Should the Sasquan business meeting extend the Hugo eligibility of the Australian movie Predestination? The movie’s only screenings in 2014 were at two film festivals. A motion has been made to grant the one-year extension available under the WSFS Constitution.
Today a maker of the motion asked members of a Facebook group for opinions. I discovered I have one.
I don’t favor the proposal because Predestination had a well-publicized national film release in the US the week before the 2015 Hugo nominations opened. Films are only in theaters for a few weeks at most, therefore I don’t consider Predestination to have been prejudiced.
Looking to the US release seems relevant to me because 80% of Sasquan members are from the United States. If the national US release had been later than the opening of nominations, I would be more sympathetic to the motion.
Predestination‘s real problem is the SP3/RP slates, and why should this movie suffer less than all the other deserving work that was shoved off the ballot?
B.2.2 Short Title: Hugo Eligibility Extension for Predestination
Moved, to extend for one year the eligibility of the movie Predestination, based on limited availability, as authorized by Section 3.4.3 of the WSFS Constitution.
Proposed by: Michael Kingsley, Mark Bernstein, Emily Stewart, and Aaron Vander Giessen
This motion extends eligibility for the Hugo Awards under Section 3.4.3; therefore, it requires a two-thirds vote.
Commentary: The Australian film Predestination has its global premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas on March 8, 2014. The film then was part of the Melbourne International Film Festival in July, 2014. There were theatrical screenings in a limited number of large cities in the United States in January 2015, and Predestination was not released on DVD until February 10, 2015. Due to its limited release in 2014 and early 2015, very few members of Sasquan had the opportunity to view the film before the deadline for nominating the 2015 Hugo Awards. Predestination is a film adaptation of the classic Robert Heinlein short story, “All You Zombies,” which appeared in the March 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the film has been receiving several favorable reviews. It currently scores 84% with film critics on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator website.
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Mike Glyer: I don’t favor the proposal because Predestination had a well-publicized national film release in the US the week before the 2015 Hugo nominations opened. Films are only in theaters for a few weeks at most, therefore I don’t consider Predestination to have been prejudiced.
But, you see, pretty much everyone who saw that well-publicized national film release in the U.S. in January, and in the U.K. in February, will have assumed that the movie had a 2015 release and that it would not have been eligible for nomination this year.
The only reason I knew it was eligible was because I took an international flight in December, and it was one of the video selections provided in the catalogue for my personal entertainment screen.
JJ: Then I guess you would vote for the motion.
Consider that with Predestination being based on a Heinlein story, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that one of the slate-makers might have gotten it a nomination based on that extact qualification of it having two public screenings at 2014 film festivals.
The main consideration for the one-year extension is whether the limited distribution in 2014 prejudiced the work’s chances for nomination. I would argue no, because its US release happened before the Hugo nominations opened. Which, incidentally, is when U.S. Hugo voters received their maximum exposure to advertising and media reviews for the film.
Predestination hit theaters here in Korea at the beginning of January, as well as VOD. I would have considered it a 2015 film if I hadn’t read this article.
Odd film — I didn’t much like it while I was watching it, but after it was over, it felt strangely satisfying.
I’ve usually not followed Hugo politics, but are these sort of limited extensions common? A broader modification to the rules — letting things that are released in the UK in (say) 2014 but in the US in 2015 (or vice versa) be eligible for two years — is something I could get behind (Reynolds and Banks, among others, suffered from this) but, from an outsider’s PoV, this seems rather selective.
Liz: Requests for extension aren’t rare. I don’t know what the literal count is. A considerable number have been granted over the years. Almost none of the works ever end up on the ballot. That hasn’t kept me from voting in favor of most of the requests because the works usually have been genuinely disadvantaged in some way.
A group made up of those who appreciated the film enough to nominate it as among the best films of the year, but not enough to ever google it, would probably have trouble filling a taxi.
Let alone have succeeded in beating the slates (Which as Mike points out in the original article should be the test for discrimination this year).
@ Mike: Ah, okay. It seems like it’d be easier to just pass a blanket rule allowing works like those to be eligible the following year, but I guess it works on a piecemeal basis?
I’d have named _Snowpiercer_ as the movie that got the most screwed this year, but it looks like – ironically – it wouldn’t have been eligible either.
…because the works usually have been genuinely disadvantaged in some way.
So we’re doing all of 2014 over again?
Mike Glyer: The main consideration for the one-year extension is whether the limited distribution in 2014 prejudiced the work’s chances for nomination. I would argue no, because its US release happened before the Hugo nominations opened. Which, incidentally, is when U.S. Hugo voters received their maximum exposure to advertising and media reviews for the film.
Would the fact that the U.S. release happened in 2015 not prejudice the work’s chances for nomination because everyone thought it came out in 2015?
The Hugo nomination eligibility terms aren’t for “everything that came out since the last nomination period up through this nomination period”. They’re for everything that came out in 2014. If the vast majority of people think it came out in 2015, because in the U.S., it did come out in January 2015 — surely that hugely disadvantages it.
Mike: I’ll have to disagree with you on this. As far as I’m concerned, PREDESTINATION was released in the US in January 2015, That’s when fans could buy tickets and see it. (They couldn’t in Washington, because it appeared on one screen in the distant suburbs.) That it was previewed at two film festivals with restricted attendance is irrelevant. Fans should have the right to select this film for the Hugo ballot next year.
I am one of the persons who proposed the motion, and thank you all for some great comments.
The text for Section 3.4.3 is as follows:
In the event that a potential Hugo Award nominee receives extremely limited distribution in the year of its first publication or presentation, its eligibility may be extended for an additional year by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the intervening Business Meeting of WSFS.
Source: http://www.wsfs.org/bm/const-2014.html
Based on the U.S. premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March, 2014, I interpret that it’s year of first presentation is 2014, not 2015. I’ve upgraded my Sasquan membership from Supporting to Attending, and intend to be at the WSFS Business Meeting to speak on this motion. I look forward to hearing comments from both sides.
Liz: A broader modification to the rules — letting things that are released in the UK in (say) 2014 but in the US in 2015 (or vice versa) be eligible for two years
That’s already in the rules (Section 3.4 of the WSFS Constitution). A work that hadn’t been released in the U.S. in its first year becomes eligible again for the year it is released in the U.S., assuming it wasn’t a finalist the first time around. That extension used to have to be granted again every year, but after Worldcons granting the extension became a matter of course, it was made permanent.
This work had been released in the U.S. in 2014, so that doesn’t apply.
Mike:
A logical but unfounded inference. The slate-makers didn’t nominate the second volume of the Heinlein biography by Bill Patterson, a monumental effort in the related work category, apparently simply forgetting about it.
I’m not sure the Puppies having a slate is a good argument against voting for an unrelated extension which otherwise seems to have some merit. A lot of things missed out that shouldn’t have, but most of those don’t share the circumstance of effectively not being released until 2015.