In Contention
By Josh Spiegel
January 18, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
You see, even if we were to ignore the Golden Globes (and some people would say you should, or that they shouldn’t be given any legitimacy within the industry), the industry guilds are announcing their yearly awards, and the pattern is clear: True Grit is being left in the dust. Don’t get me wrong: True Grit is going to get nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars (or, to put it correctly in this time of not officially knowing anything, it is likely to). But based on how the editing and directing guilds go, two very key guilds within this season, Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest film may not be as lucky as Paramount Pictures wants it to be. Both the American Cinema Editors and the Directors Guild of America announced their awards this past week and nominated Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, Inception, and The Social Network.
Of course, with the continued dominance of The Social Network at every single awards show in the history of the world (over the long weekend, it won top honors at both the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards), you have to wonder if it really matters for True Grit to get nominated for Best Director and Best Editing (the latter of which is often a strong predictor of which film will or will not win a Best Picture award) at all. Is The Social Network just going to win every award it’s nominated for at the Oscars? When it won, as an example, the Golden Globe for Best Score, some prognosticators wondered if that meant curtains for the supposed frontrunner, Hans Zimmer’s work for Inception. There are some naysayers who point out, shrewdly, that The Social Network has only won with critics and journalists so far. When the guilds come in, then we’ll know for sure.
When those guilds — including the DGA, ACE, and others — announce their awards, we may be as unsurprised by the winners. What films even stand a chance of sneaking in front of a fictionalized version of Mark Zuckerberg? While I love Inception, and it’s got a realistic chance of being the film with the most Oscar nominations (thanks in no small part to the many below-the-line awards it’s likely to get nods for), it’s not a likely winner. When Christopher Nolan and The Dark Knight were snubbed in 2008, the Academy wanted to cater to the people who thought he and the film were robbed. Those people will have to be content with nominations…hopefully. It’s worth pointing out that Christopher Nolan has been nominated by the DGA twice before, for Memento and The Dark Knight. He’s never gotten an Oscar nomination as a director. Keep that disquieting fact in mind.
If True Grit had found its way into more of the guild awards, I’d say that this remake of a John Wayne Western had a very strong chance of being the surprise victor on Oscar night. One of the key factors you have to consider with the Best Picture voting is that it’s preferential. Among the many Oscar contenders this year, ask yourself only this question: which movie or movies is a voter more likely to not like? My Oscar ballot would not match the likely ten Best Picture nominees, because I found a few of the supposed nominees overrated (why, hello, The Kids Are All Right). True Grit, however, has gotten a lot of love, or at least a lot of like. In the same way that most voters like — but maybe do not love — The King’s Speech, they like or love True Grit. The Best Picture winner may not receive the most number-one votes, but it will receive the most votes.
But the Best Picture winner has to have the guild votes behind it. While it’s not impossible for True Grit to win Best Picture, not having the support of some important guilds is important, because it may foreshadow a lack of trophies on Oscar night. As I write this, nine of the industry guilds have announced their yearly nominees. True Grit has only received nominations from six of them (and one, the Screen Actors Guild, did not nominate the film for Best Ensemble, the equivalent of Best Picture). Two films have received nominations of some kind from all of the guilds: Black Swan and Inception. The Social Network has received almost as many, as has The King’s Speech (which would have received a Writers’ Guild nomination if the film’s screenwriter was a member). True Grit has some support, but potentially not enough.
While you often hear that the acting branch of the Academy is the most fearsome, because of how big it is, that doesn’t mean the combined below-the-line branches (meaning categories such as sound, visual effects, costumes, etc.) couldn’t be just as powerful if they all focus on one film. Now, this whole discussion could be moot if, on February 27th, everyone favors The Social Network. But a movie that you’d assume would get plenty of love, from two well-liked directors with previous Oscars who know how to make a technically excellent movie every time, may be left out in the cold. True Grit is already, by far, the Coens’ highest-grossing film and is one of the highest-grossing films of 2010, but it may walk home with only one Oscar, for its cinematographer, Roger Deakins. What’s worse? That award is the equivalent of a lifetime achievement plaque, since Deakins has never won.
By the time the Oscar nominations are announced in one week, the narrative probably won’t have changed. We’ll have one or two nominations to parse through, a few people who weren’t expected candidates. But by and large, this year’s Oscar season has been pretty boring, even if you are a fan of The Social Network. I am, but there comes a point when it gets a little tiresome to see it win every award under the sun. I don’t doubt that the film deserves its awards, but with each passing day, it wins something else and I slowly try to reengage with a process that seems to have a predestined end. With the Oscar hosts being a strange duo that may crash and burn, or just…not crash and burn, and awards that I could almost predict 100% correctly right now, the excitement is only in hoping something upsets the norm. Fingers crossed, Academy. Fingers crossed.