The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group behind the Oscars, spelled out this week exactly how the Academy Award for Best Picture will be decided. My suggestion? … Beat the rush, take your preferred headache remedy before continuing.
With the shift to 10 Best Picture nominees this year, the Academy has asked its 5,777 voting members to list the 10 nominees (even “The Blind Side”) in order of preference from 1 to 10. … HOWEVER, voters are not required to do so. That’s an important distinction, because say, you love “Avatar” and want it to win. Why rank the rest, when the their position could help “The Hurt Locker” to beat “Avatar”?
And it could; here’s why: After all 5,777 ballots are returned, two accountants from the Florida Elections Commission will be locked in a room with six pizzas, a 24-pack of Red Bull and a porta-potty. They will separate the ballots into stacks, based on which film was voted No. 1. If the film with the most first-place has 2,889 votes, it wins. You ever try to get 2,889 people to agree on anything, except maybe that Kevin Costner was a lousy Robin Hood?
So, the two guys with their pizzas will take the shortest stack of ballots and disperse them among the other movie stacks … according to what was the No. 2 choice on the ballot. Let’s say “A Serious Man” finishes 10th. Where are the No. 2 votes of folks who like the Coen Bros. likely to go? My guess … to “Inglourious Basterds.”
Votes for “District 9″ are likely to have “Avatar” rated highly. The voter who chose “An Education” in first might have looked at the rest of the field and not voted anything in the 2-10 slots. And, is there any doubt that “Avatar” director James Cameron will have “The Hurt Locker” and “Inglourious Basterds” in the the 9-10 positions?
Anyway, the dispersal of the losing film ballots will continue until one film has more than 50 percent of the vote. That exact number will depend, though, on single-vote ballots. If a ballot votes for “Up In The Air” and nothing else, the ballot total (and thus the number need to win) decreases.
It’s highly possible that a film will win Best Picture EVEN THOUGH it has a smaller number of first-place votes. So, if 2,887 voters love “Precious” it could be caught from behind due to all those second-place votes from short-stacked films. We’ll never know, though, since the Academy won’t release the vote totals.
There’s got to be a better way to do this. Until then, for the sake of argument, here’s a preliminary look at how I’d rank them.
1. The Hurt Locker; 2. Up in the Air; 3. Inglourious Basterds; 4. Avatar; 5. Up; 6. Precious; 7. An Education; 8. District 9; 9. A Serious Man; 10 The Blind Side.
I could change my mind between now and the awards show on March 7. Feel free to post your own list.
