Award for Best Drama Goes to Critics’ Groups

They don’t have the glow of the Oscars or the glitz of the Golden Globes, but the awards from the top film critics’ groups can be surprisingly influential--and the history of their voting surprisingly colorful.

The critics award season kicks into gear next week with the unveiling of awards from the New York Film Critics Circle on Thursday and the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. next Saturday. Chances are good, if history repeats, that the film rated best picture by one of those groups will be endorsed by Oscar voters on March 24.

Film reviewers’ organizations abound, but only three really rate in Hollywood: New York, L.A. and the overall National Society of Film Critics. In 1979, when Sally Field was honored for “Norma Rae,” she confessed, “The New York critics’ award is more important than anything except my children.” When John Travolta nabbed an award in 1994 for “Pulp Fiction,” he revealed to the L.A. critics, “I got so excited when I heard I won that I couldn’t sleep for three days!”

These media prizes may be widely esteemed, insomnia-inducing and even copied by the Oscars, but they also have a scandalous history.

The voting conclaves are so mysterious--and regarded by many as being so sacred--that it may seem as if the critics are powwowing to pick a pope, but in fact their secret antics can be quite devilish. Fistfights, “screams of dissenters,” “fierce laments,” tears and wanton drunkenness have all been reported at conclaves past. In 1975, a voting session of the national society got so rowdy that New York Times writer Roger Greenspun suffered a heart attack. Bosley Crowther, a longtime chairman of the New York circle, once commented: “To put it bluntly, the voting sessions of the critics have sometimes been nigh unto brawls.”

That brawling has been quashed in recent years thanks to the groups’ finally banning booze and debating, but those changes didn’t nix tension altogether. Much of it has merely moved off stage.

As far back as 1939, New York circle member Frank S. Nugent reported, “The log-rolling, lobbying and vote-trading that goes on in the traditional smoke-filled room are shameful and very funny.”

By the 1970s and 1980s, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker and Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice lobbied blatantly for weeks before circle and national society meetings, working the phones like political bosses to line up votes. Their faithful troops formed rival camps so notable that they acquired nicknames--the “Paulettes” and the “Sarrites.”

Nowadays, according to current circle member and past chair Thelma Adams of Us Weekly, “Any wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes is less overt. By the time we conduct our actual voting sessions, things are very, very civil.”

Jean Oppenheimer, Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. president, describes the meetings of the L.A. critics as “very civilized too” and adds, “I’ve never observed a case of vote swapping.” The reason for the latter might be the group’s unique voting system, which discourages deadlocks that often plague the circle and national society.

In 1994, for example, “Quiz Show” didn’t receive a single vote for best picture during the circle’s first-round balloting, but the New Yorkers ultimately saluted it out of desperation when the camps backing “Forrest Gump” and “Pulp Fiction” surrendered.

The L.A. group has probably been spared melees because of its cordial voting system and a ban on debate that dates to 1975, when the group was launched by Ruth Batchelor of the Free Press and her early recruits, including the now-retired Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times. As the early founders drafted procedures, Champlin advised them on what to avoid. He’d seen the problems at the national society and even was the victim of one of its nasty flare-ups.

That happened in 1971, when he was admitted as a member, John Simon of the New Leader and Stanley Kauffmann of the New Republic resigned in protest because, reported Variety, “they felt Champlin was too close to industry figures in Hollywood.”

“Basically, some New York critics felt that there was no good criticism done west of the Hudson River,” Champlin says today. “The society was ... all New Yorkers back then, and they resisted letting any new blood in.”

The L.A. group may be bruise-free, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t taken its share of knocks. Specifically, the group’s been criticized for permitting occasional freelancers to join and then allowing them to hang on after they stop writing reviews. Former L.A. Times critic Jack Mathews once wrote, “Membership requirements are only slightly tighter than those for the Hertz No. 1 Club.”

“Frankly, I agree that we’ve been lax about credentials,” Oppenheimer says, “but we’ve recently made big changes.” As of 2002, members will be required to meet the same minimum professional standard maintained by the foreign journalists who vote for the Golden Globes: They must publish at least four articles per year.

Mathews, who now works for the New York Daily News, is a member of the New York circle but not the national society. He notes that both groups “have a few hangers-on,” plus “freelancers of dubious credentials,” while both turn away notable critics who apply to become members.

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Tom O’Neil is the author of Variety’s “Movie Awards” and host of the award-predictions Web site GoldDerby.com.