Speaker 1: Already and this this is the Daily This is the
Speaker 1: Daily os. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Daily os. It's Monday, the third of March.
Speaker 2: I'm Lucy, I'm Zara.
Speaker 1: Another year in movies has come and gone, and the
Speaker 1: ninety seventh Oscars are upon us. Today's ceremony will show
Speaker 1: us what Hollywood considers to be the best films and
Speaker 1: the best performances of the year twenty twenty four. From
Speaker 1: Adrian Brody to Zoe Saldana. Today we will be taking
Speaker 1: you through everything you need to know about the Academy Awards.
Speaker 2: Lucy, it was tough pickings to pick in the office
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 3: Podcast today, but look, I settled on you because you
Speaker 3: are a genuine movie expert. I've actually never met anyone
Speaker 3: who is as well versed in movies, let alone Oscars
Speaker 3: movies as you are.
Speaker 2: So for someone perhaps.
Speaker 3: Not as well established in the Oscar movie scene as you,
Speaker 3: why did the Oscars matter? Why do we need to
Speaker 3: talk about it on today's podcast?
Speaker 1: Well, what I always say when people ask me why
Speaker 1: things like the movies matter is that this is an industry,
Speaker 1: This is a major economy, particularly in the US. But
Speaker 1: certainly in Australia as well. When the writers and actors
Speaker 1: went on strike eighteen months ago, I told people, this
Speaker 1: is an industrial issue, that's why we should care. So
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that I care about movies, I
Speaker 1: love watching movies, I love seeing all the things that
Speaker 1: are nominated for Oscars as many as I can get to.
Speaker 1: But also, this is an industry awards show, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see what the people in that industry think
Speaker 1: was the best, beyond what I think is the best
Speaker 1: as just a fan. So the Oscars are Hollywood's biggest night.
Speaker 1: That's what they're described as, and they're an industry award,
Speaker 1: just like the Grammys are for music, or in Australia
Speaker 1: the Arias or Logis for Australian TV.
Speaker 3: I think that's the first and last time the Oscars
Speaker 3: and the Logis will be compared to one another, but
Speaker 3: we'll go with it just for the sake of contextualizing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're an industry would. We actually don't know
Speaker 1: why they're called the Oscars, which is a really fun fact.
Speaker 1: No one does, and given that they've been around for
Speaker 1: ninety seven years, anyone who could have told us is
Speaker 1: long gone.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a few different suggestions of why they're called that,
Speaker 1: but we don't know. Officially, they're called the Academy Awards
Speaker 1: because they're given out by the members of the Academy
Speaker 1: of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Speaker 2: Excellent, which I love.
Speaker 1: It's so old Hollywood that name talking about motion picture.
Speaker 2: Yes, it really is. It stands a test of time.
Speaker 3: Though. I'm curious how the voting works when it comes
Speaker 3: to the Oscars because often people will watch.
Speaker 2: This and be like, how did that possibly win?
Speaker 3: And there is good reason and an entire process behind it.
Speaker 3: Talk me through the voting process.
Speaker 1: So, as I said, before they're voted on by the
Speaker 1: members of the Academy, I think it's probably best to
Speaker 1: explain through the process of voting for an actor. So,
Speaker 1: if you are an actor and you want to be
Speaker 1: nominated for an Acting OSCAR, you need to appear in
Speaker 1: a film that is released within January first December thirty
Speaker 1: first of the year before the ceremony, and that also
Speaker 1: needs to be a film that is released for at
Speaker 1: least a week in one of a few major US cities. Oh. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's very specific requirements around, even to the degree of
Speaker 1: at least one of the screenings in the week that
Speaker 1: it plays needs to be in the evening.
Speaker 3: It's all very granular, and will movies be released accordingly? Like,
Speaker 3: is this thought about in the production and the release
Speaker 3: plan for a movie?
Speaker 1: I presume, sir, Yes, definitely. It's why you will see
Speaker 1: a huge group of very serious dramas or be released
Speaker 1: around December, right before the proper voting process begins. Okay, interesting,
Speaker 1: But then it can also be kind of done an
Speaker 1: interesting way where something my premier at a film festival
Speaker 1: which doesn't meet that requirement in say late twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: then do its week of required screenings in July twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, and then be nominated for an oscar at
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty five Oscars. The film I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: is Sing Sing, which stars Coleman Domingo, who's nominated for
Speaker 1: Best Actor. That's that movie's exact process. If first was
Speaker 1: shown to audiences in September twenty twenty three, it's now
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty five, which kind of shows you the journey.
Speaker 3: Okay, and so there are these very strict requirements of
Speaker 3: a film to even be eligible to be nominated. Who
Speaker 3: then though gets to vote. How do members of the
Speaker 3: Academy become members of the Academy.
Speaker 1: There's about ten thousand of them. Oh yeah, so it
Speaker 1: used to be many fewer, But.
Speaker 2: I use for him in my brain.
Speaker 1: No, it's because you have to think about how big
Speaker 1: Hollywood is as an industry. And part of what makes
Speaker 1: up that ten thousand is that it's not just actors.
Speaker 1: It's not just directors. It's makeup artists, hair stylists, costume designers,
Speaker 1: sound technicians. When you think about in a movie, when
Speaker 1: they show you we're filming a movie, there's a million
Speaker 1: people on set. Chances are most of those people are
Speaker 1: voting members of the Academy. So you get invited, you
Speaker 1: have to be sponsored by other existing members, and you
Speaker 1: have to be in the industry. So as much as
Speaker 1: I might like to be in the Academy, if I
Speaker 1: somehow got Kate Blanchard and Nicole Kidman to say Lucy
Speaker 1: Tassel should be in the Academy, I'm still not actually
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, so I wouldn't get accepted.
Speaker 2: But you could be a fact checker in Hollywood. They
Speaker 2: might meet some of them.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a research branch I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: There are nineteen branches of the Academy, and in the
Speaker 1: early rounds of voting, they all vote in their specific category.
Speaker 1: So makeup artists vote for Best Makeup. But once the
Speaker 1: official nominations are finalized, everyone votes for everything.
Speaker 3: And a vote's waited in any different way, or is
Speaker 3: everyone's vote equal?
Speaker 1: Everyone's vote is equal in all all the categories except
Speaker 1: for Best Picture, which when we get to the final nominations,
Speaker 1: best Picture is ranked by preference. Okay, we never know
Speaker 1: the exact voting breakdowns, as much as I would love
Speaker 1: to know them. If a film gets fifty percent of
Speaker 1: first preference votes for Best Picture, it automatically wins.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed with somehow feeling like we're talking about an election.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the Oscars.
Speaker 1: And people treat it as seriously as a political election
Speaker 1: and spend as much money on it as a political election,
Speaker 1: and it lasts as long as the US election does.
Speaker 1: Sometimes wow. I mean, just as an example, the movie
Speaker 1: Everything Everywhere, All at Once, which won Best Picture a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. It premiered at the south By
Speaker 1: Southwest Festival in April, and then all of the actors
Speaker 1: in it were effectively on the campaign trail until the
Speaker 1: Oscars the subsequent March. Wow, it's a long process.
Speaker 2: That is a long process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you spoke about Best Picture there before, which is
Speaker 3: the big gong of the night, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 3: you can just run us through who the nomineesa, or
Speaker 3: at least who people need to know when it comes
Speaker 3: to the nominees for this award.
Speaker 1: So there's ten nominees. Used to be only five, then
Speaker 1: they expanded it probably ten years ago. I would say
Speaker 1: the big ones that people probably have seen would be Wicked,
Speaker 1: which is technically Wicked Part one, but it's just called Wicked, Okay,
Speaker 1: Dune Part two. There's Conclave, which is about popes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's Anora, which is about an exotic dancer who gets
Speaker 1: involved with a Russian oligarch's son. And then there's Amelia Perez,
Speaker 1: which you have probably heard of, probably not because you've
Speaker 1: seen it. It has come out in Australia but not
Speaker 1: very widely, but because a it's a fascinating film and
Speaker 1: b because it's generated a fair bit of controversy, I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say.
Speaker 2: Can you take me through some of that controversy?
Speaker 1: So Amelia Perez is a film that is a musical.
Speaker 1: It is about a trans female gangster who asks the
Speaker 1: lawyer to help arrange for her to have gender affirming
Speaker 1: surgery so that she can effectively become the woman she's
Speaker 1: always meant to be, change her identity and leave the
Speaker 1: criminal life and all of the repercussions of that. It
Speaker 1: is very specifically a film set in Mexico about the
Speaker 1: role of drug cartels in Mexico. The initial controversy around
Speaker 1: this film was that this film about Mexico was shot
Speaker 1: in Paris, was written and directed by a Frenchman, the
Speaker 1: songs were written by French people in Spanish but written
Speaker 1: by French artists, and it stars three main actresses, a
Speaker 1: Spanish actress named Carlo Sophia Gascon. She plays Amelia Selena Gomez,
Speaker 1: who is from the US, and Zoe Saldana, who is Dominican.
Speaker 1: So there was already kind of a bit of questioning
Speaker 1: around can you really tell a story about an issue
Speaker 1: that really affects Mexico without necessarily having it be very
Speaker 1: grounded in Mexico. Originally, this movie premiere at the Cannes
Speaker 1: Film Festival in France in May. It happens every May.
Speaker 1: It's extremely prestigious and it can often be a good
Speaker 1: indicator of what the Oscar movies are going to be.
Speaker 1: So Parasite, which won Best Picture in twenty twenty, premiered
Speaker 1: at the can Film Festival in May twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 1: from there it was basically everyone thinks this is the
Speaker 1: best movie of the year. Amelia Perez didn't win the
Speaker 1: top award at can, but it did win acting awards
Speaker 1: and it was received very warmly by the mainly French audience,
Speaker 1: although there was a lot of Hollywood people there too.
Speaker 1: It also then picked up a lot of support from
Speaker 1: the Academy. It has the second most Oscar nominations in
Speaker 1: history with thirteen, tied with a number of other films,
Speaker 1: but still nominations in almost every key category that it
Speaker 1: was available to be nominated in, including Best Actress for
Speaker 1: Carlo Sophia Gascon, which made her the first openly trans
Speaker 1: person to be nominated for an acting Oscar. But then
Speaker 1: things took a turn right around the time that those
Speaker 1: nominations were announced. Once the nominations are in pronounced, everyone
Speaker 1: in the Academy can start voting officially. There's a short
Speaker 1: voting period, so that is kind of assumed that you
Speaker 1: would be catching up on the things that you haven't
Speaker 1: yet seen, yea, and making your final decisions about who
Speaker 1: you think should win each award. And so what happened
Speaker 1: around this time a Canadian journalist named Sarah Hagey, who
Speaker 1: is a black and Muslim woman, noticed a couple of
Speaker 1: social media posts by Gascon.
Speaker 2: That Gascon being the lead actress in this film.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly the lead actress, the titular role Amelia Perez.
Speaker 1: Hage said these tweets were an islamophobic dog whistle. Her words,
Speaker 1: dog whistle. That's a subtle message that might seem innocent
Speaker 1: to some and very charged to others. When she started
Speaker 1: keyword searching these posts from Krlo Sophia Gascon, she later
Speaker 1: told Variety magazine she found quote many racist and many
Speaker 1: anti Muslim posts. She said, quote. This wasn't some viral
Speaker 1: controversy waiting to resurface. She had tweeted these things and
Speaker 1: they had existed online unchatchallenged, from twenty sixteen to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. There was no pushback, no visibility. This was
Speaker 1: just how she was casually tweeting. It was all just there.
Speaker 1: And she went on to say I'm flawed because we're
Speaker 1: talking about a front runner from one of the most
Speaker 1: nominated films in Academy history. It wasn't just about one comment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've listened to a lot of podcasts about this
Speaker 3: and the role of those involved in you know, casting
Speaker 3: and in the film, and perhaps some of the research
Speaker 3: that did or didn't happen when it went into.
Speaker 2: The casting of this film.
Speaker 3: I'm curious to understand what the reaction has been though,
Speaker 3: since these tweets surfaced and you know, the nomination still stand.
Speaker 1: Certainly, just before we get into the blowback, I will
Speaker 1: also just note these tweets are all in Spanish because
Speaker 1: Gascon is from Spain. The film has been picked up
Speaker 1: for US distribution by Netflix, which is a US company
Speaker 1: That may go some way to suggest why these tweets
Speaker 1: never came to any one's attention before. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: In terms of the blowback, it was idiot and widespread. Netflix,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before, kind of quite involved in this
Speaker 1: film's OSCAR campaign, said that it would no longer pay
Speaker 1: for her to be flown to different awards events that
Speaker 1: the film was nominated for, or pay for any of
Speaker 1: her styling, which.
Speaker 3: You said, and that's important because you were saying before
Speaker 3: it's like an election campaign, like being on we'll call
Speaker 3: it the campaign trail.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually going to events like the Screen Actors
Speaker 1: Guild Awards, which Gascon did not attend, but Seldania and
Speaker 1: Gomez did. There's a huge number of events that would
Speaker 1: be in the leader, but Gascon has not been at.
Speaker 1: She is expected to attend the actual ceremony today. Seldania
Speaker 1: also distanced herself from her as did Gascon's pr agency. Again,
Speaker 1: just another aspect of this kind of campaign. So I
Speaker 1: think overall it's safe to say this is kind of
Speaker 1: the major storyline of the lead up to the Oscars
Speaker 1: this year, and it has certainly damaged the film's chances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: remains to be seen what it will win today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really fascinating. I want to turn out to talk
Speaker 3: about the Ossies who are nominated. Firstly, are there Ozzies
Speaker 3: who are nominated?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Who are they?
Speaker 1: It's a great showing for Australia this year, brilliant. First up,
Speaker 1: we've got Guy Pierce with his first ever Oscar nomination
Speaker 1: for his role in the film The Brutalist. Where he
Speaker 1: plays a volatile millionaire who commissions an architect to build
Speaker 1: a building on his property. Then we've got cinematographer Greg Fraser,
Speaker 1: already an OSCAR winner for his work on Dune Part one,
Speaker 1: nominated again for Dune Part two. I think he's in
Speaker 1: with a strong chance. Then over in the Animated feature category,
Speaker 1: we've got Adam Elliott and Liz Karney for their film
Speaker 1: Memoir of a Snail. Elliot won in the two thousands
Speaker 1: for an animated short, but Carney has never won. So
Speaker 1: that's two Ossies in that category. And Ozzie's were on
Speaker 1: the teams of three of the five movies nominated for
Speaker 1: be Visual Effects, which I think is really cool to
Speaker 1: see and like an affirmation of the quality of our
Speaker 1: VFX industry.
Speaker 2: So cool.
Speaker 1: And then finally there's Maya Nipp who produced a nominated
Speaker 1: documentary short about a man in Texas on death Row.
Speaker 3: You mentioned just before that it's Guy Pearce's first nomination.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes when we look at these award shows, something that
Speaker 3: comes out is the number of firsts that may or
Speaker 3: may not eventuate. What are some of the firsts that
Speaker 3: you're keeping a keen eye out.
Speaker 1: For this is an exciting year of firsts, because, as
Speaker 1: you say, there's first every year, but this year there's
Speaker 1: a couple of people who've had really long and rich
Speaker 1: careers who are just now getting recognized. So just like
Speaker 1: I said, Guy Pierce, there's also Demi Moore. Her first
Speaker 1: screen appearance was in nineteen eighty one, and she has
Speaker 1: just now been nominated for the first time for her
Speaker 1: performance in The Substance. Then we've also got Isabella Rossellini,
Speaker 1: who is Hollywood Royalty. Her mother, Ingrid Bergman, won three
Speaker 1: acting Oscars. Her father, Roberto Rossellini, an incredibly influential Italian director.
Speaker 1: She's been nominated for the first time for her role
Speaker 1: in Conclave, playing a scheming nun. We've also got Kieran Culkin,
Speaker 1: who obviously we know has been around forever. Everyone I'm
Speaker 1: sure listening can picture him as a child eating pizza
Speaker 1: in home alone, just now nominated for his role in
Speaker 1: A Real Pain. There's a couple of other possible firsts
Speaker 1: I'll just quickly touch on. Timothy Charlomagne has been nominated
Speaker 1: quite a few times. If he wins Best Actor for
Speaker 1: playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, he'll be the
Speaker 1: youngest man to ever win the category. He's just turned
Speaker 1: twenty nine.
Speaker 3: There are extremely the rest of us feel incredibly underachieving.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'd love to not think about how well Ty is.
Speaker 1: There's very few Oscar's gone to men under thirty over
Speaker 1: the years. The current holder of the record for the
Speaker 1: youngest best Actor, Adrian Brody, also nominated in that category
Speaker 1: the year mm HM for the Brutalist So and then,
Speaker 1: of course the final first. If Carlo Sophia Gascon does win,
Speaker 1: she will be the first openly trans person to win
Speaker 1: an acting Oscar. There's so much to look forward to
Speaker 1: finding out today. I'm so excited, Lucy.
Speaker 3: You have made me care more about the Oscar than
Speaker 3: I ever have in my whole life, and I will
Speaker 3: be watching with great interest. So thank you for that,
Speaker 3: and thank you for joining us for another episode of
Speaker 3: The Daily os. We will be back again this afternoon
Speaker 3: with the day's headlines. Until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadigl Country. The Daily os acknowledges
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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.