The Not-So-Calm Before the Storm

A few days ago, right after the BAFTAs, several websites declared the Oscar race over. I hadn’t felt nervous about The Hurt Locker’s Best Picture chances until that moment. You don’t declare a race over before ballots have been turned in. You just don’t. With one week to go and strategists and publicists who are really good at their jobs are angry. They are angry because they feel that the campaign for The Hurt Locker has been too aggressive, especially in the final days. They figure, they played by the rules – did whatever they could without directly violating the Academy’s regulations but Chartier, the producer of The Hurt Locker crossed a line when he email blasted voting members of the Academy and asked them to vote for the struggling indie and not the “500 million dollar movie.”

A mistake. On so many levels. He should have checked with me — I would have set him straight. In terms of Oscar strategy, you don’t make a play to Academy voters and mention the money.¬† Yes, it’s amazing that The Hurt Locker has gotten this far ON MERIT ALONE and without a major studio behind it, and a film that was made for practically nothing.

But directly approaching Academy members not only violates the rules, but it is about as off-putting as walking up to a girl in a bar and saying, “you wanna fuck?” You have to play games and seduce them. The direct approach rarely works.

But they were doing everything right up until now. They were “courteous and receptive to courtesy, they had established trust with the embarrassing truth about Miggs. And now this ham-handed segueway into your questionnaire – it won’t do.”

They had Rachel Maddow rooting for their team – they had this blogger all but campaigning for them on a daily basis. They had everyone fighting for them. So why the need to then beg for votes? Not a wise decision. His biggest mistake, as has been pointed out, was that he dissed Avatar. My own thoughts, after the BAFTA win, was that voters were going to actually start feeling badly for Avatar and that it might win after all. This gives it the leverage it needed. Hopefully the Fox peeps are jumping for joy right now that their fairly bungled campaign has become strong by default.

As a sidenote, should Avatar win, the Golden Globes will once again rise as the ultimate predictor of the Oscars and I won’t tolerate any criticism of them ever again.

But I feel that it’s important to you readers to explain why I didn’t “jump on this story.” This is a point-of-view website. I report on what I think will change the race in one direction or the other. I read a lot of negative reviews of films, a lot of damaging stories — this stuff is out there. Two websites that I know of spend a lot of time reporting stuff that they think makes a difference and/or is news — Hollywood Elsewhere and The Envelope. I tell you this because if this kind of news is what you want to read this is not the site for you. I very deliberately pick and choose what stories I think are worthy of coverage.

This, because the Oscar race is about campaigning. It is not about the films nor the performers.¬† The stronger the film is, the less a story like this can damage them — ie, Slumdog Millionaire couldn’t have been derailed if it came out that Danny Boyle was a male prostitute on the weekends. The weaker the film’s position is — the easier it is to go for the throat. After ten years at this game, I have become wise to the tricks. A greener reporter on the scene is not yet wise and thus, they report everything as news – gossip, kill pieces, etc.

For me, the more established the film is – as in, it has a big studio behind it and lots of money to spend on campaign – the less likely I am to protect it heading into the season. The less money they have, the less power in the industry they have, the more likely I am to protect them.

There are a lot of stories that, to me, qualify as gossip and not as news. This story started out as Pete Hammond posting an email a producer sent to him. This producer has not been identified. I was wrong, though, to assume motives on Pete Hammond’s part: he has no motives. True, he’s not a Hurt Locker fan, but he is not “in the tank” for any movie – he prefers Basterds and Up in the Air to The Hurt Locker. This may be one of the reasons why he doesn’t also feel protective of the film – he is also a real journalist. I don’t really consider myself a real journalist – I am an Oscar blogger, for better or worse.

So, I was wrong to accuse Pete, and I was wrong in assuming that Harvey Weinstein or Jim Cameron were behind this. The producer’s identity is important to me and I will long wonder why they decided to float Pete this info. As I wrote in a comment below, if they were so outraged by it, they certainly would have gone straight to the Academy instead of using it as a tool for maximum exposure/publicity and influence. By god, influence. That is what it is all about, folks. It is not about anything else.

I was nervous when various bloggers declared the race over after the BAFTAs. That is like declaring the Titanic unsinkable. I figured something like this would pop up but I didn’t think it would be this bad.

This all takes me back to the Gangs of New York campaign and the infamous Robert Wise Oscar ad Miramax took out. A full page ad that endorsed Martin Scorsese for Best Director by the famous Robert Wise. Of course, there was no chance the film was going to win Best Picture.  It was not a film Academy members even liked, once they saw it. But it caused a lot of trouble back then nonetheless and Gangs of New York went home empty handed.

When I first read about the email from the producer I figured it was an email blast sent to a lot of people. Ryan and a few others tried to make light of it – “it’s not that bad.” And the truth is, it isn’t THAT BAD. It’s just that it violates Academy rules.

It violates Academy rules.

There are clearly some rules we all like better than others I guess. Directly selling to the Academy is one of them.

So, take from this what you will. In the end, I think, it tips things in Avatar’s direction.

One thing I have always hated about the Oscar race is that voters vote for whom they “like.” Very rarely do things or people win on merit, which is why campaigning is necessary in the first place. The campaigning itself is begging for votes. Appearing on NPR or PBS is trolling for votes. Attending the Santa Barbara film festivals is trying to appeal directly to Academy members for votes. FYC ads are appealing to Academy members for votes. Parties, fundraisers, endorsements, gala events – all trying to ask the Academy for their vote. They just don’t do it in a direct manner because they aren’t allowed to.

I think many people will feel like the ballots are already in so it won’t matter. But my feeling is that this will be like a spark on a weed during the Santa Anas and everyone will be shocked, shocked to hear about this and it will be the reason to vote for another film. A shame. A damned shame.