Another King’s Speech-supporting Guru has thrown in the towel and gone over to the Social Network side. I’m speaking of In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, who’s been predicting for weeks that Tom Hooper‘s historical relationship drama would take the Best Picture Oscar. What changed his mind? Guild nominations, I’m supposing. Not just the DGA, WGA and PGA noms, but those from the ADG (Art Director’s Guild) and particularly the CAS (Cinema Audio Society), which recently nominated TSN but not The King’s Speech.
With The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Appelo and EW‘s Anthony Breznican abstaining, the six King’s Speech GoG holdouts are HitFix‘s Gregg Ellwood, the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell, EW‘s Dave Karger, L.A. Times guy Mark Olsen, MCN’s David Poland and Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson.
I’ll say again that the final game-over indicators will be when and if Karger and Thompson cast their lots with TSN. Poland, the Lee J. Cobb of King’s Speech supporters, will never go over. He has too much invested in alternate scenarios (i.e., True Grit winning Best Picture, “The Social Network still isn’t going to win Best Picture from the Academy unless they are starting a media branch,” etc.). He has to be the Great Sage who knew the secret workings of the community all along and stuck to his guns despite what many thought would happen, or he has to go down to the sea in ships.
It’s conceivable, of course, that The King’s Speech could win the Best Picture Oscar and in so doing become this year’s Shakespeare in Love. If this happens a moderate impact-grenade sensation (similar to the response to Crash‘s 2006 win) will be felt throughout Los Angeles and New York, and in certain pockets of America there will be a great hue and cry. (People in other pockets, I realize, won’t react at all, or will say “why didn’t they give it to Black Swan?” or whatever.) Another result of a King’s Speech win is that people like myself and Sasha Stone and other Social Network pallies will have to fold our tents and run for the hills and hide out like Butch Cassidy‘s Hole-in-the-Wall gang until things blow over. Because the King’s Speech contingent will be roasting our asses from dawn to sundown for days on end.