Argo Wins at Producer's Guild Awards (PGA), Along with Wreck-it Ralph, andModern Family, and Homeland Win on the TV Side

Tonight Argo is continuing its massive awards haul in Best Picture categories taking home the top prize, the Daryl F. Zanuk Award for Outstanding Producer of a Theatrical Motion Picture, or the Best Picture award at the Producer's Guild of America.  This film has won three major Best Picture awards from the PGA Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA), and the Golden Globes.  Will Argo win at the Oscars?  Argo is missing one key component a Best Director nominee, and the last and only film to win without a Best Director nomination was Driving Miss Daisy (1989).  Films also typically win Best Picture, and Best Director, the two honors seems to come as a pair more often than not (but not always).  Let's look at the last few years to see how the PGA has done:

2011: "The Artist"
2010: "The King's Speech"*
2009: "The Hurt Locker"*
2008: "Slumdog Millionaire"*
2007: "No Country for Old Men"*
2006: "Little Miss Sunshine"
2005: "Brokeback Mountain"
2004: "The Aviator"
2003: "The Lord of the Rings: "The Return of the King"*
2002: "Chicago"*
2001: "Moulin Rouge!"
2000: "Gladiator"*

From 2000 through 2011, 8 of 12 films that won at the PGA went on to win at Oscar.  The Last time a film won at PGA and not at the Oscars was 6 years ago, and that was Little Miss Sunshine.  Let's look at the year's Oscar and PGA did not line up.

In 2006 the PGA winner was Little Miss Sunshine and the Oscar winner was The Departed.  First strike Little Miss Sunshine was a comedy with no director nomination, or editing nomination  up against Martin Scorsese who had never won an Oscar.  Little Miss Sunshine won SAG too, while Martin Scorsese won DGA.  To be fair films directed by two people rarely get nominations for both directors at Oscars, West Side Story was an exception, but it was West Side Story.

2005 the PGA went to Brokeback Mountain and the Oscar went to Crash.  Brokeback was the overwhelming favorite, but was missing one key component, a Best Editing nomination, which Crash received and won.  The editing nomination is one of the biggest components or clues as to who can win at the Oscars.  Crash also won SAG, but was not nominated at the Globes, one of the rare times the Best Picture was not even nominated at the Globes.

2004 the PGA went to The Aviator and Oscar went to Million Dollar Baby.  This really was the Aviator vs. Million Dollar Baby Oscars.  The Aviator cleaned up in the tech categories winning Best Editing, Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography and Best Supporting Actress.  Meanwhile Million Dollar Baby won Picture, Director, Actress, and Supporting Actor.  The Aviator actually won more awards, than the Best Picture winner, but everyone loved Clint!  During this season there was a clear split in what was "the best" critics and SAG went for Sideways, Globes and PGA went for The Aviator, but DGA picking Clint Eastwood was a sign the Oscars were going to change things.

2001 Moulin Rouge! won PGA and A Beautiful Mind won the Oscar.  A Beautiful Mind won the Globe for Best Drama, and Ron Howard won the DGA.  This started to that concept of a lack on consensus trend, which you see in 2004 and 2006.

A Beautiful Mind, Million Dollar Baby, and The Departed (although a little violent for their taste) were or felt like the right picks from the Academy's point of view.  A Beautiful Mind was a clever bio-pic.  Million Dollar Baby was about an upstart female boxer.  The Departed was a chance to finally honor Marty.  The only unexplainable year is 2005, but the lack of a Best Editing nomination helps with that (somewhat).  Brokeback losing was an interesting sign that Hollywood may not be as ok with "the gay thing" as one would expect.

So what does this mean for Argo?  Argo was not the critics darling that was Zero Dark Thirty and Amour, but they are not going to win the top prize this year.  Lincoln has the most nominations, but Daniel Day-Lewis appears to be the only person winning for that right now.  Life of Pi like The Aviator will clean up in the tech categories or at least do well like Hugo last year.  Tonight's SAG awards will either clear things up or make things cloudier and less predictable.  The Weinstein Machine will most likely steam roll the competition giving Silver Linings Playbook the win.  In that case who ends up on top?  The odd answer is Lincoln.  This year looks like those years that lack consensus, and what film came out on top most of the time, the one with little to no solid precursor strength.  That would be Lincoln.  

Argo won here tonight because of the hard work the producers to get this film made, and this film could repeat at the Oscar in Best Picture, this is within the realm of possibility.  The true test will be the guild awards and who wins.  SAG, DGA, WGA, and ACE. If Argo wins any two of these consider the Best Picture race over.  SAG will likely go to Silver Linings Playbook.  DGA could go to Affleck, but they could also pick Spielberg.  WGA will go to Lincoln's script.  ACE (the editing guild) is the one to watch.  If Argo wins this guild and DGA, along with their PGA win then they should out step Lincoln.  Zero Dark Thirty has a great shot with this guild, and this prize on Oscar night, so they should watch their step.  If you want to win your Oscar pool at work, pay attention to these awards.  At the his point Best Picture is still anyone's guess.

Here are the rest of the winners: 

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
Wreck-It Ralph (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producer: Clark Spencer

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
Searching For Sugar Man (Sony Pictures Classics)
Producers: Malik Bendjelloul, Simon Chinn

The Norman Felton Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama
Homeland (Showtime)
Producers: Henry Bromell, Alexander Cary, Michael Cuesta, Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Chip Johannessen, Michael Klick, Meredith Stiehm

The David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television
Game Change (HBO)
Producers: Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Jay Roach, Amy Sayres, Steven Shareshian, Danny Strong

The Danny Thomas Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Comedy
Modern Family (ABC)
Producers: Cindy Chupack, Paul Corrigan, Abraham Higginbotham, Ben Karlin, Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Morton, Dan O’Shannon, Jeffrey Richman, Chris Smirnoff, Brad Walsh, Bill Wrubel, Danny Zuker

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television:
American Masters (PBS)
Producers: Prudence Glass, Susan Lacy, Julie Sacks

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Competition Television
The Amazing Race (CBS)
Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Elise Doganieri, Jonathan Littman, Bertram van Munster, Mark Vertullo

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Live Entertainment & Talk Television
The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
Producers: Meredith Bennett, Stephen Colbert, Richard Dahm, Paul Dinello, Barry Julien, Matt Lappin, Emily Lazar, Tanya Michnevich Bracco, Tom Purcell, Jon Stewart

The Award for Outstanding Sports Program
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (HBO)

The Award for Outstanding Children’s Program
Sesame Street (PBS)
“The Weight of the Nation for Kids: The Great Cafeteria Takeover” (HBO)

Academy Awards Best Picture Revisited: The Departed (2006)

When I got back home from Thanksgiving in Albany I did two things, I went to the gym, and then ate Thanksgiving left overs while watching The Departed.  The Departed is the first Best Picture winner I am re-visiting.  The other nominees in the Best Picture category this year were Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen.

The Departed was directed by the brilliant director Martin Scorsese.  Scorsese is known as one of the best film makers living today, and he is one of my favorite directors ever.  I love his style of direction, there is always this dark gritty feel, but he also puts unique touches to each film he directs making them all different.  Scorsese's first major film was Mean Streets in 1973 which started his long standing working relationship with Robert DeNiro.  Scorsese continued on this brilliant streak of film making with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990); he lost me after this and then in 2002 had a resurgence with Gangs of New York (2002), and The Aviator (2005).  While the the films in the 2000s were not his best this man has made some of the best films ever!  Ironically prior to this Oscar ceremony Scorsese had never won an Oscar.  In fact in 2005 Oscar host Jon Stewart joked Three Six Mafia has one Oscar while Scorsese has zero.  This was a funny joke, but I think the Academy finally got that they had left one of the best directors of all time empty handed and did not want to do the same thing to him that they did to Alfred Hitchcock.

Now I am not saying Scorsese and his film should not have won (although I would have not picked him for director or this for film), but I am glad the Academy got over their bias for his films, and awarded this movie as the Best Film of the year.  The Departed was a solid film, with solid direction.

The best part about the 2006 Best Picture race this year was that the Best Picture race at the time was a big question mark.  Going into the night there were a couple the field was pretty divided.   Letters from Iwo Jima was a surprise nominee and had Clint Eastwood a person who had directed two Best Picture winners.  Iwo Jima was the least likely to win though because the film is in a foreign language, and did not have as much support going in. The Queen was had a shot, as an important bio-pic about Elizabeth II, but the Best Actress prize was the trophy the Academy wanted to bestow to this film, as they saw the film was about Mirren's performance.  And then there were three. Babel was seen as the big sweeping drama that spanned countries and interconnected people in different stories.  Babel won the Gold Globe for Best Drama, but just was too weak of a film.  The critics were not that supportive of it, but it did have a lot of nominations. If there any year where a comedy was going to win this award it would have been  Little Miss Sunshine.  Little Miss Sunshine won Best Picture at the American Film Institute Awards, the Producer's Guild Award (the equivalent to Best Picture), and the Screen Actor's Guild's Best Ensemble Award.  These are three hefty trophies.  When the nominations were announced Little Miss Sunshine only had four nominations and no editing nomination, the film was sunk.  Films rarely win Best Picture without an editing nomination.


The Departed's win seemed destined in the stars. Thinking back to that year, although my memory is cloudy, most people's predictions ranged from Babel to Little Miss Sunshine to The Departed.  Babel had the most nominations.  Little Miss Sunshine had heart.  The Departed had the trump card, Scorsese.  The Departed only had five nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Mark Wahlberg) and Best Film Editing.  The surprising thing about the nominations was that Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Blood Diamond and not this film and Academy Award favorite Jack Nicholson was also not nominated.  With a small total number of nominations, and two big stars snubbed, this made the film look weak, but it took home the big prize at the end of the night.

I am glad this was an exciting year in this category (for once), but there were several films that should have been nominated in this category and were not.  My personal pick for the Best Picture of the year was Pan's Labyrinth. The film had 6 nominations and won three trophies, and it shockingly lost in Best Foreign Language Feature.  The other two films that should have been nominated were Children of Men (3 nominations 0 wins) and United 93 (2 nominations 0 wins).  I can understand why these three films were not nominated as they are more divisive, and not see as larger crowd favorites.  If the the Best Picture race looked like this: Children of Men, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, and United 93-I would would have been a happy person.