For a couple years now, I’ve continued a tradition I had at
Hollywood Reporter of bestowing “awards season awards” honoring the highs and (mostly) lows of the death march to the Oscars. This year, an especially wild one with the Emilia Pérez Twitter scandal, I decided to do it after the Oscars, both to incorporate the absurdities of the big event and to put a button on the entire season so we never need speak of it again. So here’s my acknowledgment of the most cynical marketing campaigns, the cringiest moments, and the most
ridiculous people Hollywood has to offer in the year 2025… (Did I miss something? Send me your award and I may run some on Thursday…)
The “Um… Can I Change My Vote?” Award
Winner: Everyone who checked the box for Adrien Brody after enduring his rambling, record-breaking, 5 minute and 40 second Ben Stein lecture of a speech accepting best actor, during which he was played off twice and tersely reminded
us, “I’ve done this before. Thank you. It’s not my first rodeo.”
Best Villain
Winner: Hulu, which cut out for thousands of Oscars viewers right before the final categories and right after Sean Baker begged viewers to watch movies in theaters and not on streaming services. At the Governors Ball, even the Disney executives I spoke to were acknowledging the massive screw-up.
Quietest
Feud
Winner: Demi Moore and Coralie Fargeat, the nominated star and director of The Substance, who were barely speaking to each other, if at all, by the end of the campaign, per multiple sources. (Note that Moore did not thank her director in her SAG Awards speech.)
Most Energetic Campaigner for
a Film that Was Never a Contender
Winner: Jennifer Lopez, who was seemingly everywhere this fall (the Governors Awards? Really?) positioning the Amazon wrestling drama Unstoppable, whose only “competitive” honor ended up being a BAFTA Rising Star award for Jharrel Jerome. (Note: Someone please buy J.Lo’s pricey Sundance pic Kiss of the Spider Woman so she can do this whole expensive charade over
again.)
Third Rail Award
Winner: Also Jennifer Lopez, who admirably restrained herself at an Unstoppable screening Q&A when a Variety interviewer said she was “getting up there” in age. (“Did he just say that?” one audience member reportedly gasped.)
Bygones Award
Winner: Bill Maher, who showed up at CAA’s Oscar party on Friday night, a year after defecting to WME because he wasn’t invited to the special Saturday get-together at Bryan Lourd’s house. (Incidentally, Lourd was also at the Friday party.)
Most Elaborate Emilia Pérez Joke
Winner:
Johanne Sacreblu, the 30 minute mini-movie by Mexican trans filmmaker Camila Aurora that features dancers in fake mustaches, berets, and a feud between the trans heirs of rival croissant and baguette families.
Most Scathing Onion
Headline
“Karla Sofía Gascón Apologizes After Emilia Pérez Resurfaces”
Symphony Award: Most Shameless Wicked Promotion by an NBCUniversal Media Outlet
Winner: NBC’s Today for the relentless, daily, sometimes multiple-times-an-hour on-air plugging of its sister company’s big corporate priority—sorry,
Oscar-worthy musical—well beyond when the film was playing in theaters. Did this actually help the awards campaign? Does it even matter anymore?
Runners-up: Every other NBC outlet, including several NBC News shows that should be above this nonsense.
Cringiest Oscars Commercial
Winner: Katherine Heigl for Poise incontinence pads.
Best Friday Afternoon News
Dump
Winner: The Golden Globes, for firing the 60-or-so paid voting members of the former Hollywood Foreign Press Association on the Friday before the Oscars, after promising in June 2023 to keep them on for at least five years.
Most Awkward Memories
Winner: Georgina Chapman, who sat front row last night with boyfriend Adrien Brody. It was her first Oscars since 2017, when she
also had a plum seat next to then-husband Harvey Weinstein. (Weinstein was not invited this year, for some reason.)
Most Ominous Boast
Winner: Diane Warren, who lost on her 16th nomination for best original song, then basically dared the Academy to stop nominating her: “I’m the Terminator of the Oscars—I’ll be back… You can’t get rid of me.”
Most Biting F-You to Netflix During
the Oscars As Netflix Debates Whether to Overpay to Steal the Show From Disney
Winner: Sean Baker, in his much-applauded best picture speech: “Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films.”
Runner-up: Conan’s “CinemaStreams” video defending
movie theaters, complete with a cameo from Martin Scorsese—who, of course, has made his most recent two films for streamers.
Second runner-up: Conan, again, for joking that Netflix leads all studios with “18, count them, price increases.”
Noted: We will all miss these jokes when Netflix pays $1 billion for global Oscars rights through 2040 and Conan instead does 15 minutes on the excruciating heat and lines at Disney World.
Related: Best Netflix F-You to the Media During the Oscars
Winner: An unidentified Netflix publicist shutting down The New York Times’s attempt to interview Karla Sofía Gascón in
the bar area with a perfectly passive-aggressive “I hope you understand.”
Best Cameo
Winner: Tobey Maguire, the noted poker enthusiast, who popped up in a Cartier-hosted card game at Chateau Marmont that served as another weird Timothée Chalamet campaign media moment.
Easiest Money
Winner: Skyler Higley, the comedian and Oscars writer, who
says he won $50 by betting the show’s executive producer that his Drake pedophile joke would kill, which it did.
Inadvertent In Memoriams…
—James Bond, whose lengthy musical tribute played like a eulogy to those who were aware that the Broccolis had sold their control to Amazon and have produced their final Bond
film.
—The VFX house MPC, which was mourned as the “wonderful MPC” in Dune: Part Two visual effects winner Paul Lambert’s speech, as its parent company, Technicolor, teeters on the brink of insolvency.
Achievement in Avoiding Attention
Winner: The Apprentice director Ali Abbasi, who found a ticket to the Oscars (two tipsters saw him inside) after his CAA party groping scandal, but was
apparently not photographed or interviewed, either alone or with his Apprentice stars and producers, many of whom attended.
Saddest Result for a Wannabe Contender
Winner: Ron Howard, whose splashy Toronto premiere Eden—a survival thriller with Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas, and Sydney Sweeney—was tipped by the trades as a potential
awards contender, is still searching for a domestic distributor. Ouch.
Least Friendly Producing Team
Winner: The Brutalist, where producer D.J. Gugenheim had to slog through a Producers Guild arbitration twice because director-producer Brady Corbet was trying to block him.
Runner-up: A Complete Unknown, where producers James Mangold, Alex
Heineman, and Fred Berger iced out fellow producers Bob Bookman, Peter Jaysen, and Alan Gasmer.
“Remember, You Are One” Honoree
Winner: Jason Weinberg, the talent manager, who has been so omnipresent this season at client Demi Moore’s side and on his very active Instagram account (the “Couldn’t love her Moore” tagline was a bit much) that
some have invoked the Substance refrain to describe them.
Least Subliminal Messaging in a Phase 2 Campaign Slogan
Winner: Anora.
The slogan: “Follow Your Heart.”
What the studio meant: “The Brutalist and Conclave, man, what icy, emotionless downers.”
Runner-up: A Complete Unknown
The slogan: “A Complete Inspiration.”
What the studio meant: “You
like Bob Dylan, don’t you? Don’t you? How can you call yourself a creative person if you don’t vote for the damn Bob Dylan movie?”
Second runner-up: Wicked
The slogan: “Defy.”
What the studio meant: “We know we aren’t winning. But maybe you’ll vote for us just to be rebellious.”
Third runner-up: Conclave
The slogan: “Let the Conclave Begin.”
What the studio meant: Not entirely clear… “Oscar
voting is kinda like electing the pope”?
Losers of the Year
Uh… Winners?: The voters who don’t see the freakin’ movies. I’ve ranted about this before, but in the future, can the Academy, at the very least, ask members to watch all the best picture nominees? EW did four of those anonymous voter ballots, and none of the four members had seen Dune: Part Two. The BAFTAs make voters declare they’ve seen all the nominees before they’re allowed to vote in a category. The Television Academy makes members acknowledge they’ve watched at least one episode of each nominee before voting. People can lie, of course, but at least they’re asked. The Academy does nothing to even encourage viewing, let alone
require it. Something to think about when the awards committee meets later this year.
Who Won the Season (it’s a tie)
Sarah Hagi
Timothée Chalamet’s mustache
Sex workers
