🎧 Fans' Dirty Campaign Tricks; Plus, How 'Anora' Became Oscar's 'Heart Movie'
I talk to Kyle Buchanan of the 'New York Times' about this year's rollercoaster and why the Academy often gravitates to the 'spiky' but 'tender' contender
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On billboards around Los Angeles right now you can see the final push for Neon’s best picture contender Anora and the simple, compelling pitch to voters: “Follow your heart.”
That’s precisely what a lot of the industry did last weekend, awarding the Sean Baker film the top prizes from the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild and minting it as the best picture frontrunner in a race that had previously seemed too close to call. I and my guest on this week’s podcast, New York Times’ columnist Kyle Buchanan, were both there in the room at the PGA Awards to see how shocked Baker and his team seemed after their wins. But as we discuss on this episode, Anora is this year’s “heart movie” — and in recent Oscar years (think CODA and Everything Everywhere All at Once) those have often found a way to triumph in the end.
“It’s a somewhat different movie than if you just had to create a best picture winner in a lab,” Kyle says in our conversation, looking back at the busy weekend and what’s ahead in the final weeks of the season. “But then so many of the recent best picture winners have been. What Oscar voters really respond to at the moment is a film that feels a little bit spiky and unusual, but then by the end, there’s that same tender heart and resonant theme that you would get in a more traditional Oscar contender.”
Kyle and I also get into what’s been the secret weapon of awards season, even though nobody can control them: fan armies. From the Timothée Chalamet fans fanning the flames around AI in The Brutalist to the devoted Brazilian fans cheering Fernanda Torres, this has been the Oscar season where fans are doing a lot of the mudslinging and promotion that used to be in the realm of the professionals. Is this the new normal — and can any contender find an advantage amid this much chaos? Now’s the time to figure it out: Final Oscar voting begins today and wraps up at 5 p.m. next Tuesday, Feb. 18.
Hear it all on this week’s episode, and stay tuned Saturday for another bonus episode as the busiest period of awards season continues.
