Andrew Garfield’s Sam Altman: So Evil, It’s Oscar-Worthy

The Television Academy announced this week that starting next September, the Emmys will stream worldwide on Amazon Prime Video for free, whether or not viewers are Prime Video subscribers. This ends the “wheel deal” that had the Emmys shuffling among the four major broadcast networks, and it’s the first time the show will air outside broadcast since it began in 1949. 

Speaking about the move, Television Academy chair Cris Abrego called the Amazon deal “a meaningful investment,” while Prime Video and Amazon MGM chair Mike Hopkins said it was a “fair deal,” suggesting the partnership will last well beyond six years. It’s unclear how many other streamers may have been fighting for the rights to the Emmys — Variety reported in mid-September that Amazon was the main suitor — but with the Oscars headed to YouTube in 2029, the tech giants have now fully won two of Hollywood’s most old-fashioned, tradition-bound events. 

So we’ll never again see the Nielsen ratings for the Emmys — tough beat for those who love to compare it to an average episode of Dancing With the Stars — or watch the show painfully drag itself out to end right in time for the 11 o’clock news, as happened at the end of this year’s shaggy broadcast. There’s no guarantee, but I’m hopeful the streaming future will also end stunts meant to boost ratings, like bumping categories off the main show or adding new awards so ridiculous they last only a year. 

Since the beginning of the streaming era, we’ve watched all awards shows, especially the Emmys and the Oscars, contort to win over audiences who now have infinite other options. Now, they’ll both be on those same streaming menus, and hopefully they’ll learn one of the streaming age’s major lessons: build a loyal audience and cater to them as much as possible. 

Network TV has long threatened to shrink the Emmys and the Oscars; the streaming deals, at least as the people in charge see it, could supersize them. Abrego suggests that the Creative Arts Emmys, previously edited into a package that aired on the basically nonexistent cable network FXX, could now air in its entirety on Prime Video — “we really talk a lot about just not making this a one-night event,” he told Variety. And though the Oscars already put clips from the Governors Awards and the nominees luncheon on its YouTube page, the Academy’s official transition to YouTube in 2029 will presumably bring much more. 

We’ll never again get 57 million people to all watch an awards show at the same time, the high-water mark for the Oscars the year that Titanic won and a number the Academy has futilely been chasing ever since. But Leonardo DiCaprio’s best actor speech has been watched on YouTube 60 million times since 2014; isn’t it time to start treating those numbers as equivalent?

Maybe it’s defeatist to cede so much awards-show ground to the music industry, where this year’s VMAs suggest people will still tune in live for musical performances that actually make sense on an awards-show stage. But the people who get the same thrill from a good acceptance speech or a well-cut montage — hopefully you’re all reading this newsletter, since you are my people! — know where to find what they’re looking for. Awards shows can never be the monoculture they once were, but they can still matter to a lot of people, as long as they’re given the time and space to actually do it. I’m optimistic, obviously, that both Prime Video and YouTube are the right place for that to happen. 

---

New York State of Mind

Now, I’ll hand things over to Chris, who has the latest on two major Oscar contenders and what might be the coolest edition of the New York Film Festival in ages.

---

I won’t reveal all of our group texts, Katey, but to give you a sense of what it’s like at the New York Film Festival, and how many local celebrities attend whether they have a movie there or not, consider this anecdote. On Monday, as the crowd filed into Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall for the world premiere of Artificial, I chatted with fellow Prestige Junkie Pundits Sophia Ciminello and Matt Neglia about Digger and whether it had the juice to make it through Oscar season despite calamitous reviews and worse box office. (My take: It does, but we can save that debate for another time.) The man in front of us turned around to briefly join our discussion — and it was Lin-Manuel Miranda. Like many civilians, he hadn’t seen Digger yet, but don’t worry: He said he was going this week (Lin, let me know what you thought!).

I didn’t see Miranda on the way out of Artificial, but I bet he dug it — if for nothing else than because it features the best Andrew Garfield performance in a movie since he should’ve won an Oscar for Miranda’s directorial debut, Tick, Tick… Boom. Playing Sam Altman in Guadagnino’s ripped-from-the-headlines look at OpenAI’s rise, and how it has set humanity on a collision course with its own ruin, Garfield lords over the movie like a millennial cringe Bond villain without the shark tank. (Sample line reading: “Sooo, that just happened.”) 

It’s a scathing portrayal of Altman, who partners with computer science genius Ilya Sutskever (played by Anora Oscar nominee Yura Borisov) to found OpenAI and then slowly but surely reveals his nihilism. “We opened Pandora’s box together. The future’s inevitable. Countries will fall, industries are going to collapse, and we get to be the ones to shepherd people in to this new world,” Garfield as Altman says with a kind of whisper toward the end of the movie. “It’s gonna be awesome.”

I’ve already seen people compare Garfield’s performance in Artificial to Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning work as Hannibal Lecter — and the fact that Guadagnino and his cinematographer, Malik Hassan Sayeed (He Got Game, After the Hunt), often replicate Jonathan Demme’s signature close-up shots, with Garfield and other actors looking directly into the camera lens, certainly lends credence to the juxtaposition. Hey, there are worse places to start an Oscar campaign than with Silence of the Lambs: Neon, which picked up Artificial after Amazon dumped it because of its connections to OpenAI, has said Garfield will run as a supporting actor contender, a category where villain turns are frequently celebrated (as winners like Christoph Waltz, Javier Bardem and Sean Penn can attest). Plus, Garfield hasn’t won an Oscar yet, which gives him the embers of an “overdue” narrative, even if he’s still only 43. But I think the added juice of Academy members sticking it to Altman as the AI tide turns even more negative might be his best campaign trick.

“I remember seeing Sam testifying to Congress for the first time, way back when, and I was like, ‘This guy seems fucking great.’ I was like, ‘He’s clear-eyed, he’s honest, he’s transparent, he’s talking about regulation… We need more of these people in control, in power, and he’s incredibly charming, charismatic,’” Garfield said after the premiere, perhaps speaking for other members of the community as well (ahem). “And then I, you know, like all of us, we learn more about a person.”

Artificial was the juiciest world premiere at New York this year (the fest closes out tomorrow with the debut of Ava DuVernay’s Netflix doc 14th), but not the only one. Tony Gilroy brought Behemoth! to the fest, his first movie since The Bourne Legacy —but think more Michael Clayton in its ambitions. Pedro Pascal stars as cellist Alex Serian, a former child prodigy and studio musician who returns to his native Los Angeles to play on a bunch of movie scores (including the mysterious Behemoth, which gives the film its title) and untangle some past relationships. As someone who thinks Gilroy can do no wrong — Michael Clayton, Andor and The Cutting Edge; name a screenwriter with a better CV — I wish I could say the response to Behemoth! was rapturous. But most New York attendees gave it a polite endorsement, the kind of light glad hand you see from festivalgoers when the movie is good, just not great. (I spoke to one person who gave it three-and-a-half stars on Letterboxd and, a day later, felt it was more like a three; be like me and change your ratings all the time!)

Still, it’s easy to imagine a warmer response in Los Angeles — like Misty Green, Behemoth! seems directly aimed at the industry’s working class — and Pascal is undeniably great. For an actor who has, thus far, shined brighter on television in The Last of Us and Game of Thrones than he has on the big screen, Pascal sinks into Alex, allowing the character’s inner turmoil, guilt and confusion to simmer just below the surface. It’s pro’s pro work — and it lets Pascal’s co-stars, especially Olivia Wilde (who drew spontaneous applause for her scenes from the New York crowd) and Will Arnett, go much bigger. We already know the best actor race is packed — in a righteous world, Borisov would be in the conversation for Artificial, too — but it would be wise to leave a little daylight for Pascal.