The Academy vs the People: 2025 Oscar predictions and your personal favorites (with Gabriel Frieberg)

I've never been so unprepared for an Oscar season. This year's race feels like someone threw all the conventional wisdom into a blender, hit puree, and walked away laughing.

So in this episode, we are joined by The Schmear Hunter’s Gabriel Frieberg – whose Berlinale stories alone are worth the price of admission – to walk us through his film and TV journey, and quickly descend into our annual tradition of pretending we have any idea what'll happen on Hollywood's favorite night of self-congratulation: The Academy Awards.

Gabriel turned out to be the perfect antidote to my cynicism, bringing actual insights from the festival circuit while Ben chugged tea and ranted about why "Furiosa" deserved more recognition. We dove into the genuine surprise of Ariana Grande's performance in "Wicked" (who knew?) and debated whether Demi Moore will finally get her flowers in the Best Actress category.

The real fun came when we compared our predictions against what YOU, the TFS community, voted for in our Substack ballot. Your "will win" picks are surprisingly industry-savvy, but your "want to win" choices? Pure chaos in the best possible way.

Sean Baker vs. Brady Corbet for Best Director created our most heated exchange (sorry for the sound spike), and none of us could agree whether "Conclave" deserves its Best Picture nomination. But there's unanimous support for "Anora" in both our panel and community picks—which probably means something else will win because the Oscars love nothing more than making us all look foolish.

Make sure you listen on our take on the Bond franchise's uncertain future and stay for Gabriel’s passionate defense of the films that got completely overlooked this awards season. As always, I promise to eat my words publicly when my predictions turn out wrong.

Catch up on Gabriel’s work at:

schmearhunter.com

Also subscribe to his podcast, The SchmearCast, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 🎧

And follow him on Instagram, TikTok & Letterboxd.

instagram.com/schmearhunter_

tiktok.com/@schmearhunter

letterboxd.com/SchmearHunter

Loved what you heard? Let's keep the conversation going at the That Final Scene chat on Substack:

https://substack.com/chat/3141096

Follow That Final Scene at:

Substack: thatfinalscene.com

Instagram: @thatfinalscene