The Big Picture · Discussion
March 28, 2022/ 69 min/ Sean Fennessey · Joanna Robinson
Sean and Joanna tape their reaction minutes after the 94th Academy Awards ends, covering the Will Smith and Chris Rock incident with an assist from Puck's Matt Belloni calling in from inside the Dolby, then CODA's Best Picture win and a telecast the hosts call the messiest Oscars they've ever seen.
35 films across 5 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The slap heard ’round the worldwith Puck's Matt Belloni, who was in the room
The film Will Smith won Best Actor for, playing Richard Williams. His speech opened on Williams and family but pivoted, without saying so directly, to defending Jada Pinkett Smith: what Joanna calls a "halfway speech" that left both hosts unsettled rather than moved.
CODA wins Best PictureSean called it weeks ago; Joanna is still not thrilled
Sean predicted this win outright weeks before the ceremony and is smug about it; Joanna spent the lead-up on Green Room laying out why she found the frontrunner status frustrating. Neither thinks it's the best film nominated, but neither thinks it's a disaster either.
The film that lost. Jane Campion still won Best Director (the third woman ever, second in a row after Chloé Zhao) but was seated bafflingly far from the stage for a category she was a lock to win, unlike Will Smith's front-and-center table.
One of several nominees Joanna wishes had actually been in the Best Picture conversation instead of the two-horse CODA-vs.-Power of the Dog framing.
Sean's prediction for how CODA's reputation ages: a movie that beat the presumed rightful winner, got trashed for years, then got reclaimed as genuinely good.
The film everyone wanted to win instead of Shakespeare in Love, the losing side of Sean's comp.
Joanna's preferred comparison: a movie that made a lot of people happy, ran a clean campaign, and that nobody thinks about or holds a grudge over today.
Cited as the genuinely embarrassing version of this outcome, the one CODA's win doesn't rise (or sink) to.
The other genuinely embarrassing Best Picture winner in the same category as Driving Miss Daisy, per the hosts.
Wasn't even nominated the year Driving Miss Daisy won, and it's still the reference point for how badly the Academy can get it wrong.
Joanna's rebuttal to Sean's "will anyone rewatch this?" argument against CODA: small, quiet family dramas can and do stick around.
The telecast: tributes, bits, and musical numbersreunions, remixes, and a tired Bond franchise
One of Sean's favorite films of all time; its stars reunited on stage in a bit he found hokey, reducing what he calls an "incandescent, transformational" movie to nostalgia-baiting patter.
A 50th-anniversary reunion with Pacino, De Niro, and Coppola, oddly scored with Bad Boy Records music and cut short before any of them could speak. Sean thought Pacino and Coppola looked frail; Sean "Diddy" Combs got credit for smoothing things over afterward with a joke about settling the Will-and-Chris situation at the after-party.
Won Best Original Song and got a 60th-anniversary Bond tribute the hosts didn't understand the need for, since the show did one in 2013 too.
"We Don't Talk About Bruno" got an over-produced remix that stripped out the exact TikTok hooks that made the song a hit in the first place; "Dos Oruguitas" fared better.
Lin-Manuel Miranda's wife testing positive for COVID scuttled what Sean imagines was a planned mini variety-hour built around this film. Andrew Garfield's Best Actor nomination for it also got Sean ribbed by texts from an absent Amanda Dobbins all night.
Invoked when Liza Minnelli, visibly unwell, was gently walked through a final award presentation by Lady Gaga. Sean's advice: turn off the podcast and go watch this instead.
The Fan Favorite fiascothe Academy's Twitter experiment backfires
Won the fan-voted "Cheer Moment" for "the Flash enters the Speed Force," instantly memed and, per the hosts, the funniest outcome of a deeply strange night.
Cited as proof the "Snyder heads" were always going to mobilize hardest for any Twitter-voted category.
The Johnny Depp film Joanna flags as the other fandom capable of hijacking a fan vote: she calls the Depp Army and Snyder heads the two most "bonkers, mobilized" fanbases on Twitter.
The Fan Favorite pick everyone actually expected and understood, unlike the Snyder and Depp surprises.
The one clip in the Cheer Moment montage the hosts approved of: Neo dodging bullets in the bullet-time sequence, which Sean calls an actual blockbuster-plus-craft moment worth cheering.
The moments that actually landedTroy Kotsur, Ariana DeBose, Jessica Chastain, and the also-rans
Troy Kotsur's Best Supporting Actor win, with Yoon Jung-shim staying on stage to sign for him instead of clearing the shot, was the moment that made Joanna cry.
Ariana DeBose's Best Supporting Actress speech, after a muted SAG Awards showing, brought the power both hosts had been waiting for.
Jessica Chastain's Best Actress win. Neither host is a big fan of the film, but both praise her campaign: consistently crediting below-the-line crew and visibly sitting through the Makeup and Hairstyling award.
Costume designer Jenny Beavan's funny, rambling acceptance speech ("sometimes you need a movie like Cruella") kicks off a riff about comfort-movie logic.
Folded into the same riff off Beavan's speech.
Reba McEntire's nominated song came from this film. Sean initially assumed Mila Kunis was brought out as a Ukraine-adjacent presenter before realizing she's actually in the movie.
Questlove's Best Documentary win nearly got swallowed by press-room reporters asking only about the slap. Sean hopes it doesn't overshadow the film, which he recommends.
The Oscar Sean Penn said he'd melt down over the Ukraine war, per an interview the hosts reference (not, they clarify, his Mystic River statuette).
The Sean Penn Oscar he was not threatening to melt.
Also mentioned raised along the way
The joke that started it all G.I. Jane
Presenter mix-up, Rachel Zegler and Jacob Elordi Deep Water
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
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