Posted on 01/10/2005 11:51:14 AM PST by Kerry Crusher
Damn the naysayers ... it CAN happen
The people have spoken and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ has won the People’s Choice Award for Best Drama. This despite a complete and thorough snubbing from the Hollywood industry; everyone from the Golden Globes to the Directors Guild to the American Film Institute has passed over The Passion. But not the people.
So can this tremendous thumb in the eye to the Hollywood industry improve the film’s chances among Oscar voters? Well, maybe. Just maybe.
For starters, it pays to know the details about Oscar voting. The voting system – whether intentionally or unintentionally we cannot say – favors films with that have enthusiastic supporters and fans. As Tom O’Neil of the indispensable goldderby.com , writes in the New York Times:
LOOKING OUT FOR NO. 1 Most entertainment and athletic awards use a weighted ballot, on which voters list their Top 5 or Top 10 choices, with each selection assigned a point value. But the Oscars employ the old-fashioned, rarely used preferential ballot, which gives disproportionate weight to the No. 1-ranked choice. "The advantage given to No. 1 votes favors the strongly supported minority candidates," said David Rindskopf, a statistics professor at the City University of New York, "while it also eliminates candidates with broader support at the levels below No. 1."
Here's how it works: In the best-director category, for example, there are about 300 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members who decide the nominees by listing their favorites, from 1 to 5. When the ballots are received by PricewaterhouseCoopers, they are put in piles based on who is listed as the No. 1 choice, said Greg Garrison, one of the eight accountants who spend a week determining the nomination lineup. "We divide the number of ballots by six to determine how many No. 1 votes are needed to establish a nominee," he said. So a director with 50 or more No. 1 votes is automatically a nominee. "Let's say only two directors have that many," he continued. "We take all of their ballots and set them aside. Then we conduct a second pass-through. We start with the smallest stacks of ballots, discard the No. 1 choice and redistribute them according to who's listed in second place. We work through all the stacks that way, from smallest to largest, redistributing the ballots until we have five stacks with more than 50 of the same names in each one."
WHO BENEFITS? The system opens the door for candidates with narrow but passionate groups of supporters.
Because of the details of this voting system, if roughly 900 Oscar voters pick The Passion as their number one choice, it wins a much-deserved nomination for Best Picture automatically. Mel Gibson would need 50 votes to be nominated Best Director.
In short, the voting system is an asset, not a liability, to our effort here at Passion for Fairness. But still, among the 5,800 or so Oscar voters, there are a lot of “industry types” who are upset with Mel Gibson because he made The Passion “outside of Hollywood” and even more who are covetous of his remarkable success. It must be pointed out, however, that the industry essentially blacklisted this film and Mel Gibson was forced to produce it outside of the system.
Moreover, there are some closet conservatives out there in the Hollywood industry (I know one personally.) But we doubt there are 900 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who label themselves “conservative” or “Christian” or whatever. So it is not to those people that we will direct our action.
Rather, we prefer to appeal to the crass self-interest of the average Hollywood industry big shot. Look, the top grossing films this year were a Christian film and two children’s movies. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to look at the numbers, both at the box office and at the Peoples’ Choice Awards. The voting members could pick Sideways or Million Dollar Baby and such films could flower in 2005, giving everyone involved a modest payday. Oooooooor ….
900 members could figure out: Hey, if we reward The Passion perhaps there will be a gold rush to produce more big budget, high grossing epics and I (me personally) could see a better 2005 than 2004, financially speaking. A rising tide lifts all ships, as they say.
It is to these people whom we direct our action.
http://www.passionforfairness.com/
well now that Mel has been gracious to MM, it wont happen.
If you dont believe me, look at the other thread for what some people are saying. Some are actually even questioning Mel's religion of all things LOL
Funny.
Someone once said something about rejoicing when suffering persecution for His sake. I have yet to see much rejoicing from those who think Hollywierd isn't giving Mel his just rewards.
To paraphrase a popular figure of the late 20th Century, I guess it depends on the meaning of "in." If you're not in Iraq, I'd have to recommend change.
Conversely, although I've had my screen name for well over four years, it's going to be a long time before I can no longer justify calling myself a "new" geezer. Also, unlike your chosen name, mine will always boil down to a matter of opinion. ;O)
thanks....
I need an undecided category :)
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