History

At a private Academy Awards party in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1999, partygoers filled out the usual ballots beforehand to predict who they thought would win. Eventually the guests began to discuss not who they thought would win, but whom they thought should win (consensus was that Cate Blanchett should have won Best Actress for Elizabeth) – and, later, who should have been nominated that was overlooked.

The discussion sparked an idea that we should have our own movie awards. It was never too early to start planning for the next Oscar party.

It took us a little time to get our act together. But at an Oscar party in the spring of 2001, it was time to vote.

The first year, we felt like we had a lot of time to make up. We decided to make every award category a “Lifetime Achievement,” open to every film of any year, and to every actor and actress, living or dead. After that, we went to the more traditional route of honoring films from the previous calendar year – except for a few Lifetime Achievement Halls of Fame that we created for the top honors.

Over the years, award categories have come and gone. Some have split (like Best Comedy/Musical into two separate genre awards, and Best Young Performer into separate male and female awards). Some were always intended as a special one-off. You can see more about the evolution of the awards categories under Awards by Year and, eventually, Awards by Category.