✉️🏆 What it's like to nominate movies

(And why it's still an honor just to be nominated)

This week’s rebroadcast from 2014 and 2010 takes an inside look at the process of narrowing down potential Academy Award contenders to the final nominees.

“Barney’s movie had heart. But Football In The Groin had a football in the groin.”

This morning, the Oscar nominations came out. Like every year, I was excited to see some of my favorite films nominated. Like every year, I was disappointed by which films — and which filmmakers — got overlooked.

Like every year, I asked myself: How could the Academy be so bone-headed?

The truth is, I am the Academy. I’m an Oscar voter. Two weeks ago, I logged in and submitted my nominating ballot. So I thought I’d spend a few paragraphs talking through what the mental process is like.

As a member of the Writers branch, I get to nominate films in three categories: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Let’s start with the writing categories. I often get asked whether I read all the scripts. I don’t. I couldn’t. Any given year, there are thirty to forty films that could conceivably be up for a screenplay nomination. No one reads all of them. I read the ones I’m most curious about.

I used to complain that they should retitle the screenplay awards, “Best Movie that Probably Had a Good Screenplay.” You can listen to dialogue and feel the storytelling, but you can’t really tell what was on the page.

The truth is, you could make the same argument about almost any category. “Best Performance by an Actress in a Role that was Probably Reshaped in the Editing Room.” “Best Sound Mixing — or wait, is that Sound Editing?”

In the end, you make your decision about what you saw on the screen, and hope that you’re awarding the right person.

When nominating films for writing, I’m asking myself which films had great stories and great storytelling. Which ones had incredible characters that I remember independent of the actors in the role. Which ones I really, really wish I’d written.

I don’t make a huge distinction between originals and adaptations, because every script is tough to write, no matter its source. If a screenplay is based on a great book I’ve read, I’ll be looking for what the screenwriter brought that really made it a movie.

Some movies have multiple screenwriters. I generally don’t know or care much about the backstory of who wrote what. Famously, Shakespeare in Love won best screenplay for Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, screenwriters who didn’t work together on the project. That’s fine. We give awards for the product, not the process.

For writer/directors, I ask myself, “Does the writing merit an award independent of its direction?”

I never vote for a screenplay as a consolation prize. If I like a movie but it’s not quite Best Picture calibre, I won’t throw it a screenplay vote just to spare its imaginary feelings.

Best Picture

Every studio wants a Best Picture nomination, so during awards season they spend a lot of money buying ads and throwing parties.

I’ve seen the ads. I’ve been to some parties. No offense to all the very hard-working publicists, but I really don’t think it influenced my choices at all.

The single most important thing for me was screeners. I try to see as many movies as I can on the big screen, but with a young kid and a Broadway show, screeners were the only way I could see some of these films. If I were a studio, I would take the money I spend on For Your Consideration ads and invest it in hand-delivering a screener to every possible voter.¹

For Best Picture nominations, I’m asking myself two questions:

1. Which of this year’s movies were exceptionally good?

2. Which of this year’s movies absolutely have to be on the list, because to exclude them would be madness?

The first question is about my feelings right now. Which films moved me emotionally, inspired me, impressed me? Which films constantly had me saying, “You absolutely have to see it.”

The second question imagines my future self looking at the nominations ten years from now and being bewildered that an incredibly influential movie was overlooked.

As much as possible, I want the function of Future Me to be advocating for films, not disparaging them. It’s tempting to think, “Yeah, that movie was good but in ten years no one will care.” I try not to do that. If a movie is great right now, it deserves acclaim right now. If a movie is great and future-worthy, it deserves acclaim both now and for the future.

Basically, I give a few bonus points for movies I suspect I’ll still be talking about ten years from now.

For Best Picture nominations, you rank your choices. The advantage to this system is that you can feel secure putting your top choice at the top. You’re not “wasting your vote” for something that doesn’t have a shot.

The system of ranking your choices dates back to 1936. It’s a form of preferential voting designed to more accurately reflect the will of voters.

But man, it’s complicated. It’s easier to explain what it’s not.

1. It’s not a weighted ballot. You might think that your top pick gets 10 points, while your second pick gets nine points, etc. It’s not that. In fact…

2. You’re really only voting for one title. Your ballot will only be counted towards one film. That film will be the one you ranked first, unless your number one pick has the smallest number of votes and is thus out of the running. In that case, they count your second pick. If needed, they’ll continue on to your third, fourth or later picks until your ballot is cast for exactly one picture.²

3. It’s not “wasting your vote” to rank your number-one pick first. You might think your favorite movie is a longshot for a nomination, but that film could get enough second- or third-place votes to put it in the top 10. And if it doesn’t, your vote will go to your next-highest choice. But the rules state that a picture can’t be nominated without at least one number-one vote.

4. A full ballot doesn’t hurt your top picks. In WGA board elections, I’m always mindful that casting a vote for a candidate I half-heartedly support might knock out the candidates I truly want. So I’ll often cast a short ballot with just my top choices. For Academy Award nominations, that’s not a factor. While it’s unlikely that my tenth-ranked choice would benefit from my vote, it doesn’t hurt to include it.

This year as I filled out my ballot, I felt confident in my choices. And I suspect most voters did. On some level, the Oscars are a popularity contest, but I honestly believe that voters are thoughtful when making their picks.

The nominations aren’t quite what I wanted. Yet had the nominations been exactly what I wanted — had they been exactly what any one person wanted — they would have seemed bone-headed to everyone else. The inevitable result of collective list-making is that no one thinks you made the right list.

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1. Update from 2023: DVD screeners have gone away, at least for the Academy. In their place is the Academy Screening Room, an app for AppleTV and other devices that lets you stream all the For Your Consideration films. Studios have to pay a fee to be included on the app, but it’s less than what it would cost to send DVDs. It’s a win for everyone except your cousin Frank who was always asking to mooch your screeners.

2. You could presumably pick ten movies that no one else does. That’s one challenge of such a wide-open field of choices.