Click here for more from our Oscars 2018 coverage, including the Best & Worst of the ceremony, all the speeches, and the Snubs & Surprises.
Now that the quartz miners of the planet Christophsis have been sent in to dismantle the blingiest Oscar stage ever, now that they’re rolling up the Red Carpet where Taraji P Henson MAYBE shaded Ryan Seacrest (she’s subsequently denied it but tea sure looked piping hot to me), now that the glamor has dissipated, Spanx have been un-Spanked, tit-tape removed and all over L.A. the plink-plink-fizz of morning-after Alka Seltzers fills the air, the 90th Academy Awards can be revealed for what they really are: a numbers racket.
READ MORE: Oscars! The Best And Worst Of The 2018 Academy Awards
And with last night unfolding almost exactly by the numbers, along very predictable lines, and having already run down the Best and Worst of the ceremony and listed the night’s Snubs and Surprises, we figured the best thing to do with the evening now was to puree it down and feed it through our proprietary algorithm (*aka a couple of hungover writers looking at the internet). Amaze your friends! Stun your family! Win back your beloved ex! with these nuggets of trivia and “huh”-worthy factoids, delivered to you in numerical form.
READ MORE: ‘The Shape of Water’ Wins Best Picture & Director: The Full List Of Oscar Winners Here
4/13: Win/nomination ratio for Best Picture winner “The Shape of Water.”
22: Number of years since a film has won the Best Picture Oscar without also winning The Great Predictor — the SAG Ensemble award. “The Shape of Water” is the first to do so since “Braveheart,” which in fairness just starred Mel Gibson 10,000 times over, if we recall correctly.
1998: The last time, before “The Shape of Water” that any film won Best Picture without winning a single acting or writing category too. And it was “Titanic,” in which both the writing and acting are horrible (don’t @ me, @ the algorithm).
READ MORE: The Snubs & Surprises Of The 2018 Oscars
1.3333: Average number of Best Director Oscars now owned by each of the Three Amigos (1 for Guillermo del Toro, 1 for Alfonso Cuarón, 2 for Alejandro González Iñarritú).
1: Number of Best Director Oscars over the last 5 years that have gone to non-Mexicans (Damien Chazelle).
Seis: Total number of reasons Mexico has to celebrate after last night’s haul — 4 Oscars for “The Shape of Water,” 2 for “Coco.”
2 out of 9: Best Picture nominees that went home completely empty-handed (“The Post” and “Lady Bird“).
8: Number of nominations for a Netflix feature before the streaming giant won this year with “Icarus” (including its nod and the one for the excellent “Strong Island“).
8: Approx. seconds of uncomplicated joy we felt at seeing Cherokee actor Wes Studi (“The Last of the Mohicans“) again, before realizing he that he’d been drafted in to tee up a montage of war movies.
1: number of times “Stuka sirens” were mentioned in a thank you speech (Best Sound Editing -“Dunkirk“)
5: Number of women ever nominated for Best Director.
8: Number of years between Greta Gerwig‘s nomination and the last time a woman got a Best Director nomination.
0: The number of Oscars Kobe Bryant now has, minus the number of rape cases he settled out of court.
2: Number of nominations Chile have ever had in Best Foreign Language film, including this one for the winning “A Fantastic Woman.” The other was in 2013 for “No” by Pablo Larraín, producer of “A Fantastic Woman,” and director of last year’s triple nominee “Jackie.”
1: Number of trans people the Oscars have ever had as presenters, after Daniela Vega took the stage last night.
36: Number of seconds Mark Bridges‘ speech lasted while accepting Best Costume Design for “Phantom Thread” thus winning him the jet ski.
0: Percentage probability we would have given you that the night would end with an Oscar-winning “Phantom Thread” costumier pushed onstage atop a jet ski, a life preserver strapped over his tux lest he fall off and… drown?
7: Number of years by which new oldest-ever Oscar winner James Ivory (89), shatters the previous record held by Christopher Plummer, who is now a sprightly 88 but won (for “Beginners“) when he was 82.
8: Approx. number of jokes Jimmy Kimmel would have been short by last night if Christopher Plummer did not exist.
21: Number of years between Frances McDormand‘s two Best Actress wins.
78: Number of years since a person younger than Timothée Chalamet was nominated for Best Actor (Mickey Rooney for “Babes in Arms“)
0: Number of jizz-filled peaches in “Babes in Arms” (THAT WE KNOW OF).
30: Number of years between the death of Winston Churchill and the birth of Timothée Chalamet.
43: Give or take, the number of times better “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Gary Oldman’s only other Best Actor nomination, is than “Darkest Hour.”
3: The total number of people ever to have earned nominations for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film (as producer) for their debut film. (James L Brooks, “Terms of Endearment”; Warren Beatty, “Heaven Can Wait“; Jordan Peele, “Get Out.”) Orson Welles is kind of a fourth for “Citizen Kane,” though, despite being producer, he was not named in the film’s Best Picture nom.
0: Number of black screenwriters, prior to last night, ever to have won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. (Barry Jenkins won Best Adapted Screenplay for “Moonlight,” as did John Ridley for “12 Years a Slave“).
2018: First year a black woman was ever nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay — Dee Rees for “Mudbound.”
1973: First and last year a black woman was ever nominated for Best Original Screenplay — Suzanne de Passe, for “Lady Sings the Blues.”
At least 1: Number of sound Oscars the Academy organizers apparently expected “Baby Driver” to win by having the film’s stars Ansel Elgort and Eiza Gonzalez present. (Both went to “Dunkirk” instead).
2: Number of Best Picture Winners to have a woman credited as screenwriter since WWII. (“The Shape of Water” was co-written by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. The other one was “The Return of the King.”)
6: Number of consecutive Disney wins for Best Animated Feature.
3: Number of Red Carpet events to which Tiffany Haddish has worn her white Alexander McQueen dress –because she needed another reason to be everybody’s girlfriend.
13: Number of years in the continuing dry spell since Best Actress and Best Picture winners last aligned (Hilary Swank, “Million Dollar Baby” — actually the last Best Picture nominee before last night to even have a main female lead). It’s only been 6 since Best Actor and Best Picture lined up (Jean Dujardin and “The Artist“).
7: Number of Emmys won by Alison Janney before she picked up Best Supporting Actress on her first Oscar nomination.
3: Number of free holidays apparently included in the nominees’ gift bags (12 nights for 2 in Tanzania, 7 days in Hawaii and an unspecified amount of time on a Greek Island).
14: Number of Cinematography nominations Roger Deakins had before winning last night for “Blade Runner 2049“.
4: Lowest conceivable number of Cinematography Oscars Roger Deakins should have by now. (5 if you count the fact that “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” should have somehow won him 2).
818-XXX-XXXX: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s phone number which, when he got Lesley Manville to read it out aloud at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Tiffany Haddish to call, we like to believe led directly to Oscar 2018’s best bit — Haddish co-presenting with Maya Rudolph (who is PTA’s partner).
1: Number of Oscars won by Dorothy Malone, who died in January but was left out of the In Memoriam tribute reel (along with non-Oscar-winning Tobe Hooper). Malone won Best Supporting Actress in 1956 for “Written on the Wind,” a classic melodrama directed by Douglas Sirk.
2: Number of mentions of Douglas Sirk by Best Director and Best Picture winner Guillermo del Toro during his acceptance speeches.
3: Number of minutes, by our drunken timekeeping, that the 2018 Oscars ran longer than last year’s. But hey, if they used those three minutes to double check the goddamn envelopes, time well spent.
11: Factor by which the best-performing Best Picture nominee (“Dunkirk,” $188m) outperformed the worst-performing Best Picture nominee (“Call Me By Your Name,” $17m) at the box 0ffice.
1: Days of release it took “Black Panther” to substantially outgross the entire run of Best Picture winner “The Shape of Water” ($57m) at the box office.
Wow, what a smarmy-ass, petulant, arrogant and obnoxious list!
It’s really sad, especially knowing how talented writers like Jessica Kiang are, how quick and unforgiving with judgement of others they are here at The Playlist. Im sure you’ve never made a mistake in your life so by all means please cast the first stone Jess.
Tell me if I’m misinterpreting–what do you mean by stating MILLION DOLLAR BABY is the last Best Pic nominee before this year to “even have a main female lead”? Do you exclude Emma Stone in LA LA LAND, or the trio of leads in HIDDEN FIGURES, because they were co-leads?
Even so, Amy Adams was inarguably the main lead of ARRIVAL, and just the year before that we had Saoirse Ronan leading BROOKLYN and Brie Larson leading ROOM.
I think it’s a typo, and that she meant Best Pic winner. then it does check out.
This article is so mean-spirited that I thought Kevin wrote it!
Jeez! It’s almost like an excuse to vent. It’s a shame though, because there are interesting tidbits in it.
“[…] “Million Dollar Baby” — actually the last Best Picture nominee before last night to even have a main female lead”
Did you mean the last Best Picture winner?
Because The Help, Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Gravity, Philomena, Brooklyn, Room, Hidden Figures all had female leads.
This article reminded me how Million Dollar Baby aged badly. Still can’t believe Scorsese lost to Eastwood for Picture and Directing. The Aviator is a superior and more innovative film, as opposed to MDB which feels like a spoof of a Lifetime movie.