Where Oscar Best Picture Nominees Are Liked Most -
By BROOKS BARNES and JOSH KATZ FEB. 24, 2017
Nine films are nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday.
The poetic “Moonlight,” about a black man from a poor Miami neighborhood coming to terms with his homosexuality,
had a fairly thin following in the South; its heaviest support came from New York and San Francisco.
The last three best picture winners (“Spotlight,” “Birdman,” “12 Years a Slave”) went unseen by most Americans, at least during their theatrical runs.
With the country so politically divided, we also wanted to know whether audience support
for nominees fell along similar urban-rural or coastal-heartland fissures.
The more commercially minded “Fences,” featuring a predominantly black cast
but without a gay theme, drew much of its power from Mississippi and the Carolinas.
