Can “Birdman’’ be stopped at the Oscars? Its surprise win over the heavily favored “Boyhood’’ this weekend at the super-predictive Directors Guild of America Awards means it’s now swept the trifecta of the top guild prizes, the film’s actors and producers having already received their guilds’ accolades.
All seven films that have managed that impressive feat over the past 20 years went on to win the Best Picture Oscar — the only exception to this rule being “Apollo 13,’’ which lost to “Braveheart.’’
Moreover, the winner of the DGA Award for direction of a feature film — this year, Alejandro G. Iñárritu — has gone on to win the Best Director Oscar an awe-inspiring 59 times in the past 66 years, by far the best track record of any precursor award.
You don’t have to be a math whiz like the real-life heroes of “The Theory of Everything’’ and “The Imitation Game’’ to figure out that “Birdman’’ is now a prohibitive favorite in both top categories. And the prediction (including my own) that the Best Picture/Best Director Oscars would split for the third year running now looks seriously shaky.
This has supporters of “Boyhood’’ and Oscar pundits, loath to call the race two weeks out (polls are open until Feb. 17, and there is still money to be made from advertising for the other contenders), grasping at straws.
One conveniently materialized the day after the DGA’s decision: Bloodied critical darling “Boyhood’’ got up from the mat and scored knockouts in the best picture and best director categories at the British Academy Film Awards.
But don’t get too excited: Since 2001 (when they were moved from after the Oscars to before the big night), BAFTA’s prize has just a 50 percent track record at matching Oscar’s designated Best Picture. (The number actually rises to 100 percent for the past six years, but still.)
Like the American guilds’, BAFTA’s membership overlaps with Oscar’s — but even the most optimistic estimate is only 500 out of 6,500 academy members, and many of those Brits, voted for movies other than “Boyhood.”
An even more thrilling straw for the “Boyhood” brigade to grasp at is the absence of a nod for “Birdman” in the bellwether category of editing — the last Best Picture winner without one was “Ordinary People’’ 34 years ago.
But even prognosticator Scott Feinberg of the Hollywood Reporter, who labels this a “daunting stat,’’ concedes that it probably won’t matter for “Birdman,’’ which by design has very minimal editing so that the entire movie looks like a continuous shot.
Could “Boyhood’’ pull off a huge upset anyway? Sure, and so could “American Sniper,’’ which Variety’s Tim Gray thinks may be well-positioned to pull off one of the biggest Oscar-night surprises of all time. But take it from Longshot Lou: You wouldn’t want to put any money you aren’t prepared to lose on either one of them at this point.
Blogger Sasha Stone has an interesting theory about the rise of “Birdman,’’ claiming its popularity among industry groups is a response to the film’s theme of decrying superhero movies taking over the industry.
Fine, except that a goodly number of academy members make a very handsome living in those movies. To me, Stone may be on more solid ground when she says Hollywood types may be responding to the film’s scathing portrayal of a New York Times critic who announces her intention to pan a theatrical production, sight unseen — purely on the principle that movie stars don’t belong on Broadway.