Squiz Shortcuts - Oscars campaigns

Your Shortcut to… Oscars campaigns

It’s Academy Awards time, honouring the best movies and performances from last year - and behind the scenes, the nominees and their teams have been working hard to curry favour with Oscar voters in what’s become known as Oscar campaigns. These have become an important, expensive and controversial part of the industry, so in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll look at:

• what goes on in an Oscar campaign

• how it’s played into this year’s award season

• and who might win as a result.

Prefer this in your ears?

Listen to our podcast 🎧

Listen time: 11 minutes

Let your smile shine

Smiling is one of our favourite things to do, but it helps when your teeth are at their best. The Smilie Teeth Whitening Kit offers visible results from the first treatment without the hefty price tag, delivered straight to your door. It'll even lift long-lasting stains without causing your toothy-pegs pain. Find out more here.

Squiz the Shortcut

The Oscars must be getting on a bit by now… 
They sure are, they’re nearly 100… This year’s ceremony will be the 97th Academy Awards.

Have they always been a big deal?
Not as much as they are now - the first ones were back in 1929 and it was far from the extravaganza it is today… The awards were handed out at a private dinner and tickets only cost 5 bucks. But they’ve certainly become a big deal since - millions of people watch the ceremony every year, and between the frocks and the drama, they’re always big news…

What’s the attraction?
Aside from the general interest in who wins, the fact that the ceremony is broadcast live means you can still expect the unexpected - there was a streaker in 1974, for example - a best picture mixup between La La Land and Moonlight in 2017, and Will Smith slapping Chris Rock a few years back… Those sorts of things have a habit of keeping the Oscars in the headlines. 

And how important are they to the winners?
It means a lot to win an Oscar - that’s something that’s going to be top of people’s CVs for the rest of their lives. Just being nominated is a big deal - you only have to look at the movie trailers that put ‘Academy Award winner’ or ‘Academy Award nominee’ in front of every actor’s name to see that.

Is it all just about the ego boost?
That’s a big part of it, but it also has tangible value - a movie winning an Oscar can help with box office sales, simply because people want to see what all the fuss is about. For individual actors or screenwriters, it can also be a huge boost for their career.

So everyone’s pretty keen to win one… 
Most people, for sure. And to do that, they need to attract votes.

Just like politics… So who does the voting?
That would be the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There’s about 10,000 of them, and new members are added every year. It’s made up of people from across the film industry - actors, directors, cinematographers - and even publicists and agents.

And they all get to vote?
They do - with a little caveat. How it works is that when selecting the nominees, voters stay in their own lane, so directors nominate directors, and actors nominate actors, etc. Then everyone gets to vote on the winner.

How many votes do they need to win?
Thousands… But there are some rules around what kind of campaigning they’re allowed to do, and they’re not allowed to specifically ask people to vote for them. 

What do they do instead?
Actors do the publicity rounds with talk shows and podcasts, that sort of thing, to get in front of as many voters as possible. A good example of that from this year is Timothée Chalamet - he’s been everywhere lately - doing lots of interviews, popping up on TV, and turning up to most awards ceremonies and events. And then the studios will spend money on general advertising too. 

Sounds like a lot of expense for a small statue… 
Yep, it is… Studios spend millions of dollars on trying to win these awards - figures as high as $30 million in some reports. And it’s controversial in the industry because it means the campaigns can sometimes belie the quality of the actual films... 

Are there any controversial flicks in the mix this year? 
There sure are… One of the current frontrunners - Emilia Perez - has been in the headlines a lot over the past few months. 

What’s that one about?
It’s a musical crime movie that initially had great reviews and won some of the early gongs during awards season - plenty of people who follow awards season full-time had it as the favourite to win Best Picture. But then…

Uh-oh…
Yep - 2 things happened. The first was - as happens with a lot of frontrunners - people started looking at it more closely. Those who were critical of it questioned whether it was a good movie at all, let alone worthy of winning Best Picture. The way it represented Mexican culture and the transgender experience came in for criticism as well. 

What was the second thing?
A scandal - something that’s sunk plenty of political candidates in the past. One of the film’s nominees is a transgender woman, Karla Sofia Gascon, who is the first openly trans actor ever nominated for best actress, which, given the Oscars’ issues with diversity, is something it would ordinarily celebrate. But then, some old tweets showed up… 

That’s usually not good news…
No, it isn’t… Gascon had posted things like suggesting banning Islam, and criticising George Floyd - the black American man who was killed by police in 2020. She faced a lot of backlash… Eventually, she apologised but the comments were generally seen to be so bad that the damage was done.

So she’s unlikely to win now…
That’s what those in the know say. And it didn’t just affect her chances of winning Best Actress. It also damaged the film’s chances of winning Best Picture, according to awards strategists - and this is a film that received 13 nominations, but is now considered the 5th-most likely to win. 

That’s a steep fall - so who’s in the lead now?
There’s a website called GoldDerby entirely dedicated to awards watching. They have professional awards-season watchers who have predicted every category. The top chance for Best Picture is Anora - a movie about an exotic dancer who marries the son of a Russian oligarch… it’s exactly the kind of smaller movie that would benefit from a big Oscar win.

Who else am I looking out for at an Oscars party?
Yep, people actually do those (cough… our Squiz Today host, Andrew)… Some other tips include Adrien Brody for Best Actor, Kieran Culkin for Best Supporting Actor - that one in particular is a heavy favourite - and a close race between Demi Moore and Mikey Madison - the star of Anora - for Best Actress. But, as they say in the classics, anything can happen on Oscar night… 

Onto our Recommendations

Reading/Listening: This episode of NPR’s Planet Money does a deep dive into the topic and talks to a range of experts and Oscar campaigners if you really want to get into the nitty gritty.

Watching: The movie For Your Consideration is a great parody of Oscar campaigning - and it’s available to stream on Stan. And you can watch the Oscars ceremony on Channel 7 Monday morning. 

Recent Shortcuts