“If I were the front-runner, I’d be worried.” These words, spoken back in 2013 by an Academy voter during the tumultuous Oscar season, were in reaction to a perennial phenomenon that has arisen again: a conspicuous snub. This time, there are two of them.
The final weeks of Hollywood’s awards race are always when the friendly rivalries turn hostile, the whisper campaigns become deafening, and the currents and conventional wisdom can abruptly shift. This year Oppenheimer heads toward the Academy Awards ceremony as the proverbial front-runner, with 13 nominations, including best picture and best director for Christopher Nolan. But when the nominations were announced this week, much of the chatter was focused on two people who were left out.
Barbie cowriter and director Greta Gerwig was conspicuously absent from the directing category, while the movie’s star and producer, Margot Robbie, was left out of the best-actress contenders. (Notably, Gerwig is nominated for her screenplay, while Robbie shares the best-picture nomination, so both remain Oscar nominees.) Their snubs in those specific categories might seem ominous for the movie’s best-picture prospects, but history shows that a film’s campaign for the top prize can be galvanized by glaring omissions. Gerwig in particular may not have been on the directing short list, but she ruled the headlines nonetheless: “Oppenheimer dominates the Oscar nominations, as Gerwig is left out for best director,” read the NPR story.
To be clear, Team Oppenheimer hasn’t taken anything away from Team Barbie. After the two settled on the same release date, the “Barbenheimer” craze seemingly benefited both of them immeasurably. Robbie and Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy even joined forces for Variety’s Actor on Actors video series, and after so much critical acclaim and box office success, both films were destined to have a major presence at the Academy Awards. And they do. It’s just that two key players from Barbie didn’t make the cut, leaving outsiders agog with disbelief. How did this happen?
We call it a “snub” when a favorite is left out, but the nomination process is really more like a game of musical chairs, with more worthy honorees than there are slots. Academy voters like to mix things up and spread around their support, motivated by a sense of fairness and a desire to use their ballot to do something meaningful. And that doesn’t change in phase two, when voters get the chance to see what’s already on the ballot, what might be missing, and put their support behind something that was snubbed on nominations morning.
After all, it’s happened before.
In the Oscar race for the films of 2012, there was something for everybody—history with Lincoln, action with Zero Dark Thirty, heartbreak with Amour, and indie grit with Beasts of the Southern Wild. But everyone seemed to agree that the movie with the complete package was Argo, the based-on-a-true-story thriller that earned seven Oscar nominations…but no directing nod for director Ben Affleck.
That shocking snub motivated that anonymous voter to say, “If I were the front-runner, I’d be worried.” At that point the perceived front-runner was Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, with 12 nominations and a slam dunk best-actor contender in Daniel Day-Lewis. But after nominations morning, Argo became the David facing down the Goliaths of Lincoln, Les Mis, and Life of Pi, all of which went on to collect other top awards. On the day of the nominations, Affleck’s directing absence was viewed by pundits as a sign that Argo lacked support, but in the days and weeks to follow, outrage over the snub turned into a kind of underdog enthusiasm that ultimately vaulted Argo to a best-picture victory.
How exactly did it happen? Voters detected unfairness, and they wanted to fix it. Affleck and Team Argo couldn’t control that, but they made some key decisions that helped their cause.
Affleck, for his part, responded to the discourse with humor and humility. “I mean, I also didn’t get the acting nomination. And no one’s saying I got snubbed there!” he said backstage at the Golden Globes, holding the prize for directing.
It was his allies, meanwhile, who could speak more openly on his behalf. The recently passed Alan Arkin, who received a supporting-actor mention for his work on the film, said this in reaction: “The main concern outside of the initial joy was wishing that Ben had been given a nod. It’s an absolutely perfect film in every way, and he’s responsible for it.”
George Clooney, who produced Argo, joined the clapback by invoking sympathy for Affleck, who had made a filmmaking comeback after a string of critically panned flops like Gigli. “Part of the reason there’s such admiration for Ben at this stage is because he was in actor jail,” Clooney said in the Golden Globes pressroom. “I did Batman & Robin—trust me, I know. It’s how you handle yourself when things aren’t going particularly well. He directed his way out of this. I can’t tell you how proud we are to have worked with him—and how much I hate him.”
Anthony Breznican
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