Just How Woke Will the Oscars Be?

The New York Times | Link »
March 4, 2018
By Lynda Obst, Frank Bruni, Ross Douthat

The Times’s movie-mad columnists Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat met online with the Hollywood insider Lynda Obst, a movie producer and the writer of, most recently, “Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business,” to banter and bicker about the Academy Awards and who should and who will win an Oscar.

Frank Bruni: Lynda, Ross: So great to be reunited! Last year we deconstructed the Oscars after the ceremony. This year we switch from Monday-morning quarterbacks to (hold on for a hugely mixed metaphor) Cassandras. So much to discuss: Oscars and #MeToo, the show’s declining ratings, whether political complaints will doom “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” What do you find most interesting about the Oscars this year?

Lynda Obst: I am very cranky this year because my favorite movie wasn’t nominated. In fact, it’s the first time in 97 years of voting that I didn’t fill out all 10 candidates in my preferential best picture ballot.

Bruni: Ninety-seven years? Lynda, you don’t look a day over 95! But seriously, don’t keep us in suspense! What movie was that?

Obst: It was “The Florida Project.” A little gem of a gigantic movie. It broke my heart in two and then made it soar. The academy, reflecting the nation, wasn’t in the mood for its compassion or grace.

Ross Douthat: I was also surprised “The Florida Project” wasn’t nominated, though my major beef was over the exclusion of “I, Tonya” from the ranks of best picture nominees. I suspect it lost votes over a sense that the script was too sympathetic to a subject who probably did know more about the kneecapping of Nancy Kerrigan than she admitted and the film implied. But I thought that it was a far more interesting and sympathetically critical and ultimately realistic portrait of its sociological subject, the white working class, than “Three Billboards,” which was false from start to finish.

Bruni: I had some of your same misgivings about “Billboards,” which sort of went off the rails as it went along. “I, Tonya” is exquisitely timed: It and “Lady Bird” both tackle class in a way that movies often don’t and that seems oddly cognizant of the political discussion in the wake of Trump’s election, don’t you think?

Obst: Don’t start me on “Three Billboards”! I think the backlash has nothing to do with politics but with people discussing it and finding that there were others who did not find any nuance or reality (except maybe in Woody Harrelson’s portrayal).

Douthat: I hope you’re right that “Three Billboards” will be doomed by an aesthetic backlash, Lynda.

Obst: “Lady Bird” and “I, Tonya” were two totally different experiences as a woman for me. “Lady Bird” was exquisite, a rare coming-of-age story from our point of view, and though I grew up thousands of miles and decades away, it was mine. “I, Tonya” had a painful, confused tone to me, which reflected the confusion of its main character, I suppose, but the juxtaposition of the domestic abuse with rock montages were jarring and painful.

Douthat: My assumption has been, just from eyeballing the betting line, that the voters are looking for a movie that speaks to the Trumpian moment, circled “Three Billboards” because it tried to portray Trump country (albeit from the perspective of a Brit writer-director whose familiarity with real rural America seemed … limited), rejected “The Post” as too staid and old-fashioned, and now seem to be leaning toward “The Shape of Water” because it’s about racial and sexual minorities uniting to defeat the real monster of white male suburban patriarchy — and thus a perfect political movie, from a certain perspective, at least, for the times. What do you both think?

Bruni: Don’t get me started on “The Shape of Water,” whose swampy charms elude me to a point where I can’t ponder the politics of it. It felt strained, silly, and has ruined hard-boiled eggs for me forevermore. Omelets only from now on.

Obst: Well, thanks, Ross, for explaining “Shape of Water,” because really I had no clue why people were going batty for it. I didn’t realize it was woke! Benny Goodman, who knew? It seemed so ridiculous to me as I fall in love with people and language.

Bruni: I want to pick up on something important that Lynda said — “from our point of view” — about “Lady Bird,” which is quietly revolutionary in its way and very much of this moment. As Greta Gerwig has said in interviews, including a few that I was privileged to do with her, she very much wanted to write and direct a movie in which the female teenage protagonist wasn’t having things happen to her but was, instead, making them happen. That should not be unusual. And yet it is, Lynda, isn’t it?

Obst: Yes, absolutely, Frank, that is utterly revolutionary and why this moment of the emergence of women filmmakers and writers having a voice and the power to use it is so critical. Like black filmmakers, and the explosive revolutionary power of “The Black Panther,” seeing your story being told or even just your point of view opens a whole universe of new tales. But never underestimate the academy’s ability to overlook women. I don’t think this will accrue to a surprise victory for “Lady Bird.” If any surprises happen (and I doubt that), it more likely would be protest votes for “Get Out,” I think.

Douthat: Yes, in certain ways I’m surprised there isn’t more momentum for “Lady Bird” given that it’s female-directed and female-centric and thus, in certain ways, a perfect answer to the (reasonable) claim that the movie industry is performatively anti-sexist but practically misogynist. But it’s so far removed from high politics (which is part of its charm) and it doesn’t have the Big Thudding Message that “The Shape of Water” seems to offer.

Bruni: This is what to me is so weird about Hollywood. Or so depressing. There’s a lack of subtlety. Honoring “Lady Bird” (which so deserves that) would, in its way, be as much a celebration of the #MeToo moment and spirit as having only female presenters (the SAG awards) or only black dresses (the Globes).

Obst: Lip service, stylists, statements, are cheap. Voting in secrecy for others, for your competition, through your resentment and rivalry, is hard. Another subtle thing that has changed besides the downsizing (the name of another movie I liked this year that went underappreciated and under-seen) of our audience: Thanks to the ridiculous excesses of pig/monster Harvey in trying to buy Oscar votes, a beloved perk of the Academy Awards season is over. I am talking about the now near-absence of the elegant little luncheons or dinners that the studios or financiers would throw to promote the movies in nomination. This is where we realized that our more distant friends weren’t dead, remarried or in rehab. And more important where we swapped opinions and affected one another’s thinking. Now, without parties, we don’t influence one another anymore. Instead we are influenced by social media and M.S.M. like everyone else and we are just another voting bloc or guild. It’s sad, and no longer as distinct or eccentric as it was. Boohoo. The academy has banned our fun parties. Cry me a river.

Douthat: Does that raise the odds of upsets or reduce them?

Obst: Reduce them!

Douthat: Sad! But of course no matter where the voters come down they’ll probably be celebrating a movie that most of America hasn’t seen — which is truer and truer every year. Indeed there’s a sense in which the obvious quest for political relevance might be a way to compensate for the fact that despite widening the slate of nominees, the academy can’t seem to find the old-school movies that were artful and commanded a mass audience. I wonder if we think that’s a problem with the nominating process or with the movie industry itself, which is now polarized between yuge repetitious blockbusters and small films pitched to niche audiences and the awards circuit. Will there ever be a “Titanic” (if you will) list of nominees again — a roster of movies that everyone has seen and has an opinion about long before the academy gets around to voting on them?

Bruni: I think you’ve hit on something big there, Ross, in terms of movie-industry polarization between the mass-market commercial colossi and the more artistic fare. You’ve got “Lady Bird” in one corner, the last “X-Men” extravaganza in the other. You’ve got either no explosions or so many fireballs in the last 15 minutes that you leave the theater half-blind and with temporary hearing loss. But that leads me to a quasi-prediction, or rather a question: Couldn’t “Get Out” take the prize because it best straddles the divide? Bold idea, familiar genre, big box office? It’s like the centrist candidate in an election with only far-left and far-right alternatives otherwise.

Obst: If there’s a surprise winner, it could be “Get Out.” Add all the people who just loved this movie, and all the pro-diversity voters, plus everyone who liked nothing more than this, and it’s a big number given this weird algorithm of preferential voting. And the industry loves “Get Out” so much. It didn’t cost much. It was wildly clever and reinvented a genre. It was funny and scary. It showed us life from an African-American point of view — in a way that I will never experience the suburbs where I grew up in the same way again. And there will be so many new movies created in its wake!

Bruni: I guess you could say “Dunkirk” is also a centrist candidate, but everyone I know who saw it was so cold to it that it’s one of the rare best picture nominees I skipped. Don’t tell anyone! Oops, too late.

Obst: Don’t forget that Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan (and Ridley Scott) are among the only directors who make commercial blockbusters — or at least, if not blockbusters, big studio movies that reliably are nominated for Oscars, and that is a lot to ask of this diversifying academy. And in the old days, the studios did not have indie filmmakers all over the globe making $3 million movies of their choosing to compete with. They had a monopoly.

Douthat: But they’re the only directors who get the chance to make movies that are big and also serious because every other promising director gets shunted into superhero franchises and is never seen again!

Obst: Many young filmmakers are dying to make a superhero franchise, and it is a mark of success. He or she is not shunted. Look at Rian Johnson, from “Looper” and “Brick” indie darling to “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”; Patty Jenkins, “Monster” to “Wonder Women”; Ryan Coogler, “Creed” to “Black Panther.” I could go on. Few filmmakers don’t want to play with an iconic character and $200 million! There are the failures, but they wanted to go there.

Douthat: Fair: “Shunted” is the wrong word for something that happens all too willingly. And of course if I were offered the chance to make a “Star Wars” movie, I wouldn’t say no. (And I would make a better one than “Last Jedi” — call me, Kathleen Kennedy!)

Bruni: Lynda’s right about the volitional lunge for superhero movies. The question is: How do we stanch that desire? Halt that lunge? I would be quite content to live out the rest of my days without seeing one more cape, one more mask, one more superpower. Enough.

Obst: Of course those movies are not for you. And their profits, in the best of all possible worlds, would support movies that are for you. But I can’t tell you that’s definitively true. What is good news is that those movies are made for a ready audience, and if they’re good — they will keep getting made, like “Wonder Woman” and “Black Panther.” But the bad ones, and many of the sequels, were getting rejected both domestically and increasingly around the world where they are now making more of their own domestic product.

So the domestic smaller movie may find a home in some studios. And if they greenlight the right ones, it may be a small revival of these at the studios and at Oscar time.

Bruni: Are you telling me that in a world with too many silos, separations and gated enclaves — geographic, political, ideological and cultural — I have to retreat to HBO, Netflix and Amazon and leave the multiplex to teenagers?

Douthat: This is why, even though I think Nolan’s “Dunkirk” and “Phantom Thread” (a great, strange movie that very happily has no political valence whatsoever) were actually the best movies, I’d be happy to see “Lady Bird” or even “Get Out” win — because they point to a world where the industry’s desire for diversification and post-#MeToo female empowerment leads to successful, interesting films that aren’t just “Avengers” clones with more black or female faces. And that aren’t, well, kind of bad, like “Billboards” and “The Shape of Water.”

Bruni: I’m with you on “Lady Bird” and “Get Out” for that reason but also this, which we’ve hinted at but which I’d like to spell out: They so utterly affirm the better art that you get when you have a diverse group of people telling the stories. “Lady Bird” could only have been made with its precise tone, sensibility and subtle powers of observation about that character’s experience by a woman, Greta Gerwig. “Get Out” could only have aced its satire the way it did — maybe only have been conceived with that cleverness — by an African-American writer-director, Jordan Peele.

Obst: I think all three of us are in agreement there. And they were both successful commercially, a very good lesson that has been heard far and wide here. Both are among the hottest directors in town, and both have modeled new kinds of movies that can get made that could not have even a year ago.

Douthat: Let’s wind things up by taking the preferences we’ve expressed and converting them to predictions. In the “big four” categories — director, actor, actress, picture — who should win and then who will?

Obst: Two caveats so I can work on Monday: (1) My “should” wins are not my votes. As an academy member, I never reveal my vote. (2) Every actor and director nominated, each of whom who I obviously want to and intend to work with, did a magnificent job.

That said: Who should win best picture: “The Florida Project.” Who will win: “The Shape of Water.”

For director, should win: Sean Baker for “The Florida Project.” Will win: Guillermo del Toro for “The Shape of Water.”

For actor, should win: Denzel Washington in “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” Will win: Gary Oldman in “Darkest Hour.”

For actress, should win: Brooklyn Prince in “The Florida Project.” Will win: Frances McDormand in “Three Billboards.”

Douthat: Frank?

Bruni: I find the best picture race a muddle, and will go out on a limb and say that “Get Out” will win. Should win? “Lady Bird.”
Gary Oldman clearly will win best actor. I’d stake my left eye on it, and I’m down to just that eye. Should win? Hmmmm. Daniel Day-Lewis, but he’s got a thousand Oscars already. Pretty much all the ones that didn’t go to Meryl Streep.

Guillermo del Toro will get best director because “Shape” is pretty and hyper-designed and audacious in tone (though it doesn’t work). Should win? Greta Gerwig.

And for best actress, the award will go to Frances McDormand, who’s so brilliant across the board that I’m thrilled for her. It should go to Margot Robbie. Her last 15 minutes in “I, Tonya” — at the Olympics — are raw screen acting at its most effective.

Ross?

Douthat: Oldman will win best actor, for a deserving performance — but even so (and however predictably) Daniel Day-Lewis gave the best performance of the nominees. McDormand will get best actress; since you chose Robbie (a good choice), Frank, I’ll go nuts and say that Saoirse Ronan should win, because the success of “Lady Bird” is unimaginable without her. Director will go to del Toro; it should go to Nolan for an achievement in “Dunkirk” that was initially maybe overpraised but is now underestimated. And picture, picture, picture … I give my “should” by a hair to “Dunkirk” over “Phantom Thread,” and I have zero confidence in the academy — they gave the statue to “Crash” for God’s sake — so I’m expecting to be throwing things at my television when “Three Billboards” sneaks past “The Shape of Water” for the win.

Bruni: In a matter of hours, we’ll know which of us is the champion soothsayer or at least said the most correct sooths. (Is “sooth” a noun? I nominate it to be!) Ross, Lynda, great to dwell briefly in the Empire of Oscar with you anew. Enjoy the event — even the best song nominee performances, if you can. And thanks.

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Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat are Op-Ed columnists for The Times. Lynda Obst is a movie producer, among others, of “Intersteller,” “Good Girls Revolt” and “Sleepless in Seattle” and the author, most recently, of “Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business.”