| Final Oscar voting began yesterday. How many of the nominated movies have you seen? Are you doing your due diligence in all the categories before the March 15 ceremony or, given the summer weather outside your window, might the mountains be calling? |
| I'm Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. It's never too early for flip-flops, is it? |
Testing out a new mandate |
| To vote for the Oscars, you have to watch all the nominated movies. |
| This may seem obvious. But until this year, the motion picture academy operated entirely on the honor system, strongly encouraging members to see everything before voting. |
| Now voters have to show their work — up to a point. |
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| This year, academy members are required to certify through the group's screening room portal that they have viewed all nominated films in each category to be eligible to vote in that category. Since nominations were announced in January, the academy has been emailing voters with updates on their progress, indicating where they're cleared to vote and where they still have work to do. |
| One wrinkle, and it's not a small one: Members can simply check a box indicating that they've watched a movie outside the academy's platform. Perhaps they saw it at a festival, on a streaming platform other than the portal or the place God intended films to be seen — a movie theater. |
| Whether they actually did watch the movies is left to the honesty of the voter. It's still an honor system, and members do not need to show movie stubs, tickets or receipts. |
| Talking with academy members, there seems to be a little wiggle room when it comes to having a clear conscience. |
| Take the voter who loved Ethan Hawke's lead turn as legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart in "Blue Moon," but hated "Marty Supreme," turning it off 20 minutes after starting it. Since the academy's screening room counts a movie as watched only if it's viewed in its entirety, this voter told me they planned on restarting "Marty Supreme" one night and running it on mute so he could vote in the lead actor category. |
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| "I'd seen enough," he said. "Watching [Timothée] Chalamet play another pingpong tournament wouldn't make me change my mind." |
| Other academy members told me they were OK marking the "watched" box next to a movie they hadn't seen, provided they had viewed four of the category's other nominees. By and large though, they were the outliers. Most voters said they were happy to abstain from voting in a category in which they hadn't watched all the nominated work. (As academy members may not publicly state voting decisions or preferences, voters spoke on the condition of anonymity.) |
| "I don't need to see another 'Avatar' movie," a producers branch member said. "So I'm fine not voting for visual effects or costume design this year. Life is short." |
| "I like the idea that I can abstain from categories without any guilt," an Oscar-nominated writer noted, adding that she thought the new system has been "helpful, reminding me to watch things." |
| To that effect, academy members have been receiving a flurry of emails and texts that would give off Big Brother vibes if it didn't simply boil down to an admonition to watch "Frankenstein" so they could vote in the nine categories where Guillermo del Toro's monster movie is nominated. |
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| It really isn't that big an ask, as in recent years the Oscars have become increasingly dominated by a smaller number of movies vacuuming up a greater share of the nominations. This year, the five movies earning the most recognition — "Sinners," "One Battle After Another," "Marty Supreme," "Frankenstein" and "Hamnet" — hauled in 56 nominations. |
| If an Oscar voter viewed the 10 best picture nominees, they'd be eligible to mark their ballots in best picture and eight other categories — supporting actor, adapted screenplay, casting, cinematography, film editing, production design and original score. Add Hawke's "Blue Moon" and that opens up lead actor. Make it a double feature with "It Was Just an Accident" and original screenplay becomes available. |
| "You don't really need to be much more than a casual moviegoer to knock out most of your ballot," an actors branch member told me, "except for things like animation and documentaries and the shorts. I don't know how many people watch all of those." |
| Nobody does, save for the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants counting the ballots. The question vexing both voters and the awards consultants paid to persuade them is how this new, formalized voting will affect the results. As Oscar winners are sometimes the movies that are the most-watched, might requiring voters to see all the nominated work boost less-publicized efforts? |
| "If 'Sirât' wins sound over 'F1,' then I think it's a new ballgame," one veteran campaigner said. "Right now, though, nobody knows." |
| We will soon. In the meantime, with Oscar voting running through Thursday, some academy members tell me their weekend is booked. |
| "Three nights, three movies," one voter said. "And then I'm watching 'Bridgerton.'" |
