The Politics of a New Oscar Category |
At the Oscar nominees luncheon less than two weeks ago, there was noticeably louder applause each time one of the five nominated casting directors was brought onto the stage for the class picture. Everyone in the room seemed to know how big a deal it was that the Academy had established a new Oscar category—the first in 24 years.
But many in the room might not have been aware of how long and arduous that journey had been. I’m Rebecca Ford, and this week I took a deep dive into the history of the creation of the achievement-in-casting Oscar, which will be awarded for the first time on March 15.
When casting director David Rubin joined the Academy, casting directors were categorized as members at large, a now defunct amorphous group that included agents and others who didn’t fit into the organization’s specific branches. “We always felt a little bit ‘other than,’ without representation on the Academy’s board,” Rubin told me. In 2013 the Academy established the casting branch, but it would still be a long journey to earning recognition with an Oscar.
There was a great deal of resistance from other Academy members at the start. (Cassandra Kulukundis, a nominee this year, told me that when the idea of the new category once came up, she heard a cinematographer remark, “There goes the neighborhood.”) “We’ve been very understanding that there’s a reason why so many people—audience members and even Academy members—haven’t understood the casting process,” Rubin said. “Because our work is done behind closed doors in a very intimate conversation between us and the filmmaker and a producer.”
So the five nominees in this inaugural year—Kulukundis (One
Battle After Another), Nina Gold (Hamnet), Jennifer Venditti (Marty Supreme), Gabriel Domingues (The Secret Agent), and Francine Maisler (Sinners)—are not only celebrating for themselves, but also honoring the legacy of their profession and the hard work of their peers. “I stand, really, on the shoulders of the early architects of the casting profession. It’s because of them and the paths they paved that we are here today,” Maisler said.
The question now is: Who will the voters pick as the first winner? It’s harder to predict without a lot of history, but the Academy made sure to give voters as much information as possible on the craft, providing a video interview with each nominee that can be watched on the Academy’s members-only site. Gold, Kulukundis, and Maisler are considered veterans of their profession, and we’re betting that the voters will pick one of them, especially because they have also cast the three films that are considered the strongest in the best-picture race. But no matter who wins, it’s a triumph for all. |
