Breaking Down 5 Key Oscar Shortlists
Thom Powers on why the doc branch is 'more political' this year. Plus: My Series Business convos with three amazing EPs
Happy almost-Chrismukkah to everyone, at least everyone who isn’t about to spend the next two weeks trying to get their executives seated at the best tables at the Golden Globes or strategizing over social media posts for their awards hopefuls. I heard of one studio that has a two-hour awards season strategy meeting scheduled for Dec. 23, which in my household is known as Christmas Adam (you know, because Adam came before Eve . . .) The horror!
In happier news, a genuine congratulations to the films that made the Oscar shortlists announced on Tuesday, which range from the Hollywood blockbusters in the visual effects shortlist — enjoy your Oscar buzz, Deadpool & Wolverine — to the tiny short films that now have a much better chance of actually being seen.
Today I’ve got a deeper dive on those shortlists, including some insight from documentary world veteran and friend of The Ankler Thom Powers. On Saturday, I’ll also have a bonus episode of the podcast (you’re a subscriber, right?) breaking down the shortlists in even more detail with Filmmaker Magazine’s awards columnist Tyler Coates, as we assess the state of the Oscar race as the Hollywood break begins.
But first: a look back at the first-ever Series Business FYC event in Los Angeles last week, presented by FX and Netflix. In one busy afternoon, Mike Schur explained how to find comedy in the sadness of aging, Erin Foster told me what it took to keep pitching her autobiographical show until somebody said yes, and Paul Simms described how it feels to wrap up a series on your own terms — just as you’re launching a whole new one.
Taking Care of Business
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you — I am not, in fact, the author of Series Business, nor am I an expert in what it takes to get a television show made. But when The Ankler hosted its first-ever Series Business FYC event last week in Los Angeles, and Series Business’ own Elaine Low found herself under the weather, I did my best Elaine impression and stepped in for three conversations about four of the funniest, most rewarding shows on television.
First up was Paul Simms, a veteran TV writer who created NewsRadio in the 1990s and has spent the last decade teaming up with some of the most exciting new talents in the business, including Donald Glover (Atlanta), Jemaine Clement (What We Do in the Shadows) and now Brian Jordan Alvarez, whose comedy series English Teacher debuted earlier this year. As a television veteran ushering new talents into the system, Simms offers guidance on how to structure a season of television — but also how to survive the long process required to get it on the air.
“Once you realize that you don’t have some unique situation — that there’s no one out there who walks in and goes, ‘Here’s my script,’ and everyone goes ‘That’s great, let’s shoot it and put it on the air,’’ Simms explains. “Once you realize that situation doesn’t exist, then you can be happy and go, oh, this is not a personal thing. This is about making the show better.”
Erin Foster, the creator and showrunner of Nobody Wants This, knows very well what it takes to try, try, and try again to get a show on the air. “It took me an incredibly long amount of time to write the pilot,” Foster told me, to murmurs of appreciation from an industry crowd that has seen their share of creative challenges. “No, really, way longer than you’re thinking. Like, three years.”
When the show was finished and it was time to pitch, Foster says, “Everyone passed — like, deeply passed.” Her final meeting was with Netflix, who said yes and got a millennial romance phenomenon as a result, with Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations for stars Kristen Bell and Adam Brody as well as for best comedy series.
Our final guest of the day, Mike Schur, knows very well what a blessing it can be when Kristen Bell is part of your project — The Good Place creator told the crowd a charming story about Bell calling his young daughter with the voice of her Frozen character Anna. But when it came time to cast his new series A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson as a man who becomes an undercover spy in a retirement home, Schur had to focus almost exclusively on actors in their 70s and 80s for his supporting cast — and realized it actually gave him access to some of the best talent in Hollywood, even including an All in the Family icon.
“It was very eye-opening because we were like ‘Oooh, this is going to be tricky,’” Schur recalled. “And it really wasn’t. We cast the role of Virginia, who is this flirty lady who falls in love with Ted the second he walks in, and the first person to read was Sally Struthers. And she blew the doors off the place.”
You can watch my conversations with all three of these creators at Ankler Enjoy, our hub for Ankler events, video series and appearances:
And if you’re somehow not already, become a paid subscriber to The Ankler, where you receive Series Business and its weekly insights into the business of making — or sometimes, like Erin Foster, waiting forever to make — the best television out there.
The Long and Short of It
As I predicted last week, Tuesday’s shortlists announcement brought excellent news for Emilia Pérez, which has the advantage of being a musical — those always are competitive in the sound categories, not to mention original song — as well as an international feature. The Netflix contender made the cut in five of the 10 shortlist categories, and with two contenders for original song, is looking as strong as it has been since its big Golden Globes nominations showing.
But there’s a lot more nuance to be found in the shortlists than merely handicapping best picture contenders. Which titles are conspicuously missing? Which title seems to have no place in the Oscar conversation at all? And who are the people making these decisions? Below I’ve found five interesting stories to track in these shortlists, with some help from Thom Powers, who tells me this year’s documentary branch “seems like it wanted to be more political.”
I. Sound and Fury
In addition to Emilia Pérez, the sound shortlist contains a strong contingent of music-driven best picture hopefuls: A Complete Unknown, in which Timothée Chalamet sings a number of Bob Dylan classics, as well as Wicked and, believe it or not, Joker: Folie à Deux. Musicals and action films tend to have the edge in sound, but we’ll have to see if the bigger spectacles like Gladiator II and Dune: Part Two can shove out the singers. Personally, I’d bet on Wicked here and many other places — see below.
II. Kiss and Makeup
Somehow the shortlist inclusion I became most invested in was for A Different Man, which uses elaborate prosthetics to transform Sebastian Stan’s face. The A24 release hasn’t gotten as much awards attention as I’d hoped but is a worthy inclusion here, as is The Substance, with its own elaborate, sometimes shocking prosthetics on star Demi Moore.
That kind of stunningly detailed prosthetics work can often win the makeup Oscar, but so can work from films the Academy simply likes a lot — which is why Elphaba and her green skin make Wicked formidable here, too.
III. Music Makers
The 20 films on the original score shortlist more or less went as planned (though I still think Jon Batiste’s percussive work on Saturday Night deserved more of a shot), but the original song category, voted on by the same music branch, contains plenty of potential drama. Emilia Pérez is the only film with two contenders, but Disney is up against itself with songs from Moana 2 — famously not written by the original film’s songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda — and Mufasa, which does have Miranda’s songs.
Neither film’s songs are getting acclaim on par with “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” or “How Far I’ll Go,” but it’s never wise to count out a Disney musical in this category — or Miranda, who somehow still doesn’t have an Oscar.
IV. The Double Dippers
As the Academy gets more international in its membership, its nominations in every category are more likely to span the globe, which has given us a run of international feature nominees that also compete in other categories. This year Emilia Pérez is practically guaranteed to do so, but may be joined by Senegal’s Dahomey — also shortlisted for best documentary feature — and Latvia’s animated contender Flow.
V. The Documentary Branch Stakes its Claim
This is not the kind of year where the documentary shortlist leaves off a film so popular that its exclusion sparks outrage — though if you’re still steaming about Good Night Oppy in 2022, I’m right there with you.
“I think it’s a strong list,” says Thom Powers, who acknowledges a bit of professional bias — he’s the director of special projects at Doc NYC, which made its own shortlist that has substantial overlap with the Academy’s. “These films have also been performing at a high level in awards and festival recognition — they’re definitely not coming out of nowhere.”
There are still underdogs to be found, though, particularly with more than a third of the films on the list still lacking distribution, including the Gaza-set No Other Land — which has been cleaning up with critics awards — and Union, which follows a unionization drive at an Amazon warehouse. “When you’ve got a film that’s really striking a chord, that’s better than all the money you can spend in campaigning,” says Powers, who also credits the Academy’s efforts to level the playing field and make it more possible for every documentary contender to be seen.
The one potential snub that Oscar pundits had been bracing for was Will & Harper, the Netflix-backed documentary about Will Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele taking a road trip following Harper’s transition to living openly as a woman. Celebrity-driven documentaries have had a tough time breaking in with Oscar for the past decade, but Will & Harper seems to have had just enough topical resonance to make it through.
“I think that while documentary branch members are not a monolith, they are people who tend to be drawn to causes, and drawn to subject matter that speaks truth to power and takes risks,” says Powers, who points to documentary short contender “Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr” as another title addressing the ongoing effort to strip rights from trans people in America. “Will & Harper has celebrity presence, but it’s not a celebrity profile of Will Ferrell. It’s telling a different story.”
The films and filmmakers that have made the shortlists, like everyone else, now have a little under a month to capitalize on this momentum — and for some of the films without distribution, maybe even strike a deal. For the 15 films on the doc shortlist, says Powers, “It’s a lovely marketing tool. For the next four weeks, you have this distinguishing factor.”
