Secrets of an Oscar Seer

Andrew Beyer, the superlative handicapper and horse racing columnist for the Washington Post, once wrote about meeting an ancient gambler, still a regular at the track and still studying the Racing Form with undiminished fervor. “If I’d put this much time and effort into studying the law,” the man told him, “I’d be on the Supreme Court by now.”

I know what he means.

After decades of closely studying the Oscars, I have very little concrete to show for it, not even a peerless record of prognostication (more about that later). Still, I and my fellow Oscar watchers, like Beyer’s “addicted horseplayers,” wouldn’t have it any other way. The Oscars are so important in the international film cosmos as well as Hollywood and so ultimately unpredictable that once you get the urge to handicap them, you’re hooked for life.

I have learned over the years that picking the Oscars is in fact an awful lot like picking winners at the track. There are numerous factors that can influence the outcome, and their indications are often contradictory. Your task as prognosticator is not only to identify the relevant circumstances, but to determine, by instinct as much as intellect, which one will be predominant for any given race. While it’s relatively easy to explain, on the morning after, why a particular actor or film won or lost, figuring it out ahead of time is considerably more challenging. Especially so this year.

Unlike the competition for nominations, which was far less wide open than generally perceived, the race among the finalists is the most frustrating in memory. Talk to veteran Oscar sages and the phrases they use are “fuzzy,” “unclear,” “an absence of momentum” and “weirdly evenly balanced.” So, even though I will not shy away from making choices, this seemed to be a good year to look at how Oscar predictors work, to share with the world, or at least the percentage that cares, the precepts we live by.

Let’s start with some general guidelines, of which the most central is the understanding that the Oscars, very much like any award, have only a tangential relationship to the quality of a given film. What an award does is express the taste of a particular group of people, nothing more, nothing less.

So the task is not figuring out what a “good” film or performance is, but determining what academy members like. It means, and this is often the hardest thing for beginning prognosticators to get used to, completely forgetting about one’s own likes and dislikes, one’s own ideas of quality. Even if your personal taste is impeccable, it not only doesn’t matter, it will likely get in your way.

Imagine the Oscars were awarded by you and your immediate family or, by extension, the people you work with. Because you’ve put in a great deal of time with those groups, you could probably say, with a fair chance of success, what direction their taste runs to. Just living in L.A. and absorbing the zeitgeist of the town gives you an advantage over those who live in other cities, even cosmopolitan New York. A taste for a certain film is simply in the air, and if you pay attention, anyone can pick up the scent.

If you work in or around the movie business, that’s, of course, an added advantage, but civilians can compensate by paying attention to the winners of the various guild awards that precede the Oscars. Although a correlation you can take to the bank doesn’t exist, the winners of the Directors Guild, Writers Guild, American Society of Cinematographers and Screen Actors Guild awards, the Eddies for film editors, and so on, can be powerful indicators of trends that might be developing.

And trends do develop, often at the very last minute, so much so that this piece would have a better chance of being accurate if it could be written for next Sunday’s paper. One of the best examples was the 1998 best picture race, when the feeling that “Shakespeare in Love” would upset the favored “Saving Private Ryan” grew and grew, but so slowly that it wasn’t until a day or two before the event that its victory seemed likely.

The final, and most critical, precept is to familiarize yourself with the history of the Academy Awards. Although the membership of that group changes every year, it changes at a glacial pace, and the ethos of the Hollywood community remains remarkably constant. Just as you can recognize characters from today’s movie business in F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories though they were written more than 60 years ago, so the academy often votes in ways it always has.

One of the first indicators to look for, especially in the best picture category, is how many nominations each of the contenders had--simply because it indicates strength across the breadth of the academy membership. Which means this year’s race will likely come down to “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “Moulin Rouge.”

At first blush (and possibly even at final blush), “A Beautiful Mind” seems the picture to beat. With its artfully tidied-up reality and its uplifting message, it has seemed, from the moment it hit screens, like a movie that was almost genetically engineered to win the best picture Oscar. If one were to pick a favorite, this would have to be it.

But there are, as there always are, contradictory indications. Although pictures without best director nominations rarely win the big prize, “Moulin Rouge” has done a savvy job with its marketing, turning a negative--its perceived lack of appeal to older voters--into a positive by harvesting tributes from impressed senior citizens such as Robert Wise and Stanley Donen.

The film did win the Producers Guild award, which has correlated with the Oscar win in nine of the previous 12 years. On the other hand, the Producers Guild changed its membership this year, increasing its total voters by close to 25%, and such a radical change in its makeup throws its predictive prowess into question.

And what about “Lord of the Rings”? It did get 13 nominations, but films with a lot of nominations don’t always do well. Two things speak in its favor: Because splitting tickets between director and film is not uncommon (it happened two of the past three years), Ron Howard’s likely win in his category could help “Rings” in this one. And those with long memories will remember that the last time a Ron Howard-directed picture was up for the top prize was 1995, when the highly touted “Apollo 13” lost to a film very much like “Lord of the Rings”: Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart.”

So, in direct contradiction to one of my own rules, I’m going to abandon the obvious favorite and pick “Lord of the Rings” because I have a personal preference for it. If I’m destined to go down with a ship, this one seems to suit the occasion.

Selecting Ron Howard as the best director winner flows from three usually reliable Oscar factors. No. 1, he took the Directors Guild prize, which has correlated with the Oscar in all but five years. Second, it’s important to remember that with the acting branch as its biggest component, the academy always seems to smile on performers when they branch out into other fields: witness Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s 1997 best screenplay victory for “Good Will Hunting.” Finally, following years of not being nominated by the fussy directors’ branch, the well-liked Howard has at last made it into the tent after nearly a quarter of a century behind the camera, and there’s a feeling that this is going to be his year.

Although Sean Penn, Will Smith and Tom Wilkinson all have their partisans, the best actor category is considered to be a two-man race between Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington. Under ordinary circumstances, this award would be Crowe’s. He plays the kind of up-from-adversity character the academy likes (as opposed to Washington’s hostile rogue cop), he’s in a film that’s a fair bet to win it all, and he took the usually reliable (11 of the past 14 years) SAG award.

Two factors, however, are hurting his chances. No. 1, he won last year for “Gladiator,” and the academy, ever mindful of its history, may not be willing to put him in the tiny pantheon of back-to-back best actor winners that contains only the well-liked duo of Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks. Being involved in a series of well-publicized scrapes--the academy frowns on controversy--also will likely count against Crowe as well.

So, although the academy probably does not care for his “Training Day” character, or “Training Day” itself for that matter (it got but two nominations), that leaves the overdue Denzel Washington as the winner. Very much in his favor is the fact that he should have won the year before last for “The Hurricane,” but suffered unfairly when that film was caught up in a controversy of its own. The academy has a history of giving awards after the fact. Paul Newman, for instance, took the Oscar for 1986’s “The Color of Money” when he should have won for the last film he was nominated for, 1982’s “The Verdict.”

For those looking for an upset, Oscar history also shows that the academy has frequently been partial to British actors, and with even Sissy Spacek saying how impressed she was with his ability to convincingly play American, “In the Bedroom’s” Tom Wilkinson might surprise some folks.

The best actress category also comes down to a two-person situation. The favorite has to be Spacek, because she is a respected veteran who has not had a role of this caliber in some time; the academy loves what it perceives to be a comeback.

On the other hand, Spacek has been nominated five times before and won for 1980’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” And if there’s anything the academy likes as much as a return to form, it’s a young actress who’d never previously had an Oscar-caliber role making the most of her opportunity. Hilary Swank did that with “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999) and Halle Berry just might do the same with “Monster’s Ball.” Although not the initial favorite, her nomination has been gaining momentum the past several weeks, and it’s increasingly possible that she could catch Spacek at the wire. In fact, after her SAG victory, she looks like she’s done just that and should walk home with the statuette.

Best supporting actor is perhaps the toughest race to call, with only Ethan Hawke in “Training Day” considered to be out of the running. Jon Voight is a veteran who hasn’t been nominated in 16 years, but he’s already won (for “Coming Home”) and his work in “Ali” is not a breakthrough. Jim Broadbent’s performance in “Iris” was enormously admired, but there does not seem to be much heat behind that picture.

Which leaves two respected British actors, Ben Kingsley in “Sexy Beast” and Ian McKellen in “Lord of the Rings.” Kingsley, though superb as a soulless gangster, has already won for “Gandhi” and is in a film that may not have been as widely seen as it deserved. Which leaves McKellen, a brilliant actor who was the sine qua non of a very popular film and won the SAG award. That combination will likely be difficult to resist

Best supporting actress, on the other hand, is probably the easiest race to call. Although Maggie Smith, like Judi Dench in “Shakespeare in Love,” gives just the kind of showy British performance the academy usually can’t resist in a supporting role, one of her co-stars, SAG winner Helen Mirren, is nominated along with her, and having two actors from the same film (Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand in “Almost Famous,” Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in “Thelma & Louise”) in most cases means they will cancel each other out.

With Kate Winslet put aside, again for “Iris’” lack of heat, that leaves two young but experienced actresses in career best roles. But Marisa Tomei has already won an Oscar (for the very different “My Cousin Vinny”), which should make Jennifer Connelly, “A Beautiful Mind’s” major surprise, the not-surprising winner.

There’s a caveat to all these choices, and that is, as that ancient horse player would no doubt attest, in handicapping races it is always possible to know too much. The more you start to recognize a variety of factors as potential key indicators in the academy’s decisions, the harder it becomes to decide which one is going to be predominant.

With the academy, as with many things in life, it is possible to overthink a situation, not realizing that the most obvious choice may also be the best one. It’s a lesson I’m continually trying to learn, and if I don’t get it this time, the Brooklyn Dodger fan I once was reminds me that there’s always next year.

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Kenneth Turan is The Times’ movie critic.