Oscar awards will have a different face this year
At this year’s Oscars, the contenders include #MeToo, # TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite
The glow from James Franco’ s best actor win at the Golden Globes didn’t last long. Shortly after Franco accepted the prize for his role in The Disaster Artist last month, several women tweeted allegations of sexual misconduct, casting a pa ll over his victory.
The Academy Awards snubbed Franco despite him being a supposed lock for a best-actor nod. How much of this came as a response to allegations—a Los Angeles Times report featuring five acc users was published a day before Oscar voting closed Jan. 12 — is difficult to quantify. But the omission underscored the extent to which the# Times Up and# Me Too movements and general woke culture now permeate Hollywood.
Only four previous times had Oscar voters nominated a woman oran African-American for best director. This year they nominated one of each, Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird and Jordan Peele for Get Out.
“This is representative of a shift ,” Gerwig said. “The recognition for all the amazing women who worked on my film is bringing us closer to the idea of 50-50( academy gender parity) in 2020. It hope- fully brings us closer to half of all films directed by women, which I think should be the goal.”
Lady Bird actresses Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf also received nominations for the semi-autobiographical motherdaughter tale, as did the movie’s producers for best picture. Gerwig received an original-screenplay nomination.
The star of Get Out, Daniel Kaluuya, was nominated for best actor, while the film landed on the best picture list. Peele drew an original-screenplay nod, as well.
The Oscars are due to take place on March 4.
The nominations provided a bookend of sorts to a wave of sexual-misconduct scandals that began in October with wide-ranging allegations against the former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and proceeded to rock nearly all layers of Hollywood, including TV executives, media personalities, talent agents and actors. With allegations mounting, the industry struggled to rebut the claims and send a message that it wasn’t the disease-riddled den of misogyny the scandals suggested.
Branches in the 8,500-member Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences voted for a woman for the first time ever for best cinematography, designating a slot for Mudbound’s Rachel Morrison. That film’s writer-director, Dee Rees, became only the second African-American woman ever nominated for a screenplay award. Those choices were especially notable because the movie camefromNetflix, acompanywith which many Oscar voters have an ambivalent relationship due to the firm’s resistance to theatrical releases.
These choices were greeted warmly by the veterans and observers of Hollywood who have been calling for change. Beginning in 2015 and 2016, the academy came under harsh fire from a grassroots# Os cars So White movement that charged the showwi thunderrepresenting people of colour.
The makeup of AMPAS has changed since #OscarsSoWhite began, with a drive to increase the proportion of women and people of colour. In June the group allowed in a record 774 new members, nearly a third of them people of colour.
“The academy did a very smart thing in recruiting the biggest class of diverse newcomers to the group,” Peele said. “We’re seeing that in the nominations and we’re seeing it paying off in today’s political climate, which is facing and moving backward. It’s up to the artistic community to move it forward.”
Peele noted he thought the newcomers were also more open to new voices; he and Gerwig, after all, had achieved the rare feat of a director nomination with a debut film.
Host Jimmy Kimmel says that he will seek to tackle the issue of gender in equity and sexual harassment, even if he’s not sure yet how. “You can’t really know what the temperature is until you get there ,” he told reporters at the Television Critics Association gathering.