..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

17 Days To Go
The Ten Rules
Of The Season

Perspective is hard to come by this time of year. Here are 10 general rules you might want to consider when you consider this wacky game of movie chess.

Don't Be The Frontrunner ... Unless You Can't Lose

Being the frontrunner from the start to the finish line is not the norm in modern Oscar history.  People love to knock the battery off that shoulder ... especially the media. 

Of course, the entire notion of The Frontrunner is an illusion (delusion?) of the media.  We need a story, so building a movie up to knock it down means more fun copy for us ... yay! 

Lord of the Rings: Return of The King, Titanic, American Beauty, Schindler's List, and Forrest Gump are the only start-to-finish frontrunners to survive in the last 20 years.

By the time the season is rolling along with enough steam for the media to start obsessing, at least half the movies that are going to be in play are already in play, launching at Cannes, Telluride, Venice, Toronto or New York.  In many cases, the films are already in theaters by mid-October. 

Atonement was this year's early anointed with Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd in the back pocket of expectation.   But the smarty-pants comedy, Juno, and the pitch black show pony, There Will Be Blood, pushed ahead of all three.  No Country For Old Men was the Cynthia Swartz Lovechild of the season.  Michael Clayton was the studio little engine that could ... and has.  And Atonement made it through ... but just by the hair of its chinny-chin-chin, without nods in more of the expected other major categories.

Meanwhile, Sweeney Todd did all it could to stay away from frontrunnerisms ... yet still fell to overeager expectations and a tough set of parameters to overcome in a season with two other films that had lots o' blood.

Charlie Wilson's War got slaughtered as soon as it peeked out of the foxhole with critics' screenings ... too much so.  The film has quietly done more than $60 million, outgrossing all but Juno amongst the BP nominees.   The film is no masterpiece, but it also had no chance to settle in and to be seriously considered past the hysteria of the moment.

This brings us to ...

Don't Start Late ... Unless You Have The Nuts

The Nuts.  A poker term meaning "the unbeatable hand."  In the Oscar universe, this speaks not only to the movie itself, but the talent connected to that movie.

It's real simple.  You can get into the game late if you have Steven Spielberg or current Clint Eastwood at the helm or if you have a highly anticipated commercial film that is also expected to be awards bait. 

There are two major issues at play here.  First, people have to see your film.  And while critics awards and nominations (including the Golden Globes) are mostly irrelevant on their face (see Critics rule below), they do narrow the field of movies for Academy voters who will nominated a couple of weeks after everyone else has had their say.  Even if "they" want to watch your film, if you aren't in play with the critics, there is a good chance that "they" will prioritize movies that are ... maybe not seeing your film until after its too late.

The second issue is Perceived Value vs Real Value.  The Real Value is how people will feel about a movie next year and onward.  The Perceived Value is how people think of the film as they mark their ballots in the month of December or the first week of January.

Some films really, really need to settle into people's psyches.  Some films are really, really going to fall out of favor if anyone thinks about them too much. 

A big part of being an Oscar nominee is your film coming of age at the right time.  You can cause a sensation, but lose the head of steam before the voting begins.  Conversely, you can hit your stride days or weeks too late to get where you are hoping to go. 

The genius of the Weinstein strategy of the 90s was to let the film get just far enough out of the gate to get nominated and then to whip it to the finish (especially at the box office) after nominations.  Chicago did this from the frontrunner slot ... and almost got overtaken by The Pianist.  Shakespeare in Love did it from the late slot ... and overcame the seven month frontrunner, Saving Private Ryan.

Some films are never going to gross enough at the box office to be seen as financial hits, and thus, are discounted by Academy voters.  Some films are going to gross too much.

If a movie like Juno, giving it all due credit, opened in the summer and grossed over $100 million, it would have no chance at anything more than a screenwriting and an acting nomination, at best.  It's just the nature of the beast.  A film like Little Miss Sunshine, grossing $50 million and change at the end of the summer and through the fall, remains an underdog.  But $100 million movie is a commercial hit ... and therefore is exponentially less likely to be Oscar nominated. 

This brings us to ...

Being The Underdog Requires Illusion

While Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen were playing the Underdog card, Dreamgirls was being slammed over and over for overhype ... even though the "underdogs" were spending and marketing as aggressively and really more aggressively than the big movie musical. 

Letters From Iwo Jima was, really, an underdog, in Japanese, opening late, with only one actor that was remotely recognizable to Academy voters.  But it was an Eastwood ... and a vastly superior Eastwood to the one that was an early frontrunner.  So it wasn't really an underdog at all. 

Babel was an underdog ... except that it had a large budget, starred international superstar  Brad Pitt, Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, and was touted as an Oscar movie for seven months.

And The Departed, the eventual winner, was perceived as an underdog ... even with so many major movie stars that no one could quite figure out who to nominate, over $130 million at the box office, and a lock for Best Director in Marty Scorsese. 

Of course, all the other titles were kinda underdogs in other ways.  Little Miss Sunshine was the Indie Spirit movie ... kiss of Oscar death (as it likely will be for Juno this year).   Letters From Iwo Jima was seen by six people, was (still) in Japanese, and did not play as gloriously the first time through on DVD as it did on a screen.  Babel was messy and for many, irritating, and won the Golden Globe, which has turned into its own kiss of death lately.  (This year is just like last year, with the Best Drama film being Oscar nom'ed but not a winner while Best Comedy/Musical went without a nom.  Of course, we can't blame the lack of a nomination on the Globes, as they announce winners after Oscar noms close.  But the coincidence is interesting, no?)  And The Queen was just, in the end, too small and too Brit to win.

Every Scheme Works ... Every Scheme Fails

Any of the strategies that have worked recently could have failed.  Any of the strategies that have failed lately could have worked.  A Best Picture nomination is like being in the NFL Pro Bowl.  About 50 men are so honored each year, from a field of 1600 pro players who were picked from an annual field of about 57,000 college (about 150 who make the league each year) who were picked from a field of 1,000,000 high school players.  It is, win or lose, a remarkable feat.

As films get closer to thinking they have a shot, perspective bends.  And it is true, you do need the right strategy in the face of the circumstances you face.  But no one knows exactly how to measure every element ... just as so many college stars drafted by the NFL don't make it and undrafted free agents often do ... just as a top athlete can see their career end in a second with an awkward hit that may not have even happened in an important moment in the game ... just as an unsung back-up like Tom Brady suddenly emerges as a top quarterback in his first year after laying behind a Pro Bowler who never won a Super Bowl.

It is the most basic thing that the public (and often, the media) forgets when looking at the idea of handicapping the Oscar race ... things change. 

No one, not even the people paid to manipulate the future of these films, controls how things go.  We all - insiders and out - tend to want to believe otherwise and want others to believe otherwise because we want to maintain the illusion that there is some logic to the parade.  And there is.  If you think it might rain and you bring an umbrella, you could be inconvenienced all day walking around with an umbrella or you might be the smart person who stays dry.  If a girder is falling towards you as you walk under a building, you should get out of the way.  And knowing the territory for your particular film is absolutely a key factor in how a season goes.  But you just don't know.  You don't know if the critics will line up.  You don't know whether you will be accused of overhype.  You don't know whether your box office will be surprisingly good ... or bad.

And then there are situations that are controlled, but that no one outside of the inner circle realizes are out of control ... like when your talent is available to promote the film and/or themselves.  How much different would a movie like Sweeney Todd look to awards voters if Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were out kissing babies instead of having them (well, at least one of them)?  If Keira Knightley had a few weeks to spend in L.A. in November, would the fate of Atonement have changed?  Could George Clooney being the most photographed and quoted star at the Nominees Luncheon lead to an upset of Daniel Day-Lewis? 

Speaking of Mr. Day-Lewis ...

Critics Only Matter When Unanimous

Critics can't really kill an Oscar movie ... or make an Oscar movie ... unless they are united in a clear, loud voice (even if that clear, loud voice is not a vast majority, just the right loudmouths).

This year, we saw what we haven't seen since 2002 ... critics muscling a film into the Best Picture race.

Atonement follows a long line, however of films like Master & Commander, Ray, Munich and BP winner Crash, that got in despite mixed reviews and very little support from the critics groups.

It is an honorable thing when the critics line up with guns a-blazin' and get a movie like There Would Be Blood that might otherwise be a "crafts only" nomineee deep into the race even as No Country For Old Men remains, when you look at the year, The Critics' Choice. 

Five More Rules The Next Time ...

The Charts

January 31, 2007
January 22, 2007
January 10, 2007
January 3, 2007
December 20, 2007
December 13, 2007
December 6, 2007
November 29, 2007
November 15, 2007
November 8, 2007
November 1, 2007
October 25, 2007
October 18, 2007
The Post-Toronto Chart - September 21, 2007
The Pre-Toronto Chart - September 6, 2007
The First Chart - June 21, 2007

- Email David Poland