After the Riseborough flap, who will win the lead actress Oscar?
An hour after film academy CEO Bill Kramer issued a statement saying Andrea Riseborough would be allowed to keep her lead actress nomination for “To Leslie” following an academy investigation that found her team did not violate any Oscar campaign rules, a voter called me to vent. And to tell me she had just finished watching “To Leslie.”
“Her team did nothing wrong,” the academy member said, “other than run an unconventional campaign that circumvented the Oscar machinery. She absolutely deserved the nomination, and I’ve heard from a lot of friends who have watched the movie since this whole stupid thing erupted, and they all agree. And you know what? I think she could win!”
The voter requested anonymity, in light of Kramer’s letter to members, asking them to “refrain from publicly discussing your voting preferences or attempting to persuade others to vote similarly.” That missive also noted that the academy would be reviewing its rules as “it is apparent that components of the regulations must be clarified to help create a better framework for respectful, inclusive, and unbiased campaigning.”
I look forward to how “unbiased campaigning” is parsed and defined. Because that’s a curious combination of words!
In the meantime, I wonder if that academy member is onto something: Could Riseborough pull a Ben Affleck and go on to win an Oscar for a movie that, up until a couple of weeks ago, had been seen by only a handful of people outside the 310 area code?
You may remember what happened a decade ago when Oscar nominations came out and Affleck’s crowd-pleasing thriller “Argo” earned seven nominations, including best picture, but Affleck himself was overlooked for directing. Poor Affleck had to go to the Critics Choice Awards that night, a dismal obligation even under the best of circumstances, walk the red carpet, force a smile and, in his words, “pretend that you’re OK, pretend it didn’t bother you, because, God forbid, something bothered you.”
But that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day produced an outpouring of sympathy for Affleck, catapulting him to Golden Globe and Directors Guild honors and, shortly afterward, a triumphant moment at the Oscars when “Argo” won best picture. Would “Argo” have won without the hysteria surrounding Affleck’s scandalous “snub”? Well … the publicity sure didn’t hurt its cause.
Now, unlike Riseborough’s “To Leslie,” nobody had to google “Ben Affleck” or “Argo” when Oscar nominations went down that year. So, there’s a steep hill for Riseborough to climb, not to mention some formidable competition. The lead actress race might have been the most crowded category at this year’s Oscars and was always going to be fiercely contested. Could Riseborough actually win? Let’s look at the nominees — in order of least to most likely to win— to see where we stand.
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