.3 Weeks: 3.06.03
.4 Weeks: 2.27.03
.5 Weeks: 2.20.03
.6 Weeks: 2.13.03
.The Nominations
.Pre-Nominations
.7 Weeks: 2.06.03
.8 Weeks: 1.30.03
.9 Weeks: 1.23.03
.10 Weeks: 1.16.03
.11 Weeks: 1.9.03
.12 Weeks: 1.2.03
.13 Weeks:12.26.02
.14 Weeks: Part 2
.14 Weeks: Part I
.15 Weeks:12.12.02

..News
..Nominations
..Oscar Race Charts

..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

..Scoreboard
..Charts

10 Days Away
March 13, 2003

I find I need to spend a lot of time in the shower these days…

It was so boring for a while there that I was worried about having anything much to write about.  It was all pretty much according to plan until David Hare beat Charlie Kaufman, Renee Zellweger beat Nicole Kidman and Roman Polanski’s 25 year old crime was waved directly under everybody’s nose.

This last week, not a day has passed by without at least one phone call from someone looking to turn up the heat on somebody.  It’s something like attempting to dope a horse as the race is moving into the final stretch, hoofs and dirt aflyin’.  Not everyone fights the same way.  Sometimes, it’s just chatty gossip.  Sometimes it pretends to just be chatty gossip. 

The truth is, even though I hold some players in far higher esteem than others, everyone who is in this game is playing, at least on some level.  Some are brutally honest.  Some pass along information that actually will work against their interests.  Some of them just plain lie.  And not a single one of them wants to be singled out in public.

It should be no surprise to any of you that Miramax gave up on me a long time ago.  Which is kind of a shame.  I am not, in reality, out to get Miramax.  Unfortunately, in a game that they seem to want to play as an all-or-nothing proposition, anything less than complete submission is unacceptable.  I actually like most of the people at Miramax publicity.  And it’s not my nature to hold a grudge or to care much about the froo-froo.  I hope to be supporting Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain next year… because I have faith in Minghella.  On the other hand, I expected to be the biggest supporter of Gangs of New York and Martin Scorsese this year.  I still wish I were.  But it’s not personal for me.  It is about the movies. Always the movies.

That said, the majority of mud slinging stories this year, as with most years, have come out of the Miramax camp.  Why is that?  Is it jealousy from others, dreaming of having quality movies and money to spend promoting them?  Or is Miramax uniquely evil?

As with most things in life, the answer is somewhere in between these two poles.  But as I pondered the differences between the different companies, one thing did jump out at me.  The only real complaints that come up against other studios are basic Academy process issues.  This one sent out DVDs with too much packaging or that one has had too many parties. 

But the complaints about Miramax always seem to be about actions taken against other contenders, more so than going overboard in promoting their own product.  Yes, an accusation by another studio against Miramax is still an effort to hurt Miramax.  But the worst we’ve seen about Chicago, for instance, is that they cut around the poor dancing by some of the actors. (And any moron who knows anything about cutting can see that they did just that… and in fact, it doesn’t matter.  Editing is part of filmmaking, always.)  Meanwhile, photos of Nicole Kidman touching Ewan McGregor’s knee are turning up, loaded with innuendo. 

In today’s Variety, there is a story using the Homeland Defense color system in discussing the issue, suggesting that the campaigning has perhaps hit Orange Alert level.  But then the punchline… more softball comments on possible ticket limitations next year.  Yawn.  More to the point, the only actual bad act brought up in the article is possibly inappropriate parties.  The big nap.  Why would anyone bother to pay attention to the rules?  More disturbing to me is that I got the phone call that was probably identical to the one that led to this story by Timothy Gray and Bill Higgins.  I didn’t bite.  And, more importantly, Variety did not bother to report, even without naming specific studios, any of the transgressions that they have obviously heard about.  So no one is calling anyone to task.

Last year, Universal execs refused to name any specific names behind the push against A Beautiful Mind, even though they claimed to know exactly who the source on the various stories was.  A year later, some of those same people openly “remember” that Miramax was the source.

This year, Focus Features is just throwing up its hands, not even wanting to go as far as to suggest that there is anything other than coincidence that has brought Samantha Geimer and her 25-year-old transcript into the public eye all in the same month.  Part of that is because Roman Polanski is guilty of having raped this woman when she was a 13-year-old child and there is no win to be found in any direction.  The only thing worse than having people reading the Grand Jury transcript – which would normally be understood to be unreliable as a document of fact by its very nature, but which is beyond challenge because it is the only contemporaneous testimony of a victimized child – would be anyone thinking that Focus has anything to do with trying to exonerate Polanski in any way for his crime. 

This, of course, makes The Pianist the ultimate pincushion.  The film is so good that it has managed to get nominated in pretty much every Top 8 category it could really legitimately get (no lead actress, no major performances by supporting actors, it’s not an original screenplay), even without campaigning by the director, very little availability by the writer and a lead actor who is wonderful, but not already a major movie star.  And, for the last month or so, it has been considered the one serious candidate to upend the Chicago juggernaut.  Prick, prick, prick. 

I get the impression that if Miramax were proven to be behind the “revelations” about Polanski’s crime, Focus would rather not know.  Dirt is one thing, but smashed up cow patties is yet another.  And no one at Focus seems to want to have anything to do with it.  They love their movie – as they did and do Far from Heaven – and they just want to movie forward.

The not-so-funny funny thing about the Geimer appearance and transcript discovery and the Kidman photos is that all of these things turned up about presumed front-runners, increasing the unlikelihood that it is just a coincidence.  If Adrien Brody was considered to be a legitimate threat to Nicholson and Daniel Day Lewis, do you think we’d be reading about some awful thing he might have done as a younger man? 

Miramax has been accused of trying to hire away marketing talent in the middle of exclusive campaigns, using next year’s campaigning dollars as the ultimate bait.  Harvey Weinstein is regularly accused of personally making phone calls to Academy members, pushing his favorites.  While Chicago is doing quite well, the television advertising for Gangs of New York has long been significantly more costly than the rentals from the film on any given day. Robert Wise’s letter of support for Martin Scorsese, which one can only presume was passed on for publication by the L.A. Times or Variety, was re-printed by Miramax in those outlets as paid advertising. 

Perhaps the most disturbing element of Miramax’s campaigning took place before the Oscar nominations, with their manipulation of the National Board of Review and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, keepers of the Golden Globes.  Miramax’s skill at turning the earlier awards into a defacto primary system that is even less well policed than the under-policed Oscar game makes Miramax into finger-pointing fodder for month after month.

But frankly, it’s boring to kick old Miramax month after month.  At least DreamWorks used to bring a similar level of rage to the party.  Scott Rudin has but up a fight, but his team of talent is too laid back and high-minded to ball up their fists.   Meryl Streep has simply skipped the campaign on both her films.  Julianne Moore is like The Madonna… even if she is unwilling to get naked in public like The Other Madonna.  And Nicole has worked it harder than the others… but still maintains her decorum.  Which is not to say that all of the Chicago people are slutting it up like, say, Mr. Scorsese.  But they bring a different kind of enthusiasm to the table.

I can promise you that Stephen Daldry would not be shooting a TV spot for The Hours parroting the same exact words that David Hare had used in the otherwise identical spots.   Nor would you see The Hours claiming to be more important because it is some sort of tonic for depressed women.  The Hours people have not lied about how this one or that one came on board.  Not only was Phillip Glass unreserved in explaining being the third or fourth composer on the film, but he went out of his way to point out that Harvey Weinstein had been very kind to him when they met at various awards ceremonies. 

The old spin on one of the Chicago actors was that she wasn’t supposed to be able to sing or dance that well because it was “in character.”  Now, Rob Marshall knew she would be perfect five minutes after meeting her.  (If you believe that, I  would try to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, but Marty is recompositing it for his Career Achievement Award DVD.)

Meanwhile, New Line didn’t get their About Schmidt nomination and understands that Rings is all about next year’s Oscars, while Focus… well… we’ve been through that.

Often, people seem to excuse a lot of the Oscar period behavior by saying that transgressors are working within the system and who can blame them?  Others rationalize that some studios just make better movies than others.  (No one seems to comment on whether those studios even release their best films with any enthusiasm at all.)  And my favorite is that it is just like Old Hollywood.  This is the way the old-fashioned moguls would play it.  And maybe they would. 

To me, it’s like the old joke about the woman who was willing to have sex for $1 million, but insulted by the suggestion of doing it for $1, everything in Hollywood seems to have a price... all we are doing now is negotiating the details.  If you will do anything to be a big Oscar winner, eventually that Oscar is not going to mean as much. 

I think we are at that point.  Every year, people say it.  But this time, I think it’s true. 

And what can the Academy do?  Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs seems, to mix metaphors, like cutting off their nose to spite their face.  Miramax has spent tens of millions of dollars to promote Chicago as THE Oscar movie and a part of every one of those dollars is essentially advertising for a television special that generates a vast majority of the MPAA’s annual operating income.  Miramax is building the Academy Awards.  Miramax is killing the Academy Awards.  What to do?  The answer, as it specifically articulated in the Variety story, is “We’ll take the rewards now and deal with the problems later.”

Me?  I’ve become a little numb. 

You know what my favorite moments are at the movies?  When I get that tingle running up and down my spine, when my subconscious knows that something magical is happening and my body reacts without my intellect getting in the way.  I used to get that a lot when I watched the Oscars.  So, I’m going to clean off the mud and hope for a tingle.  I’m just hoping that the tingler isn’t broken.

Email David Poland