When critics’ awards season started, “A Real Pain’s” Kieran Culkin seemed poised for a total sweep in Best Supporting Actor. Yet as “A Real Pain” kept getting wins and nominations for Culkin and for Jesse Eisenberg’s script, it was barely getting any nominations for Best Picture, aside from its Golden Globe nomination and NBR and AFI top ten mentions. It has caught up a little in the last two weeks but is still lagging behind the most nominated films of the season and is still squarely on the bubble for Best Picture.
The easy assumption is that as long as Culkin keeps winning and stays on track for the Oscar, there is no way “A Real Pain” will miss for Best Picture. Yet if it does miss, given the history of the expanded era, it might turn Culkin from a heavy favorite to an underdog in an instant.
In fifteen years of the Best Picture field expansion, male actors who win Oscars almost always win for Best Picture nominated movies. In fact, only three men have ever won Oscars in this era for a film that missed, including Jeff Bridges for “Crazy Heart” in 2009, Christopher Plummer for “Beginners” in 2011 and Brendan Fraser for “The Whale” in 2022. However, as it stands, Culkin does not have any of the advantages those three men had.
Bridges won in the very first year of the expanded era before any trends could form. More importantly, he won at a time when he was well overdue for an Oscar, to the point where “Crazy Heart” didn’t really need to get into Best Picture to clinch it for him. Nonetheless, it still got a surprise Best Supporting Actress nomination for Maggie Gyllenhaal and a win for Best Original Song, so it gave him more than enough help without needing Best Picture anyway.
Plummer was another matter in a way since “Beginners” did not get any other nominations in 2011. Yet just like Bridges, Plummer was long overdue to win an Oscar, and he ran away with it, especially since Albert Brooks was pretty much the only other Best Supporting Actor candidate to win critic prizes for “Drive” that year and still got snubbed at the Oscars. To this date, Plummer is the only male actor to win an Oscar in this era as his movie’s only nominee, which Culkin won’t threaten if only because “A Real Pain” should be locked for a Best Original Screenplay nomination too.
Culkin certainly can’t use the “overdue” angle like Bridges and Plummer, both because of his age and because he already just swept an awards season for “Succession’s” final season at the Emmys. He also doesn’t have the advantages Fraser used to break this trend just two years ago for “The Whale,” since Fraser was not only a Hollywood comeback story but a transformative one as well, burying himself under Oscar-winning prosthetics. Since Culkin has no such prosthetics in “A Real Pain” and hasn’t gone away for years now, this example doesn’t remotely apply to him.
Since Culkin doesn’t have Bridges, Plummer, or Fraser’s mitigating circumstances and narratives, what would it mean for his Oscar chances if “A Real Pain” misses Best Picture? An obvious answer would be that it shouldn’t matter since Culkin has been winning critics groups that have snubbed “A Real Pain” over and over again and has been almost universally recognized so far as the supporting actor of the year – at least among those who think he is in supporting and isn’t a co-lead with Eisenberg.
But for whatever reason, missing Best Picture is held against male actors much more than against actresses in Oscar season. While only three total male actors have won Oscars without a Best Picture film in fifteen years, three Best Supporting Actress winners alone – Alicia Vikander for “The Danish Girl,” Allison Janney for “I, Tonya,” and Regina King for “If Beale Street Could Talk” – have won without one. Even more glaringly, five Best Actress winners in this time frame – Meryl Streep for “The Iron Lady,” Cate Blanchett for “Blue Jasmine,” Julianne Moore for “Still Alice,” Renee Zellweger for “Judy,” and Jessica Chastain for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” – have won for Best Picture snubbed films too, with Angelina Jolie likely aiming to make it six for “Maria” this year.
There are many ways to interpret why actresses are more likely to win Oscars for snubbed films than actors are – whether they are held to a too-low standard, whether actors are held to a too-high standard, or anything in between. Either way, even if this double standard isn’t used on a conscious level, it is evident anyway. And if “A Real Pain” doesn’t make Best Picture, this trend will be held under an intense microscope this year.
Since films that make the cut at NBR, AFI, the Golden Globes, and Critics Choice almost always get Best Picture nominations, “A Real Pain” surely wouldn’t have been at risk if it didn’t miss Critics Choice, regardless of its struggles with regional groups. But since it did miss that one mention out of four while fellow Searchlight bubble film “A Complete Unknown” didn’t – another film whose hopes for an acting Oscar might hinge on slipping into Best Picture – there is still too much wiggle room for comfort.
Leaving all of that aside, if “A Real Pain” is snubbed in Best Picture and suddenly puts Culkin in danger, it would help to figure out who, if anyone, would reap the benefits. Bridges was helped by not having much competition once he overtook George Clooney for “Up in the Air,” while Plummer swept a shaky field without Brooks. On the other hand, Fraser had to seriously fight off Austin Butler for “Elvis” and Colin Farrell for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which further speaks to how much voters wanted to honor him if not his movie.
In Best Supporting Actor this year, the pecking order behind Culkin is still sorting itself out. It didn’t look like it would be necessary once Culkin won most of the critics group at the start of the season. But interestingly, Culkin hasn’t been sweeping these groups in the last few weeks at the same pace he had been at the start of the month, whether that’s because of “A Real Pain” losing steam elsewhere or not.
As of Christmas Day, Guy Pearce has the most precursor wins besides Culkin for “The Brutalist” with six wins. In contrast, “Sing Sing’s” Clarence Maclin has four, “Anora’s” Yura Borisov has three, and other potential nominees Denzel Washington, Edward Norton, and Jeremy Strong only have one. At first glance, it would seem a no-brainer that Pearce would be next in line if Culkin slips, given his own kind of overdue narrative as a veteran first-time nominee and that “The Brutalist” could well be in line to win Best Picture. However, since “The Brutalist” is also favored for wins in Best Director and Best Actor, voters might not feel the need to give it a Best Supporting Actor win as well – unless the film is a total sweeper.
Maybe there is a scenario where Borisov shocks and clinches a Best Picture package for “Anora” if Mikey Madison can’t seal the deal in Best Actress. Maybe “Sing Sing” has a rally like “CODA” did three years ago, if only to give Maclin a collective victory for the movie. Or maybe even if “Gladiator II” misses Best Picture, Washington is immune to such results like always and wins yet another Oscar for a film that isn’t nominated. Or maybe still, those who have argued Culkin belongs in Best Actor instead of Best Supporting Actor shockingly get their way – in which case he all but certainly won’t win in Lead and “A Real Pain” then all but certainly misses Best Picture as well, once it’s best case for a nomination through a Culkin Oscar win is gone.
Admittedly, all of those scenarios seem much more unlikely than the most obvious outcomes. The millisecond “A Real Pain” is nominated for Best Picture; if it is nominated, it will almost surely end the Best Supporting Actor race then and there and officially engrave the Oscar for Culkin. If he misses, it will probably leave an opening for Pearce more than anyone else, depending on where “The Brutalist” stands by nomination morning.
Or maybe even if “A Real Pain” misses Best Picture, it won’t change a thing, and Culkin will still win the Oscar even without a career narrative, a transformation narrative, or any other narrative but his performance to fall back on. Perhaps that would seem like a refreshing change of pace outcome, at least to those who aren’t arguing that it would still be category fraud. Regardless, it would be the kind of outcome that has never happened before in this era – which is why it is still very hard to believe right now that it could really happen.
Have you seen “A Real Pain” yet? If so, what did you think of it? Do you think it will be nominated for Best Picture? Do you think Kieran Culkin can still win Best Supporting Actor without the film receiving a Best Picture nomination? Please let us know in the comments below or on Next Best Picture’s X account, and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
