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.