Oscar watchers on high alert as Spielberg’s The Fabelmans wins TIFF People’s Choice Award
The Toronto International Film Festival audience award has been a prime predictor of Best Picture winners since the 1980s
Old Stevie might need to clear some room on the mantle. Per Deadline, the three-time Oscar winner’s autobiographical film, The Fabelmans, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, won the coveted People’s Choice Award on Sunday.
While winning awards is all well and good, this one holds special significance. Oscars watchers believe TIFF’s audience award to be a bellwether for the Best Picture prize at the Academy Awards. Since 1978, the audience award has gone to Best Picture winners such as Green Book, 12 Years A Slave, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty, Nomadland, and Chariots Of Fire. Most winners at TIFF tend to be nominated. Movies like The Big Chill, Shine, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Silver Linings Playbook, Precious, and The Intimidation Game were also nominated for Best Picture.
Runners up for the award also do well. Argo, Parasite, and Spotlight all came up short at TIFF only to win on Oscar night. This is all good news for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, both runners-up this year.
But failing to pick up the Best Picture win isn’t the only option. Jojo Rabbit won the audience award and earned Taika Waititi a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, and Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine took home Best Documentary Feature.
What does this tell us? Well, nothing, but it’s fun to think about. It also gives a sense of the types of movies that Oscar voters tend to favor. However, watching the Academy Awards will also tell you that the Academy prefers movies like Green Book over If Beale Street Could Talk. If they didn’t, Beale Street would have won.
As for the TIFF People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, well, that one’s “Weird.” Eric Appel’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a biopic spoof starring Daniel Radcliffe, won the Midnight Madness Award, with Ti West’s Pearl and Tim Story’s The Blackening the two runners-up.
Maybe this year will be the start of a new tradition and Weird will win Best Picture. We can only hope that the Academy does the right thing and dares to be stupid.