Note: I’ll be posting my memories of the Muriel Awards every day leading up to this year’s Muriels unveiling. I’ve labeled each post based on both the year of the films being awarded and the year in which the awards were actually presented. In this case, the awards were for 2006 films but were presented in 2007.
A lot of you have probably heard about how Steve Carlson and I hatched the idea for the Muriels back in December 2006 while we were watching Out 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image. It really was that simple – one of us turned to the other (during an intermission, naturally) and said something like, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to start up a movie poll for us and some of our friends?” Once we agreed that it would, in fact, be cool, we went about sketching out how we wanted to make it happen. I came up with some rules and voting categories, he rounded up most of the voters with the exception of a few personal friends I brought to the party, and we kind of rushed a ballot out to the voters we’d enlisted by the end of the year.
One thing we didn’t have yet was a name. When I first sent out the ballots, I actually included a space in which the voters might suggest a name under which we could operate – after all, an (INSERT NAME HERE) Movie Award just wouldn’t have much mystique, y’know? However, when the ballots started coming in, there were no suggestions that really sounded right. I somewhat hastily began brainstorming for something that if nothing else might serve as a temporary name until the right name came along, and I settled on the name of my guinea pig, Muriel. I ran this by the other voters and was surprised by how positive the reaction was, so it stuck.
Once the ballot deadline arrived that first year, I started tabulating the ballots from our 13 voters, which seems like nothing now but felt pretty daunting at the time. After I tallied all the votes, it turned out that we had a tie for Best Film – specificially, Children of Men and United 93. I was a little uneasy about kicking off the first year by announcing a tie for our top award, so I ended up sending out an e-mail to the voters asking them all to choose one or the other, and the one with more votes would be our winner for the year. However, as the runoff votes started to roll in, I received a mail from someone else asking whether I’d received his ballot. I hadn’t, and asked him to re-send it, and when I received it and added in his votes, his #1 placement of The Departed in the Best Film category caused it to overtake both the previous “winners” and claim the award for itself.
I appreciate everyone who has ever participated in the Muriels, but I have a special place in my heart for those people who’ve been with the group ever since the beginning. To commemorate our tenth year, I wanted to try to involve as many original voters as I could in one way or another. Now, some people just aren’t keeping up with new movies like they once did, or they’re busy in some other way, and I can respect that. But there were a handful of people I was unable to locate, and that’s a shame. However, I’d like to offer my thanks to all of the 2006-2007 Muriels voters who were able to participate in this year’s awards:
Jason Alley
Kent Beeson
Andrew Bemis
Steven Carlson
Dennis Cozzalio
James Frazier
Mark Pfeiffer
Thanks, guys!
Coming tomorrow: the Muriels get snazzy in our second year, and we get some old-media attention – along with a touch of controversy.
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