Shahbaz Khayambashi
Independent Scholar
Toronto, ON, Canada
khayambashi@hotmail.com

Dorney, J., Regan, J., & Salinsky, T. (2022). Best Pick: A Journey Through Film History and the Academy Awards. Rowman & Littlefield, 315 pages.

“The Academy Awards often…get the Best Picture winner wrong.” This line from Helen O’Hara’s foreword practically serves as a thesis for Best Pick, both in content and tone. The authors use their introduction to “respectfully” disagree with this notion. However, despite this disagreement and the position of the book as a light read based on a podcast, the authors still manage to perfectly understand and situate the Academy Awards within cinema: as a dated, prejudiced anachronism that, despite often failing to reward lasting cinema, still necessitates viewing by its biggest critics, owing to its ability to build careers.

The book follows a simple formula throughout its chapters. First, each decade discussed is contextualized within cinematic history, and the winners are introduced, along with the highest earners for context. The authors then dedicate some space to a discussion on the making of an interesting winner within the decade, what they deem the best winner of the decade, and what they deem the worst winner of the decade. It is here that they discuss whether the Academy awarded the correct film in each year. The style of writing and critique is irreverent and light, full of jokes and clearly written for a general audience that enjoys cinema but is not particularly well-versed.

It is within this formula that the book begins with the birth of the awards, all because “Louis B. Mayer wanted to build a beach house.” When Mayer, the head of MGM, discovered that the unionized Hollywood labourers would charge much more than the average labourer to build his beach house, he became concerned about the creatives unionizing as well. This led to the collaboration between the studios and the creation of the Academy, which would eventually use the awards to fight a battle – albeit a losing one – against unionization. The first three years of the awards, starting from 1929 are discussed as an anti-union action filled with politicking and a lack of integrity, leading to the system of branches providing checks and balances that is still in place today. These initial years are generally seen as ones where deserving winners were selected, as two of the winners are unanimously agreed upon by the writers. The 1930s is shown as an important juncture for the Oscars and cinema in general. It is in the early 30s that the various guilds began to form to ensure fair wages and practices for the artists from the studios, which complicated matters with the anti-union Academy. Frank Capra is held up as something of a hero, becoming the Academy president in 1935, quickly instituting many of the most important elements of the Oscars. Chief among them are honorary and supporting actor awards, secret ballots and the funding of lavish ceremonies. This is also the decade where the authors begin to disagree with the Academy, essentially with It Happened One Night being the sole winner unanimously agreed upon by all three. One issue that also starts to become apparent is the fact that the authors are looking at these awards with hindsight. For example, films like Frankenstein and King Kong are often touted as the deserving winners of their years, ignoring the fact that these films would not even win an Oscar today. This book serves as a fun thought experiment, but it does require a certain close-mindedness to keep it accurate. After all, the Academy Awards, like any other institution, have their own set of biases and beliefs and such experiments should exist within those parameters.

The 1940s brought with it more modern flourishes, beginning with the added security of Price Waterhouse, a move that became necessary after the LA Times printed the winners earlier than the actual awards in 1939. This was also the decade where the Oscars became a more public event based on a recommendation from at-that-point-former Academy president Bette Davis. This public presentation further opened the door to outsiders, leading to a move away from just Hollywood, with British films getting more nominations and the arrival of the best foreign-language film special award and its eventual category. Finally, this was the decade where the studios began to lose power they formerly had over both their stars and their distribution models. This decade, once again, brings only one unanimous agreement between the Academy and the authors, namely Casablanca. The 1950s, meanwhile, brought about a lot of turmoil caused by major changes, new beginnings and endings. The authors give the most importance to the arrival of television, which simultaneously siphoned money away from the cinemas and gave the ceremony a new public-facing home. This decade  was also the beginning of the end for many other major issues with the film industry, among them the Hays code, HUAC, segregated cinemas and the career of the original union-buster, Mayer. And, once again, this decade provided one unanimous win with From Here to Eternity.

The decay of the 1950s brought about a burgeoning new style in the 1960s. Cinematic new waves took hold in various nations, foregrounding realism over artifice. Race relations were being discussed out in the open on the big screen and auteurs were having a moment which allowed them to tell personal stories for a mainstream audience. Passion projects and frank depictions of all kinds of taboo subject matter peaked in 1967, where four of the five best picture nominees dealt with either race, sex or violence. Of course, the awards were still something of an anachronism, with this decade seeing people like John Wayne aiming for Oscars to make up for their financial failures, a practice that has seemingly become more widespread today. Yet, this decade is definitely portrayed as the best decade for the Oscars with its four unanimous wins from the authors, but what goes up, must come down and that is what happened in the 1970s. While this decade has two unanimous best picture winners in the two Godfather films, it is a decade of an overwhelming identity crisis within the Academy. The Academy Awards had trouble deciding if they wanted to be modern or nostalgic, leading to a back-and-forth throughout the years. This decade also saw the welcoming back of the blacklisted artists and the backlash against the awards that saw George C. Scott and Marlon Brando declining their awards. In a rare critical turn, the authors question the uncritical veneration of this decade, pointing to the homogeneity of the auteur style which saw year after year of celebrating films by men about men, with this decade seeing the first female best director nominee, Lina Wertmuller, get shut out.

The 1980s is perhaps the decade where things crater for the awards, as the Academy and audience begin to diverge in matters of taste. This led to a decade of failure: Zbigniew Rybczynski was humiliated during his Oscar acceptance before being forbidden re-entry and imprisoned for the night, Steven Spielberg continued to not win the big one and the awards staged one of the worst ceremonies in their history, not to mention the failed actor occupying  The White House for the majority of the decade. It is no surprise then that the authors name the worst best picture winner of the decade “(nearly) everything.” This does still allow for one unanimous winner in Platoon, with Amadeus missing that distinction by one vote. The 1990s represented  a decade of stagnation saved only by the arrival of Titanic. The Oscars were run by Gil Cates and Billy Crystal for the majority of the decade and Spielberg finally won his award in 1993 with the sole unanimous win of the decade, Schindler’s List. The decade also saw the beginning of more political action against the Academy by queer protesters as calls for diversity began to rise.

The 21^st century began with both triumph and tragedy, as the awards moved to a new home specifically designed for them, only to be overshadowed by the events of 9/11. The pre-9/11 event also saw the final acting award—best leading actress—go to a racialized performer, Halle Berry becoming the first Black woman to win it. The turn of the century is mainly identified by rapid technological advancements: CGI, DVDs and the arrival of the internet. And, in 2009, the best picture became a race between up to ten nominees. This decade  resulted in two unanimous winners, with Slumdog Millionaire and The Hurt Locker being deemed worthy by the authors. It should be noted that this is likely the result of the authors being cognizant of the films as they were released, being aware of the variety of options and generally not having to rely on titles that had survived the court of public opinion. The 2010s, the last decade discussed in this book, is also the first decade where the best picture and the highest grossing film were never the same one. This had been a long time coming at this point, with each of the previous three decades only having these designations match once: the division between the Academy and the mass audience was therefore complete. The awards would never be audience friendly again, despite various attempts. They could however be more diverse, which was being attempted after the 2015 nominations led to the Oscars being deemed “so white” (and male). Industry boycotts led to attempts at change that are still being seen today. Like the 50s, this decade was another one of major change with the end of celluloid in many theatres, the conglomeration of many major properties under Disney and the fall of the unsinkable Harvey Weinstein. This decade ended with the infamous La La Land and Chadwick Boseman Oscar “wins”, which led to our book ending on a positive outlook on diversity in the Academy Awards’ future in its afterword.

This book is not a comprehensive history or study of the Academy Awards. It does not break new ground, but it would be strange to fault it for something it never attempted to do. This book is a fun and easy-to-read collection of facts and figures—some of which are surprisingly well-researched—that could absolutely serve as a useful introduction to the Academy Awards as subject matter. It could even be useful in an academic setting, as long as it is supplemented by more comprehensive material. As for the opinion segment of the book: the quality of any opinion piece is dependent on how much the reader agrees with the stated opinion, so the reader’s thoughts on that may vary greatly. The one bit of criticism that should be noted, again, is that the authors fail to situate the book within their specific space and time when deciding which films should have won. Again, this could be a  little fun thought experiment, but where certain films could have won if given the right amount of attention and praise—films like Citizen Kane and Singin’ in the Rain could have been best picture winners in an alternate universe—documentaries like One Day in September and animated fare like The Emperor’s New Groove would simply never win best picture, because of the organizational biases of the Academy. This is not enough to discount the book, but some of the readers will certainly come away feeling the same way. However, they will surely leave with some fun anecdotes and interesting stories on top of that slight frustration, so it may well be a fair trade.

Author Bio

Shahbaz Khayambashi is an academic, artist and author who holds a PhD from York University. His research deals with death in the media and the use of imagery in protest. He has been published academically in journals including Omega: Journal of Death and Dying and Pop Culture Review, and non-academically in Scarlet Leaf Review and Literary Yard. He has also built a career in the experimental film and video scene, as both a curator and an artist.