..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

13 WEEKS TO GO
I Wanna Season With A Slow Hand...

How could we make the Oscar season a better place?

Before you start getting visions of a top ten list in your head, I'll make it simple. There is just one major adjustment that would help. More time.

Well… less time really.

There is simply no reason for Thanksgiving to be the key holiday of the award season. Not long ago, Christmas was the key. And that is the way it should be.

There is simply no reason for critics, associations, guilds and spirits to be determining the best of the year by December 15. None.

Well, one… influence…or the appearance of influence.

As much as I'd like to pin it on the wacky foreigners of the HFPA, I can't. The fact is that the NY Film Critics Circle hasn't held off on announcing their awards until January since 1976. Outside of the "screener debate" year of 2003, LA Film Critics Association hasn't even announced their winners any later than December 21 in their history. Only the National Society of Film Critics waits until the start of the new year… and have, with the exception of two years in the 70s, in every one of its 38 years in existence.

I've never heard a good reason to have critics announce their awards in the second week of December, except that it helps them book talent for their actual awards galas in the January. LAFCA usually has their party sometime around the Globes to take advantage of talent coming to town. NYFCC is usually a week or so earlier. Likewise Broadcast Film Critics Association has moved its dates earlier in each year of its decade of award giving.

There are now three months of competition leading to the Big Show. There is the Nominations Race from NBR to NYFCC, generally the first few days of December to the 15th of December. Then there is the January Winners Corridor, consisting of the two televised shows, Golden Globes & Critics Choice, plus the NSFC. And third, but certainly not that interesting, is the Post-Nod Push (post-Oscar nominations), mostly about the televised SAG awards, the other guilds and BAFTA.

BAFTA has taken a slot after Oscar nominations are announced and before final Oscar balloting closes. This is clever, as it allows this group to appear to have an influence on the Oscar voting in a different way than everyone else. This has also been the strategy of the Screen Actors Guild awards, which are a year older than BFCA. But oddly, in apparent deference to the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl taking the February 5 date, SAG will have its even two days before the Oscar nominations are announced.

Oh, yeah… and there are The Oscars.

As much has everyone wants to claim influence, it is really only the nomination period that acts like a primary. You don't have to win anything before the Oscars arrive in order to do well at the big show. But if you aren't nominated by some group or multiple groups, you cease to exist as a film in Oscar play. There are occasional category exceptions, like Fernando Meirelles getting an Oscar nod for directing City of God after being mistaken for dead or Almodovar scoring both a screenplay win and a directing nomination for Talk To Her.

Of course, the horror show starts earlier than ever thanks to a group that literally has months between announcing nominations and giving out awards, Film INDependent's Independent Spirit Awards. This year they put the comedy of National Board of Review to shame, announcing their ISA noms more than a week before NBR. No organization in recorded awards history (that I can find) will have a longer gestation period between nods and awards than this one… 95 days.

What the fuck is that all about?

And the really pathetic part is that there is no group that is less qualified to be giving out awards and to be taken seriously. The group virtually guarantees a pure market-based popularity contest since the only restriction to entry is: "Membership in Film Independent begins at $95 per year and those who join before January 15, 2006 will be eligible to vote to determine the winners for the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards."

Thing is, a lot of very smart, very sincere, very serious people are involved with FIND… people I respect… some people I count as friends. And this group is all about the most honorable, most challenging part of the film world. And yet, they are the most hyper about being first. And in many ways, they have become the embodiment of a film group turning their back on their founding principles for more awards season attention. They do put much of the revenue from the Indie Spirits to good use.

Of course, this rush into the December nominations season means no less than six weeks of hard campaigning to get to those nominations. And that means starting in mid-October.

But now there is another method of attack, developed in the last year of Miramax with Finding Neverland, the Early & Often Campaign. Basically what happened last year - with due respect to the real quality and popularity of the film, which are absolutely required to stay in the game - was that Miramax started showing the film in March, pushed is steadily, but not heavily, all summer, and then were in line to front all the Sept/Oct newspaper and magazine coverage at the start of the awards season. The film dipped a bit in November, but it was there in the end when others fell away.

This year, Focus campaigned Constant Gardener around release with a bit of Oscar tone, Disney started its Shopgirl push going into Toronto and New Line used Toronto to kick off A History of Violence. Focus also showed Brokeback Mountain at Telluride and Toronto before pretty much mothballing it for two months until rolling it out again in recent weeks… and it has been very effective. That is a variation on Clint Eastwood's Mystic River push. The film premiered quietly at Cannes and then Eastwood refused to show the film until near the US premiere at the New York Film Festival.

Sadly, I don't see much of answer out there. You can't force groups to wait longer before they start nominating. You can't avoid groups trying to find position in January. And though the Olympics have pushed back Oscar and only BAFTA is daring to send their TV show right into the face of the international event (the ratings are terrible anyway), the month or so between nominations and awards are pretty standard for the Oscars and even with screenings and endless screenings, nominees still need that time to try to be seen and admired by as many voters as possible.

But all things considered, I would give up a month of ad revenue happily if everyone would just wait to nominate until we got back to work in the New Year. Take a deep breath, Hollywood. It's just a lovely, life-changing award, not rocket science.

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2004 Oscar Columns

- Email David Poland