I’m not 100% convinced that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences knows how films are made. Yes, I am thinking of how Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie have not been nominated in their main categories. (Gerwig was shut out of Best Director and Robbie out of Best Actress, but the “Barbie” film they created – Gerwig co-wrote it and Robbie created the project — are nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.)

Oddly, that bit about Best Adapted versus Best Original Screenplay gets questioned a lot and it’s one of the few really clear rules. If it’s based on any existing property, it’s adapted. So admittedly it’s unusual that the source material for “Barbie” is a doll instead of a book or play, but there’s no question that it’s in the correct screenwriting category. Even if it is easily the most original script I’ve read in such a long time.

I’ve worked on awards and I know there’s no such thing as a lock, a given, not when countless people are voting. But if something is a candidate for Best Picture there is something wrong when the director isn’t in contention for Best Director. I’m not sure that it’s the same for best actor or actress, but I do think that Margot Robbie was extraordinary as Barbie.

Where I am sure is over the writing categories. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach deserve their Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. They won’t win: they’re up against Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan, for which I can only presume he’s made the dialogue audible this time.

My longer-standing problem and where I question the Academy’s concept of filmmaking, is in the history of the Oscars. To date, there have been 95 ceremonies and so 95 Best Picture winners. (It is confusing: there were two winners in the very first Oscars, covering 1927-1928, in slightly differently-named awards. Somehow it still adds up to 95 even though this year’s Oscars are the 96th.)

Assuming I haven’t cocked up the spreadsheet, out of 95 Best Picture winners, only 16 also won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and another 16 won for Best Adapted. That means only 32.68% of what the Academy says are the greatest movies ever made, also won any award for their writers.

That’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saying that it doesn’t matter what the story is, doesn’t matter what any character says, really doesn’t matter about the characters at all, a film can still be the best without any of those.

I can just about see how Best Production Design or Best Makeup and Hairstyling could be done without the script, except no, I can’t: as talented as any film department is, they have to start with the script. The script says it’s set in a desert, the script says there are three women, two men, and a kid, and describes them.

It’s not all there on the page, I am not in any way trying to reduce anyone else’s contribution to a film, but none of it is there at all without the script. None of it.

So the Oscars thinking the script doesn’t matter two thirds of the time, yes, it makes me question how they think films are made.

But then at least the Oscars have always recognised that films are written. The British Academy of Film and Television Awards didn’t notice writers for the first 19 years of the BAFTAs. I’m not joking.