This isn't quite the same thing but why is it always a big deal when a film received a nomination for Best Picture and the DIRECTOR is nominated but if the film is nominated for Best Picture but not Best sCREENplay no one is outraged.

I realize that film has always been considered a more of a director's medium than a writers and that's not always the wrong idea but without the writer, the director doesn't have anything to work with.

it is only after the writer's strike that I have come to realize that when it comes to the medium of film the screenwriter is far too often shortchanged. We can all named five or six of the greatest current directors working, but unless they also happen to be directors themselves (as Gerwig is) I can't think of many of the best screenwriters working today. The only screenwriters I know who worked independently of directing at all were William Goldman and Paddy Chayefsky and both had careers in other mediums before they went into film.

I had a long post on facebook where people were outraged Gerwig was ignored for Best Director. I wrote a piece that night that the rest of the world will ignore Justine Triet's accomplisment as it is nearly as hard for a foreign film to get nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. I could only think of six prior examples and I wasn't included Ingmar Bergman at the time.

And its getting ridiculous how obsessed people are. I just got a progressive fundraiser email telling me that it's A POLITICAL OUTRAGE that Gerwig was snubbed for Best Director. So I guess they didn't notice Triet was nominated, they want to email on outrage, or they liked how conservatives were pissed at Barbie's existence and wanted to own them even without seeing the movie? (Which is odd, I thought the left hated corporations ;) )

For the record, I am more pissed Alexander Payne was ignored by the Oscars than Gerwig. I've loved his work for twenty years and he never quite gets his due. In the mean time Barbie fans you need to see the glass half-full. Fifteen years ago, the Oscars would haven't nominated it for best picture at all. I can assure the day of the nominations, there were a bunch of old white men saying: "What's the world coming too? They nominated a movie about a DOLL for Best Picture. Why can't they honor the films they used too? You know, like Song of the South