Only categories remaining that have never been won by a Latinx person
Lead Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Visual Effects, Documentary Feature, Animated Feature 

Only 'celebrity' categories remaining that have never been won by an out member of the LGBTQ+ community
Lead Actress and Lead Actor. (We're making progress here but there's a long way to go) 

Related Posts

• Oscar Night Review
• All 20 Acting Clips Ranked
• Best Dressed Supporting Actress
• The Slap: Toxic Masculinity at the Oscars
• New Trivia via the latest Oscar race
• Complete List of Winners

Comments

[Joanne]

Re this point from Edward L: Dune with 6 Oscars, becomes the film to win the most Oscars without a Directing nomination.

I could only attribute the lack of a directing nom to the fact that Denis was being punished for making only half a movie and that they will award him generously when Dune Part 2 turns out to be a triumph.

[jps1984]

@Joanne - the question I'm fascinated by is what would have happened if Villeneuve and/or Heder had been nominated for Best Director. Clearly, PotD was not as beloved as we thought - a) could Denis have won, given how much they DID love Dune? or b) given CODA's sweep of their nominations, could that have carried over to Heder in the Director category? My hunch is that Campion still would have eked out a win, but it probably would have been much closer.

[Edwin]

@jps1984- I agree Campion would probably still have won, but it’s an interesting thought for sure. I think Villeneuve especially would have given her some real competition and it’s at least possible he could have pulled off an upset had he been nominated. It definitely seems like The Power of the Dog divided the Academy pretty sharply, and as it played out, Jane Campion’s win unfortunately feels less like the assertive victory we assumed it would be and more like a combination of career Oscar and win by default.

[Joanne]

@jps1984 mmm the question being why these two Directors from obviously admired films were not nominated. As I stated I can see what the justification for why Denis wasn’t nominated may be but why wasn’t Sian Heder nominated? I can only imagine it was because CODA was originally only seen as a light weight BP nom and it wasn’t until later that they turned against PotD. She did win for adapted screenplay so maybe if she had been nominated, say over PTA who seems to me to be the obvious sub out, she may very well have gone on to win. Maybe she wasn’t nominated because Campion took the “female director” slot and maybe it was Campion not PTA who was lucky to be here. So yes, there is sadly something in what @Edwin said - Campion’s win may have been a default win for a female nominee with a stellar career and not as a reflection for much Academy love of PotD. What a disappointing thought.

[Travis C]

Apologies if this has been mentioned in another comment (I am currently too time-poor to read through them all), but wanted to put it here:

The first time a woman has won Best Director in a Picture-Director split. Even more notable in the fact that the Best Picture winner was directed by a woman as well.

[Peter]

Joanne, I don't think the ranked-choice voting was decisive here. Adapted Screenplay is not done by ranked choice and CODA managed to defeat Power of the Dog there as well. It was just the Academy's preference!

[brookesboy]

Ariana DeBose is now the youngest living actor with an Oscar, five months younger than Jennifer Lawrence.

***

Peter--thanks for all the great trivia. Love it. Just one correx: Tatum O'Neal has this record.

[brookesboy]

Lady Gaga must be one of the youngest performers to present Best Picture. Her 36th birthday was yesterday. I haven't checked this, but I think the only younger presenters would be Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews.

[Frank Zappa]

@ brookesboy

I believe he meant age right now not age at the time of the win. DeBose is 31. Tatum is 58.

(The only Oscar winners younger than DeBose are Billie Eilish & Finneas, H.E.R. and Sam Smith, all in Original Song.)

Also: Eddie Murphy was 27 when he presented Best Picture in 1988.