There was only one upset I could see, relative to the expected Oscar winners. Greta Gerwig is expected to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, but the BAFTA went to Taika Waititi. I would have made the same call. I have not read the book (“Caging Skies”), but it’s obvious that he did an amazing job of creating a heartfelt comedy from a bleak story.

With unintentional irony, Joaquin Phoenix called out the BAFTAs for racism on the same night they gave both screenwriting awards to deserving non-whites. Taika Waititi is a double minority – non-white and Jewish. And as for Bong Joon-ho … well, that doesn’t sound like a Norwegian name to me.

Here is my proposed rule for all the film and TV academies: award winners can make all the woke speeches they want, as long as they are specific. If you think Greta Gerwig should have been nominated as the best director, you have to specify which of the five nominees she should have replaced. Mendes, Phillips and Bong Joon-ho obviously deserve nominations, so if you have the balls to piss off Scorsese or Tarantino, have at it. Same deal if you think Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Awkwafina or J-Lo should have been nominated. This will show that (1) you have some cojones and (2) that you have actually given the matter some thought and are not just mouthing bromides for the politically correct.

And yes, I would throw out Pacino or Pesci to nominate Jamie (for example). In fact, you can toss them both out and give the fifth nomination to somebody else, of color or otherwise. A decent choice would be either the little kid or Sam Rockwell in JoJo Rabbit, but those are just two that come to mind immediately. You can probably name a dozen people who deserved those nominations more than Pesci and Pacino and there are probably non-whites on your list.

It seems to me that the recipe for inclusiveness in nominations is simply to expand the number of nominees in each category. There is no magic significance to the number five. Make it ten. More people can claim to be Oscar nominees. More films can claim to have earned Oscar nominations. Where is the downside to that?

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