October
6
EW Launches Oscar Revote, Without Buzz
Entertainment Weekly wants Hollywood to rewrite Oscar history. The magazine is giving the film industry a chance to look back at Oscar races past and vote again. The EW survey is called "Recall the Gold."
On October 6, EW is inviting more than 7,000 Hollywood insiders to re-vote on past Oscar races. EW wants to test which movies stand the test of time. With the benefit of hindsight, did the right films and performances win over the past 25 years? To look at 1998, will Robert Begnini still beat Tom Hanks? Will Shakespeare in Love still beat Saving Private Ryan? Will Gwyneth Paltrow still beat Cate Blanchett? (See the EW ballot below).
Each Oscar race takes place in a given year, and Academy voters awarded the prize to the films they considered the best at the time. While Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, had a big problem with the Wall Street Journal when it polled Academy members a few years ago, EW's exercise in Oscar revisionism doesn't bother him. "This is a game we all play as individuals," he says, "looking back ten years ago to see how we'd vote. I don't see any harm in it. There will be no emergency board meeting. It won't mean anything, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to do."
Last summer, Matt Damon told EW, "The only way to judge a movie is 10 years down the line. I think they should do the Oscars that way. I wish this year we were voting on 1997." Funnily enough, EW's Sean Smith (who used to work with me at Premiere) had been thinking along the same lines: he pitched the idea of an Oscar revote to EW in July, 2007 when he was applying for the job of EW west coast bureau chief. It took this long to get this massive undertaking under way.
"Every year we talk about the effect of campaigns, and spending too much money and did they buy the Oscar, especially at the height of the Miramax era," says Smith, who was inspired by Brokeback Mountain's loss to Crash. "Would people stand by that five years later? Was it five years ahead of its time? We have all looked back and thought, 'they picked that?'" If a movie crosses time and generations and all that, does it still resonate? The object is, if you strip away everything, the campaigns, the timing, in terms of pure movie quality and performance, were the right films picked? If you voted again, would you vote the same way? It's voting without buzz."
Monday EW is mailing out their official "Recall The Gold" ballot inviting the industry to vote in six major categories for five given years spaced five years apart--2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and 1983--five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five years ago.
Each ballot is numbered for security, says EW, but will be treated anonymously. All ballots will be tabulated securely by the Scantron Corporation and the results will be revealed in January 2009. Not only is this is the largest survey of its kind, but it has never been done before. Smith and an intern worked full-time for six months, from January to June, to assemble a list of 7000 industry professionals who match in many ways the diversity and scale of the Academy voting membership--assuming some of the ballots never get returned--without looking at an actual Academy list, Smith insists. He wanted to keep it pure.
"We built it from scratch," says Smith. EW reporters and editors scrolled through their rollidexes. They added everyone who had ever been nominated or won an Oscar, and crew members of films that grossed over $100 million. They looked at news reports of Hollywood people who had been added to the Oscar ranks in recent years. They culled creative directories for execs, producers, publicists, editors, costume designers, art directors, directors, cinematographers, writers, animators, sound mixers, composers--all the categories covered by the Academy.
EW made one HUGE change. They invited top film (not TV) agents, who are not permitted to belong to the Academy, to join the list of Oscar revoters. And Smith thinks his list may skew younger than the Academy membership. "We're not trying to duplicate the Academy," he says. "What do people working in the film industry think about these Oscar-winning movies now?"
If this Oscar survey works--and it's bound to generate considerable attention--EW will go back and ask their group to revote on other years as well. "I would have liked to go deeper than six categories," Smith admits. "Or do every year." But that was logistically impossible, and would have taxed the voters too much as well.
This time, unlike the Academy, EW can not only calculate the percentages, but will be happy to reveal which groups voted for what, and who lost, and by what margin. But how is Spielberg going to feel if he beats Shakespeare this time? And how will Harvey Weinstein feel if Shakespeare loses a few of its wins? "We're not going to take away anyone's Oscar," says Smith.
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Look, they'll never ask me, so somebody please help me out here: Claude Rains for Best Supporting Actor in Casablanca (1942 for 1944). Great. Thanks. Now I can rest easy.
Posted by: Speedyk | October 06, 2008 at 09:42 PM
For Best Picture for those years, how about nominating films that got frozen out the first time? Like these:
2003: KILL BILL VOL. 1
1998: THE BIG LEBOWSKI
1993: HEAVEN AND EARTH (Oliver Stone)
1988: DIE HARD (hey, it’s either that or Steven Seagal’s debut feature, ABOVE THE LAW!)
1983: SCARFACE
Posted by: Brian | October 07, 2008 at 08:57 AM
Great idea. Limiting it to the nominated films, though, seems inadequate.
Posted by: A. Campbell | October 07, 2008 at 05:42 PM
Great idea, but what about movies that weren't nominated to begin with?
A recent one that comes to mind is 'Waitress' (2007). I feel this was extremely overlooked when it came to nominating best actress (Keri Russell) and Best Direcor (Adrienne Shelley).
Any thoughts?
Posted by: Eleni | October 13, 2008 at 03:07 AM
The Oscars are not definitive. We do not judge the quality of a film by how many Oscars it may or may not have won. Any attempt at a definitive 'best of' list will always be doomed to failure.
What the Oscars are, however, are historical documents. They represent the general consensus of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at that particular point in time. And that, in itself, is something valuable. That 'Bonnie and Clyde', 'The Graduate', 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' and 'In the Heat of the Night' were the best picture nominees in 1968 highlights the changing social attitudes in America at the time. So what purpose, does the 'revote' serve?
Well, Variety argue that hype and advertising skew the Academy Awards votes away from quality and towards that which is seen as being 'in'. But has the Academy Awards ever really about quality filmmaking? To me, it is a self-celebratory event that focuses upon the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. This focus is not so much on good filmmaking, but rather on excess - in all senses of the word. The 'revote' will not sway the public perception of the films in question, but will show that, over time, perception changes.
But we already knew that.
Posted by: Andriy Rebkov | October 13, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Leon the professional and Fight Club were both robbed.
If they don't win this revote is useless
Posted by: joe | October 13, 2008 at 12:29 PM
2003 Best Actor - Daniel Day-Lewis.
Posted by: Mark | October 18, 2008 at 10:42 PM