Well, what do you know?
In the middle of what lots of people figured was a victory lap for “The Social Network,” a real race broke out.
The Producers Guild of America served notice on Saturday night that while David Fincher’s acclaimed drama may have put together an unprecedented sweep of critics awards, and capped that with a win at the Golden Globes, it’s not a lock to continue that winning streak through the Oscars.
In the aftermath of “The King’s Speech” taking the top PGA film award in a surprising and significant upset, you can be sure of a few things.
Harvey Weinstein is beaming. Scott Rudin is sweating. And the folks behind “The Fighter” are looking ahead to next weekend’s Screen Actors Guild Awards with the chance of turning this season into a three-way dogfight.
(Above: "King's Speech" producers Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Gareth Unwin at the PGA; photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Before the Producers Guild, I was mulling over ideas for a piece to be called “Is It Over?” “The Social Network,” after all, was dominant, winning all the awards that preceded last year’s Oscar victory for “The Hurt Locker,” and then some.
And in talking to Academy members over the past month, I found that almost all the voters under 50 scoffed at the idea that this was a real race. “Of course ‘The Social Network’ is going to win,” one told me last weekend. “You guys just want to pretend it’s a race so you have something to write about.”
But when I spoke to AMPAS members over 50 – and I don’t have a demographic breakdown, but that’s a big group – I heard something else entirely. I heard “The King’s Speech,” “The King’s Speech,” “The King’s Speech,” and then “The Fighter.”
Over and over, I’ve been hearing real love for those two movies – and also, every so often, for “Toy Story 3.”
Over the past four years, to be sure, Academy voters have tended to agree with the critics, particularly when one film became a consensus choice as the best movie of the year. It happened with “No Country for Old Men,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Hurt Locker,” none of them typical Oscar movies. And although I thought that “The King’s Speech” felt like an Oscar winner from the first time I saw it, I was persuaded that the weight of consensus would leave its mark on the Academy once again.
Now, though, I’m starting to wonder about the effect of all those early “Social Network” wins on what one Academy member described to me this morning as the “I don’t LOVE ‘Social Network’ thing.”
In the same way that the enormous success of “Avatar” may have made James Cameron’s film an irresistible target last year, and pushed the critics to be almost unanimous in their choice of “The Hurt Locker” as the alternative, so the unprecedented sweep of critics awards could serve to rally voters who are on the fence to come together behind another candidate.
