Oscar season, explained

On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. William A. Wellman's war film “Wings” was named best picture of the year and best unique and artistic film FW Murnau's masterpiece “Sunrise”. Two best director awards were presented that night: one for a drama (Frank Borzage for “7th Heaven”) and one for a comedy (Lewis Milestone for “Two Arabian Nights”). There were only two performance awards: Best Actor went to Emile Janning for The Last Stand, while Janet Gaynor was up for Best Actress for the film. three films (“7th Heaven”, “Sunrise” and “Street Angel”). The ceremony took place without pomp and tension: it lasted 15 minutes, and the winners were known in advance. Razzle-dazzle was booked for the afterparty.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) chose to broadcast the ceremony via radio in 1930, it quickly caught the interest of the movie-crazy public, fascinated by the advent of “talkies” and enamored with matinee idols. At some point, the awards became known as the “Oscars,” and everyone from AMPAS President/Librarian Margaret Herrick to Bette Davis acquired the nickname. In 1953, when the ceremony was first televised, movie fans around the world were excited by the idea of ​​an annual shindig that brings together some of the world's biggest films and stars to compete for awards voted on by their peers. . Tens of millions of people watched the Oscars every year (with The 1998 broadcast dominated by “Titanic” still the most watched ceremony of all time), although the length of the event could be a penalty (no more than four hours and 23 minutes long marathon in 2002).

We may live in a very different entertainment environment today, but the Academy Awards still create a lot of excitement outside of the film industry. They don't move the needle at the box office quite like they used to (mostly because the movies just don't last as long anymore), but people still cheer when the nominations are announced in January, and at least pay attention to who triumphs on Oscar night (which is usually a Sunday in March). More plugged-in movie fans start following the Oscar race much earlier than this one; they follow the speculation of Oscar journalists/bloggers and excitedly wonder if this could be the year a superhero blockbuster finally takes home Best Picture.

We call it Oscar season, and it's a lucrative industry in itself. How does it work and who does it benefit other than the people fighting for the trophy? I have covered the season as a journalist for over 20 years and have followed it since I was a child. Here's what I've learned along the way.

Oscar season never ends. As soon as the book is closed on the calendar year, the Academy Award quest begins anew, while the one started the previous year is heated up. Confused? Here is the clearest explanation I can offer.

Beginning Jan. 1, any film that plays at least seven days in 10 of the top 50 U.S. markets is eligible for an Academy Award. So, yes, in theory, the 2025 Oscar Derby will begin when “Den of Thieves 2: Panther” hits multiplexes on January 10. However, don't expect awards journalists to start writing about the 2025 season on this day. They will begin considering potential contenders when they attend the Sundance Film Festival later this month, where such thoroughbreds as “Call Me By Your Name,” “Whiplash” and 2021 Best Picture winner “CODA” debuted.

Journalists do double duty this time of year. In 2025, Oscar nominations for 2024 films will be announced on January 17, six days before Sundance begins. Some journalists will also visit the Berlin International Film Festival in February, where Wes Anderson's film “The Grand Budapest Hotel” premiered. Do Oscar voters also attend these festivals, or at least find out what's making the buzz? Unless they have movie screenings at one of the festivals, they usually don't attend. They'll read the reviews, of course, but with the Oscar voting deadline looming on February 18th, those voting in good faith are forced to watch or re-watch all the nominees.

Funnily enough, when the Oscars are on March 10, some Oscar reporters will have to fly into Austin for the film portion of the Southwest Conference and Festivals March 7-15. Although fewer awards contenders are debuting here than at Sundance, this one is the festival that gave us Best Picture Winner “Everything Everywhere at Once” in 2022. Journalists then get an April break before Oscar season returns at May's Cannes Film Festival. Many Academy Award favorites have premiered at this most prestigious festival, where, as “Parasite” proved in 2019, the Palme d'Or can be won for the best picture trophy 10 months later.

During the summer months, the Oscars season takes a significant hiatus, but returns at the end of August with the trio of the Venice International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Studios and distributors typically save their top year-end contenders for these three events, which are a series of premieres that are screened. In my experience, most Oscar voters note and begin to evaluate the potential of the awards based on the news spread by journalists and their peers. With these movies hitting theaters in the coming months, they can start to come out and make their own list of the best movies, shows, screenplays, etc. of the year. can. It sounds weird to say, but some Academy members don't start watching movies until they hit screens later in the fall.

And that brings us to December, when critics groups vote on their year-end awards to sway Oscar voters. An organization like the New York Film Critics Circle can absolutely raise the profile of a starless indie or an intellectually challenging epic (like 2024's The Brutalist ). Much of this is nuanced, but in general, this is how Oscar season plays out every year.

Now let's get down to the campaign.

If you think the answer to this question is “being a great movie”, it's unfortunately not. With few exceptions, legitimate Academy Award consideration is pay-per-play. Hundreds of millions of dollars in total are pumped into the praise industry, with campaigns for individual films often running north of $20 million.

It wasn't always like this. For most of the Oscars' existence, the campaign was on a much smaller scale, to the point where it was completely invisible to anyone outside the movie business. If you live in Hollywood, you'd see billboards scattered around town, and full-page ads taken out in trade publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Decades ago, I always looked forward to the fall months, if only to see which hopelessly prestigious pictures had the obligatory FYC ads (my favorite was Caleb Deschanel's long-forgotten yachting drama The Wind ). I was also very happy to see dark and gloomy indie like “Heathers” get a little boost for Best Original Screenplay.

This raised the question: Who determined the applicants? For a long time, feedback and word-of-mouth were key, and you can blame the latter, created by an increasingly older and whiter academy, for the cold shoulder given to edgy and diverse classics like Do Right. Case, “Blue Velvet” and “To Die For”. These masterpieces grew out of the independent film movement of the 1980s (ironically driven by the now-prestigious Sundance Film Festival), which accelerated the rise of increasingly prominent independent distributors such as Miramax. And when Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein grew tired of being denied the Academy's top prize, he turned Oscar season into a political campaign.

The Oscar season as we know it now began in 1998 when Miramax spent a lot of money and used dirty tricks straight out of Nixon's political playbook (until the Watergate break-in) to topple over-sized Best Picture favorite Saving Private Ryan with “Shakespeare in Love.” The industry company was shocked for one hot second before deciding to accept Weinstein's rules. From then on, studios identified their blue chip contenders in the fall (adjusting for box office performance, because nobody likes a flop) and hung out like Ernest Hemingway on a daiquiri bender. Publicists specializing in awards campaigns would be hired to provide clients with prime media real estate, while special Academy screenings would feature Q&As hosted by past Oscar winners (this year Guillermo del Toro has won for Nosferatu, while Christopher Nolan has planted his flag “Gladiators II” mountain).

And if you try to fight the money machine with a grassroots campaign (as Andrea Riseborough did when her peers lobbied her for Best Actress in 2023 for “To Leslie”), the establishment will force the Academy to deal with it. you like a cheater (AMPAS shamefully investigated Riseborough for breaches of the rules but cleared him of wrongdoing).

In short, campaigning for an Oscar is a lot like running for office. It's exhausting and not terribly dignified. But with very rare exceptions (such as George C. Scott and Marlon Brando), no one has been unhappy about winning. And that's why Oscar season will thrive as long as people make motion pictures. We'll have to wait and see how the AI ​​feels about the rewards.