Best in Show: Oscar & BAFTA noms, campaign politics and sexy ghosts
MIA This week on Best in Show*,* we have our reactions to the Academy Award nominations, and compare them a little with BAFTA. We’re also talking to the big cheese from Rotten Tomatoes — Jacqueline Coley — about the millions spent on Oscar campaigns, and we’re re-evaluating the 1992 BAFTA Best Screenplay lineup.
[Best in Show theme song plays alone, fades out]
Mia: Hi and welcome to *Best in Show—*a limited podcast series brought to you by The Letterboxd Show. I am Mia Vicino, the West Coast Editor here at Letterboxd, and Best in Show is all about awards season! Throughout the series, we’re discussing the noms and gongs, the snubs and surprises and meeting some contenders and insiders. Mostly, we’re doing what we always do here at Letterboxd—celebrate cinema! As always my Best in Show besties are here. Please welcome Hollywood veteran and our editorial producer, Brian Formo...
BRIAN Cheers!
MIA And our Editor-in-Chief, Gemma Gracewood...
GEMMA Well hello there.
MIA Pip pip cheerio to you both! Also on our team, outside in the broadcast van with their kale chips and cherry Kool Aid, are our resident fact-finder, Jack’s Facts, and the man with the Tape Deck himself, our editor Slim. So, this week, two very, very big things happened: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ed Letterboxd… Yes! That is right! letterboxd.telechargertorrent.org/oscars is where they live, go on ahead and follow them. And in slightly lesser news, they also announced their nominations for the 95th annual Academy Awards!
GEMMA Yeah they did!
MIA Yes they did. Brian, you have just returned from Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Did you manage to get any sleep before Oscar nom?
Brian: Nah, I’m running on fumes. Let’s get into it so I can catch up on my sleep. I need the Zs.
GEMMA I can tell you who can bring you some Zs, Brian, Rizzz Ahmed who with Allison Williams—thank you, thank you, thank you—
MIA Yes, excellent, excellent. [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA Riz and Allison were the hosts of the nomination announcement. Was that exciting to anyone else or just me?
MIA No, it was very exciting to me as I just started watching HBO Girls for the first time ever, I’m on season two. And both of these actors appear on that show. So, what a treat to see Marnie Michaels herself announce the Best Costume Design and say...
[clip of Allison Williams plays]
ALLISON WILLIAMS And Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris...
GEMMA And, Riz saying...
[clip of Riz Ahmed plays]
**RIZ AHMED ***My Year of Dicks...
GEMMA For Best Animated Short Film. I’m sorry, but it’s not just me. The whole internet is a small child today.
MIA It’s funny, like we gotta take the laughs where we can get ’em, truly. [Mia laughs] So first off, we really need to talk about Michelle Yeoh. I am so, so, so hyped for her nomination. She is—this is history-making—she is the first East Asian woman to be nominated for Lead Actress. So, Merle Oberon, who was mixed-Indian but hid her heritage at the time, was nominated for her performance in the 1935 film The Dark Angel. So, even so, this is the first nomination for an Asian woman in almost 90 years, which is both amazing and profoundly depressing to me, as an Asian woman in the film community. We have such, such a long way to go but this is an amazing step in the right direction.
BRIAN I hardly agree. But speaking of 90 years, that’s how old I feel right now after spending a week at Sundance, but also it is a good week for senior citizens, like myself, who choose not to retire, because John Williams—the John Williams—picks up a score nomination at the sprightly age of 90. He’ll be 91 at the time of the Oscars, when they’re aired on March 12. That was for the The Fabelmans.
GEMMA Ah, as Jennifer Coolidge says, “it’s never too late.” It’s never too late until you’re dead. There’s still a chance for all of us to win an Oscar.
Mia: It’s true. No, it’s true, it’s true. So Brian, you are our insider, famously, and Everything Everywhere All at Once led with eleven nominations and The Banshees of Inisherin with nine, which is no surprise for us at Letterboxd at least. So, can you confirm that those are our front runners, perhaps?
BRIAN I can’t confirm, but it absolutely feels that way. Both of those films seem to be playing to different demographics within the voting branch—Everything Everywhere All at Once with the youth vote, and Banshees with the older vote. And both have four acting nominations, so they get to take the whole cast out to events. That’s something that Parasite was doing and CODA did last year, even though. in in Parasite's case, none of them were nominated, they came to everything. And in in CODA's case, only one was, but they all went everywhere together. Now they all get to go everywhere together, the cast of Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Banshees, to all the events as nominees, and it’s very important because having gone to the luncheon before, you can see everyone reacting to see casts at these events. So in this case, they’re all nominated and I’m very curious to see how everyone is treating and kind of fawning over specific groups, because it actually gives a little bit of insight into the Academy because they want to reward something, people they like being around. That was a big hat tip the two times I’ve gone to the eventual Best Picture winner. But let’s not get too far down that road, let’s celebrate what’s here and now. Mia, what was your biggest happy surprise?
MIA There were a couple happy surprises, but what I’m most pleasantly surprised about is how Women Talking was not shut out like it was at the BAFTAs. It’s the first Best Picture nominee to earn only a SAG Cast nomination with no individual nominations and no PGA nominations—so we love an underdog! I am just thrilled that it scored a Best Picture nom and one for Best Adapted Screenplay, which it has a decent shot at winning. I mean, Sarah Polley’s script resonated deeply with me, certain lines from it still get stuck in my head, particularly a monologue delivered by Claire Foy. I do wish she would’ve gotten some ing Actress love, she was maybe my favorite ing performance of the year. And it would be nice to see one woman in the form of Sarah Polley, perhaps, in the directing category, but you know, those were long shots. Those were pipe dreams. I am just so happy with what we got. Gemma, what about you?
GEMMA Well, first of all, I will say that I asked Jack for some facts around women directors and we will come back to that a bit later. I love the Animation top five so much, I’d adopt any single one of them as my child and I would be happy for each of them to win. There’s Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Turning Red, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or The Sea Beast, which not enough people talk about, it’s a gorgeous film. I suspect the Academy might go with Guillermo, just because frankly, all he has to do is hit up a red carpet with that little woody boy and people are emotional toast. But, give it to Domee Shi, why don’t you? You know what’s up. [sings] You know you know what’s up!
MIA 4Townies for life! [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA Brian, Brian, what table do you want to be at at the Oscars the most?
BRIAN The ing Actor table looks like a lovely bunch of gents that I’d really like to rub elbows with. You got Brendan Gleesonand Barry Keoghan, both from Banshees, you got Ke Huy Quan from Everything Everywhere All at Once, Brian Tyree Henry for Causeway—these are all first-time nominees. They’re ed by another senior citizen, who is not retired, and that is Judd Hirsch. Sixteen of the twenty acting nominations were first-time nominations, but I love the nod for Judd Hirsch, he’s the only one who’s been here before, because if you watch The Fabelmans with an audience, he only has two, two-and-a-half scenes, it’s a total of eight minutes, but he grabs everyone by a collar—the room erupts in laughter with everything that he does, and that’s a solid, traditional, ing actor nomination. A lot of times you’ll see in this category, there will be category fraud, where it’s people who are in ninety percent of the movie get put in there, because they’ll have a larger chance to win. So I love when the Academy will highlight a performance like this—in the door, blow it up and leave. Which is something that Brian Tyree Henry did before in If Beale Street Could Talk and he was not nominated there, so I love to see him nominated here as well. And I guess you could say that Judd Hirsch bumped out Paul Dano, gave a great performance in The Fabelmans, it’s much more subtle. But this is 47 years between Oscar nominations for Judd Hirsch. Since Ordinary People is the movie that has made me weep the hardest out of any movie ever, I am in full of those bookends, because that is what he was first nominated for.
MIA Okay, I have to add that weepie to my watchlist. Wow. There’s so much trivia, so just hit up Jack with the Facts for a quick rundown there, huh? So we have our first all first-time Best Actor lineup since 1934. And just like that year, they’re all white guys... Woohoo! [Gemma laughs] Not much has changed, huh?
BRIAN Yeah, well, actually, something has changed because when that happened in 1935, the ceremony was 1935, there were only three nominees—so five for five this year, that is a bigger feat even than the first time it happened.
GEMMA Oh five white men instead of three, woo!
MIA Woo! We can always use more of those... [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA I was gonna read a Jack’s Fact but actually I need a fact from you, Brian, as our insider. I was looking through the Adapted Screenplay nominees and I agree, Mia, that Women Talking ought to get it, especially because today I learned that an adapted screenplay can be something that is adapted from itself... Brian, can you please explain Top Gun: Maverick and [Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery] being in this category to me. I have not read those books or seen those plays... [Gemma laughs]
BRIAN Well, it’s the same two letters that have taken over the entire industry and every Cineplex: IP. Anything that pulls—that’s an intellectual property if you don’t know what IP stands for.
GEMMA Yeah, right, got it, got it.
BRIAN Anything that pulls characters from a previous movie is considered adapted.
GEMMA What?! So wait, so it’s adapted, even if it’s just a character, not the whole story?
BRIAN Yeah, even if it just lists in the credits ‘based on characters from this’, like that’s enough.
GEMMA Wow...
MIA Wow, Benoit Blanc is enough. [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA That feels like category fraud to me, that feels like something wacky that the Academy dreamed up to, I don’t know, to suit somebody somewhere along the way.
BRIAN Well, they did nominate Rian Johnson for Original Screenplay for the first *Knives Out. So wherever it was gonna be, I feel like, whatever category it was gonna land in, they wanted to get them in there.
MIA Okay, it’s time for the lightning round, everyone. Okay, okay, here we go. [makes wisp sounds] That’s the sound of lightning, even though it doesn’t make a sound. [Gemma laughs] So last episode, you may we discussed our hopes and dreams for Oscar nominations. So today, we will discuss, were our hopes and dreams achieved? Gemma?
GEMMA Oh, yes. Absolutely. With eleven nominations, I am positive I will get to see some Everything Everywhere All at Once family up on that stage, which is all I wanted. And you know what I’m going to say, The Quiet Girl up for international picture. A stunning year, it has been a stunning twelve months for Colm Bairéad’s darling little film, which still hasn’t come out yet in the US apart from one brief, theatrical Oscar qualifying week just before Christmas. I think NEON’s sister distributor, Super, is dropping that film very, very shortly in February, date TBC, but I bet they’re shipping film cans to theaters right now. It is up against All Quiet on the Western Front, so I suspect this might be as far as The Quiet Girl goes, but that’s pretty far for a very quiet girl. So I’m happy. I’m happy.
BRIAN It was a big day for quiet people. [Gemma & Mia laugh]
GEMMA Big day, big day for quiet girls and quiet western fronts, yeah. A couple of other fun noms for me, Florian Hoffmeister for TÁR. So everyone’s been talking about Cate and Todd and Hildur, her score, but this is a nice surprise—that one, that ten minute continuous shot at Juilliard for starters. I am still trying to work out where they put the camera. Friends think it was hung from a rig on the ceiling. I think it was Steadicam. Who knows? Anyway, but then there were those dream sequences, the gorgeous uses of space, the concert hall scenes where it’s all about who’s glancing at whom with an entire orchestra of non-actors in play. Yeah, I think Florian did an incredible job. And then one other little one for me, Shirley Kurata for Costume Design for Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was truly a labor of love on a tight budget. Sausage fingers for life. Mia...
MIA Oh, yeah, I mean, I agree on all fronts, especially the Costume Design nod. I loved everything Jobu Tupaki wore. But speaking of costumes, though, as I previously mentioned up top, I’m very happy to see Jenny Beavan nominated for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and I also got my other wish, which was Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Best Original Song nomination, which is for David Byrne, Son Lux and one of my favorite working artists, Mitski!
GEMMA Yes!
MIA So we will hopefully, fingers crossed, be seeing her up on that Oscar stage giving a performance which is almost a bucket list item for me for some reason. [Mia laughs]
GEMMA Brian, how did your hopes and dreams land, the man with few hopes and dreams?
BRIAN Well, we’ll get back to my dashed hope in a little bit. So I’m just gonna stick with delight here and that, I kind of forgot—we all we all knew that *Top Gun: Maverick was going to be nominated for Best Picture but it didn’t dawn on until today that that actually makes Jerry Bruckheimer and Oscar nominee, the action producer of the ’90s The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys is now an Oscar nominee, alongside Tom Cruise and this is Cruise’s first nomination since Best ing Actor nomination for Magnolia.
GEMMA Oh wow.
BRIAN So I love that those—I mean they first started working together, the Days of Thunder and so now they’re in the lightning round, that’s not moving as quick as the lightning round of our faves here. Something that I would have liked to have seen, S.S. Rajamouli and Best Director because that would have been a lot of fun for RRR, but in a way there—is I’m gonna look at the glass half full here, RRR only has one nomination, it’s for Original Song for Naatu Naatu, so if everyone wants to pool all their love for that movie into one spot, they can.
GEMMA Sorry Mitski...
MIA I know, I’ve already made peace with that. I have made peace with it. It’s okay, I’m just happy that she got a nomination. I am rooting for Naatu Naatu over Mitski—I’m sorry, please don’t tell her. And speaking of RRR though, can we talk snubs a little bit, because I’m a little surprised...
GEMMA And we always promise in the intro that we will talk snubs and then we never really do, so, let’s dive in. [Brian & Gemma laugh]
MIA I know, we always mentioned we’re going to talk snubs and we don’t really, so now’s our time to finally do it. I am kind of shocked that Claudio Miranda’s cinematography did not make it in for Top Gun: Maverick. I mean, I have been keeping track of the awards lists for Letterboxd, which you can check in the Episode Notes. And I mean, he’s racked up a whopping 26 wins so far from critics groups.
GEMMA Wow!
MIA He was definitely the front runner in my mind. I was like, locked in, he’s gonna win. And then he’s not even nominated... I’m very surprised.
GEMMA Wow! So the Academy is not checking the Letterboxd awards season list, which is frankly disappointing.
MIA No they are not...
GEMMA Because if they were, then they wouldn’t have made the decision to leave Decision to Leave out either.
MIA Perfect, Gemma. Exactly.
GEMMA Thank you, thank you, thank you.
MIA Decision to Leave, decision to leave out. Yeah, that was the other snub that kind of got my goat a little bit, because I love Park Chan-wook and that had some of my favorite cinematography of the year. So, I was surprised with that.
GEMMA Yeah, totally. On snubs, I am surprised not to see Jaime Leigh McIntosh, hair designer, up for hair for Blonde, truly. Babylon less so, but for Blonde, like, that’s a real surprise. Especially when Elvis is in there. Although—ah, I’m just gonna go on a little rant, a little lightning round rant, lightning rant. Here it comes. I am disgusted by this category, Makeup and Hairstyling. Let it be on the record, I find it disgusting that there are three nominations for fat suits in Elvis, The Whale and The Batman. I’m pretty sure that nom was for the Penguin, not for Robert Pattinson’s hair.
MIA But that will not stop me from pretending it is. [Gemma laughs] I will tell people that that was why they got it, for his emo haircut.
GEMMA I was gonna say, we can pretend it’s also for Elvis’s hair as well. But let’s be honest, it’s for prosthetics. And I sort of think we need to separate out prosthetics from this category ASAP because it’s so confusing to have like three nominations for prosthetics, Elvis, The Whale, The Batman fat suits, one nomination for blood and guts in All Quiet on the Western Front and then a nomination actually for Hair and Makeup for the continent that’s arguably done hair and makeup the best for centuries, and that’s [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever]. I mean, I don’t know, Brian, you tell me. Maybe I’m willfully misunderstanding the category—after all, it is a category that was pretty much only in vintage because of special effects makeup. I looked it up and it was in 1980 when Christopher Tucker would spend seven hours a day making up John Hurt into The Elephant Man and friends were dismayed that his work was overlooked and that’s when they brought the category in. So I get it, I grant it, but I guess I’m done with fat suits. And I hope that Camille Friend and Joel Harlow take out the Oscar for their clay wigs and underwater looks in [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever]. They did wet for wet, not dry for wet, and if you’re a makeup artist and a hair artist, you know what that means—that is hard work.
MIA Gemma, I love your rant. I have one of my own. If I may...
GEMMA Ohhh, bring it on, bring it on. You may, you may. The floor is yours.
MIA Thank you. Thank you. So, he he, there were absolutely no women in the Best Director category, which is a big disappointment after Jane Campion’s amazing win for The Power of the Dog. But, you know, we already knew it was a pretty low year for women when only eight of the Letterboxd Top 50 for 2022 were directed by women. But I mean, come on, this shit matters. Having said that, though, Domee Shi is of course the director of Turning Red, so she and her producers may get to grace the stage if that wins animation. But as we just discussed, I have a feeling it’s going to go to Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, which is also very well-deserved. Jack’s Facts also points out there are films by women directors that show up in many other categories—Women Talking, Aftersun, Causeway, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Fire of Love and Tell it Like a Woman, not to mention six of the shorts. So there is some hope, but I did want to spotlight not letting them be nominated for Best Director.
GEMMA Agh...
MIA And also we—I know, it’s very frustrating. And what’s also very frustrating is that only two films by Black directors are featured anywhere in the nominations. So you have [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever] and as I just said, *Tell It Like a Woman, where Taraji P. Henson is one of the six credited directors. And that, brings us to the
‘where is Danielle Deadwyler?’ question...
BRIAN I got a rant now...
MIA Yes!
GEMMA Oh, yeah.
MIA Your turn, Brian!
BRIAN I mean, y’all made me feel guilty for having no hopes and dreams for nominations last week, and so then I decided to toss mine out there and it just got dashed, blew up in my face. So Danielle Deadwyler was not nominated for Best Actress, but who was likely in her place, it came out of nowhere. So I have not seen To Leslie, many people have not seen To Leslie, it made $27,000 at the box office.
GEMMA Whaaat?
BRIAN Andrea Riseborough is consistently very good, and she is an Indie Spirit nominee for this film as well. But I cannot comment on her nomination until I see it and I will, but it does stick out immensely at the expense of two Black actresses who appeared in many other precursors, Danielle Deadwyler for Till, and Viola Davis for The Woman King—both Deadwyler and Davis are nominated in Leading Actress at the BAFTA this year, which would have been a very natural place for the very English Riseborough to show up and let us know that there was that goodwill and . To Leslie was seen by 4000 Letterboxd , Till by [15,000] and The Woman King by 88,000.
GEMMA So, how did this happen? How did this happen?
BRIAN I think that’s something that everyone was asking...
GEMMA Including Andrea Riseborough herself, who was reportedly baffled.
BRIAN Oh, she knows. [Gemma & Mia laugh] There was a grassroots social media campaign from many of her famous pals and former co-stars, like Edward Norton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, Amy Adams, Sarah Paulson, and Cate Blanchett even shouted her out by name at the Critics Choice Awards in her speech. And while normally I love when a pundit spreadsheet gets blown up, the pundits, they have all these spreadsheets, who was nominated here, who was nominated there. I love generally when there’s an out of left field nomination without the precursors, but this does feel a little icky to me, for who had come at the expense of and for the people who were playing the game as it’s normally been played. And I don’t know, this could set a little bit of a precedent of like—Momentum Films did not have the budget to put on a campaign that you can just have all your famous friends post on Instagram and maybe one that gives a speech. Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on that, because I am reminding people all the time that these are community awards, and that actually is community grassroots in action but it does feel a little strange.
GEMMA When your community is Cate Blanchett and Charlize Theron.
BRIAN Yeah, so the To Leslie nomination is wild and the people I feel saddest for today are Daniel Deadwyler and cast, craft and crew of The Woman King, which should have placed somewhere, didn't get any nominations, but Design in the very least. The only Black directed feature films receive any nominations outside of Original Song, was [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever] which had five nominations, including Angela Bassett’s first this century. Gina Prince-Bythewood did receive a BAFTA nomination for Best Director for The Woman King, however.
GEMMA Thank goodness for that. Thank the Royalty or the British Empire or something for that...
MIA Yeah we’ll thank the monarchy this one time. [Gemma laughs] But no, I completely agree with you, Brian. The Woman King, Till, and also Nope being shut out. These are all very, very glaring and important snubs.
GEMMA Yeah, thank goodness for the BAFTAs then. Let’s pivot and can we have a quick look at their nominations? As you know, I love the BAFTAs, I’m a BAFTAs girl. And these nominations also landed in the last week, and that’s where we probably saw a little bit of the noise for [All Quiet on the Western Front] rising.
BRIAN Yeah, the BAFTA long lists which came out prior, they really reduce—we talked about the Oscar shortlist, but the BAFTA long list reduces their pool of nominees to a much smaller, smaller group than the Oscars do. And All Quiet on the Western Front was all over that. That was when I Slacking Mia, like, “we’re gonna have to watch this because this is going to be a thing.” And it was a thing, especially it was a thing at the Oscars. It has eight nominations, but it had fourteen BAFTA nominations.
GEMMA That's a whopping amount. How did that happen? Sorry, I’m digressing. I’m digressing. I probably shouldn’t.
BRIAN I don’t know! [Gemma & Mia & Brian laugh]
GEMMA We’re gonna need a BAFTA insider on this—stay tuned next week. I don’t know. It’s crazy, isn’t it? But also *All Quiet on the Western Front(OG) was a winner of Best Picture at the third Oscars. Is that right? The original, the very, very original. Yeah.
BRIAN The Lewis Milestone. It was a milestone.
GEMMA It was a milestone! How exciting though, that our beloved Banshees have ten? That’s cool.
BRIAN It has ten and it’s also the only film—so the BAFTAs, there’s five nominees for best Best Film, and then there’s ten for Outstanding British Film. Banshees is the only one that crossed both of them. That was part of its ten, it’s basically being nominated for Best Picture twice at the BAFTAs, and it might win both of them. We shall see. Here’s a fun fact about the BAFTAs though, they do have extra slots. So the directors, actors at the Oscars, there’s five. At the BAFTAs, there’s six. But something that really stood out even with that number six is the lack of Spielberg at the BAFTAs for Best Director. Even with those six slots. There’s also a lack of The Fabelmans in their Best Film, while that one’s down to five. So The Fabelmans are looking very good with seven nominations. If you want to go all-in on bets on it, I would say hedge those bets right now because being shut out of the BAFTAs is a pretty difficult space to come back from. Now that does not mean that Spielberg himself cannot win somewhere.
MIA Another plus-up on the Academy is that the BAFTAs do have a Feature Film Debut category and we love an award for freshmen. We also love this area because it’s where women are winning at the BAFTAs.
BRIAN So it’s freshwomen.
MIA Freshwomen! Exactly—you’re right, Brian, we love an award for freshwomen.
GEMMA We love an award for freshpeople. It’s pretty exciting.
MIA Yeah, for freshmen. Yeah, any free people, really. It’s exciting. So yeah, the BAFTAs have Outstanding Debut of a British writer, director or producer and this year, the category is entirely women.
GEMMA Oh, yeah.
MIA So please—yeah! We love that. So here are the films, add them onto your watchlists, them. Aftersun, Blue Jean, Electric Malady, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and Rebellion.
GEMMA What a great lineup! What a beautiful weekend of watching that would be.
MIA Exactly. So I also want to bring attention to the fact that BAFTAs have a casting category as well. I think this is such an underappreciated yet so crucial department and Lucy Pardee should absolutely be lauded for bringing Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio together in Aftersun.
GEMMA Oh my god, so completely. And did you see, one of my favorite things is the reactions to nominations and the gorgeous FaceTime screenshots of Paul talking to his family and to Frankie when his Oscar nomination landed?
MIA Oh it was so sweet! It was so sweet. I’m so happy for Paul. That was a little bit of a surprise in a very good way, I want to add that as another pleasant surprise, seeing Paul up there in that Best Actor lineup.
GEMMA And that’s after a BAFTA nomination too, right? One last fun fact, the BAFTA and Oscar leading man lineup is identical, except that the BAFTAs, as Brian mentioned, have one extra, they have six men. And the sixth man is the lovely Leo Grande himself, Daryl McCormack! Somewhat slightly, gently diversifying the category and just adding another tender man to a lineup that already has tender Bill Nighy and tender Paul Mescal and tender Colin Farrell. It must be said.
BRIAN And Brendan Fraser...
GEMMA Ohhh and tender Brendan Fraser!
MIA Yes! And tender Brendan!
GEMMA Tender Brendan. It’s a tender year for the men. I love it. And then there’s Lydia Tár...
BRIAN For the ladies... [Gemma laughs]
MIA Yeah, the opposite of tender. Oh man... [Mia laughs] So to cap off this nom chat, Jack with the facts has created a Letterboxd *crew list of all the nominated films and a list just for the *Best Picture nominees. So jump on over to our *HQ page to follow along. And if you are a Pro or Patron member, you can clone and sort that list according to your own personal Best Picture preference.
GEMMA Amazing.
MIA As much as we’d love to think that awards are given to the best films, if you’re an awards follower, you will know that there’s a lot of campaigning and strategy involved. It is exhausting and it’s weird and award winner Cate Blanchett thinks it should stop. Just listen to her speech at the Critics Choice Awards as she accepts the trophy for best Lydia Tár...
[clip of Cate Blanchett’s acceptance speech plays]
CATE BLANCHETT Thank you. And thank you to all my fellow nominees. Look, I would love it, if we would just change the [beeps]. It’s like, what is this patriarchal pyramid where someone stands up here? Why don’t we just say, there is a whole raft of female performances that are in concert and in dialogue with one another? [applause] And stop the televised horse race of it all. Because can I tell you? Every single woman whether, you know television, film, advertising tampon commercials, whatever, you’re all out there doing amazing work that is inspiring me continually. So thank you. I share this with you all.
GEMMA One day, I hope to win an award for a tampon commercial and I want Cate Blanchett to give it to me—the award that is...
MIA I’ll take either! [Gemma laughs] I don’t know...
GEMMA Hey, look, if all this campaigning stuff is still surprising to you, Brian and Mia tracked down the perfect guest this week to take us behind the curtain on awards season campaigns. Friend of Letterboxd, Jacqueline Coley is the Awards Editor of Rotten Tomatoes—Awards Editor, like, year-round job, no less. It’s amazing. And she’s also the host of the Rotten Tomatoes is Wrong *podcast. Or if you’re in America, Rotten Tomatoes is Wrong. She jumped on for a chat about this—
MIA Thank you, thank you. [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA You’re welcome, you’re welcome. Inclusivity is, you know, we’re at peak inclusivity here. Tomato, tomahto. Anyway, Jacqueline Coley, the wonderful Jacqueline, jumped on Best in Show for a chat about the strategy behind winning an award and which gongs matter the most to the winners.
BRIAN Gemma, you took me back to my years at Fandango Rotten Tomatoes when we had an Australian Editor-in-Chief Joe Mear, and he always said tomatoes and everyone in the room was always like, ‘say tomatoes!” And he’s like, “I won’t...” [Gemma laughs] So that is where I know the great Jacqueline. But I did discover something new about her that everyone is going to discover, and that’s an award that she has won in her past. We also litigated an Oscar from the past. So, have a listen to someone that you’re very likely to see if you follow Oscar talk on Access Hollywood or E! or anything like that, in addition to Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd.
[theme music stinger plays]
MIA So, because you host the Rotten Tomatoes is Wrong podcast, I want to ask this question. So why is the Academy wrong? If you could go back in time and change one award recipient, which would you choose? Like I might have to take Jeff Bridges back for Crazy Heart and give it to Colin Firth for A Single Man.
JACQUELINE Ohhh, that’s a good one. Yeah, because then later they gave it to him for The King’s Speech, and that was basically—is that right?
MIA Which we didn’t need to do—yeah, yes. Yeah, we gave it to him for The King’s Speech. But we didn’t need to do that, so we could have given that one to a different person. It would have changed the course of history.
BRIAN Would that have been Jeff Bridges again for True Grit? Because like, we could have given it that.
MIA They could have switched! We can switch them around!
JACQUELINE Well, as I like to tell people, an Oscar because you deserve it begets more Oscars because you deserve it. Because for every time you award a master like Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman because you didn’t give it to him for this movie—you know what I mean? It’s the chicken or the egg, and it all messes up. But there’s one instance that I love to point to, because the person could still be an Oscar winner, in the ceremony that they were nominated. Use this in 1993, Angela Bassett was nominated for Best Actress for What’s Love Got to Do with It, and she was going up against Juggernaut, but in the Best ing Actress category, Holly Hunter was nominated for The Firm, which was her better role, murdered that ish in twelve minutes—I think it was actually eight minutes. She was eight minutes, she gave a BJ, she saved the day and she did it in their fabulous accent. That’s the one she should have won the Oscar for, it was Marisa Tomei, it was literally a My Cousin Vinny performance, they should have given it to her for that, but they gave it to her for the stupid The Piano—I have feelings about The Piano. I always have. I love The Piano for its beauty. But that performance? No, no! I get it, you couldn’t give Anna Paquin an Oscar and not give Holly Hunter an Oscar, I get it. But like, come on. Anyway, that's the one I would want. I would want Angela Bassett to win for What’s Love Got to Do with It, because come on! Everything she had to do for that role. She learned Buddhism and how to do a high step shuffle! That is way more than anybody did for Bohemian Rhapsody. Come on.
BRIAN The Globes are in the past, the Critics Choice are in the past, we have all these Guild nominations, we have obviously the Oscar nominations. Which of all these organizations, there are so many, show us how the Academy might be leaning, and which matter the most?
JACQUELINE That’s actually a really, really great question because I think a lot of people deem them all to just be precursors to the Oscars, helping influence the Oscars, and that’s really very much not the case. So first thing I will say is, let’s just divide up the types of groups. So the main two types of groups are: critic’s guilds that are comprised of people of like-minded status, and or what we consider production or industry guilds, meaning these are people within your group that do the same thing you do and they’re picking their year-end awards to say, ‘of the writers that are part of our group, this is the best’ ‘of the production design folks, these are the best.’ When you’re talking about the critics groups, there is a ton of them, including the Golden Globes, including the group that I’m apart of, the Critics Choice Awards, including ones that are based on identity like the African American Critics Association, and say, something like the Women’s Alliance, all of these different groups. All of those, for the most part, are not what I would say individually influential. All of those are more of a culmination, it is much more of like, ‘hey, do these groups think so on and so forth?’ The only time they matter is when they match—ie, I don’t think New York Film Critics are more influential than LA Film critics. But when New York Film Critics and LA Film Critics pick the same movie like they did last year with Drive My Car, that absolutely influences them if that movie is going to be nominated. Certain critics groups aligned with certain guild organizations, like the PGA is often aligned with NBR. And something like I would say, the Writers Guild, a lot of times aligns with the Critics Choice with their writing categories, and sometimes they influence each other there. As far as importance, when you’re talking about what the various people care about, any of them will tell you that they absolutely want to be awarded by their peers. So the Oscars and any of the guilds are definitely the ones that I think they hold the most esteem to, because they were actually awarded by the people that go in and do the job that they do every day. So I hope that answers your question as far as influenced, and where it sort of lines up. But all of these groups would tell you if you asked them that they are not like that, that they just care about their groups and their whatever, but I would say unless there’s something like the Independent Spirits or the Gotham’s, or some of these groups that make specific rules to say, ‘We don’t care about big budget movies,’ or ‘Hey, we only want to reward films that are from this particular group,’ ie maybe African American cinema or something like that. I think outside of that, it really is more, ‘Hey, what does this group think for these particular films? And which ones do they find to be influential?’
BRIAN And I’m glad you bring up the Spirit Awards, because actually, to me, it does feel like they have moved—there was a period of about five to almost ten years, that they kind of were aligning very close to the Oscars. It was the day before the Oscars, and it was kind of supposed to be this jump into the rest of the weekend. But really around 2018 is when they kind of shifted and got actually back to more independent roots. And I think that that has made the show and the nominations so much better. Because it decided to not be like, ‘we’re gonna predict the Oscars anymore, but we’re gonna celebrate actual independent cinema.’
JACQUELINE Yeah, and I think that was not only a choice of theirs. I think that was also due to a bit of industry pressure, like a lot of these folks felt like, ‘Hey, as long as you keep trying to align yourself with Oscars, we’re gonna keep missing more of these films that never get any sunshine.’ Because like I say too, as I like to tell people, the Oscars do not decide the best movie of the year. The Oscars decide what a group of, still statistically, mostly white, 65-year-old men think about this year’s films that can afford a multimillion dollar awards campaign and rise to the attention of then garnering a segment of the voting population to nominate them in a category. That is literally what it takes to actually get an Oscar nomination and that is literally millions of dollars and most films cannot afford to do that. There’s not a single film that gets nominated, even a movie like Drive My Car, that didn’t have at least a multimillion dollar Oscar campaign.
BRIAN I know how much you’ve done in this space, but I’ve actually never asked you this. Have you won an award yourself outside of film?
JACQUELINE I have won—I have won—I’ve been awarded things for competitions. Does that count?
BRIAN Yeah!
MIA Absolutely. Yes.
JACQUELINE Okay, man, I’ve never—I don’t think I’ve told this in this space and so now you’re gonna get like, this is—I definitely have not talked about this a lot and how barely two people I know this.
MIA We’re already getting a scoop!
JACQUELINE Yeah, I was a nationally ranked competitor in moot court and mock trial and debate. [Jacqueline laughs] And I hate telling people this because when you tell people that, they think that you just love to argue, which... fair. But that doesn’t mean I’m doing that all the time. And I just don’t like telling people that because then they just assume that you’re just this argumentative, horrible person, that anytime you speak to them it’s gonna be confrontational. And I’m not saying that I don’t have that in me, but I’m just not that way all the time. I turned it on to very specific things. So yeah, I don’t tell people that. But yeah, they gave us gavels. So I like award gavels and other regular trophies. But last year I competed, when we won. Yeah, that’s an interesting thing. And nobody cares about that, I was in college and I did it in college. Collegiate and high school, actually. But, yeah.
BRIAN I mean, that’s amazing. What is your favorite courtroom drama film?
JACQUELINE Courtroom drama? Man, there’s so many! I love The Verdict. Drunk Paul Newman in that movie is just so good. You know what is really funny and does not get nearly as much credit for how well written it is? Is My Cousin Vinny. I don’t care what anyone says about that movie, that movie is about a trial lawyer on a mission. That is a Columbo episode that is just giving more. It is just such a really tight one. But there’s a few, I mean, there’s a few that I think folks think of when they think of right off the top of their head. And I’m not saying that I don’t love all those ones, you know, like To Kill a Mockingbird or things like that. But, yeah, no, The Verdict. I would watch that again right now. Yeah, I would, I really would. I love Paul Newman. He’s my favorite. He’s my favorite actor. I literally love his filmography.
MIA What about his salad dressing? Have you tried it? Is it good?
JACQUELINE I live for his salad dressing and for his pizzas. And I love that it’s in a perpetual trust to raise money for climate change. They’re in a bit of a fight about that actually, because some people are trying to be capitalists in that company. Also, Ethan Hawke directed The Last Movie Stars with him, and I just love that he loved a woman that was very loud in Hollywood, you know, I just love that about them that they had this really cute love story.
MIA So I’m curious about what film got you into awards season? As we’re talking about your favorite movies and everything, was there one in particular?
JACQUELINE Well, there’s been a few but I will say this, and I also haven’t talked about this. The reason why I’m an Awards Editor, I would definitely say is because of Whoopi Goldberg. Because Whoopi Goldberg started hosting the Oscars is when my mother became an avid watcher of the Oscars, because every woman who exists loves Whoopi Goldberg because of The Color Purple, because The Color Purple is amazing. It’s also why every Black woman who exists to some tangential form, also loves Steven Spielberg because he made The Color Purple. You know, it’s like he sort of gets that blanket of that film's goodwill, even though obviously, he’s the director, you should get more than that. But for Black women, this is our thing, they just brought him along. That’s the way they feel about The Color Purple. Like if you showed most Black women who the director of The Color Purple was, they wouldn’t know who he is. But if you gave them any quote, they could quote it by heart. Yeah, that kind of vibe. Anyway, but no, when she was hosting the Oscars, that’s when I decided to be obsessed about it. And then I just got obsessed about the movies, too. And she was always obsessed about the movies. And I think for Black people, the movies have always been sort of a thing that you’ve been sort of in love with because of how transporting it was. Any aspirational existence that Black people would want to achieve, they probably first saw on a screen before they saw it in real life, including a Black man being in a relationship with the white woman in something like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. A lot of the representation that we first see that is, like you said, aspirational, is on a movie screen. And so yeah, I don’t know if there’s a movie that made me obsessed with awards as much as her hosting—that was when I was just like, ‘Okay, I’m signed up for everything.’ Lived in that for as long as possible, and then became ionate about all of the things—because it’s sort of, you know, it’s a rabbit hole. You can go down the rabbit hole of like, ‘Oh these movies—oh, there’s this Cannes thing, there’s NYU, there’s Sundance,’ there’s all these things that come with that.
BRIAN You were on the front lines, still are on the front lines, for reclaiming [Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit] is a great film.
JACQUELINE Yes I am. And I will say, first line of my orbit will be, “And with her podcast, Rotten Tomatoes is Wrong, she managed to hopefully slightly raise the TomatoMeter of the Bill Duke classic that starred Whoopi Goldberg, [Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit].”
BRIAN Back in the Habit, one of the best sequel titles ever. But there isn’t a clear front runner yet, but The Fabelmans are there. And I’m curious, because they had this platform release that was actually very confusing. It was d for, largely for Thanksgiving, it didn’t even hit 700 screens. The movie didn’t go over 1000 screens until late-December when it was already available on VOD. It would be one of the lowest grossing Best Picture winners if it were able to go that far. I’m wondering, does box office matter still? And is the platform release in trouble? Because that’s been a big part of how these awards movies have been released for a while, but they’re not doing well with that rollout right now.
JACQUELINE I mean, I think it does. I think it always will. I think what awards cinema is starting to realize is that the model that they used to have—because basically this is what happened. With award worthy cinema back when we used to have direct-to-DVD and VHS sales, that was part of why it was that they made these movies—literally Miramax, the reason why they became Miramax was because people then bought Miramax movies at home because they now associated the brand with quality. They had this sort of built-in buying power for direct to consumer sales. Eventually, what happened when they got rid of that is they just started pushing all these movies to the end of the year. And that then made advertising extremely critical for those movies to work. And that was cool when we still had must-see TV, and you could tell people that they needed to go see the new Steven Spielberg at that time. Since we moved into this digital age, the exact people that we need to market towards, we actually can’t communicate with anymore. And this is 30 to 55-year-old people who still care about award worthy cinema. And I think this year has demonstrated the lack of advertising with that particular group. And that’s really what we’re seeing with this [The] Fabelmans thing. And it’s a recent phenomenon that I think rs just haven’t figured out yet. So I think that’s the reason why, but I do think box office does still absolutely matter, and it will matter as long as we still have this model, I think they just have to figure out a way to talk to these people. Because the older, older people, the people that still watch CBS, they showed up because they found them with [Top Gun: Maverick]. That’s the other thing that people don’t talk about with [Top Gun: Maverick*]. It’s not lost on me that the same company that was most closely aligned with CBS, that has the oldest viewing demographic that still watches live television, also happened to produce the movie that everybody went to go see in the theater, that can’t be a coincidence.
BRIAN And that they keep bringing back to theaters, like every time someone leaves the theaters, they’re like, “we’re taking screens back!” [Brian laughs]
JACQUELINE Exactly. So this is not—yeah, again, this is no coincidence, the fact that they seem to be the one that has gotten this right. Also, the fact that they have this little show Yellowstone that they could also do cross promotion with.
MIA Do you have a personal front runner for Best Picture? And then what your prediction is for what will actually perhaps win?
JACQUELINE That’s a good question, because I think people mistake why I would want something to win. So I want to be very clear that I’ve had—I’m in Mexico right now on a very extended vacation and if you look at my Out of Office email, you will realize that I’m very much warning people to 'leave me alone’. [Jacqueline laughs] I don’t want to talk to you. So because I think our industry is in an existential crisis. And I think if we do not figure out a way to get these people that are making videos and TikTok to understand that they’re filmmakers and that they all are ionate about filmmaking, we’re going to let our industry die. I really do feel that. I think we need to learn to be inclusive, not just in the diversity sense, I’m talking about inclusive in the idea of like, ‘Hey, that kid is a filmmaker, bring him into our fold. Do not belittle him and call him just an influencer or diminish what he’s doing because you don’t find the value in it.’ It is part of the language of filmmaking, we need to bring these people along. So I am all about making every aspect and certain ways of our industry more democratic and more, I would say, populous. So I want a popular pick to win. I adore a movie like TÁR, but I do not want that to win Best Picture. Give me [Avatar: The Way of Water]. Give me Elvis. Give me [Top Gun: Maverick]. Give me something that people are gonna look at and then go see it. I hope it’s not Elvis. I really do. And I honestly hope it’s not even [Top Gun: Maverick] because they can’t bring it back into theaters anymore. But I do think, in the most fitting way possible, give it to James Cameron. The man is literally the embodiment of the film industry—good, bad or indifferent. And at least now he is trying—like for people coming for [Avatar: The Way of Water] this time, for like, “Oh, it’s not this, it’s not that.” I’m like, this is James Cameron we’re talking about, like the fact that this man even hinted at some level of emotional intelligence between these characters is just like, let’s go. Hi, happy days. Happy days. This is growth. You know what this is? This is Avatar: The Way of Water is growth and I will not let you diminish this man’s growth just because it’s not achieved a level and semblance of 2022 standards. I’m happy that it’s here.
BRIAN I know that you’re partially here, you’re not just here to talk with us about the wrongs of the Academy, the wrongs of the Golden Globes. You also need to promote a little game yourself that Rotten Tomatoes is going to be doing. So tell us what’s up.
JACQUELINE Yes! Daily Tomato. This is our new daily game. If there’s a New York Times game that you used to play before doing so would cross the picket line, this is very similar to that. It’s really fun, you get to take a series of five guesses to find a popular film that you would probably recognize but not always. Just think of it as probably a Rotten Tomatoes staple type film. something on one of our Essentials Guide, something like that. And the first thing you’ll see is the TomatoMeter score and a logline. Then we’ll give you a little bit more details of it, maybe a trivia detail of it, and again, the idea is to hopefully guess it very quickly. The other day, I did get one on one guess and it was—all it gives you is the genre, it doesn’t even give you—it’s a thriller, drama, comedy, horror— thriller, drama, comedy, horror—98% Certified Fresh, 91% Audience Score. 2019.
BRIAN Parasite?
JACQUELINE Yes, Parasite.
MIA Nice! Brian, wow!
JACQUELINE And I actually got that one on one guess, and so you would have gotten that one probably too. But that was the other thing, if it was—and it tells you that the title is one word, it will tell you the title guess. So that’s Daily Tomato and it’s really fun! And yeah, keep clicking away. Have fun with it.
BRIAN 2019, every genre, I just feel like that—when it was basically like, that was the math I did, is like, oh that’s Parasite. If it’s every genre scene and it’s 2019... [Brian laughs]
JACQUELINE That’s exactly why, that’s exactly why. And that’s what made me get it too. Also one word, which was really fun. And that’s the only time I’ve gotten it all one guess. I have been embarrassed by this game on so many occasions, because it’s movies that you would think you would know. I one—I think it was [The Best Man] or something like that. And I was like, I need to give away my Black folks card, because there are white people that got this guess correct and I did not. [Jacqueline & Mia laugh] Maybe it was like Friday or something like that, where I’m like, there are literally Caucasian people who I know got this correct before I did and I am very much ashamed as a Black woman that I missed it! [Jacqueline laughs]
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GEMMA You know what Rotten Tomatoes was right about? [Mia gasps] Jacqueline Coley—she is a gem. What a lovely chat you both had with her. And she reminded me that there’s an award I totally forgot I won and did not declare at the beginning of this season when we were discussing our awards for swimming and journalism. When I was in my first year at high school, I was the first speaker and captain of our high school debating team, Papatoetoe High School, and we won the Auckland Debating Association Annual Championship.
MIA What?!
GEMMA So... I am looking forward to going head-to-head with Jacqueline in a debate sometime. ‘Letterboxd was right about, Rotten Tomatoes was wrong about...’ It’ll be fun. And I still have that little trophy too. It’s like the size of my finger. It’s so wew, but it’s a real trophy, like the emoji for a trophy. It looks just like that.
MIA Oh my god, you should bring that with you everywhere. I bet it would get you into Elton John’s Oscars after party. Right? That’s all it takes. Right? You just show a little trophy and then you’re in?
GEMMA Yeah, you just turn up with your trophy. It doesn’t have to be an Oscar, does it?
MIA No, it can be anyone. So speaking of after parties, by the way, it is time for us.
GEMMA Yeah!
MIA Yes! Yes!
GEMMA I’m changing my outfit.
MIA Yes, yes. We’re all changing into our gowns—or no, changing out of our gowns, into our party dresses? Okay.
BRIAN I’m going into my hoodie.
GEMMA I’m going into my silk pajamas.
MIA Oh, silk, excellent choice. So this is all real and happening. [Gemma & Mia laugh] Okay. All award ceremonies have that moment after the final gong when you get to loosen your tie, unbutton your jacket, take your bra off, kick those heels under the table, pull on your silk pajamas, and assess our life choices and play a few party games! This is that moment for Best in Show! This is the... After Party.
GEMMA I’m ready. I’m ready. Brian, have you kicked your heels off? [Brian laughs]
BRIAN They were never on.
MIA You’re already ahead. Okay, let’s take a look back at last week. So what were—Gemma, could you remind us which category and year you chose?
GEMMA Yes, I can, Mia. The Heart Rate category is the 45th BAFTA Best Original Screenplay nominees from 1992. And ranked by Letterboxd rating in that order, they are: Thelma & Louise, screenplay by Callie Khouri.
MIA Woo!
GEMMA Yeah! The Fisher King, screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, *Truly Madly Deeply*by Anthony Minghella, and Green Card by Peter Weir. Yes, that Peter Weird, our *Master and Commander.
MIA And it looks like there are no major shocks here. Jack’s Facts tells us that it is the exact same order when we sort by the heart rate, and just like with the ratings, Green Card is trailing a long way behind the others.
GEMMA Oh my god, it’s so is. So Green Card has like a 2.9 on Letterboxd, whereas Thelma & Louise have a very well deserved 4.2.
MIA Oh! 4.2? Yes, it is what she deserves, what they deserve. Gemma, but what was the winner of all of these?
GEMMA Okay, so interestingly, Thelma & Louise had a big award season that year, it won the Screenplay Oscar, the WGA—and its own Writers Guild Award—and the Golden Globe. But, BAFTA chose differently. Thelma & Louise did not triumph. That gong went to Truly Madly Deeply, which was the first of Anthony Mandela’s three BAFTA wins. And another fun fact—so Truly Madly Deeply stars Alan Rickman as a cello playing ghost and BAFTA we’re really big on Alan Rickman this year. He got a lead actor nom for Truly Madly Deeply, but he didn’t win for that. He won Best ing Actor for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves—definitely the best thing in that film. Everything I do, I do it for Alan, just saying. Unfun fact, however, Anthony Minghella only won one Oscar in his career for Best Director for The English Patient. He may have won many more, but he died way too young at the age of 54 in 2008, which I think is still quite a shock to anyone who followed his career. Brian, Mia, I want to know which of these Best Original Screenplay nominees did you take the time to watch for the first time, or rewatch, and what’s your pitch for why we should add it to watchlist?
BRIAN Well, before I get into that, you can’t bring up Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves around me without me thinking about when I was a very young boy and I got all the neighborhood boys together in the garage to play fake instruments and record ourselves singing Bryan Adams songs from that movie.
GEMMA Brian, it’s so deeply triggering to me. At the time that movie came out, my parents owned a wedding reception lounge and catering business. And I was a baby waitress while I was at my, you know, broadcasting school. And every Saturday night, for about three years, I had to watch couple after couple, black suit, white dress, do their first dance to that song. I never need to hear it again. [Brian laughs] Maybe your version? Maybe your version...
BRIAN Yeah, our version where you could barely hear probably, you could just hear like paint can drumsticks and some broom strokes. That’s the version that everyone needs to hear—where is it? I have no idea.
GEMMA Mia is suspiciously quiet. I mean, maybe this is the year that you were born? I don’t know. Do you know what song we’re talking about?
MIA I was not born yet... [Gemma laughs] And I do not know the song, and I haven’t seen the film.
GEMMA But Alan Rickman’s performance is very definitely worth seeing.
MIA I mean, all of his performances are definitely worth seeing...
GEMMA Right.
MIA Loves him.
GEMMA But I was gonna say, speaking of great actors and award winners, we just saw at the Critics Choice Awards, the great Jeff Bridges onstage receiving an excellent and timely honor. Tell me, Brian, was it The Fisher King that you watched?
BRIAN It was. It was a perfect segue, a way to reel it back in there... He he. [Gemma & Mia laugh] The Fisher King, as you said, was written by Richard LaGravenese. Before—I’m kind of putting off talking about The Fisher King, I’m just going to say a little bit that it does reinforce something that I love about TÁR—yes, I get to bring up TÁR too. It’s not just the girls. [Mia & Gemma laugh] It reinforces that I love that Todd Field refuses to use modern terminology in TÁR, even though it is a quote unquote, “cancel culture” movie and the word is never used, neither is ‘woke’, none of this stuff is mentioned because despite what you might hear on Twitter, public consequences or a fall from grace has been around as long as there have been airwaves or print or campfire gossip. The Fisher King, this is 1991, concerns a canceled shock DJ played by Jeff Bridges, whose words on air made a listener snap and shoot up a bar, killing multiple people and himself. And as he attempts to make amends with his mistake by helping a homeless man on a quest for love and the Holy Grail, it is Terry Gilliam, the homeless man he learned had lost his wife in that very bar shootout. So that is how he’s trying to close this chapter by helping someone that was affected by his words. This is one of those films that has its heart in the right place, but I think it makes the mistake by focusing on the established man’s plight and like the housed person’s redemption as opposed to engaging with the homeless subplot beyond integrating him simply into his life. I’m also shocked by, so the homeless man is played by Robin Williams. I’m shocked by how little screen time Robin Williams has in this. He’s one of the biggest movie stars in the world at this point. So I did not love it as a story, so apologies to BAFTA nominated screenwriter Richard LaGravenese, but I did enjoy many of the performances. So we’re supposed to say like, ah, why put it on your watchlist? My pitch is, if you’re like me and didn’t love The Fisher King, but still want a shock jock profile from that era, I highly recommend Oliver Stones Talk Radio, which is Eric Bogosian, he stars, he astounds and sticking to writing, he actually wrote the play that the movie was based on.
GEMMA Can I put on a little plug for that Times Square with Tim Curry as a radio DJ?
BRIAN Oh, yes. I mean, radio DJs had a moment in this era. Christian Slater, Pump Up the Volume.
GEMMA Oh my god, Pump Up the Volume? Yes!
MIA Are we kind of radio DJs?
BRIAN We kind of are... make a movie !
MIA But with movies instead of music?
GEMMA We are radio DJs and we are having a moment. [Gemma laughs]
MIA We all have over ear headphones. We’re all talking into microphones. Isn’t that all you have to do?
GEMMA Pretty much, pretty much. [Mia laughs]
BRIAN But the last thing I’ll say as a DJ is also, don’t listen to my words that I’m saying right now because ultimately, if you haven’t seen The Fisher King, a lot of people love it. I am an outlier out here. I look at my mutual’s on Letterboxd and most everyone loves it. I did not, but also as of today, the Criterion just announced they’re going to put it out on a 4K blu-ray. So they’re all on board. Everyone’s on board.
GEMMA Except Brian. That’s okay!
BRIAN Except Brian...
GEMMA Mia, what did you watch of these amazing original screenplays? Like I’m assuming you went Thelma & Louise, but then again, I’m thinking you’ve seen it enough times to maybe take a little break?
MIA Yes, yes. I believe I mentioned in the last episode that this was the film that I studied the most in college. So I’ve seen it a billion times, I’ve written thousands of words on it. I love it very much. And I decided to challenge myself by watching a movie that I am not familiar with, Truly Madly Deeply.
GEMMA Yes!
MIA Yes, yes, yes. Written and directed by Anthony Minghella. So this is an English rom-com featuring ghosts and rats. So that is one hundred percent up my alley already. And focusing on the script itself, it is so wonderfully written and explores the grieving process in a really authentic way. That’s very, very moving. I don’t know, ghost rom-coms can be kind of cheesy and, yes, this is a sub-genre, there are quite a few. And I say this with a lot of love for Ghost and Just Like Heaven, but this one was not cheesy, it’s very rooted in reality and it gives its leading character, a lot of space to grieve and wale and rage about the loss of her husband, who is played by a mustachioed, cello-playing Alan Rickman who we previously mentioned. But it also depicts this necessity of moving on in a way that’s very devoid of condescension, like it bugs me when stories about grieving are just like, ‘Ah, don’t be sad. Just pick yourself up and get over it. It’s fine!’
GEMMA Get a new husband!
MIA Yeah, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s that easy? Ah, I hadn’t tried that. Thank you so much. It’s such great information.’ Yeah, that’s just not true and it’s not conducive or healthy to what is a very natural process. And I really appreciated how this movie does not dip into that. And that’s why you should add it to your watchlist.
BRIAN Mia, I recently watched this as well. I wanted to ask how much it filled your heart to watch the scene where they hop and tell each other their life stories.
MIA Brian, I had to pause and I had to look up the script and take and copy it into my notes and put it into my private list that’s favorite movie quotes.
BRIAN Yeah, that scene is when I was like, ‘Oh, this is the BAFTA win right here. This is so good.’
MIA The hopping scene? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I loved it. It was so romantic! Ah, romance!
GEMMA Just the ending, the ending! All I’m gonna say is, no spoilers, but just that moment, right, when she... and then she... and, ah...
MIA And then she... [Mia & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA But also, who doesn’t love a big snotty cry to your therapist, see if you’re missing one of those things in your life, track down Truly, Madly Deeply. And by the way, it’s hard to track down. It’s not currently available on any streaming service that I can see. And I know that you both had to go to their local video store to get it. So can this be a plea from this and show and the litterbox family more globally? Truly, Madly, Deeply criterion when?
MIA Yes, we need to make it accessible because you can’t even rent this thing
GEMMA tells you what you can rent for $1.99 on iTunes. And that is Green Card written and directed by Peter Weir. So this was a huge hit when it came out. I actually seeing it at the movies a bunch of times. It has a crazy low rating as I mentioned on leader bucks of 2.9. It is Peter we as the lowest rated film other than some 50 minute 1971 Australian thing he made that looking through letterbox reviews, it is a four to five star comfort watch for many people. And I chose this one because I hadn’t seen it since back then. So it’s been a bunch of years and a bunch of things have happened and JIRA diplodia has, you know, had a reputational reanalysis. Much needed. But Peter Weir is best known as a director. He’s an incredible director. I love him so much, but I hadn’t really thought of him in the context of being a script writer. So I rewatched this one for the screenplay, and I was really sort of touched by how intelligent and grown up and economical it is. It’s just like it just jumps right into the plot and doesn't muck around. We meet French George and American Bronte as they meet each other in a diner right before the Quickie waiting at City Hall. Bronte needs to appear married in order to get past the condo gatekeepers of a building that has a very gorgeous greenhouse apartment attached to an apartment that she just has to rent and they want a nice stable married couple. And George Well has a tourist visa that is expiring and he’s gonna have to leave America and he wants to stay there. And that’s all we know. And we don’t need to know much more and we’re not really spoon fed throughout. We figure it out as they figure it out. And so much of the story, which is in the screen players and glances and fidgeting fingers and small nonverbal moments, which really reflects Peter Weir’s visual sensibility, I think and also I don’t know about you, but I love scenes with hubbub unclear dialogue, like lots of people in the room. Lots of hugs,
MIA I love that it’s natural. That’s how people talk. People are talking over each other like I’m doing to you right now.
GEMMA Peter, we, I could have written this segment of this podcast. But there’s a memorable dinner party scene right at the center of the film the exact halfway point which has, here’s the dining table hubbub, which then sort of clears out into this immaculately cheesy because the rom com right, so you’re gonna have a cheesy moment, this cheesy piano performance at that halfway point that totally shifts the mood between the central couple who haven’t liked each other up until this point. And then soon after that there’s a very erotic, largely nonverbal, Midnight scene where they’re on either side sleeping either sides of a wall in the apartment, and they don’t touch but it’s like, oh my god, were you 60 Min. Anyway, And it all builds up to the immigration interview where they finally finally have to talk at length about each other, in separate holding rooms to sort of immigration officers who are not, and not there to receive the information emotionally. So they’re talking about each other but not to each other and it’s the first time that we end they get to truly understand how they need to now feel about each other and and some of the lines oh my god, he says she has peace. I don’t have peace and she says he has ion he eats life anyway and holds up script writers wise apart from the JIRA dip idea of it all, even though at the time it was very clever casting because he needed to be a sort of carnivorous oafish, bumbling French beast larger than life to nd McDowell’s gorgeous, long haired, very well put together. Person it’s, it's wholesome.
MIA I just gonna say I think that oftentimes it’s more erotic to not touch like that tension. There's an erotism inherent in that. So that’s very interesting.
GEMMA I’ve often said it’s more erotic to have clothes on than to be naked.
BRIAN Shout out to the toothbrushing bring it on scene the most sexual tension ever.
GEMMA Anyway, I just want to sum up the whole Green Card of all with David Sims Letterboxdmember blank check pod co host who wrote a four star review of Green Card with the comment. Now this is how you make a goddamn motherfucking gentle movie. However, I stand by speaking of gentle cinema, Truly, Madly, Deeply as the winner. And I would have been totally fine with Thelma & Louise as well. What would you have chosen?
MIA Well, I think it’s fairly obvious which one I would have chosen if I am Thelma & Louise forever. I think it’s a perfect script from beginning to unforgettable end and it’s immortalized in the academy museum. I mean, I mean, how do you beat a lion? Like,
and I’m not sorry that some of them are dead. I’m just sorry, it was you that did it. Not me. Oh,
GEMMA do you think that line is going to make it to the reported musical version of Thelma & Louise that we’ve just found out about?
MIA I know, I know. I hope it’s the whole song title. I hope it’s a really, really long song title. I cannot wait for that. I can’t believe that’s happening. I’m in. I’m all in on that. But anyway, I’m a Thelma & Louise girl for life. Again, it’s maybe my favorite script ever. So yeah, I gotta lock that one down. Brian, what about you? Well, I’m gonna
BRIAN do a little role playing. And I’m going to pretend that I’m British, for a moment. And so Kelly Curie, she won the WGA, she won the globe, it’s very obvious, she’s probably going to win the Oscar. If I’m part of the if I’m a voting member and BAFTA, I would like to award one of my own. And this is something that I'm saying Truly, Madly, Deeply. Sorry, I didn’t answer that quite yet. Partially for the hop scene as well. But this is something that a lot of these other country groups like to do, because the Oscars even though they’re not extremely global, for what they award, they are the largest global brand. And a lot of these branches like to award people that they work with, because as we’re trying to drill home, this always isn’t about the best movie, it is kind of like a community award for people within it. So there are many, many Oscar equivalents in many, many different countries, almost every Asian and European country has them. There are many in South America, every continent has their own words. And you look at something like this, which says ours, which is loved by American films, they don’t give their say ours to any Americans, the only American director who has ever won Best Director there is Joseph Losee. And he was blacklisted from Hollywood and started working in Europe in the 50s. And then they awarded him the only American actors they’ve given to as Adrian Brody for The Pianist, which is French maid and Kristen Stewart for Clouds of Sils Maria, which is French maid. So I’m going to just pretend that that’s kind of in this role playing way of like, who should have won. I'm going to be British for a moment and just say, because I know Thelma & Louise are getting all that shine. Let’s just give Anthony Minghella a listen here as well. And also a little shout out additionally to so well. Anthony Mandela did win three. The BAFTA did spread it out a lot more in the 90s than the Oscars did, like during The English Patient sweep. Anthony one two for Best Picture and screenplay, but they gave best director to Joe Cohen for Fargo so they do award Americans me there is like English speaking parallel, but they they seem to just like try to try to spread it out more which is something that Cate Blanchett I think is trying to tell this that we’re supposed to do in this process as well spread the love. That’s what we’re doing.
GEMMA Oh, spreading the love and spreading the love to maximum Gala. Anthony’s son, later bucks member totally We have superstar actor and director. We love him. And funny GET off these original screenplays only Thelma & Louise was also a nominee for best film that year, alongside Dances with Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs and The Commitments . Any guesses which film won? Best Film factors? 1992 going
MIA off of what Brian just said, I am going to have to abandon my American girlies Thelma & Louise and guess the Irish musical the commitments you I
GEMMA is correct. And well, everyone goes on about Shrek and Moulin Rouge! kicking off the jukebox musical craze happened a whole lot earlier in the end the Irish got their first
BRIAN directed by Amin was there Yeah, Alan Parker, the original jukebox music. Maybe up the wall.
GEMMA Love Alan Parker. All right. Is that it? Is that it for this week’s
MIA Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much for choosing the year and category. Gemma. Thank you. Thank you for your excellent choices. But next week, we are actually going to switch things up. But we are all going to get on the same page and watch the same movie. Wow. Yeah, movie club. It's a fun movie club.
BRIAN Oh, cool. And you can us!
GEMMA Oh, yeah.
MIA So in the spirit of Oscar nomination day, let’s watch the first film to win all of the top five awards: Best Picture. Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. It Happened One Night.
GEMMA It all happened in one night, those five awards. Yes. Oh, the Frank Capra film, It Happened One Night.
MIA Oh, the wildly influential rock every modern rom coms takes for him.
GEMMA It’s so funny because I think that of Bringing Up Baby but I have never seen It Happened One Night and it keeps coming up on my iTunes movie recommendations. So that’s it. I’m watching it. I’m not just gonna watch it one night, it’s going to happen tonight.
MIA Oh, Gemma, I’m so excited for you to watch it and retroactively understand all these rom com references. I’m so excited. So many of them stem from this one. It's so interesting.
GEMMA So if you are listening, and you haven’t seen it, or it’s time for a rewatch do that between now and the next episode, because then you'll be on board. And drop us your thoughts about how it holds up, . We’d love to hear your thoughts. We’ll read some of them out or if you tag your review Best in Show, we might read it as part of our wrap. That’d be pretty exciting.
MIA Okay, and that brings us to the Player of the sSason. So this is where we select a person or group of people who, you know, amongst the glitz and glam are grounding us with heartfelt and political actions to make the world and Hollywood a little bit better. So do we have any nominees this week?
GEMMA I do. I do. I have one. Apart from Cate Blanchett's speech at the Critics Choice Awards, which is one of my nominees, we’ve already heard that. S.S. Rajamouli's speech at the Critics Choice Awards, we’ve already heard Cate Blanchett speech which I also loved but the director of RRR, who won Best International feature film, thanked all the women in his life from his mom who encouraged him to read comic books, to his wife, Rama Rajamouli, about whom he said she’s the costume designer of my films. But more than that, she’s the designer of my life.
MIA Awww…
BRIAN Insert sigh. [all three hosts sigh]\
[theme song ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
MIA Thank you so much for listening to the Best in Show, a limited series award season series brought to you by The Letterboxd Show. Thanks to our guest, Jacqueline Coley. You can follow all of us and our HQ page on Letterboxd using the links in our episode notes.
GEMMA Thanks to our crew: Jack for the facts, Slim for making us sound amazing and Sophie Shin for the episode transcript. Thanks to Letterboxd member Trent Walton for the music and to Brian for producing us and also to you for listening. We’d love you to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if you have a minute.
BRIAN As Jennifer Coolidge said at the Critics Choice Awards: “I know you’ve heard a lot from me in the last month or two but I just want to say, this is as good as it gets. I hope this gives you hope, it’s not over till it’s over. It’s not over till you’re dead.” Best in Show is a Tapedeck production.
GEMMA Hell yeah, Brian.
MIA Woooo!
[Tapedeck bumper plays] This is a Tapedeck podcast.