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Predicting the Academy
Awards
By Rich Drees
Predicting what films the members of the Motion Picture Academy of
Arts And Sciences will vote to bestow the Academy Awards upon is a
bit like herding kittens. While it may be easy and glib to make
sweeping generalizations about how “the Academy ” bestows its annual
awards as if it was a single, united body, one should remember that
there are actually over 6,000 voting members with over 6,000
differing opinions on which films deserve top honors for the various
chosen categories.
Still, as with any set of data compiled over time, some trends do
become apparent and the Academy Awards are no exception. But these
trends aren’t 100 percent and strict reliance on them, for say those
looking to beat their office Oscar pool, may not be the
wisest course. There are always surprises each year at the awards
ceremony and that, of course, is have the fun of watching the show.
Of course these trends can change over the course of the decades as
the Academy’s membership has changed. For most of my analysis of the
winners, I’ve
tried to concentrate not so much on the Awards’ 76-year history as
how the Academy has voted over the past 15 to 20 years.
One constant the can almost always be relied upon is the Academy
leaning towards the conservative side. For all the lip service that
may be given about how the Academy Awards are to honor excellence in
film making, they are more apt to behave like they did in 2002 and
give an Oscar to the likes of Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind
rather than a maverick director with a unique vision like David
Lynch, who was nominated the same year as Howard for his nightmarish
Mulholland Drive. The Academy’s conservatism was never more
clearly evident than in 1976 when the feel good, underdog triumphant
story Rocky beat far more cynical and radical films like
Network, Bound For Glory, All The President’s Men
and Taxi Driver for the year’s Best Picture Oscar.
(Note: Any year referenced is the year the award was presented and
the not the year the film was released, hence Lord Of The Rings:
Return Of The King is referenced as winning in 2004, though the
film was released in 2003.)
Best Picture
There are many competing theories for the prediction of the winner
of the Best Picture Academy Award. Some have merit, some don’t.
“The longest picture usually wins the Academy Award.” An interesting
theory, though in actuality the odds of the Best Picture winner
being the longest of all the nominated films has historically been
less than 50%. The average length of a Best Picture winner in the
1990s is 152 minutes. For the first half of the current decade it’s
an average of 145 minutes. Oddly enough, though the average length
of the winner has shortened, the percentage of lengthiest films
winning has risen slightly. Over the last ten years, 5 films that
won Best Picture were the longest film out of that year's nominees-
Braveheart (1995), The English Patient (1996), Titanic
(1997), Gladiator (2001) and Lord Of The Ring: Return Of
The King (2004).
Some may claim that the results for 2002 and 2003’s Academy Awards
may be skewed by the presence of the first two installments of Peter
Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy. For such a mammoth
production so skillfully executed it became fait accompli at
the time that the trilogy would be recognized with Oscar gold for
the final installment, The Return Of The King. However, even
removing from consideration the other two installments,
Fellowship Of The Ring and The Two Towers, the next two
longest films in each of those years’ nominees (Gosford Park
and Gangs Of New York, respectively) did not win the Oscar.
A safer bet would be “The shortest nominated film will not win the
Academy Award.” The Academy tends to favor large, sprawling epics,
mammoth productions that require the strong hand and vision of their
directors to realize. Only two films in the history of the awards
ran under 100 minutes- Annie Hall (1977) and Driving Miss
Daisy (1989). Since 1990, the only picture with the shortest run
time of all the nominees to win Best Picture was Chicago in
2003.
Also, don’t count on comedies bringing home the Best Picture honor.
In the history of the Awards only six comedies, excluding musicals
with some comedic elements, have won the Oscar- It Happened One
Night (1934), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Going
My Way (1944), The Apartment (1960), Tom Jones
(1963), The Sting (1973) and Annie Hall (1977).
However, if you’re looking for the most sure fire way to predict
which film will win the Best Picture Oscar, look no further than the
Best Director.
Best Director
It is generally assumed that the Best Picture and Best Director
awards go hand in hand, the same film winning both. The most
accurate indicator for Best Director is usually considered to be the
Director’ s Guild of America’s award. Since 1948, the Directors
Guild of America has given its own awards out honoring excellence in
direction of film, television and commercials. Between 1970 and
2000, the two organizations disagreed only once a decade on the
year’s best film director. In 1972, the DGA awarded Frances Ford
Coppola their award for The Godfather, while Bob Fosse won
the Academy Award for directing Cabaret. In 1986, Steven
Spielberg won the DGA award for The Color Purple, but didn’t
’t even receive an Academy Award nomination. Ron Howard won the DGA
in 1995 for Apollo 13, but lost the Oscars for both direction
and picture to Mel Gibson ’s five-statue Braveheart sweep.
However, starting with the 2001 awards season, things get a little
dicey. Whereas the Directors Guild honored Ang Lee for his work on
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Best Director Oscar went
to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic. Rob Marshall, honored by
the DGA for Chicago in 2003, would be passed over for the
Oscar in favor of Roman Polanski for his film The Pianist.
However, whether this is just a statistical anomaly or a major shift
in how the average Academy voter casts their ballot remains to be
seen.
In the past 50 years, the best picture/ best director awards have
only split 8 times- in 1956 (Around The World In 80 Days/
George Stevens (Giant )), 1967 (In The Heat Of The Night/
Mike Nichols (The Graduate)), 1972 (The Godfather/ Bob
Fosse (Cabaret)), 1981 (Chariots Of Fire/ Warren
Beatty (Reds)), 1989 (Driving Miss Daisy/ Oliver Stone
(Born On The Fourth Of July)), 1998 (Shakespeare In Love/
Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan)), 2001 (Gladiator/
Steven Soderbergh (Traffic)) and 2003 (Chicago/ Roman
Polanski (The Pianist)).
(To be fair, 2001’s split may be chalked up to the fact that
Soderbergh had directed two films that year, Traffic and
Erin Brokovich, both of which were nominated for Best Picture.
It’s thought the dual nominations split Soderbergh’s potential vote
tally in the Best Picture category, allowing Gladiator to
win.)
Best Actor/ Actress
There are several types of roles that seem to generate more Oscar
wins than others. It’s often thought that actors who adopt
convincing accents or portraying a character with a disability are
good bets for Oscar gold. A safer bet would be to lean towards roles
that were based on real people. Out of the 12 acting awards in the
last two years 6 were awarded for performances based on real people
including performances by Jim Broadbent (Iris, 2002), Adrien
Brody (The Pianist, 2003) and Charlize Theron (Monster,
2004).
Although the Screen Actor’s Guild have only been handing out their
Actor award since 1995, they have a fairly decent track record as
Academy Award predictors. In the Supporting Actor and Actress, the
SAG and the Academy were of the same mind 50% of the time, Lead
Actor 60% of the time and Lead Actress 70% of the time.
When analyzing the Supporting Actor category another thing to look
for is a performance that could be considered a lead performance.
Perhaps the best recent example of this kind of crossover occurred
in 2001, when Benicio Del Toro won the Best Actor award from the SAG
while he was nominated in and won the Academy’s Best Supporting
Actor category.
Screenplay
The screenplay category is another award that historically was tied
to the winner of Best Picture. Between 1954 and 1994, the Best
Picture winner also landed the screenplay award 75% of the time.
However, that percentage decreased between 1994 and 2004, with the
Best Picture winner snagging the Best Screenplay award only 50% of
the time. However, looking at the past 20 years, the Best Picture
winner has still won the Best Screenplay award 70% of the time.
However, this method only helps to predict the winner of one of the
two screenplay categories. Looking to the winners of the Writers
Guild of America’s awards offers some help- Over the last 15 years,
the winner of the WGA’s award of best original screenplay went on to
win the same category Oscar 53% of the time, while the winner of the
WGA’s award for best Adapted Screenplay would win the Adapted
Screenplay Academy Award 66% of the time.
Art Direction/Cinematography/Costume Design/Editing
Since all Academy Awards are nominated by Academy members working in
that particular field, it’s no coincidence that the nominees for
many of the behind the scenes categories such as costume design or
art direction often mirror the nominations for the awards the
individual craft guilds give out. However, the Oscars are voted on
by the entire voting body of the Academy, so the winners don’t
always sync up with how the various guilds voted in their own
awards. The Costume Designers and American Society of
Cinematographers choice of award winners only matched the Academy
winners 33% of the time. The Art Directors Guild awards have been
much more in line with what the mainstream Academy voters felt
deserved the Oscar with 62.5% of Guild winners receiving an Academy
Award as well. The award from the American Cinema Editors has the
best track record of matching that year’s Oscar winner at 73% of the
time since 1990.
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