How ‘Anora’ Filmmaker Sean Baker Pulled Off an Oscar Feat That’s Happened Only a Few Times in History
Warren Beatty. Alan Menken. Chloe Zhao. Alfonso Cuarón.
The list of people who’ve received four nominations for the same film is extremely short, basically those names and maybe one or two more.
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On Thursday, Anora‘s Sean Baker added his name to it. The filmmaker pulled off that rare hat trick-plus-one — he landed noms for director, picture, original screenplay and editing.
“It’s surreal, a lot of those are my heroes,” Baker said when The Hollywood Reporter caught up with him Thursday about the feat. “Especially since I thought I was making a movie whose subject matter was out of fashion,” he said, chuckling slightly as he described his stripper-themed action dramedy.
Star Mikey Madison called Baker “one of a kind” when asked about him Thursday. Oscar-wise, that statement is not exactly true. But it’s not far off.
[Update: On February 10, Emilia Perez filmmaker Jacques Audiard also landed the fourpeat when he was named as a nominated producer on his best-picture-eligible film. The French auteur also got nods in directing, adapted screenplay and original song categories.]
Even people who’ve garnered multiple nominations in the same year don’t do it with the degree of difficulty that Baker has. Walt Disney would regularly land a handful of Oscar nominations at a given show, but for a mix of different films (often shorts). Francis Ford Coppola drew five noms in 1975 — but spread across two movies (The Conversation and The Godfather Part II). Bong Joon-ho went to the Oscar podium four times to accept awards for Parasite in 2020…but the fourth was for the international prize, which goes to the country.
And even the few who’ve done the nomination four-step like Beatty did — he pulled it off both with Heaven Can Wait in 1979 and Reds in 1982 — have had acting to rely on. Baker doesn’t act, so couldn’t get there that way.
Instead, like Zhao with Nomadland in 2021, he scored the diamond, ace, jack and heart with a boost from editing.
That last job is one few modern directors do. But Baker has long felt differently: He has edited all eight of his features.
“I consider editing to be just as important as writing and directing — it’s literally a third of the process,” he said. He paused and laughed. “I hope it doesn’t come across as me being a control freak. It’s just my process.” (No modern filmmaker is known to have landed five nominations for the same movie; let’s not get crazy.)
The hyphenate hat trick indicates not just Baker’s talent but a changed climate. With two coming in five years, the nominations feat reflects the Academy’s willingness to honor independent-minded auteurs, who tend to wear more hats on their movies than those working on bigger pictures.
Zhao and Cuarón (Roma) would each go on to win two Oscars in their respective years. Now Baker has a chance to surpass that mark when March 2 rolls around.
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