Why Isn’t A Star Is Born Winning Big Awards? An Investigation

Ever since Lady Gaga swanned into the Venice Film Festival last summer, it seemed like a foregone conclusion: A Star Is Born would be an awards-season darling.

Maybe it was Gaga’s crossover from pop superstardom to film, or the Hollywood mythology around A Star Is Born (Judy! Barbra!), or the fact that Bradley Cooper was going Clint Eastwood in his directorial debut. Throw in the movie’s Titanic-esque melodrama and the way it consumed pop culture (so many memes), and there was a feeling in the ether that A Star Is Born (2018) could become the rare commercial box-office hit that would double as an Oscar contender. Last fall, the awards prediction site Gold Derby believed A Star Is Born would be the most likely Best Picture winner at the Oscars, over Roma.

These days, however, not so much. On the eve of Sunday’s Oscars, Roma is now the front-runner, and ASIB’s odds have slipped to 8 to 1. And while oft nominated, ASIB has been passed over in the major categories (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director) at most of the mainstream Hollywood awards shows. Gaga has consistently won Best Original Song honors for “Shallow,” but the once-buzzy film’s meh awards-season showing has left some fans, myself included, at a loss.

“On paper, A Star Is Born is the perfect Oscar contender,” Kyle Buchanan, the awards-season columnist behind The New York Times’s Carpetbagger, told Vogue. “It’s a critically acclaimed hit that’s also about the entertainment business. So why has it been overlooked again and again by major awards bodies?”

Below, an investigation. Note: This is not—I repeat, not—an echo of Sean Penn’s breathless Deadline Hollywood op-ed in A Star Is Born’s favor, and it should be noted that there are more dire problems in the Hollywood ecosystem than Gaga and Cooper not winning awards but still being rich, famous, and full of promise. (Indeed, like many other awards films throughout history, ASIB was short on racial and ethnic diversity, with the exception of bit parts for Dave Chappelle and Anthony Ramos.) Rather, ahead of the Oscars, consider the following theories an attempt at closure.

__A Star Is Born peaked too early . . . __

Seasoned Oscar nerds know that most awards-y movies are released maximally close to nomination time—usually on (or at least around) Christmas Day. And yet, ASIB dropped two and a half months earlier on October 5. Big mistake . . . huge? “It felt like old news by the time awards season kicked into high gear,” Paul Sheehan, executive editor at Gold Derby, told me.

__ . . . which led to Cooper/Gaga fatigue.__

“Too much gazing at each other, too much of the song [‘Shallow’], too much ‘Cooper is Clint now!,’ too much time to sit with it and start to look elsewhere for something/someone new to back,” said writer/editor David Walters. Add to the fact that “it was the fourth version of this story,” Sheehan noted, referring to the previous A Star Is Borns, “and it doesn’t feel special enough to be singled out.”

But also: Maybe Bradley Cooper didn’t campaign hard enough.

“As a schmoozer, Cooper has been remote and often late or absent to big events,” Buchanan said (see: Cooper’s tight-lipped interview with the Times in September). “He wanted to let the work speak for itself, but I think a little glad-handing goes a long way in Hollywood,” said Denise Warner, executive digital editor at Billboard (who self-identifies as a frequent tweeter about ASIB). “Yes, he did the traditional press tour before the movie’s release, but that’s not enough for award season.” Consider that Gaga is out here getting a “La Vie en Rose” tattoo!

“While other Oscar Best Song contenders throw mini concerts in Los Angeles to promote their movie, Cooper and Gaga have abstained,” Buchanan added. “Wouldn’t that go a long way to remind people what magical chemistry they’ve got?” Once snubbed by the Oscars’ Best Director category, however, Cooper seemed to have a change of heart. “So what does he do? He goes out and performs ‘Shallow’ live with Gaga at her Vegas residency,” Warner said. “It’s almost as if he’s trying to make up for lost time.” Note to Bradley: It’s not too late to get Charlie the dog involved, too.

Bohemian Rhapsody stole its shine.

How much room is there, really, for a splashy musical movie in the awards-season pack? Apparently, not much. “It’s weird to say A Star Is Born was scooped by another blockbuster musical drama, but that’s actually what happened,” Louis Virtel, awards-season savant and cohost of the Keep It! podcast, told Vogue. Fictional Jackson and Ally Maine were just no competition for Rami Malek’s portrayal of the legendary, late Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. “Cooper’s movie is better by nearly any measure, but you can’t underestimate the power of those Queen songs, I guess,” Buchanan said. “Great though ‘Shallow’ might be, it’s only been in the pop-cultural consciousness for a few months, while we’ve been rocked by Queen songs for decades on end.”

Glenn Close is long overdue for an Oscar.

There could be 99 Best Actress nominees in a room, but it will only take one Glenn Close in The Wife to beat Lady Gaga. Her competition in this particular year couldn’t be stiffer in Close, who, outrageously, has never won an Academy Award. The legendary actress “looks like 40 years of screen mastery,” Virtel said. “If Glenn Close is doing anything career-best, you cannot vote against that.”

Outside theory: Ally’s synthetic, orangey hair color did not help matters.

So floated People’s style and beauty director, Andrea Lavinthal.

Conspiracy theory that I’m loathe to even acknowledge: A Star Is Born is a target of reverse discrimination.

According to conservative-account responses to a Twitter callout on this topic, A Star Is Born is being passed over due to the whiteness of its cast in an era when Hollywood awards bodies are attempting to be more diverse. Take this one with a grain of salt. On the contrary, the Academy still overwhelmingly lavishes nominations on white people and would have been more than happy to toss a few in A Star Is Born’s direction, but . . .

It doesn’t quite hold up as an awards-season heavy hitter?

“Sometimes, after a big movie romance becomes a giant hit, people almost seem bashful to have fallen for it,” Buchanan said. “Remember when people went back to see Titanic again and again, and then a few months later turned it into sort of a punchline?” (Yes, vividly.) Maybe, just maybe, the emo ASIB fandom just got a little overcome and overexcited on exit from the theater and was misguided to expect it to clean sweep its way through awards season? “People remember A Star Is Born as an exciting rush more than they do for its great performances,” Virtel suggested.

On the bright side, Cooper and Gaga will perform “Shallow” (even if Cooper will do so in his own—not Jackson’s gravelly—voice and also minus his sensual facial hair) at the Oscars, and A Star Is Born is expected to win at least one from the Academy, as Gaga (along with cowriters including Mark Ronson) seems to have Best Original Song in the bag. “ ‘Shallow’ is definitely winning Best Original Song,” Buchanan predicted, “but any other victory would be a surprise at this point.”