Remember Adam Resurrected, the Paul Schrader-directed, Jeff Goldblum-starring film that Paul saw at Telluride which made him admit to wanting “to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius”? I got an invite for a press screening for the film a couple of hours ago, which I thought was weird, because the last I heard, the film didn’t have distribution. Now Mike Jones at The Circuit has posted an item that solves the mystery: it looks like Bleiberg Entertainment, the company that financed the film, have decided that rather than wait for a distributor to pick it up and miss this Oscar season, they’ll fund a qualifying run for the film in New York and LA themselves.
Jones says producer Ehud Bleiberg was “unhappy with the offers he received after the pic’s Toronto fest screening,” Bleiberg himself implies that if any of those offers were promising in other respects, they didn’t include a timely release or support for an Oscar campaign. “Why would we screen the film at Telluride and Toronto and release it a year later,” he asks rhetorically. Considering that Goldblum’s performance is apparently so good that it propells heterosexual Midwesterners to contemplate the actor as an object of physical (and eco-friendly!) love, that question seems eminently reasonable.
Oh, I’m so naive to be shocked by this:
Movie studios traditionally spend up to $25 million a year per nominated film in an attempt to secure Hollywood’s highest honor. This time around, Fox Searchlight (”Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Last King of Scotland”) and Paramount (”Babel,” “Dreamgirls”) are leading the pack. With marketing budgets commonly running around $40 million to $50 million for high-profile films, that extra $25 million smarts. But many studios feel it’s worth it.
The above is from an article in yesterday’s Daily News, called “The business of Oscar.” It seemed like a fitting, albeit depressing, follow up to Monday’s post about the push to get Half Nelson star Ryan Gosling a best actor nomination. No wonder our “who-we-think-should-win” and “who-we-think-will-win” lists rarely line up.
Anne Thompson of the Hoolywood Reporter’s Risky Business column wrote a great piece about how an Indy production costing less than $1 million was able to position itself for a prominent Oscar nomination. It was no accident that Half Nelson star Ryan Gosling is a Best Actor nominee, Thompson says in her column “How ThinkFilm goosed Gosling’s Oscar drive.”
ThinkFilm’s distribution and marketing president Mark Urman “made the decision to pursue a Best Actor Oscar nomination” when ThinkFilm acquired Half Nelson more than a year ago at Sundance 2006. The strategies were put into play. Among them were the film’s August opening (squeezing in ahead of the pack), sending out thousands of DVDs to the Academy and SAG nominating committee, and taking out ads in the LA Times that focused on Gosling as a brilliant new talent. Urman and Gosling also had luck on their side, because the best actor competition was lighter than usual. And, as Thompson quotes Urman in her column, from time to time the Academy likes to take part in the “discovery” of new talent:
Urman, a veteran Oscar marketer who’d played a role in winning campaigns for Lionsgate’s “Gods and Monsters” and “Affliction,” knew that acting nominations for breakthrough newcomer performances are doable. “We all generalize that the Academy is one giant brain,” he says. “But there are trends. There is a steady affection for the discovery, like Julie Christie in ‘Darling.’ The Academy has always enjoyed making an investment in a career.”
Apparently so. Urman’s strategies worked. I’m happy for Gosling and Half Nelson, that an Indy film and emerging actor can play with the big boys. But even while it gives me more faith in the Academy, it simultaneously gives me less. Gosling made it to the short list not as much for his stunning acting talent as for ThinkFilm’s marketing talent and the money they were willing to throw into promotions. It’s still all a big game, which is made even more apparent when you see all the two-columned prediction lists out there–one column for who various critics think will win the top honors, and another column for who they think deserves to win.
Although she must be burnt out from Sundance, Anne Thompson put together a nice Oscar nomination analysis on her Risky Business blog.
Here are my main two thoughts about the nominations and her post:
- It’s fascinating that a film like Dreamgirls can get eight nominations, including best actor and best actress, but not get nominated for best picture (or director or writer, for that matter). Each year at this time, when I’m puzzling over the system, I tend to be a bit surprised that it’s not more of a science. Then I remember that falling in love with a person isn’t a science–why should our love for a movie be something calculated? (But, on the other hand, when you compare two best picture nominations–Babel and Letters from Iwo Jima, with seven and four nominations respectively–you have to admit that Babel seems a more likely and deserving pick. Sure makes it seem kind of mathematical.)
- Secondly, when I think of this ideal I have–this inexplicable but genuine falling in love with a film–I quickly snap back to this reality: The Oscars, while not a science, are, in many ways, a game. (Yes, I’m well aware love can be a game, too, but the best love isn’t.) In her post today, Anne Thompson references the Clint Eastwood/Warners “Oscar strategy,” and the “trick with foreign films.” Ah, yes. There are strategies and tricks involved. I can’t help it, though. I want to be a purist. I want the film that wins Best Picture to win because, as Thompson says, it is “beloved.”
