No shortage of ink, of both the virtual and finger-staining varieties, has been spilled discussing the Academy's move to ten Best Picture nominees this year, a change that marks the first time since the wild, experimentation-happy period of 1932-1943 that we've had more than five films in contention for Hollywood's most prized statuette. (One day, when the story of this paradigm-exploding Oscar season is written, the eureka moment when new AMPAS president Tom Sherak squealed, "Let's nominate evvvverrrytthhhing!" to a mixture of thunderous applause and joyous weeping by the Academy's inner circle, will be its most moving chapter.) As you probably know, the decision to double the Best Picture field has necessitated the adoption of a "preferential voting" system, a safeguard for avoiding a mathematical nightmare scenario in which so many contenders split the vote that the Oscar is handed over to a winner that's earned a scandalously low percentage of check-marks. But how exactly does this preferential voting system work?, you are probably asking yourself, if you care way too much about how famous people are handed shiny trinkets. It sounds very complicated! Well, it is!
While other Oscarologists have already taken a crack at explaining it, we at Movieline have decided to go Deep Inside Oscar™ and venture even further into the Best Picture Code. Below, find for the first time the mind-bending intricacies of how the final Oscar is actually awarded.
The Basics
As The Wrap's Steve Pond succinctly explains:
Voters will be asked to rank the nominees in order of preference, one through 10. Those ballots will then be tallied using the preferential system... in which the film with the fewest Number One votes will be eliminated, and its votes redistributed based on the film listed second on those ballots. Eventually, one film will wind up with more than 50 percent of the vote, and will be named the Academy's Best Picture of 2009.
In theory, the above system should provide a relatively straightforward way of awarding Best Picture. But due to the power of certain constituencies within the sprawling, squabble-ridden Academy, a set of often-convoluted conditions must be obeyed before a lower-ranked film's ballots can be redistributed to the bigger piles, a process that proves so complex that only a top-shelf accounting firm can handle the tabulation.
The Special Conditions
· If Avatar is listed in the number one slot, the ballot is placed in a pile labeled "Easily Distracted By Groundbreaking Visuals, Record-Setting Box Office, And Six-Legged Horses," where it will be sneered at by the accountants maintaining the much smaller An Education and A Serious Man piles, then urinated upon by the supervisor assigned to the Inglourious Basterds pile.
· If The Hurt Locker is in the number one slot, it may be placed in either the "Hey, Did You Know This Was Directed By A Woman? Crazy!" pile, or the "Hey, Have You Heard That The Director, A Lady, Used To Be Married To Jimbo Cameron?" pile. At the end of the tabulation process, these two stacks will be combined into a single "Holy Crap, I Think This Thing Is Actually Going To Beat Avatar" pile.
· If Up in the Air is ranked at the top, the ballot is taken to a separate room, where an accountant screams "Overrated!" at the ballot-sorter, who then exits to place it in its first-place pile.
· If UITA is ranked anywhere from second to tenth, it's brought to a different room, where two accountants then debate whether the film's once-overwhelming Oscar buzz peaked too early, wonder if the recent, overblown script-credit kerfuffle between Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner cost it some support, and gripe smugly about having seen the Vera Farmiga plot-twist coming the minute she and Clooney started comparing frequent flier cards.
· If Precious is the top-listed movie, the two accountants closest to the Precious pile must murmur disapprovingly about Mo'Nique's non-campaign for the Best Supporting Actress nomination, but all complaints must be tinged with grudging admiration for both her eye-opening performance and her ostensible bravery in "not playing the game."
· Additionally, if Precious is in any of the top three spots, executive producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry somehow each receive $50,000 per qualifying ballot.
· If The Blind Side appears in slots two through ten, the ballot is pinned to a life-size cardboard standee of Sandra Bullock, and in the event of a tie-breaker, that ballot is placed in the pile of whatever film would have most benefited from "a sprinkling of Sandy Magic."
· If Up is the top choice, the accountant must pause for ten minutes to weep uncontrollably as he remembers the film's wordless, gut-stabbing opening montage before sorting the ballot.
· If Inglourious Basterds is in the bottom half of a ballot, it's awarded a five-spot "Weinstein bonus" per vote. Any accountant failing to apply the bonus will awake the next morning to find the scalped head of a Nazi on his pillow, and FOR YOUR RE-CONSIDERATION scrawled in pig's blood on the bedroom wall.
· If a ballot is cast for Best Picture-ineligible It's Complicated in any of the ten available slots, it will be destroyed and its Voter ritualistically humiliated by having his or her genitals broadcast via Macbook webcam to the entire Membership. In an iChat running alongside the video stream, the Members will make disparaging comments about the Voter's naughty parts, a punishment not only for his or her regrettable susceptibility to Meyersian ladyporn, but an inability to follow simple instructions.
· If a protest write-in vote is made for The Hangover, the Voter is placed in a Baby Bjorn attached to a ten-foot Oscar statue, pelted with rotten buffet food from a recent junket, then banished forever to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
· If a Best Picture vote is cast for In The Loop, the accountant sighs wistfully, whispers "f*ckety-bye-bye then," and mails the disqualified ballot to us, who cherishes it f*cking forever.