The $11 Billion Year

by Anne Thompson

  January 13:

  BILL CLINTON INTRODUCES LINCOLN AT THE GOLDEN GLOBES

  From the start, it’s received wisdom in Hollywood that Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, the highest-grossing film of the Best Picture nominees ($178 million as of January 25) with the most nominations (twelve) has the right stuff to win Best Picture. But dynamics change.

  While the New York Film Critics Circle goes for Daniel Day-Lewis and Tony Kushner, the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics ignore Lincoln altogether.

  On the night of the televised Critics’ Choice Awards, which offer Oscar contenders a chance to practice their acceptance speeches, Best Actor winner Daniel Day-Lewis basks in a standing ovation and then lays his plummy British charms on the crowd, calling Spielberg and Kushner “fearless Sherpas.” He adds that making Lincoln was “one of the greatest unforeseen privileges of my life.”

  But Adapted Screenplay winner Kushner—considered the Oscar favorite—is discomfited that his eloquent acceptance speech is not televised. And eighty-year-old winning composer John Williams, seated with Team Lincoln, doesn’t get to make one at all, to the dismay of the group. Over the Golden Globes weekend, at Saturday’s annual BAFTA tea at the Four Seasons, Lincoln producer Kathleen Kennedy jokes with Silver Linings Playbook producer Bruce Cohen about the times they’ve gone up against each other, from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button vs. Milk to The Sixth Sense vs. American Beauty. The veteran campaigners both know better than to believe that anything is in the bag.

  On Sunday, at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe Awards, DreamWorks reveals their anxiety. They surprise everyone seated at the glittering studio tables at the Beverly Hilton, as well as the global audience, by playing the Bill Clinton card. The ex-president unexpectedly pops in to introduce big-league Democratic donor Spielberg’s film about the world’s most famous president. But that unexpected power move—bringing in the Washington Beltway heavy-hitter and Hollywood outsider to remind everyone that Spielberg is a friend of Bill’s—doesn’t have the effect DreamWorks has in mind. It carries a whiff of condescension. It seems to say, “You may not realize the historic significance, the sheer gravitas of what we have accomplished. This U.S. president gets it. What’s your problem?”

  By overplaying its hand, Team Lincoln shows weakness, not strength. The Lincoln Oscar campaign reeks of entitlement from Hollywood’s top-ranked, most powerful director. Even the press materials stand out, from an elaborate white box lined with tissue paper and ornate printing containing the screener and press notes, to an overscale white hardcover of the screenplay. Everyone else sends out standardized slim paperback scripts.

  Like Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln is hit by a poison dart in the form of a well-timed revelation—two weeks before the final ballots are due on February 19—from Connecticut Representative Joe Courtney, who figures out that Kushner’s script misrepresents the 1865 House roll call vote. In the movie, Connecticut votes against the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, but in real life, the state voted for it. The congressman sends out a press release of his letter to Spielberg with the headline “Ahead of Oscars, Courtney asks Spielberg, DreamWorks to correct Lincoln inaccuracy that places Connecticut on wrong side of slavery debate.”

  Meanwhile Kushner admits that he took some dramatic license with this fifteen-second moment: “The closeness of that vote and the means by which it came about was the story we wanted to tell. In making changes to the voting sequence, we adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical drama, which is what Lincoln is.”

  A growing sense takes hold in Hollywood that what really makes the movie stand out is not so much the writer or director but the perfectionist star who insisted that the set be pure and historic and real—and whose performance makes the movie a must-see.

  Everyone sees that nothing is going to stop Daniel Day-Lewis, who also accepts Best Actor at the Globes. He’s not about to lose the gold man.

  February 6:

  ANG LEE WINS THE APPLAUSE METER AT THE ACADEMY NOMINEES LUNCH

  On the other hand, Life of Pi, which is comparable to a Lord of the Rings or Avatar as a tour-de-force epic without any acting nominations, is starting to look like a stronger contender after all. Fox has to overcome early preconceptions that the movie is a family flick based on a heart-tugging bestseller, and that it was too expensive to be successful. Eventually, Life of Pi turns into a word-of-mouth hit overseas and stateside, and Academy members get a chance to see all the feats of cinematic derring-do from Lee and his visual effects (VFX) team at Rhythm & Hues. I sit with Lee at the Critics’ Choice Awards; he asks me if the movie’s up for VFX. It is. And that’s exactly what it wins.

  As the weeks progress, Life of Pi keeps winning craft awards—from the Visual Effects Society, from the American Society of Cinematographers. And eventually it becomes clear that Spielberg is no longer a slam dunk to win best director. Lee has a shot.

  First, he has pushed a seemingly unfilmable film adaptation into existence, via not only David Magee’s script, but the believable actualization of CG tiger Richard Parker on a boat in the ocean. Inside the movie industry, people understand the obstacles Lee has surmounted. He has achieved that impossible merger of art, spirituality, and technology.

  The annual Academy lunch, midway between the nominations and the final ballot deadline, brings together at the Beverly Hilton Hotel all the nominees, not only to celebrate their rarefied status and pose for a historic photograph, but to do some last-minute campaigning. During the cocktail hour they work the ballroom with drinks in hand and then settle into their assigned round tables with a mix of nominees, governors, and press scattered around the room. Sony’s Michael Barker hangs out with Les Misérables director Tom Hooper; Kathryn Bigelow sits next to Robert De Niro; Fox’s Jim Gianopulos is paired with Bradley Cooper.

  The nominees submit to the usual begging to keep their acceptance speeches short if they take the stage at the Oscar event in ten days. “Get to the stage quickly,” exhorts Oscar show producer Craig Zadan. “You have forty-five seconds. Winning groups should select a speaker who will begin immediately and give a heartfelt funny speech. Speak from the heart, not a piece of paper. You are talking to over a billion people in two hundred twenty-five countries.” (Not. It’s hundreds of thousands.)

  At that moment, the room rustles with discomfort. “Piece of cake!” cracks my tablemate Mark Andrews, codirector of Brave. “Inspire billions! Be funny! Speak from the heart!”

  The Academy lunch applause meter is always revealing. Producer Frank Marshall is the event DJ, spinning discs as his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, new CEO of Lucasfilm and producer of Lincoln, is the first one called by AMPAS president Hawk Koch to line up in a semicircular set of four tiers for the annual nominees group photo—Spielberg is the last to squeeze into the end of a row. Among the names generating enthusiastic applause while heading up to accept their nomination certificates from Koch: directors Spielberg, Russell, Bigelow, Burton, and Bendjelloul; writer Kushner; Argo and Zero Dark Thirty editor William Goldenberg; and Anna Karenina production designer Sarah Greenwood. The actors always get the biggest hands, from Affleck (nominated as producer for Argo), Denzel Washington, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jacki Weaver to Naomi Watts, Joaquin Phoenix, and sprite Quvenzhané Wallis, who earns a big laugh by sitting on the Oscar statue in the middle of the photo.

  At that moment, Spielberg’s blockbuster Lincoln, with twelve nominations, is regarded as the establishment contender. Rivals portray it as dull and educational. Day-Lewis, who was felled by flu and didn’t make the lunch, and Kushner are seen as locks for Best Actor and Adapted Screenplay. But Picture and Director? Lionsgate motion picture executive Rob Friedman—one of the two leading contenders to take over the AMPAS presidency after Koch’s one-year tenure—warns a group of us that the Oscars are still “wide open.” (Although Koch lobbies the Board of Governors for Friedman to take over after his term, entrenched Academy in
sider Cheryl Boone-Isaacs wins the vote on July 31, 2013, becoming the first African American to hold the AMPAS presidency, and the third woman—Bette Davis only lasted for two months in 1941, while respected screenwriter Fay Kanin ran the Academy from 1979 to 1983.)

  Of all the people going to the front of the room, Ang Lee garners by far the most enthusiastic round of applause. Visually glorious and spiritually uplifting, Life of Pi picks up steam as it cleans up the pre-Oscar tech awards and passes the $500 million mark worldwide. It’s tough for Fox to campaign without name actors—but well-respected Lee and Visual Effects Society winner Rhythm & Hues are the film’s real stars. Lee’s riding high, as one actor after another through the lunch goes over to him to pay their respects. Can he beat Spielberg?

  January 13:

  BRAVE WINS THE GOLDEN GLOBE

  In the animated category, Disney boasts a surprising three Oscar nominations, for Tim Burton’s artful stop-motion expansion of a 1984 Disney short, Frankenweenie; Pixar’s gorgeous first princess film, Brave; and an homage to video arcade games, Wreck-It Ralph. Sony/Aardman’s domestic box-office flop The Pirates! Band of Misfits ($31 million), which did three times better overseas, is a surprise inclusion, coming at the expense of DreamWorks’ would-be franchise Rise of the Guardians, which barely recouped its $145 million budget with $370 million worldwide (remember, only half goes back to the studio). Also nominated is Laika animators Sam Fell and Chris Butler’s CG-enhanced stop-motion ParaNorman, which became the family horror hit that similar Frankenweenie wanted to be.

  Disappointing box office can negatively impact an awards race. For Frankenweenie, his most personal movie since Edward Scissorhands, Burton returned to his home turf of the Burbank suburbs and shot his film in black-and-white. Though the modestly budgeted $39 million feature is a welcome reminder of what an artist can do when he’s not playing to the marketplace, its lack of success taints the movie with Academy voters. The grosses top out at $35 million domestic and $46 million foreign.

  Since its first film in 1995, Toy Story, Pixar has been on an Academy roll, winning seven Best Animated Feature Oscars, most recently for Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. But Brave is tarnished by creative conflict. Long a boys’ club distinguished by groupthink and replaceable directors, Pixar attracted rare slings and arrows from the press when its studio head (and Disney animation czar) John Lasseter hauled in Mark Andrews to fix what wasn’t working in this Scottish mother-daughter story. The film’s original writer-director, Brenda Chapman, who would have been the first solo woman director on a Pixar or Disney animated feature, was understandably upset.

  Andrews overhauled the story (with help from Steve Purcell, Irene Mecchi, and Michael Arndt) and added more male characters and comedic action among princess Merida’s younger siblings. Pixar knows how to reach the widest possible audience for animated storytelling. The movie survived the tinkering; it’s one of Pixar’s most stunningly beautiful films. But Chapman isn’t able to harmoniously take one for the team. She publicly complains. And Lasseter stays angry.

  No matter. Disney savvy marketers shrug off the bad vibes on their box-office hit ($539 million worldwide) and have the sense to send Andrews and Chapman, who are friendly, on the promo trail as a happy team.

  Highly amusing even for adults, Wreck-It Ralph, starring the indispensable John C. Reilly, is one of the strongest Disney titles in many years, one that Lasseter is enthusiastically behind. But Disney sells it as an eighties retro gaming movie with male appeal. And the Academy tends to favor live action. Many members don’t get around to discovering the film’s strong female character (a princess!) or its emotional depth. Critics apportion their awards among all three films. The top animated feature awards, known as the Annies, go to Wreck-It Ralph, while the Visual Effects Society awards Brave.

  The race is on.

  January 27:

  ARGO WINS SCREEN ACTORS GUILD FOR OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A CAST

  After its Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe wins, Argo keeps winning the guilds—by far the most predictive bellwethers of Academy popularity. The film wins the Producers Guild award on January 26 and, on January 27, the Screen Actors Guild’s equivalent of Best Picture, the cast award. On February 2 come the announcements of the top awards from the Directors Guild.

  Half-hour TV show winner Lena Dunham (Girls) accepts her award by saying, “Steven Spielberg, I’m coming for you. Ben Affleck, I already came for you.” She forecasts the heat that attends Argo, which by evening’s end has continued its awards surge by taking home the DGA’s top honor for Best Feature. When Chris Terrio wins the Writers Guild of America award for Best Adapted Screenplay on February 17—two days before the Oscar final ballots are due—it’s a sign that Argo can’t lose.

  Affleck joins other actor-directors who have won the DGA: Woody Allen, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Ron Howard, Kevin Costner, and Clint Eastwood. His win marks only the third time a director has won the DGA without an Oscar nomination. And on both of the other occasions it was a sign of weakness: neither Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985) nor Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995) went on to win the Best Picture Oscar. Only seven DGA winners have not gone on to win the directing Oscar—obviously something Affleck can’t do since he isn’t a nominee.

  But Affleck has reasons to be cheerful. Apollo 13 was the only film to ever sweep the top Guild awards—PGA, SAG, and DGA—and not win the Best Picture Oscar the same year. And only thirteen times in the past sixty-four years has the film directed by the DGA winner not been named Best Picture by the Academy.

  First-time nominee Affleck has beaten three-time DGA winner Spielberg, who earned a standing ovation, and two-time DGA winner Lee, the only two DGA nominees who are also in the running for the Best Director Oscar. (The others are Oscar-snubbed Bigelow and Hooper.)

  The DGA is considered a more mainstream group than the nominating Oscar directors or the Academy at large. Thus Lincoln is revealed as tellingly vulnerable in the Oscar race for Best Picture.

  February 24:

  THE OSCAR SHOW—WINNERS AND LOSERS

  And so Argo rolls into the big night with all the signs of a winner. That, combined with the charming Affleck’s undeniable appeal and humble-brag brilliance as a campaigner, fuels the movie’s Best Picture triumph. As producer George Clooney reminds me later, the winning Argo votes were already in for the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globes before the Academy directors’ “snub.” In other words, the film was a strong competitor from the start.

  There are other factors pushing Argo’s Best Picture win. After playing to enthusiastic crowds at Telluride and Toronto, Argo rocked its L.A. premiere at the Academy. I saw the way the Hollywood crowd responded to this hugely satisfying movie about American heroes. It was a thrilling true story, and when ex-CIA agent Tony Mendez stood to take a bow, the crowd went wild. They could cheer for America for once. And for Hollywood.

  That uplift is an unbeatable combination. It also marks Affleck’s own redemption, from Gigli to Best Picture Oscar winner. “Fifteen years ago I had no idea what I was doing,” Affleck says onstage of his first Oscar win, for cowriting Good Will Hunting. “I never thought I’d be back here. So many people helped me . . . It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life. All that matters is that you get up.”

  So what happens to Lincoln? The older Academy usually goes for its level of quality, heart, and period seriousness. Why does this widely admired Spielberg movie run out of gas? Partly it is front-runner syndrome—on top is a precarious place to be. Like another early leader of the pack, Clint Eastwood’s 2006 Letters from Iwo Jima, Lincoln is seen as a stuffy but honorable history lesson. On top of the self-important marketing campaign, the poisonous anti-Lincoln campaign is sticky. Widely repeated everywhere: Lincoln is “boring.”

  Far from the truth, but in the absence of eager campaigners—Spielberg, Tommy Lee Jones, and eventual winner Daniel Day-Lewis have to be pushed into doing the minimum of public appearances—Kennedy, Kushner, and Field can
’t carry the day. In the end, wins for Day-Lewis—an unprecedented third Oscar for a lead actor—and production designer Rick Carter have to suffice for Lincoln.

  When Affleck won the predictive Directors Guild award, Argo became the front-runner, and Spielberg was competing in the Oscar director race with Ang Lee, who is respected, even beloved, for his enormous range and depth (with one Oscar win to Spielberg’s two). Emotionally uplifting, Pi scores four Oscars, including Director, Visual Effects (from Rhythm & Hues, on the verge of bankruptcy), Cinematography, and Score. It’s the second time Lee has won directing without taking Best Picture (in 2006, Academy steak-eaters voted for Crash over Brokeback Mountain).

  In the competitive year 2012, the awards are spread out among eight of the nine Best Picture contenders (only indie Beasts of the Southern Wild goes home empty-handed). In fact, the six top awards go to six different movies for the first time since the Crash year of 2006, which was also the last time a Best Picture winner won only three Oscars.

  Britain’s Working Title has a good night as Les Misérables nabs three awards, the same number it won at the Golden Globes, this time for Hathaway, Sound Mixing, and Makeup and Hairstyling; meanwhile, Anna Karenina earns a well-deserved Costume Design statuette. And the Oscar show’s rousing, neck-chilling Les Mis number—featuring the key cast and some sixty total people on the Dolby stage—doesn’t hurt to boost DVD sales around the world. (Hugh Jackman agreed to do it first and then wrangled Russell Crowe into participating.)