Which Comes First... The Globes or The Gold?

I’m not sure what if anything the Golden Globes mean. Do they influence the Academy Awards or do they just reflect the general popularity of certain films and performances that are destined to be nominated for the big show anyway? Whatever the answer, they do historically match up pretty closely with the Oscar shortlists (they’re helped greatly by having a pool of ten to chose from (in three top categories) for five slots, and even with that advantage, they often sneak in an eleventh or twelfth (as with the eleven Best Picture contenders this year).

Inspired by my offhanded remarks a month ago about Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise’s already unlikely Oscar hopes being dead in the water (and by a Best Actress category that still has two tenuous slots to fill that I was considering plugging Ms. Roberts into), I decided to see how many performances that were snubbed by the Globes managed to make it to the big leagues anyway. In the Lead categories (especially Lead Actress since there are usually far fewer strong female roles to chose from), there are few mismatches.

Here’s how the numbers break down (all stats are based on data since 1980; math may be a bit fuzzy):

In the Best Actress category, there were perfect matches (i.e. all five Oscar-nominated performances were also tapped by the Globes in either Drama or Musical/Comedy Lead Actress category) in 1980, 1982, 1983, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. That’s 11 out of 24 years with perfect matches. In those 24 years, there were 17 Oscar-nominated performances in the Lead Actress category out of a total 120 who were not also nominated for a Globe – or 14% missed. There are asterisks next to some of those stats, but I’ll get to those in a minute.

In the Best Actor category, there were perfect matches in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1991, 1999, 2002 and 2003. 8 out of 24 years with perfect matches, with 20 misses out of 120 – or 17% missed.

In the Supporting categories, where there are usually only five Globe slots (though often six or seven), it stands to reason statistically that their averages would be less accurate. Also, whereas the Globes are slightly more adept at predicting the women than the men in the Lead categories, the opposite is true of the Supporting categories.

In the Supporting Actor category, there were just two years with perfect matches (1999 and 2000) and 39 misses (almost exactly double the number in the Best Actor race, which makes sense since they get half as many guesses) – or 32.5% missed.

In the Supporting Actress category, there were also just two years with perfect matches (1996 and 2001) and 41 misses (again, a little more than double the Best Actress number) – or 34% wrong.

All in all, not bad for determining the likely pool of contenders, especially considering that there are rarely more than one Oscar nominee left out in any category in any given year and that the Globes have been doing even better in recent years (except for last year where they didn’t go for 21 Grams or In America or unknowns as much as The Academy Awards).

It gets even better when you take into account those asterisks I mentioned before. There are pretty much three reasons why I starred certain misses:

1) The Globes nominated the performer for a different performance than The Oscars that year (Debra Winger (A Dangerous Woman instead of Shadowlands), Gerard Depardieu (Green Card instead of Cyrano de Bergerac), Julianne Moore (only nominated for Far From Heaven, not The Hours));

2) The Globes nominated a different performance in that category from the same film (Meryl Streep instead of Diane Keaton for Marvin’s Room, Robin Williams instead of Robert De Niro for Awakenings, John Turturro instead of Paul Scofield for Quiz Show, John Goodman instead of Michael Lerner for Barton Fink, Kim Basinger instead of Glenn Close for The Natural, Mary Steenburgen instead of Elizabeth McGovern for Ragtime); and

3) The Globes nominated a performance in a different category than the Oscars (Denzel Washington (Cry Freedom), Robert Preston (Victor/Victoria), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago) all went Lead at the Globes and Supporting at the Oscars, while the aforementioned Elizabeth McGovern actually was nominated for Ragtime – but in the now-defunct New Star of the Year category, as was Michael O’Keefe (The Great Santini), and Clint Eastwood did win Best Director for Unforgiven at the Globes, even though he didn’t pick up a Best Actor nod).

Not counting Eastwood, that’s thirteen semi-misses to deduct, which would bring the Globes’ miss percentages down to 12.5% for Actress, 15% for Actor, 28% for Supporting Actor and 31% for Supporting Actress.

Our ability to narrow down the pool of contenders is further aided when you run the Globe misses through the sieve of the SAG shortlists (at least dating back to 1994 when the SAG Awards first appeared on the scene).

Of the Globe misses since 1994, 23 received individual SAG nominations (with a few like Joan Allen (Nixon) and Keisha Castle-Hughes in the wrong categories) and an additional four mentioned as part of SAG’s Best Ensemble award nominees. Forgetting those team players and eliminating overlap between the asterisked performances and SAG nominees, that means that the percentages of Oscar nominees covered by the Globes and/or SAG is up to 89% for Actress, 90% for Actor, 77% for Supporting Actor and 72.5% for Supporting Actress. If we only count since 1994, those percentages rise to 94% for the first three categories and 86% for Supporting Actress.

Meaning that if history and statistics mean anything (and most likely they don’t), then there probably won’t be too many as-yet untapped performances mentioned on the morning of January 25th. That means Jeff Bridges, Clint Eastwood, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tom Cruise, Gael Garcia Bernal, Jude Law, Al Pacino, Julia Roberts, Laura Dern, Julie Delpy, Sigourney Weaver, Ziyi Zhang, Kerry Washington, Kim Basinger, Peter Sarsgaard, John Lithgow, Alan Alda, Rodrigo De la Serna, Gena Rowlands, Sharron Warren, Regina King, Minnie Driver, Lynn Redgrave, Kyra Sedgwick, Lola Duenas and Kate Winslet (for Finding Neverland) will all be clawing at each other for a very slim chance of slipping in.

Looking at the Globe misses, very few Leads (including Tom Wilkinson for In the Bedroom, Clint Eastwood for Unforgiven and Stephen Rea for The Crying Game) came from films that the Globes nominated for Best Picture, and not too many Supporting nominees came from them either. That’s more bad news for Roberts, Law, Washington, Eastwood, as well as Alda, Sarsgaard, Lithgow, Winslet, King, Warren and Driver – and it’s not a vote of confidence for SAG nominees Sophie Okonedo or Freddie Highmrore either who couldn’t get support from people who liked their movies.

So the point is, I won’t be predicting a Julia Roberts surprise this year.