Oscars State Of The Race: ‘Anora’ With Its PGA, DGA & Critics Choice Best Picture Wins Now In Pole Position, But Can It Keep Momentum?
Well that was quite a weekend, and I am not talking about the Super Bowl, even if Anora rolled over its competition the same way Philadelphia decimated Kansas City.
So unusually, both the PGA and the DGA, two ever-so-important guild awards ceremonies that can predict the Oscars, somehow landed (for the first time I can recall) on the same night in two nearby hotels in Beverly Hills. I made the decision to go to PGA, and was happy to be invited to sit at the front-row table for nominated documentary feature Porcelain War. It lost at PGA, but just a few minutes later won at DGA, so the champagne was flowing on both sides of Santa Monica Boulevard.
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Directly next to us at the PGAs was a Neon table for Anora. Producer Alex Coco was there, and Mikey Madison came in briefly before going onstage to introduce the Best Picture nominee clip from her film (turns out she had done the same thing at DGA earlier). I figured it would be quite late, closer to 11 p.m., before we heard what happened at DGA, and with the WiFi dead down in the Fairmont Century Plaza ballroom I had stopped getting emails at 6:30. Lo and behold in the darkened room Anora director Sean Baker turns up with his co-producer and wife Samantha Quan, and publicists from Neon and sits directly in front of me. This was at around 9:30 p.m.; the PGAs still had a few presentations before the final category of Best Picture.
I was completely clueless with no WiFi and was not aware the DGA agreed to start a bit earlier so some shared nominees could come over to the Fairmont before the last award. When I got Baker’s attention, I asked him if DGA was still going on. “No. It ended,” he said, much to my surprise. “Oh wow. Who won?” I naively asked. “I did,” he smiled.
As the PGA show continued, our tables did a couple of quiet whoops to celebrate him. A few minutes later, Jodie Foster announced Anora as the PGA winner and Baker was holding his second prize of the night.
The celebration continued upstairs in the lobby as the Porcelain War DGA winners and PGA nominees had champagne toasts, and the two ceremonies continued to merge when Baker and the Anora team came up and joined in, turning this into a night like no other PGA or DGA awards I have ever been to: fun, informal for a change, and different.
At the cocktail reception, and really at every event I have been to lately, I kept getting asked, “Who do you think is going to win the Oscar?” In the past week my answer has consistently been “talk to me on Monday.”
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So here it is Monday, and after a whirlwind weekend that began actually Thursday with the AFI Awards, Friday with the Critics Choice Awards (finally), and then a Saturday bonanza of PGA and DGA, plus the Annies (and even earlier in the day the AARP’s Movies For Grownups Awards where you had to be over 50 to win), my answer is much clearer.
That’s because Anora came from the middle of the pack (at least in terms of what pundits were predicting) to suddenly become the clear frontrunner in the Oscar race after running the table at CCA, DGA and PGA. They are three bellwether groups that more often than not are in lockstep with Academy voters and, perhaps because Oscar voting begins Tuesday, more influential than ever for voters who may be preoccupied with the L.A. fires in one way or another, and perhaps looking for guidance, if looking to vote at all.
Up until now this race has been all over the place. With its 13 nominations, a near record-tying total and the biggest ever for a foreign-language film, Emilia Pérez was the closest thing we had to a “frontrunner”, especially after winning several Golden Globes including Best Picture – Comedy or Musical. But that got swallowed up in all the drama around the implosion of Best Actress nominee and first tans performer nominee ever Karla Sofía Gascón‘s campaign after all those shocking tweets resurfaced.
But did it hurt the film overall? That remains to be seen, particularly with the strong international voting bloc in the Academy. But it is safe to say it didn’t help.
Still, voting for the PGA Awards, where Emilia Pérez lost, had closed January 30 just as Gascón issued her first apology after the revelations of the tweets, so PGA results were largely not affected. The DGA, on the other hand, had ballots out until shortly before Saturday’s awards. The Critics Choice Awards, which often uncannily mirrors Oscars, had ballots due way back on January 10 before the ceremony itself moved twice due to the fires, finally landing on February 7. Emilia Pérez picked up three awards there, but the 600-plus critics organization’s choice of Anora as Best Picture now seems prescient, cemented back then, even though in surely a first it was the only CCA award it won.
Anora‘s Friday win was then piggybacked by impressive wins at DGA and PGA wins 24 hours later; these first of the key guilds to weigh in are generally the true indicator of where Oscar voters could be heading; memberships in the guilds cross over heavily with AMPAS. Actually, I always wait to gauge the race until the guilds weigh in, a smart move on my part since not a single pundit on Gold Derby’s survey of “experts” was predicting a DGA win for Baker — no one.
Things can turn on a dime when voting gets to this point, and because the WGA, which holds its awards ceremony this Saturday, rules films ineligible that didn’t comply with their minimum basic agreement (this year that list includes Conclave, The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez and The Substance) Anora is also a heavy favorite to take Original Screenplay there unless Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain pulls an upset.
The WGA ceremony falls smack in the middle of Oscar voting, so headlines of another win could make an impact, as could the results of the BAFTA Film Awards, which take place Sunday and could also throw a wrench in things where Anora is facing nominations leader Conclave with its imposing 12 nominations. Remember, this was where Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front upset the apple cart two years ago. Could he do it again? Globe winners Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist, and A Complete Unknown are also looking now to stop Anora, and this could be their best shot to do it.
The SAG Awards another major bellwether, is voting until February 21, just two days ahead of its February 23 show, which no matter what happens will have no effect on Oscar voters. However, it could still shake up perceptions of the race should Anora go home empty-handed there, and say SAG nominations leader Wicked pulls off a coup in the Outstanding Cast category. Oscar nomination-less Jon M. Chu’s Pop-U-Lar Best Director win at Critics Choice could help, just as it did at Critics Choice for Ben Affleck and Argo in 2012 on the same day the Academy’s directing branch snubbed him. On the other hand, remaining SAG voters might be influenced by all the Anora headlines now. Voters are like sheep: They follow the flock.
Where SAG will be informative is in the individual acting races, which now after Golden Globes and Critics Choice will look to BAFTA first, then SAG to see if all are in lock-step with clear frontrunners Adrien Brody, Demi Moore, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Salda?a. Could Timothée Chalamet rally? Or Ralph Fiennes? The wild card until Oscar night will remain Best Actress nominee and Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres, whose stirring role in surprise Best Picture nominee I’m Still Here might pull off an upset even without nominations for SAG or BAFTA. It’s rare, but it could happen, especially with a strong international turnout making up for a weaker-than-usual Los Angeles-based vote.
Anora’s ascendancy, which could also help Mikey Madison‘s Best Actress chances, should not really be shocking. After all, there were indications all the way back at Cannes in May, when it proved to be the little engine that could and won the Palme d’Or. Should it pull off a Best Picture Oscar win it will be only the third Palme winner do it after 1955 Palme winner Marty and 2019’s Parasite (like Anora a Neon release). Critics groups in L.A., Boston, Dallas, Georgia, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Mexico, North Dakota, San Francisco, Central Florida and Michigan among others have also anointed Anora, so this train is just continuing to pick up speed even if it did get shut out at the Globes. Don’t the Globes seem like a year ago at this point?
Rival consultants can take heart that even with all-important PGA and DGA wins, films like La La Land, Brokeback Mountain and Saving Private Ryan — to name three — did not ultimately become Best Picture Oscar winners. But the compressed voting period and the Academy’s misbegotten determination to cut off voting sooner than actually needed in order to free up ABC’s promos barrage for the Academy Awards (don’t ask) means all the momentum as we head into final balloting tomorrow (for just one week) is now unquestionably with Anora.
That is where you want to be at this point in the game, standing on the 20-yard-line and driving into the end zone.
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