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Festival Cinephilia Profile: Daniel Joyaux

Robin Write
Daniel Joyaux

ESSENTIALS

Daniel Joyaux — Freelance Contributor, Vanity Fair, The Verge, MovieMaker, Filmotomy (mostly Oscar analysis, some interviews and profiles, occasional reviews)

Email — Twitter — Blog

WANT TO KNOW MORE

What are your Go-To Sites for Film?

It’s less about sites and more about what kind of writing I’m looking for. But in general here are the writers I read most often: Mark Harris, Wesley Morris, Kyle Buchanan, Anne Thompson, Joanna Robinson, Justin Chang, Glen Weldon, Sean Fennessey, and David Ehrlich.

Classic Film you Shamefully haven’t seen?

8 1/2, The Best Years of Our Lives

A Film that Genuinely Scared you?

Hereditary

A Film that still makes you Cry like a baby?

Hugo

A Film that still has you Pissing Your Pants Laughing?

Superbad

An Old film you would love to see on an IMAX screen?

Bridge on the River Kwai

What is your Favorite Film of 2019 so far?

The Farewell

Which Screenplay do you wish you had Written?

Beginners

Who should Host the Oscars next year?

Awkwafina and Kumail Nanjiani

Whose Zero Oscar wins or nominations hurts the most?

Ryan Coogler for noms, Brad Pitt (as an actor) for wins

The Internet is no more – what is your Job now?

Teaching, film festivals, or possibly writing a book. Gods I could do so much without the internet.

What is one of your greatest Childhood Movie Memories?

Seeing The Shawshank Redemption in theaters when I was 13, with my friend and I thinking we were going to a Stephen King movie.

Who were your Movie Star crushes growing up?

Alicia Silverstone, Kristy Swanson, Sharon Stone

Pick 5 words that best describe going to the Cinema?

Everything else shuts off. Rejoice!

Where do you stand on Streaming Services and their place in film?

As someone who grew up in a town that didn’t get most good movies, I love the democratization of movie accessibility. As someone who can no longer focus to save my life when watching movies at home, I hate the seemingly inevitable loss of the theatrical experience. I haven’t yet figured out how to reconcile the good and the bad there. I suppose ideally I want all movies available for streaming at all times, but anytime a movie is available locally at a theater, people would be legally obligated to watch it that way under punishment of flogging.

What is your Honest Opinion on the entire Star Wars saga?

I grew up on comic books, so I love extended mythologies. There will always be great entries, bad entires, and a whole lotta mediocre entries. But one of the coolest things about mainstream comic books is you eventually get every major creator’s take on every major character, and I’m excited to see that future for Star Wars. I love the idea that, over the next several decades, we’ll get Star Wars movies by dozens of wonderful, unique filmmakers. Comics taught me early on that franchises are nothing more than unending differing versions by a multitude of unique voices. And there are a lot of positives to that.

We really need a Film Twitter definition – what is yours?

The unbearable tragedy of groupthink.

Share one of your most Controversial movie world opinions?

Back to the Future is a top-10 worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve given it several tries. It’s a fine concept, but the characters, dialogue, and acting are all atrocious. Doc, Biff, and George McFly are all contenders for worst movie character ever. They’re even less tolerable than the characters on How I Met Your Mother were in like Season 8. But the score is good.

Change one thing about a Masterpiece, and tell us why?

Could we retroactively take James Woods out of Videodrome? Perhaps he can be digitally replaced by a young Christopher Plummer?

What are some of the Film Quotes you use a lot in everyday life?

“These go to 11.”
“Help me I’m poor.”
“Wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it Bob.”
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been considered an asshole. That’s just my style.”
“You must choose, but choose wisely.”

What is the Role of a Film Critic – and how important are they?

I think it’s three things. First and most obvious is to just provoke and, when needed, lead discussion. If film critics can help people understand what they think and why, that’s incredibly valuable.

Second is recommendation. This was less important in the monoculture, but now that the amount of content out there has exploded (and is still becoming more overwhelming seemingly by the week), we all need voices we trust to help us sift through what’s out there.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, is to preserve history. The films that stand the test of time aren’t necessarily the most successful ones, but the ones that critics and historians like to rewatch, write about, and show to the next generation.

A Film Buff asks you for advice starting a Website / Podcast – what do you tell them?

You don’t really hate yourself that much, do you?

FILMOTOMY RECOMMENDS

Rather than highlight several of Daniel’s well thought out and finely presented writing, I want you all to read his analysis of how the preferential ballot voting might have gone for this year’s Oscars. Which he published BEFORE the Academy Awards were announced. I am generally quite rigid (and without blowing my own trumpet very rarely wrong) when it comes to predicting the Best Picture winner. I just about kept at bay the many reasons against and detractors of Roma winning Best Picture – until I read Daniel’s thorough breakdown of a very possible line of voting. “Shit!” I thought, “There’s goes months of sticking by the one film.” The following is lifted directly from Third Man Movies & Culture with every word accredited to Daniel Joyaux. Read it all!

BEST PICTURE

First, a quick reminder of how the preferential ballot works: Voters are asked to rank all eight films (though some voters only rank a few of them, and leave off everything they didn’t really like). The goal is for one film to end up with over 50% of the first-place votes. Assuming that doesn’t happen upon the initial tally (which would be nearly impossible), an elimination process begins. The film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated from contention, and all of the ballots that ranked that film first get reallocated to whatever film was ranked second. Assuming no film is at 50% of the first-place votes yet, the process repeats; the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and the ballots for that film are reallocated to whatever was ranked next highest on them. This process repeats and films are continually eliminated from contention until one has over 50% of the first-place votes.

Before we get into the specifics of how this may play out, there are a few generalities of what we’re kind of looking for. The logic behind the preferential ballot is that the winner will be the film the Academy most agreed on. That means we’re not explicitly measuring passion or concensus, but rather the intersection of both. For a film to survive the first few elimination rounds, it needs to begin the process with a lot of first-place votes. That means the films that don’t start with many first-place votes can’t win, no matter how many second- or third-place votes they rack up. But after those first few eliminations, we start getting pretty deep into voters’ ballots. Films that voters ranked fourth suddenly morph into first-place votes. At this point the process has changed, and what we’re primarily looking for in these later stages is the film that will be toward the bottom of the fewest number of ballots.

The other thing that’s important to do before we start getting totally wonky with numbers speculation is to just generally look at the pool of films nominated. Think about what is there and think about what isn’t there, and what broad generalizations we can glean about the Academy’s thinking in this particular year. When I look at that Best Picture list, I think populism. Of the eight nominees, three are massive hits (Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, and A Star is Born), while only two can really be classified as arthouse films (The Favourite and ROMA). And the two movies that were most widely predicted to get Best Picture nominations but didn’t—First Man and If Beale Street Could Talk—fall closer in line with the auteurist films than with the massive hits. In fact, the biggest reason First Man isn’t here is probably because it wasn’t a massive hit.

So we know going in that success looked pretty important to the Academy this year. Now let’s get to the math, and remember that every nominee will likely get at least 5% of the initial first-place votes, or it wouldn’t have gotten a nomination. (Although that’s not completely accurate, the caveats there are way too complicated to go into here, so let’s just start with the assumption that everything is getting at least 5% of the initial vote.)

Here’s my best stab at what the initial vote tally may look like, and note that I’ve changed these starting totals from the simulation I did a few weeks ago on Twitter:

If that’s the case, Vice is out and that 6% of the vote gets reallocated. Because Vice is primarily a film that relies on a snarky script and powerful acting, The Favourite should be the biggest beneficiary of this reallocation, and BlacKkKlansman should also gain a bit here because, like Vice, both films use satire to look at our current political moment. So then we may have numbers that look like this:

Now Black Panther is out. Many of those votes will surely go to BlackkKlansman, but keep in mind that a lot of Black Panther’s support may come from voters who just support hits. So some of those votes will surely also go to Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born, and Green Book.

A Star is Born now has the lowest total, so it’s done. That should heavily benefit the other musical in the field, Bohemian Rhapsody, but also the other populist nominee with movie stars and an obvious appeal to older voters, Green Book. So the next set of totals may look like this:

The Favourite is now done, and that should heavily benefit the only other true art film of the bunch, ROMA. But keep in mind that we’re also now deep enough in voters’ ballots that every elimination will give at least some boost to all of the remaining films.

Hopefully this is where we can finally say goodbye to the Best Picture chances of Bohemian Rhapsody. But that should signal a huge boost to Green Book, because Bohemian Rhapsody voters have questionable taste and at least some of them seem to be prioritizing the thrill of sticking it to critics. But again, we’re deep enough in ballots now that everything gets a boost of some kind.

And now here we are, the moment of truth. After the sixth elimination, one of the two remaining films will have over 50% of the vote. If I’ve been remotely accurate in my guesswork, and BlacKkKlansman will in fact be the elimination that pushes our eventual winner to its victorious total, It would be easy to look at that and immediately say that ROMA will be the obvious beneficiary (especially if ROMA starts this final round with a slight edge in the vote totals), because no Spike Lee fan will also like Green Book. There is undoubtedly some logic to that, but it’s also a lot more complicated.

First, remember that the 27% of the vote BlacKkKlansman has in this simulation came from all over the place, not simply from people that ranked it (or Black Panther) number one on their ballots. Second, we have to remember that the Academy is mostly older, and many such voters will have a hard time distinguishing between the ways issues of race are portrayed between BlacKkKlansman and Green Book. A lot of voters will just feel good about both films in pretty similar ways, and they won’t get into the “What is this movie saying?” debate that has dominated the critical conversation surrounding Green Book. And remember, we already know this was a year that leaned pretty populist in Best Picture voting.

Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), even Academy members that dislike Green Book may still get their vote reallocated to it, simply because Netflix bias caused them to rank ROMA last. Weird as it may sound, any ballot that ranked Green Book seventh and ROMA eighth becomes, at this point, a first-place vote for Green Book. As mentioned at the beginning, in this final stage of the game we’re partially looking for whichever film was ranked last on the fewest number of ballots. For a lot of older voters still deeply allegiant to antiquated film industry business models and distribution ideas, ROMA may very well be the bottom on their ballot. Netflix is rapidly gaining traction with the Academy every year; just last year was the first time they received any nominations outside of the Documentary Short category, and now they’re suddenly in the Best Picture race. That upward mobility will continue, but the stubbornly held ideas of old men do not change in two years.

That’s why, when BlacKkKlansman becomes our final elimination and its (theoretical) 27% of the vote gets reallocated, I think it will yield totals like this:

And folks, I really do think it will be that close. ROMA could certainly win, but to do so it would probably need at least a 5% lead going into the final round, and maybe something closer to a 10% lead, because the final round are when last-place votes will suddenly play a major role. If ROMA starts with substantially more than the 25% initial vote I gave it, then it may cruise to the victory. And as you can see by the final vote tally I ended up with, if I’m off by even 2% anywhere on my guesses (which I surely will be), then that could make a big difference in how things play out.

But a Green Book victory makes sense on an intuitive level just given how the nominations went this year. Not only did a critically reviled hit like Bohemian Rhapsody receive a ton of Academy support, but more challenging, highly lauded films like If Beale Street Could Talk, First Reformed, and Leave No Trace really struggled to connect with voters on the level that was expected (or at least hoped for). In broad terms, that tells us where the Academy’s thinking was this year, and the preferential Best Picture ballot is measuring Academy thinking on exactly those terms.

But our consolation prize will always be that the Oscars never stop reacting to—and trying to correct—their own recent history. Two years after Crash won, Best Picture went to No Country for Old Men. So even if we do get Green Book two years after the amazing Moonlight victory, another amazing, timeless Best Picture winner will be just over the horizon.

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