“Director” Taylor Swift “Snubbed” by Oscars

Don’t cry because it’s over — smile because, for the past 13 months, Taylor Swift has been angling for an Oscar nomination for her “All Too Well: The Short Film” music video, and as of today, the mega-watt pop star and aspiring director has been left off the shortlist for the “Live Action Short Film category.” Phew! Can you imagine what a nightmarish few months we’d have ahead of us if she had successfully tricked the Academy voters into buying into this crap? Talk about a Christmas miracle.

Swift put in the work to convince us that her entry was an earnest attempt at legitimate filmmaking, even releasing a Greta Gerwig-esque behind-the-scenes video and strong-arming her way into a vapid conversation with Martin McDonagh for Variety’s “Directors on Directors” series. She even announced that she’s going to direct a whole feature film! Nice try, but looks like none of it convinced the powers that be (a bunch of film nerds) that a 10-minute music video with Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink is worthy of a nomination. Swift will have to work harder and smarter to gain the trust of her movie industry peers, or at the very least, make them forget that she was ever in Cats.

Perhaps this is a sign that the “Consider… Melissa Leo” campaigns of days past no longer fly with the new Academy populace, or maybe it’s a sign that a music video isn’t a short film, no matter how hard you try to convince people otherwise. Lucky enough for Swift and the Academy’s future viewership prospects, her song “Carolina” — featured in Where The Crawdads Sing — is still eligible, which means Swift might still have a chance to attend the Academy Awards and lose “Best Original Song” to the RRR guys.