Tarnished Gold

 In case you were wondering why NBC pulled the plug on the Golden Globes, give this a read. While the lack of diversity among Hollywood Foreign Press Agency members got mentioned a lot on TV reporting, always follow the money.

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Golden Fleeced

With its win for outstanding ensemble cast last night, there's some sentiment out there that Argo is now the favorite for the Best Picture Oscar. But is that really the case?

We've looked at the predictive tendencies of pre-Oscar awards before, and here's what I think we can say based on that:

1. Golden Globes mean almost nothing. The last time the winner of the best drama Globe also won the Oscar? 2008, with Slumdog Millionaire. Before that it was 2003 (the last Lord of the Rings movie), and before that 2001 (prior to that it was much more closely aligned).

2. SAG Awards are a little better, maybe. The cast award winner has gone on to win the Oscar 9 times in the 17 years where both have been awarded. Skewing things a bit is that this is an award given to actors by actors, so while it's the de facto best picture award, it does not include input from anyone behind the camera, unless they're also actors. Like Ben Affleck.

3. The PGA Awards are definitely better, at least recently. You have to go back to 2006 to find the last film to win this but not the Best Picture Oscar. Prior to that the relationship is spottier, to be sure, but of the three awards this one seems to track the best with Oscar winning.

But none of them track as well as the DGA Awards, which last split with the Oscars in 2002. There are only two cases where the DGA went to a director who wasn't Oscar nominated - Ron Howard for Apollo 13 and Stephen Spielberg for The Color Purple. There's some thought Affleck could win the DGA based on momentum and the wider voting pool.

But even he does pull that off, there's the one last hurdle to clear - the very small number of movies that have won the Best Picture Oscar without having its director nominated. It has happened three times, most recently with Driving Miss Daisy. That was almost 25 years ago. The other two instances happened in the very early days of the award (Wings and Grand Hotel), when voting rules were very different. So for all of the buzz, I'd say the odds are still stacked against Affleck, even if those odds are shifting in his favor.

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The Bellwether Awards, Part II

I'd missed/forgotten that the Globes give awards for directors and screenplay (didn't think these folks were big enough stars for the HFPA to bother), but seeing as they did I figured I'd go back and make comparisons.

I stopped with the screenplay award pretty quickly, as the mix of awards that offer one award versus two awards (one each for original and adapted) was going to make things pretty messy.

For directors, I used the usual awards (Globes, LA and NYC critics, National Review Board, Satellite) plus the DGA Awards. Not surprisingly, the latter are the most predictive; they've only differed from the Oscar six times in their history, with three of them happening since 1990 (the oddest was Ron Howard winning the DGA in 1995 for Apollo 13 while not even getting nominated for the Oscar). The Globes are a little less accurate, with they missing a bit more since 2000 than in the 1990s.

In any event, David Fincher should still feel pretty good about his chances, as he's won all of the directing awards given to date (sharing the LA critics award). If the DGA splits off and goes with someone else, he may want to worry.

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The Bellwether Awards

So I was participating in a live blogging of the Golden Globes (while not actually watching the awards, which was less of a problem than you might think), and someone posted that The Social Network was now the movie to beat for the Best Picture Oscar now that it had won the Golden Globe for best drama. Which got me to thinking: is that actually true? Time to compare the winners!

I went back and got the Oscar and Globe winners since 1990. I stuck with drama winners only for the Globes, though they do give an award for the best comedy/drama as well. And, just for comparison's sake, I got the award info for the LA and NYC critics awards, the National Review Board's awards, and the Satellite Awards (offered by the International Press Agency).

And looking at all of the results, the Golden Globes are a great predictor for the Best Picture Oscar... as long as your film was nominated before 2004. From 1990 to 2003 the Globes only missed three times (if you include the two Oscar winners that picked up the comedy/musical Globe, Shakespeare in Love and Chicago). From 2004 on, though, the Globes have only gotten it right with Slumdog Millionaire.

Picking up where they left off, though, are the Satellite Awards, which have a four year streak going. Less impressive is that the only time they matched the Oscars prior to 2006 was when Titanic won, which was pretty much a given (undeserved as it was). The other awards were less predictive, with none of the three offering much insight as to a potential Oscar winner.

The good news for The Social Network out of all of this? It's swept all of the awards I checked. Since 1990 this has only happened to one other movie: Schindler's List. That worked out pretty well for Spielberg and company. Usually a move that wins three of the five awards gets the Oscar, but there have been notable exceptions (Brokeback Mountain, L.A. Confidential, Saving Private Ryan).

So the answer to my question is that the Golden Globes, at least of late, hasn't made it's best drama winner the film to beat at the Oscars. But The Social Network may still be the film to beat given its overall performance in awards.

For fun I then checked the acting awards, including the SAG Awards into the mix. I would say that the SAG Awards are slightly more predictive than the Golden Globes, and that they're slightly more predictive for actors than for best film. And they're somewhat better at choosing the best actor and actress awards than the supporting awards.

If I had to extrapolate based on the awards given to date, I think Colin Firth is in the best position to win an Oscar, having won awards from all groups except the National Review Board. Christian Bale and Melissa Leo would be next best off, having won three of five awards. None of the best actress awards have repeated.

So if I had to come up with a rule, I'd say winning the Golden Globe or the SAG Award is a good sign that you might win the Oscar. Better to win them both.

(Note: I make no claims that these finding are based on anything like actual statistical research. I pretty much eyeballed the results and went on that. This isn't the Freakonomics blog.)

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