Notes On The Season: A ‘CODA’ Upset At SAG?; Plus Past Oscar Producers Offer Support To Academy After Latest Controversy Heats Up
A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.
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This Sunday’s SAG Awards mark the beginning of the final phase of this looooooong awards season as the Screen Actors Guild becomes the first of the all important peer-group guild honors to make known its actual choices. If the past is prologue here we should take heed of what they will be saying, too, even if the results aren’t always totally indicative of where Oscar might eventually land — especially since the merger with AFTRA that gives local weatherpersons the same power of the vote as say, Meryl Streep.
SAG is usually good as a precursor in at least three of the individual acting categories, and sometimes even with its Outstanding Cast of a Motion Picture, which if nothing else can bring much needed momentum to the winner since the media loves to equate it with SAG’s version of Best Picture. Recent history has been spotty, in the film categories at least, where last year only supporting winners Daniel Kaluuya and Yuh Jung Youn repeated at the Oscars, making SAG just 2-for-5. But last year was an aberration all around, wasn’t it? In 2020, the guild went 5 for 5 and arguably sent historic Cast winner Parasite on its way to the Best Picture Oscar.
In the past decade, SAG has, at worst, missed only once or twice at most in matching Oscar in the individual categories. It is also at about 50% matching the eventual Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards in its past 10 at-bats. It is, no matter which way you cut it, overall one of the best and most reliable track records forecasting Oscar glory and can provide a much needed boost at a crucial time.
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With that in mind, Oscar frontrunner The Power of the Dog has an impressive three acting nominations from SAG, but missed somehow on a Cast nomination leaving the door open for another Oscar Best Picture nominee to walk through. Most likely that will be Dog’s biggest Oscar rival Belfast. The caution there is it surprisingly only received a single other nomination, for Catriona Balfe in Supporting, which could mean less than expected support and thus lead to Sundance darling CODA becoming a popular history-making winner for its largely deaf cast — and what a moment that would be. The much admired King Richard is also the only largely Black cast in the mix, giving it an edge for diversity, and Don’t Look Up might score with actors not least because it has such a starry and awards-magnet ensemble. Ironically House of Gucci, with a similarly big-name ensemble, is the only nominee without a corresponding Oscar nod for Best Picture (it only is mentioned at the Academy for Makeup and Hairstyling) but was the most impressive in terms of its overall SAG nominations. It would be a shocker though if it pulled off a win here. I have a hunch it will be CODA for the upset against Belfast.
WHICH ACTORS WILL SAG CROWN?
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Will Smith is the favorite for Lead Actor, though Andrew Garfield, so visible in not only his nominated Tick, Tick…Boom! as well as in The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Spider-Man: No Way Home, might sneak by him despite that Cast nomination Smith’s King Richard has. Still, Will has the heat, on paper at least, so a loss here could be harmful to his march to the Dolby. Nicole Kidman is likely to take Lead Actress since actors love seeing actors playing other actors, and she did it as well as it can be done in Being the Ricardos. The spoiler might be the Oscar-snubbed Lady Gaga. I will stick with Kidman, but the Best Actress race, as at the Oscars, is full of landmines.
The opportunity to make Troy Kotsur the first-ever deaf person to win at SAG is well nigh irresistible, and only Dog’s critical fave Kodi Smit-McPhee stands in his way here, though as in the Cast category I think SAG might follow its heart. In-person Q&As with the CODA cast last weekend were so crowded that some SAG members had to stand in the aisle, plus the post-receptions were packed.
As for Supporting Actress, it isn’t looking like it will produce an upset meaning favorite Ariana DeBose of West Side Story will prevail, but Dog veteran Kirsten Dunst will give her a run for her money. (See Dunst talk with me about being on the awards trail in today’s edition of The Actor’s Side.) Dunst, McPhee and Benedict Cumberbatch are the hopes to keep Dog from going winless at SAG and losing a little momentum (that can easily be picked up again two weekends later when DGA, BAFTA and Critics Choice come in with their picks in the same 24-hour time period), but it seems entirely possible it could fall behind lesser Oscar rivals (it has a leading 12 Oscar nominations) in this particular contest. We shall see on Sunday.
As for SAG, check out Deadline’s live blog during the show where I will give the blow by blow, followed by a wrap-up analysis later in the evening that will also feature the TV winners and an early indicator of Emmys and a possible historic win for Netflix’s Squid Game.
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With SAG the first of a very dense lineup of guild awards ceremonies, the endgame is still the most important and that is at the Oscars, which doesn’t even open voting until March 17. So this 2 1/2-week period where the industry’s voice is finally heard is usually crucial and can tip the scales. Between this weekend and the Oscars on March 27 there are no less than 25, count ’em, 25 movie awards ceremonies. And just remember the year The Social Network swept the first half of the season winning all the critics awards, Globes, etc., only to come to a crashing halt at the Producers Guild awards where The King’s Speech pulled an upset and never looked back.
OSCAR’S CONTROVERSY DU JOUR
As for the Oscars, which seems to be having a controversy weekly these days, the good news is the Oscar watching party at the new Academy Museum sold out instantly at $75 a pop, meaning there are still those among us who are devoted Oscar fans. However, the Academy’s decision to relegate eight crafts and shorts categories to a pre-tape before the broadcast has, predictably, brought predictable angst from within and outside the Academy — just as it did in 2019 when AMPAS tried the same thing to shorten the show and hopefully boost ratings, only to be forced to abandon the idea due to the outcry among nominees and others. I am not sure who would have thought the same reaction wasn’t going to be in store after going down the exact same rabbit hole, but indeed objections have been fast and furious from some quarters. BUT not from everyone! I found some encouraging support for the idea from those who have previously served on the front lines of Oscar broadcasts, and certainly are valued for their expertise.
TOP PRODUCERS OFFER COUNSEL AND SUPPORT TO ACADEMY
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Veteran multiple Emmy-winning producer of live shows Don Mischer, a master who knows this game as well as anyone who has ever played it, emailed me Wednesday and said this (for which he gave me permission to print):
“For the three years I was involved with the Oscars, I met with the Academy Board each year urging them to consider pre-taping some Awards (like the Tonys) an hour before going on the air to streamline the show and possibly help us get off the air on time. But at that time the Board said “no way.” I also suggested presenting one Oscar during each of the 3:30 commercial breaks. There are 14 commercial breaks in the show. If you presented 7 Oscars during seven commercial breaks, it would make the show better for the live audience, and for viewers around the world as well. Glad the Academy has been able make this change and I hope it works.”
Surfing the web I found this note of support offered in a response to a Facebook post from a journalist. It came from another past producer, Lynette Howell Taylor, who helped shepherd the 92nd Oscars in 2022: “It’s gonna be okay. I promise. The media loves to make these things sound like a catastrophe…but the difference to the home audience will be miniscule (like editing out the boring walk to the stage from the seats!)…and the nominees will still get the same experience of hearing their nomination announced as part of the live show, and the winner will still have their moment in the live broadcast. We need these changes. For the sake of all of us who rely on the Academy for making movies we love or covering movies we love…something has to change…I’ve heard ALL the various ideas and I’ve been deep inside the specificity- let’s give it a shot to work! Let’s keep us all doing what we love.”
When Bill Condon and Larry Mark produced the landmark 81st Oscar show in 2009, their innovations trumped the need to get creative with actual categories. But they did go to the Academy with the idea of putting the shorts categories on the red-carpet show that precedes the main telecast. Of course it was a non-starter, but now times are clearly different and the red line AMPAS would never allow producers to cross is being red-lined itself.
WILL OSCAR STICK TO ITS NEW COURSE?
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Still, it appears there may be some disappointed nominees who are circling the wagons, notably the music contenders with rumblings of some sort of very visible protest after the news that Original Score is one of the categories pushed to pre-broadcast taping. Already the similarly affected Film Editors have been vocal, but how far and how successful any of the dissenters will be in getting the ear of the Academy and producer Will Packer — who seems to be leaning towards a “populist” Oscar show from what I am hearing — is to be determined.
It isn’t that these artists are not sympathetic to the Academy’s plight of dwindling ratings, but will this move the needle in any significant way? It is hard to imagine how, since all these categories are going to be in telecast even in truncated form. And many of these nominees are public about feeling just a little less loved despite the best efforts of the Academy to convince them otherwise. In his Wednesday email to nominees and members, Academy [pesident David Rubin promised, “every awarded filmmaker and artist in every category will still have the celebratory ‘Oscar moment’ they deserve on the stage of the Dolby, facing an enrapt audience.” One veteran Oscar voter asked me if that meant “seat fillers.” The Academy hasn’t yet offered specifics on the logistics of all this, considering there is a red-carpet preshow usually leading directly into the Oscars. So how will all this work? As they say, watch this space.
It doesn’t help that the Academy’s social media arm devised a populist #OscarsFanFavorite contest that will take up an unspecified amount of time on the show, and as reported here last week is continuing to see block voting on Twitter (up to 20 votes for each person daily, ala ABC’s American Idol) pushing unexpected potential winners like Cinderella, Army of the Dead or anything by Zack Snyder, and Johnny Depp’s little-seen indie drama Minamata into genuine contention due to their committed and apparently well-organized cyber fanbase. Can one of them steal the thunder from the movie the Academy obviously and clearly hopes to celebrate onstage, Spider-Man: No Way Home, the year’s biggest hit by far, which landed only a single Oscar nom for Visual Effects (and perhaps a key reason that category remains untouched on the live show)?
TIME OUT FOR EMMYS
I have personal experience in this area from when I served for six years as a governor on the Television Academy board, where my co-governor Margaret Nagle and I represented the writers branch. Like the Oscars, the Emmys were dealing with declining ratings from an all-time low for the 2008 show, and we were trying to figure out how to stop the bleeding on the 2009 show (produced by Mischer). Dumping two of the four guaranteed writing as well as directing categories on the Primetime Emmys was part of the “time shifting” solution devised, almost identical to what is proposed by Oscar this year since it also involved pre-taping eight categories overall.
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Although the idea was a no-brainer from a producing standpoint since viewers just want to see stars anyway, writers and directors cherished their once-a-year primetime recognition at the Emmys. Knowing that caving in would be a slippery slope — at least for writers, who are insecure to begin with — we fought it to the core, devising a plan with the Writers Guild to cancel the existing contract with the Academy that allowed free use of any film clips (which if the fee was not waived could cost up to $1 million or more), taking out an ad in the trades signed by 100 heavyweight showrunners in solidarity, and making sure an information packet was slipped under the hotel doors of every critic gathered for the summer TCA tour in Pasadena where one of the panels was going to be promoting the Emmy show that year. The time-shifting questions raised by the assembled press dominated that panel. The new policy was soon reversed and the Academy put out a statement: “This decision was made to mend relationships within the television community and to allow executive producer Don Mischer to focus his full attention on producing the creative elements in the telecast.”
Whether, unlike 2009 at the Emmys or 2019 with the Oscars, this is the year this long-gestating idea gets its “shot,” as Taylor puts it, remains to be seen. A little more insight and clarification is what is really needed from the Academy in order to ease the angst for some out there.
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