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

5 Weeks To Go
by David Poland

To every season, spin, spin, spin…

Spin #1 – Harvey is thrilled to have 15 nominations, even though Cold Mountain did not get a Best Picture nod. This was a brilliant play, actually. Harvey opened the door wide it seems, there was not a call that he refused to take. Beyond the big spin, he also got off some additional doozies, best highlighted in Rebecca Traister’s straight Q&A story in Salon.com.

For instance, the glorious shock of City of God’s 4 nominations becomes Harvey’s master plan. Had Miramax released the film last year for consideration in all categories, including foreign language, the critics could have actually gotten behind the film and really given it and Fernando Meirelles their due. City of God was in Miramax’s Oscar plans, but it was the lowest profile film in the Oscar group.

Suddenly, Harvey wants to push The Best Of Youth, the six hour Italian movie that the company floated at Telluride and Toronto and got decent reaction for. But there still isn’t a set release date and the issue of how to deal with a six-hour presentation is still unresolved. The City of God of 2004 for Miramax could be Hero, Zhang Yimou’s wondrous art/grind house flick that makes Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon look like a walk in the park. The Best of Youth would make a wonderful TV mini-series in the spirit of Angels in America.

The Lord of The Rings lie continues, which is all the more reason to love Peter Jackson for being so gracious that he mentioned Harvey at all in his Golden Globes speech. There is no debating the truth. Harvey Weinstein wanted to fire Peter Jackson off of The Lord Of The Rings, which was then a two part, four hour movie budgeted at less than $80 million. If it were up to Harvey, we would have the two part Chris Columbus version of Lord of the Rings. Bob Shaye said, “Do a trilogy.” Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne bought Miramax out of its development and pre-production costs. Mark Ordesky and Barrie Osborne shepherded Jackson, Walsh & Co. to the promised land, not only making the machinery work for the visionary, but slowly taking the greenlight for three films for $145 million total to about that figure for each of the three films. In other words, the Weinsteins never had any intention and never asked Disney to get behind Peter Jackson for enough money to deliver even one of the three films that have become one of the greatest cash cows in the history of film.

Harvey also participates in the second absurd spin of this Oscar season…

Spin #2 – The End Of The Screener Ban Changed Something

This argument is, simply put, a lie. There was no screener ban for the Academy when the screener lawsuit was filed. Period. End of story.

Did the screeners that went to the Academy, whose distribution resulted from the uproar after the absolute ban was announced, have any effect? Here, it is harder to say what the bottom line is. Charlize Theron, Alec Baldwin and Keisha Castle-Hughes are the only major category nominees to come from true independents, with an additional three tech nods to Girl With A Pearl Earring. That’s six total true independent nods of a possible 84 for a 7 percent success rate. And every one of the nods was one with a loud and constant drumbeat for months and months.

On the flip side, the majors took 51 of the possible 84 nods for a 61 percent clip. (I’m not including Finding Nemo’s Best Animated Film nomination, since it is part of a “special” nominations process.)

That leaves the “dependents” garnering 32 percent of the nominations- 26 nods. 15 of those 26 nods are for Miramax, almost half of which (7) are for a movie that cost in excess of $80 million… hardly a film in the spirit of indies. 9 of the nominations are for acting, embracing front-runner Bill Murray, previous Oscar winners Holly Hunter and Benecio del Toro, previous Oscar nominees Samantha Morton, Renee Zellweger and Jude Law, the when-is-it-going-to-happen duo of Naomi Watts and Patricia Clarkson, leaving only Djimon Hounsou as a real newcomer among this group. Six of the nominations are from the writer’s branch, which has always been willing to push the envelope, giving 60% of their nods to these films.

Add Cold Mountain to the majors and the “big movies” own 69 percent of all of the nominations that aren’t for documentary, shorts, animation or foreign language.

This leads us to…

Spin #3 – The “Independent” Nominations Were Backlash… Or Even Surprising.

Three of the five Best Picture nominees are major studio films that cost in excess of $80 million. Four of the five nominees had P&A in excess of $30 million. Major high-profile movie stars led four of the five Best Picture nominees, the exception being Lord of the Rings.

Let’s take an arbitrary look at the past… let’s say 20 years ago. No screeners. No backlash. No Miramax. Tender Mercies, The Dresser, Educating Rita, Reuben, Rueben, The Return of Martin Guerre, Cross Creek, Fanny & Alexander and Testament were the “small movies” of that season. These films scored 26 nominations out of 81 available slots or 32 percent… 3 percent more than this year

It’s all very well and good to play the game of crying “Indie,” but for every Keisha Castle-Hughes who got nominated, there was a Hope Davis and a Scarlett Johansson who did not. Fernando Meirelles got in, but Jim Sheridan did not. Barbarian Invasions and Dirty Pretty Things got in for screenplay, but 21 Grams did not.

One could easily make the argument that Lions Gate and Newmarket would have done better had the screener ban stayed in full force with MPAA signatories and they been the only major films sent to Oscar voters.

None of the major critics groups voted based on the new release of screeners, even though the Los Angeles Film Critics and Chicago’s decided to have awards based on the success of the screener lawsuit. The support for American Splendor was well in line with Top Ten lists from around the country.

And have you noticed, no one is crowing about The Last Samurai’s four nominations? Or Pirates of The Caribbean’s five?

ONE LAST POINT. I agree with Harvey that “Miramax backlash” was not at the core of Cold Mountain’s failure to get a Best Picture nomination. But the idea that the film failed because it was released too late and therefore was not sampled is false.

Momentum is a matter of perception. Big Fish was released late, but one could argue that Oscar voters had enough chances to see the film, including via screeners. While Miramax once revved up films over what was the pre-nomination January period, Columbia was playing it pretty straight, but Big Fish paid much the same price as Cold Mountain. $50 million for Big Fish to date is the kind of momentum that Oscar voters like. But that track record didn’t exist two weeks ago when the balloting closed and it was no more than an inkling in Jeff Blake’s eye a month ago when a significant percentage of the Oscar ballots were returned. One cannot say for sure that Big Fish would have received more nominations under other circumstances, but I am guessing that they would… at least, Albert Finney would have had a real shot.

A big part of what killed off The Last Samurai was the perception that the film, which has now grossed more than $105 million – or $20 million more than Master & Commander – was not doing well enough at the box office. On the flip side, Seabiscuit is the second highest grossing film in the Best Picture race this year. Perception.

As I wrote on Tuesday morning, Miramax is the best at changing perception in the midst of an Oscar race. But they just didn’t have the time to do it this year. No one did. If Cold Mountain was a better liked movie, it would have gotten its nomination. But it wasn’t. And Miramax did not have time to brainwash 1000 voters.

Instead of trying to politicize this year’s awards by trying to push the light of these nominations through the prism of our own causes, we should simply be celebrating the power of the movies over the marketing.

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The Rankings: January 27, 2003

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20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 14
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 13
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 12
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 11
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 10
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 09
20 Weeks To Oscar: Critics Week Special
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 07
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 06
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 05
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 04
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 03
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 02
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week 01
21 Weeks To Oscar
23 Weeks To Oscar
29 Weeks to Oscar

- by David Poland