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