And Then There Were Ten – in which our intrepid hero goes back and expands the Academy Award Best Picture nominations to ten nominations, and goes about filling those hypothetical slots. This time – it’s 2008. Check out previous entries here.
Chapter 5: Indie Movies in our Temples of Gloom (A Wildcard Throw-Down)
And it comes down to this.
The last magical slot for expanding nominations in 2008.
If the rest of the movies previously assigned to the extra Best Picture slots are playoff division winners (Box Office Division, Acting Division, Animated Division and Comedy Division), then this last slot is the wildcard play-in game.
Looking at guild support, all the usual suspects have already made it: Frost/Nixon, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and Benji B all wrapped all four major guild nominations (Producer, Director, Ensemble Acting, Writing). The other two with more than one guild nominations are The Dark Knight (DGA, PGA, WGA) and Doubt (SAG, WGA) which made the extra slots as described in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of this speculative manifesto. All that’s left are the WGA nominees, but this guild is a poor predictor for nomination success (43% correlation of WGA nomination to Best Picture nomination). This leads us down an appropriate avenue – the wildcard movie in the wildcard slot.
An interesting trend from 2006 to present – there has been at least one movie to not be recognized at all from the major guilds to make it to BP every year and twice in 2011 – below are the non-guild movies to make it from the expansion year to present:
It did not happen in 2016, but you get the point.
The reasons for this left field success differ from small / indie studios releasing the movie (Winter’s Bone, Room), last second entry in the release window (Extremely Loud, Selma) to Britishness (Philomena). Let’s take a look at the best of the rest for 2008 Oscars – these are selected movies nominated for at least one award but not nominated for Best Picture (officially or unofficially through this series) to get a word bank to draw from:
Revolutionary Road (3 nominations, Supporting Actor, Art Direction and Costume Design)
Changeling (3 nominations, Actress, Art Direction and Cinematography)
The Wrestler (2 nominations, Actor and Supporting Actress)
Frozen River (2 nominations, Actress and Screenplay)
The Duchess (2 nominations, Art Direction and Costume Design)
The Visitor (1 nomination, Actor)
Rachel Getting Married (1 nomination, Actress)
Defiance (1 nomination, Original Score)
Waltz with Bashir (1 nomination, Foreign Film)
Man on Wire (1 nomination, Documentary)
We are using this bank since a movie doesn’t make it into Best Picture alone, typically – although there are publicists, producers, executives, casting agents and other members of the Academy with no other category to nominate (thus, only voting for the BP category), it is extremely rare to have a solo BP nomination as the only love a film gets. In fact, the last time this happened was in 1944 for The Ox-Bow Incident; that Ox-Bow, though. So, we’ll go ahead and say this is not a thing in the modern era and move to the cuts.
It would be fantastic to have Man on Wire to be in Best Picture – it’s a fantastic documentary with a narrative feel (and infinitely superior to the Robert Zemeckis / JoGoLev adaptation, The Walk), but there has never been a documentary in Best Picture, so poo to that.
Defiance feels like it accidentally got in here – I had to look up the movie to figure out this was the movie I was thinking about (it wasn’t). It’s Daniel Craig fighting Nazis in the woods, and only got in for the music by Thomas Newman (also a surprise nominee this year for Passengers). Great concept, limited success – red flag. It’s out.
Revolutionary Road is an interesting re-pairing of those ole Titanic sweeties Leo and Kate in an acerbic period film by the director of American Beauty. How was this not in Best Picture already? This Oscar catnip thankfully gave us the first nomination for America’s Sweetheart Frankenstein, Michael Shannon – he seems better at anything than I will be at anything. Anyway, it feels like original nominee The Reader bested Rev Road in the Battle of Two Kates, so it’s out.
I’ve seen Changeling, but remember very little about it. Also a period film. Angelina Jolie is good in it – she cries a lot. It does feel a little like minor Clint Eastwood, as he directed both this and Gran Torino this year – I remember this movie does not include a song sung by Clint Eastwood. And Clint is a couple years removed from winning everything for Million Dollar Baby (2004), and from Letters from Iwo Jima getting surprise nods in Picture and Director in 2006. For those arbitrary reasons, it’s out.
Speaking of period, The Duchess was a post-Devil Wears Prada lead role for Emily Blunt that nobody remembers… Wait. No it’s not. That’s The Young Victoria – The Duchess is a post-Pride and Prejudice lead role for Keira Knightley that nobody remembers. Also a royal drama, The Young Victoria got three nominations (same categories as The Dutch, and adds Makeup/Hairstyling) the following year in 2009 – a year when there were 10 BP nominees. And it didn’t make it. So neither does Duchess. So we’re down to five after the culling:
The Wrestler (2 nominations, Actor and Supporting Actress)
Frozen River (2 nominations, Actress and Screenplay)
The Visitor (1 nomination, Actor)
Rachel Getting Married (1 nomination, Actress)
Waltz with Bashir (1 nomination, Foreign Film)
Essentially a Best Picture nominee field runoff, all indie offerings that had critical acclaim with little box office. To differentiate these films, let’s break down those two factors to figure out the little indie wildcard. First, the critical acclaim.
Previously, we had dismissed the nominees and winners from the various critics’ groups, since they don’t actually vote for the Oscar. Well, I changed my mind. If the Oscars are the equivalent of Rolling Stone magazine, then we need to look to the equivalent of Pitchfork. Where to start? There are regional critics’ groups all throughout the country – the New York Film Critics Circle, Chicago Film Critics Association, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and Critical Film Circle Association of Film (last one made-up) are the most influential. To get overview flavor, aggregating national film critic associations into a scorecard could simulate a critics’ guild and build some separation between the Indie Five.
For national film critics’ groups, the following gang was drafted: Film Independent (behind the Independent Film Spirit Awards), Broadcast Film Critics Association (the Critic’s Choice Awards), Independent Filmmaker Project (the Gotham Independent Film Awards), the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, the Online Film Critics Society (for good measure) and the International Press Academy (the Satellite Awards). The total nominations across these awards and groups was collated into the following table:
The summary of these awards are below:
The newly minted Critics’ Guild Awards (CGA, patent pending) helped distinguish a grouping – in terms of total nominations, The Wrestler, Rachel Getting Married and Frozen River have as much or more nominations than The Visitor and Waltz with Bashir combined. I’ll be sad to see these go – just as sad as I was when I watched them. The Visitor is a pre-Spotlight Tom McCarthy movie that showcases Richard Jenkins – an incredible character actor – who fills a story about lonely people and refugees with humanity and humor. And Waltz with Bashir is bizarre. It was nominated as a Foreign Film (from Israel), as an Animated Film (it is), and as a Documentary Film (it is, also). It takes the rotoscoping of Waking Life / A Scanner Darkly and filters a sad-true story of the Israel/Palestine conflict – like a serious “Archer” episode, but like… incredibly serious. Anyway, it’s gone, as is The Visitor.
Another aspect of the indie wildcard is the low box office – laying in wait to spring their sad trap. But there is a balance to strike – to fill out the indie slot, we want a movie to not be a blockbuster, but also to make enough money for people to notice it exists. Let’s look at money (again).
Talking post-expansion (the 2009 Oscars and forward), the average box office for a Best Picture nominee is $105 million (give or take). But the focus is no longer on the middle, but the bottom. From 2009 to this year, the average minimum box office return for a movie is $12.8 million. First up, from the top ropes comes The Wrestler with $26.2 million domestically. Next, Rachel Getting Married – Anne Hathaway’s first big dramatic role rolled in $12.8 million – exactly the average.
Finally, the cold and misery-soaking Frozen River zambonied up only $2.5 million – that would be low, like historically low as a Best Picture nominee. This is less than half the indie wildcard postergirl Winter’s Bone earned ($6.5 million). The next movie lower than Frozen River is The Dresser (1983), which had $562 thousand at the time of nominations – after the ceremony, it earned $2.3 million dollars, 25 years before Melissa Leo’s movie (not accounting for inflation, either). River went from $2.3 million before to $2.5 million after its two nominations. This movie has an interesting story and unique point of view, but it is now out of the running.
The Wrestler versus Rachel Getting Married – the classic battle. Both are from indie arms of major studios (Fox Seachlight for Wrestler, Sony Pictures Classic for Rachel). Both have similar budgets (Wrestler $6 million, Rachel $12 million). The directors both have indie credibility and earned nominations for their movies beforehand (Darren Aronofsky for Wrestler and Jonathan Demme for Rachel). Both are from first time writers (Robert D. Seigel for Wrestler, Jenny Lumet for Rachel). In the end, the very last Best Picture slot comes down to feel. Which movie feels more like a Best Picture nominee?
I’ve been an advocate for RGM since it came out – in my opinion, the film is ahead of its time with the mix of comedy and drama – you get equal cringe for both the laughs and tragedy. But the beauty of the film is in the lived-in performances – Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger, and even Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio act naturally, and Hathaway is the best she’s ever been here. It’s a poignant and scathing film that sticks with you.
However, I feel like The Wrestler should be the Indie Wildcard. Wrestler is a confident film, even as its “hero,” Randy the Ram, is spiraling into darkness – it is stark but bold and has a magnetic and deeply personal performance by Mickey Rourke. Plus, it follows a mode that’s had success before. The gritty character study – The Lost Weekend (1945), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976), The Verdict (1982) to Capote (2005). I love Rachel, but in the end, giving The Wrestler the Indie Wildcard belt just feels right.
FINAL LIST
- Slumdog Millionaire
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- Frost/Nixon
- Milk
- The Reader
- The Dark Knight
- Doubt
- WALL*E
- Vicky Cristina Barcelona
- The Wrestler
And that’s it. Expanding the Best Picture nomination list in 2008. We’ve had laughs, tears, blood, tears – it’s been a blast to re-visit these movies that are almost ten years old. I highly recommend pretty much every film discussing in this series (and the ones that didn’t make the cut) – I think 2008 was a highly underrated year for cinema.
Although Best Picture 2008 is done, the series will be ongoing here and there to tackle other years and other categories as well.
(Chapter 1: The Box Office Hero)
(Chapter 2: The Actors’ Showcase)
(Chapter 3: The Animated Exception)
(Chapter 4: The Quote-Unquote Comedy)
(Chapter 5: The Indie Wildcard)
