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Unraveling the Myths Behind SUPERMAN's Oscar "Snub"

Lots of folks were working overtime this morning, trying to reason out why Davis Guggenheim's WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' didn't get the Oscar nomination that so many (including us in our final predictions) forecasted. 

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website blames it the politics - arguing Guggenheim is learning "the price a political apostate pays in Hollywood for straying off  the liberal plantation".  Says John Nolte

"But how could America’s teachers unions not have been thrilled with the news that Guggenheim's damning indictment of the devastation they have brought down upon America’s public school system and millions upon millions of children was snubbed by the Academy this morning?"

The conservative National Review agrees that the omission was "extremely disappointing" (it also opines for the lack of THE LOTTERY as well), but stops short of calling it a liberal blacklisting.

The Washington Post (writing from a hometown in which some of 'SUPERMAN' takes place) said it was because the film "was not good/accurate enough to be selected" and levels a number of truthfulness claims at the film.  The AP's Jake Coyle also speculates along that line, saying it went missing "perhaps because some experts deemed it an inaccurate exaggeration of charter schools".

Dave Karger at Entertainment Weekly says it's because the Doc Branch is so "quirky".

And finally, in a conversation with the Washington City Paper's Benjamin Freed, Oscar blogger Scott Feinberg goes to the old saw that Doc Branch voters are "older, retired and perhaps less in touch", even though he acknowledges that that hardly explains the nomination for EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (or the creatively made GASLAND).

So there's the theories - liberal bias, accuracy and that quirky, old, retired documentary branch.

Wrong on all three counts.  Here's why WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' didn't get nominated today:

The Most Honored Documentary of 2010 is EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

After a full year in which Laura Poitras' THE OATH and Jeff Malmberg's MARWENCOL dominated our Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll with a full slate of festival jury prizes and year-end documentary awards, the onslaught of 2010's various film critics honors have handed the mantle of most honored documentary of the year to Banksy's EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP.

EXIT now has a full 24 mentions on the Honor Roll - a combination of year-end documentary award nominations and critics prizes - which is 8 ahead of the 2nd place film, MARWENCOL and 10 ahead of Poitras' THE OATH and fellow Oscar shortlisted doc, Charles Ferguson's INSIDE JOB.

Three other Oscar shortlisted features - Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's RESTREPO, Amir Bar-Lev's THE TILLMAN STORY and Davis Guggenheim's WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' have 12 mentions each. 

After being absent from the list for most of the year (the film played out of competition at Sundance and Berlin), EXIT sprinted to the top of the Honor Roll chart on the basis of a somewhat surprising critical consensus - surprising not on the merits but because critics have tended to award issue-based docs over more entertaining fare.  Even last year when ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL was making a strong year-end showing among some critics, in the end the awards tended to favor the eventual Oscar winner, Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE.