Erlich partly credits the growing gap between Best Director and Best Picture to the Academy’s implementation of a new voting system to select Best Picture. In 2009, the Academy switched from a popular vote to a complicated, weighted system of voting for Best Picture. The inclusion of more nominees for Best Picture than for any other category led to a growing discrepancy between Best Picture and Best Director — and the birth of a philosophical impasse about the distinction between the two awards. In an Indiewire article suggesting that the Academy eliminate the award for Best Director entirely, Erlich asks, “Can a bad movie be well-directed? Can a good movie be poorly directed? More to the point, can a supposed masterpiece — a cinematic experience deemed worthy of the year’s greatest honour — really be independent of the person most centrally responsible for its realisation?”