What I've Learned from the Oscar Viewing Project

Well, we have officially come to an historic moment on The Many Rantings of John today.  Over the past twelve years (okay, if you go WAY back this blog technically has some articles from when I wrote them in college, but as a rule you should avoid those as they aren't very good so let's just count since 2012) I have written about politics, movies, Oscars, literature, my dating life-there's a lot of stuff even I don't remember on this blog.  That has amassed to, as of today, 4000 articles.  Yes this, my friends, is my 4000th article on this blog.

I make no money from this, and sometimes am a little worried that it's only me writing this into the void (comments, messages, & encouragement is always seen & welcomed, so if you're out there, please make yourself known as I cherish when I get those reminders), but it's one of my favorite things to do.  I have a lot of unusual hobbies, some of which my poor IRL friends have had to deal with me jabbering on about for years, so this blog is such a nice refuge for me for getting those thoughts out, and in the process, I've made a few new IRL (and just virtual world) friends who share these passions!

I wanted to celebrate this occasion, and I didn't entirely know what to do for it.  I can't write an article about both politics & film without it feeling a bit convoluted, so I decided that we're just going to lean into the movie side a bit (politics, I love you, but you've gotten a lot of article-love lately so this feels fair), and use this article to honor the recent accomplishment we achieved for the Oscar Viewing Project.  We are currently profiling the Oscar contests of 1931-32, our 24th season, but we just finished all of the 2000-22 races, which means that as of today we are caught up with all of the finished Oscar races of the 21st Century.  I thought it would be fun to use our 4000th article to talk about a few of the lessons I've learned from doing these 23 seasons of the series, and clear up some misconceptions about the Oscars that have come into clearer focus as a result of writing this.

1. Very Few Performers are "Overdue" for an Oscar

When I'm done with the entire series (which will be a while-I've got 70+ seasons left to go), I'll be able to further prove this, but one of the things that I realized when I was writing this is how often people use words like "overdue" without actually meaning them.  Look, for example, at this year's Oscar race-I have heard people claim online that they're shocked or appalled that actors like Paul Giamatti & Cillian Murphy have never won Academy Awards.  With no disrespect intended...for what?  Giamatti's best performance was Sideways, and his lack of a nomination for it is surprising (though, to be fair, I didn't nominate him either), but is that a super egregious snub worth complaining about for twenty years?  Do you really give him the Oscar over some of the other contenders that year (like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator or Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)?  I think people just assume there's a limitless amount of statues, and that everyone who is a good actor will get one, but as we'll talk about for this article, that's simply not the case.

One of the nice things about doing this, and holding myself accountable, is that I now have a list of "whom I would nominate" and can do some stats work (I love stats work!) to back up my thesis that most actors are not "overdue."  Let's start with "overdue for a win" and put some rules around it.  If someone is "overdue" the assumption should be that they've won your personal awards at least twice.  Missing once is understandable (we all have our personal tastes), and we should grant Oscar a bit of grace there...and you can't expect Oscar to pick someone just because you nominated them a bunch if you yourself haven't given them a statue.  In the 23 seasons I've done of the show (obviously not all-encompassing, but a pretty large swing of time), I have given 2+ gold medals (my equivalent of a win) to 108 people.  The most-nominated without a win would be Richard Linklater, whom I have given six statues to (Director & Picture in 2014, Screenplay statues in 2004/2013/2014/2016), and yes, I would say comfortably at this point that Linklater is "overdue" for an Oscar.  Six personal awards and he hasn't won a single statue-this feels like one I can claim without much cringe.

But the list gets smaller the further down you go.  Let's look at acting winners because there's less of them (the large number of 108 is driven by repetitive teams taking multiple trophies for Lord of the Rings in the tech categories).  I only have 13 people winning 2+ acting trophies from 2000-22, twelve winning a pair and Nicole Kidman (Best Actress in 2001, 2002, & 2010) getting three.  Of these 13, all but three also have Oscars, albeit not all of them (like Rachel Weisz or Joaquin Phoenix) have them for the same performances I gave them statues.  The only four figures I'd qualify as "overdue" in this scenario are Michael Fassbender, Colin Farrell, Clive Owen, & Andy Serkis, all of whom have two gold medals from me and have never won an Oscar.  But that's an extremely short list (and honestly, none of those feel insane given none of them are over sixty yet, and therefore still have time).  The way people crow about "overdue" wins online, you'd think Oscar was purposefully ruining the lives of dozens of actors for them, but if you only give out a small number of statues each year-you're going to end up with a bunch of people who don't have them.  That's why they're an honor in the first place.

2. Please Stop Overusing Snub

This moves us into the next logical conversation-nominations.  Surely the way that people seem to lose their minds over something like Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie missing for Barbie, there must be a huge epidemic of under-nominated performances, and even more so than the wins, this feels like a specious situation.

I tweet this every year, but I do think it's bizarre how people forget how to count to five during awards season.  There are more than five good performances in a category each year, there's more than five good songs, five good directors, etc.  If you want to complain about a lack of a nomination for someone, it needs to be someone you're willing to put in your Top 5; you cannot replace Annette Bening in Nyad with Margot Robbie...and Natalie Portman, Greta Lee, & Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.  You get five-that's it.  I found one poster who had tweeted four different snubbed Best Actress nominees as an Academy crime this year on nominations morning, which means (presumably) that either they can't count to five or they thought Emma Stone or Lily Gladstone should've been kicked out, because that's how it works.  Doing this exercise, there are definitely performances I loved that I ended up kicking out as a nominee in tough years (Brie Larson in Room comes to mind, as does Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?)...but if you only get five, in a good year there's going to be sacrifices.  Again-give Oscar a break.

In the larger conversation of "how can X have never been nominated before?" we learn a similar lesson.  Taking Cillian Murphy again-he's a fine actor, but I'd never (to date) actually put him in my Top 5.  There's certainly a number of performances of his I like, but if you're going to throw out the dreaded "snub" word, you should be able to do the homework and show you'd have nominated him before.  So similar to winning, let's assume here that you need to have gotten at least 3 nominations (they're easier to come by, so we're upping the ante) before you can claim with a straight face that you've been "snubbed" and it's a crime you've never been nominated.  There are 315 people who have been nominated 3+ times by me (again, those tech categories rack it up for certain contenders), and that's way too unwieldy of a number for me to cross-reference with Oscar for this article (did you see the note above where I said I make no money from this?), so let's focus on the 41 actors who have 3+ nominations to make it easier to make a point.  Of these 41, while there are certainly some (like Kate Winslet) whom I gave more nominations to, in terms of actors who have never gotten an Oscar nomination that are sitting at 3+ there are again just four: Andy Serkis, Oscar Isaac, Michael B. Jordan, & Logan Lerman (it has become apparent during this project that my tastes in female acting lineup more consistently with Oscar's than male acting, likely due to the latter's over-reliance on biopics, which is one of my least favorite genres but Oscar loves them).  I am comfortable with saying that these four have been "snubbed" and should have an Oscar nomination by now.  But again-that's it.  Not a laundry list of 40+ actors, certainly not multiple actors in a given year.  Just these four from the past 23 years stand out as actors that Oscar should've given more attention toward.

3. You Need to Value a Nomination

There's a cliche when it comes to the Oscars that is said so often I sometimes think that people forget it's true: it's an honor just to be nominated.  This is said by people on the campaign trail, trying to stave off "what are you going to do if you win?" style questions, and let's be fair-everyone wants to win.  But most people can't, and so we should actually treasure when certain performers get a nomination, even if it's the only one in their career, because there are lots of great actors who will never get nominated.  Like I said-I wouldn't have nominated Cillian Murphy before 2023 (and, spoiler alert-I wouldn't have cited him in 2023 either), but he's a good actor.  If you have a good actor getting their only nomination, don't take that as a slight as to why they never won, but instead celebrate that they got nominated at all.

One actor who comes to mind in this argument is Emily Blunt.  Blunt is a fine actor, one who has given a lot of really strong (and diverse-she's not afraid of any genre) performances.  She got her first nomination in 2023 for Oppenheimer (not a performance I'm a fan of, but whatever), and the chorus was largely "I can't believe she's never been nominated before."  2000-23 encompasses the entirety of Blunt's career, so I can say with confidence that I'm including all of her work when I give my vote total for her, and I...nominated her once, for 2006's The Devil Wears Prada.  That she won for me adds a bit of push on this, but she's a prime example of someone with a lot of good performances who just didn't make it in my Top 5.  Now, she might've made it in your top five's more than that (we're not all going to have uniform "snubs"), but I suspect most people complaining about this aren't doing their homework-was it a case where Blunt actually made your Top 5's for a lot of years, or is she just a good actress with a lot of awards bait you're surprised never made it?  If it's the latter, "snub" is the wrong word...what you're looking for is "surprise."

Part of the problem with considering the nomination "its own reward" is that certain people get them like free mints at the Olive Garden.  Diane Warren has basically started a cottage industry of being nominated for increasingly mediocre movies/songs in the past few years (for the record, during this time frame, I did nominate Warren, but for a far more appropriate two songs).  Feeling the need to over-nominate figures like Warren or Meryl Streep every time they're up-at-bat makes the pool smaller, and makes it so that there's less room for more people to get their moment-in-the-sun.  This doesn't mean you don't end up with certain people with tons of nominations (I gave John Williams 13 nominations during this time frame, just a few shy of Oscar's 17 nominations), but it does mean that you have to earn the citations.

4. Old Age Awards Are Not a Great Idea

All of this connects back to one of the main tenets of the OVP that I've had while working through it: don't give out "old age" awards.  There's a trend at the Oscars, particularly for the higher-profile acting & directing categories though it sneaks into tech's on occasion too, to give out career achievement statues (i.e. old age awards) to certain people less for a performance and more for a culmination of their career.  This isn't the worst reason to give out a statue, mind you.  It sometimes feels strange or like you missed an opportunity to honor a legend like Paul Newman or Henry Fonda, and so you take the opportunity that's given to you, even if it's questionable whether they deserved it for that particular performance.  But it causes a domino effect, and someone is left losing (or you're left continually honoring mediocre performances).

So I decided when I did this project I would follow the ethos of only giving out statues in a vacuum.  This means that I knowingly give Nicole Kidman back-to-back statues in 2001 & 2002, even if that means there's a decent chance Sissy Spacek or Renee Zellweger never wins one, because Kidman gave the (slightly) superior performances those years.  Two of the biggest complaints I've seen about the Oscars that they give out the statue not for the work, but for the career and that they have plenty of legendary performers (Peter O'Toole, Deborah Kerr, Glenn Close) who somehow don't have a statue.  But doing this for 23 seasons, and doing it as methodically as I've done it, I can tell you-even if you give out for the best of the year, every year...you're always going to have a Glenn Close.

One of the most oft-cited "snubs" when it comes to someone with a lot of nominations but no wins from this century is Amy Adams, who (save for one performance) we've hit every year she's been eligible in our 23-year span (so I can say with confidence what I would've nominated her for).  Like Diane Warren, I think Adams Oscar nomination count is a bit elevated, but she gets four nominations in 23 years, a totally respectable achievement.  She also doesn't win for any of them.  I do the medal system to lessen the blow to myself in situations like this, but Adams gets two silver medals (for The Master & Arrival), a bronze (for Junebug), and one additional nomination (for Enchanted).  All great work, but in all cases there was something I considered better that year.  Adams definitely got close, but I can't with a straight face say she deserved an Oscar win by now...because I wouldn't do it either.  If you're being honest with yourself (and not just knowingly saying "this person already won, so let's give it to this person because I know they'll never win," which is cheating because Oscar doesn't get to do that either), there are very few figures in Adams' situation that count as unusually overdue snubs.

I've been scolding a bit in this article, and part of that is because I'm airing out some pet peeves, but just so you know I'm not impervious to this-I've definitely fallen for this one before.  I have long-maintained that it is insane that John Williams has not won an Oscar since 1993.  He has been nominated 23 times since then, and he's done some really strong work (I've nominated him 13 times this century alone) during it...why has Oscar not corrected this?  No one can say he hasn't been nominated enough, but he should have more wins...right?  But of those 13 nominations this century, the number of gold medals I gave him matches Oscar's: zero.  I nominated him for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (shh, this will get me banned on Film Twitter so I'm burying this in the article to see if anyone actually reads this far), but unless I decide in the next two weeks he deserves to win for it (I still haven't picked my personal victor in that category in 2023), I'm my own problem here.  A lot of silver & bronze medals, but never a time where I was willing to proclaim "he's the best of the year."  So I was just as guilty of the hyperbole as anyone when I grumbled about his lack of a sixth statue.

5. Oscar Should Be More Creative (Especially in Tech Categories)

A lot of the lessons I've talked about is in regard to Oscar culture, largely defending the Academy because even the "perfect" (i.e. your exact choices) result in situations where there are still misses or oversights that bug you.  But that does not mean that Oscar is not above criticism, and perhaps the biggest area he needs work is the tech categories.

Listen, it is very, very easy to just over-nominate your Best Picture contenders, and I definitely did it to a degree if you look at the My Ballots from each year.  But that's wrong, and it avoids a lot of personality.  Looking at the My Ballots I've done, undoubtedly the best and coolest nominations are the ones that aren't relying upon the films with the most nominations.  Things like A Simple Favor for Best Costume Design or The Ring for Makeup or We the Animals for Cinematography.  Nominating films that are not just knee-jerk nominations (same with trophies) shows a lot of respect for the craft, and it's noteworthy that certain branches (Makeup, Cinematography, Visual Effects) do this better than others (Editing, Score).

They also need to bend their idea of what constitutes "best."  We all have our tastes (see my 13 nominations for John Williams above) that will seep into an exercise like this, but maybe be aware of that bias.  Contemporary costume design in this century has resulted in really cool options from films like Blue Jasmine, Melancholia, Crazy Rich Asians, & Promising Young Woman that Oscar totally ignored.  It's okay to notice modern costumes.  It's okay to notice practical or supporting effects.  It's okay to honor makeup & hair work that makes beautiful people even more beautiful (or if it's in a horror movie!).  Oscars lack of introspection and just "if we say it, it must be good" has largely turned the tech categories into rubber stamps, and ones that could be way more inventive, often honoring films (like Blue Jasmine and Promising Young Woman) they're already watching, but in a way that they aren't thinking about because of preconceptions.