At a RECENT party in the Los Angeles hills, a movie star, perhaps Matt Damon, stood on a small stage before his peers doing his best impression of King George VI.
He stuttered. He mumbled in faux-regal tones. He uttered uproarious profanities. Colin Firth stood in the wings, chuckling. Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul and executive producer of The King’s Speech, at his side, applauded. The crowd, all Academy members, cooed in approval. Backs were slapped, flesh was pressed – votes were won.
Forget the sound stage, the cutting room, the writer’s keyboard and the director’s brain. This is where the Oscars are won and lost: at the private parties and luncheons, by the ads in Variety and the whispers between voters, in the feverish weeks and days leading up to tonight.
Tonight the 83rd annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards (the Oscars to you and me) are announced. Publicists talk of the period leading up to the Oscars in terms of “campaigns”. The military and political overtones might sound hyperbolic, but in the Hollywood calendar this is when things get bloody. This is when Machiavelli comes to Tinseltown. It’s high concept yet as real and gritty as the kitchen sink.
This year producer Bob Last is in the thick of it. Just a few days ago, on the other side of LA from the private King’s Speech party, he sat at a nominees’ luncheon at the Beverly Hilton, a long way from the small studio in Edinburgh where he created The Illusionist, the magical reimagining of the capital nominated for Best Animated Feature.
Nearby sat representatives from Toy Story 3. Last says his film has no chance against the Pixar giant. Woody, Buzz Lightyear et al are the hot favourites. But that does not stop him from “getting out there and hustling”. That’s what these nominees’ luncheons are all about. Last is taciturn on the exact details of his “hustling”, but he has been relentlessly promoting the film across the US. Like the other nominees, he has had to act like a politician, canvassing the small constituency that is the academy. There might be only 6404 members but their votes are worth millions.
“Just being nominated puts you in a select group,” he says. And he’s right. Newsweek estimates that a nomination alone is worth $6.6 million in box office takings and an extra month in cinemas.
The hunger to win has inspired several unusual approaches this year. Banksy, the mysterious British street artist, is nominated in the Best Documentary category for Exit Through The Gift Shop. With a minimal budget for a traditional campaign, he has quite literally taken to the streets. Several of his works have appeared on LA street corners, including a fire-bug Charlie Brown. For one, he stencilled over a billboard advertising a nightclub with an image of a cocktail-swilling Mickey Mouse grasping a woman’s breast – directly opposite the offices of the Directors Guild of America.
The Fighter actress Melissa Leo’s approach has been rather less well received. Frustrated by the lack of campaigning her studio was doing for her, the 50-year-old Best Supporting Actress nominee personally booked a series of ads in Variety – Hollywood’s in-house journal – asking the Academy to vote for her. Ironically for an industry built on rabid self-promotion, the move seems to have backfired. Leo’s odds for winning have lengthened since the ads were taken
If any lesson is to be learned, it is that Hollywood would rather keep the grimy reality of Oscar lobbying private. Leo’s sin was to suggest that it is not the best film or actor that wins, but the one with the best campaign
“That is the insidious nature of Oscar campaigning – it has to be done in a way, like all good advertising, that leaks through without you realising,” said Seamus McGarvey, an Edinburgh-based cinematographer, Academy member and former Oscar nominee. “You’d hope the Academy might not be easily swayed by the campaigning. But these campaigns are very alluring and unsubtle. Everyone talks to one another. The noise around a film, whether actual or created, does have an effect on perception. Running a good, military-style campaign has a huge effect on the outcome.”
Three years ago McGarvey was nominated for his work on Atonement, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Despite eventually losing out to Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood, McGarvey came face to face with the treadmill that Last, Firth and the countless other nominees are currently pounding. He described it as “a total dog and pony show”.
“There’s a lot of parties leading up to it, like the nominees’ luncheon, where you shake hands and get your photos taken. If you were inclined, you could spend two months leading up to the awards doing this.”
The key period is from October to February, the cinematic lull between blockbusters when studios release their prestige films. The January confluence of the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America awards, and the Baftas gives films the all-important momentum for the Oscars. From the new year until Oscar night studios buy ads, host panel discussions, send their stars to film festivals “or basically show up at theopening of the envelope”, according to Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety, home to most of the campaigning ads.
He called the negative reaction to Leo’s ad “hypocritical and sexist ... I just don’t understand why a woman advocating for herself has got on people’s radar. But it did hit a nerve”.
As an Oscar veteran, Gaydos vividly sketches out the machinations behind Colin Firth being hot favourite to win Best Actor tonight.
‘Let me tell you what the Oscar season means for Colin Firth,” he said. “From October to February he has shaken every hand on the planet. He has kissed babies. He has been hugged. He has had his picture taken with dignitaries, met press people, strangers and fans. He has talked about The King’s Speech so much he will probably never want to think about it again. He’s worked really hard behind the scenes. There is something called Oscar campaigning, and most of it has to do with old-fashioned shoe leather. It’s showing up, making appearances and flying the flag.”
Harvey Weinstein is credited with applying a hitherto unseen political nous and ruthlessness to his quest for Oscars in the 1990s when he had an entire division of the studio devoted solely to campaigning.
His most spectacular sleight of hand came in 1999 when he convinced voters that the modest Brit flick Shakespeare in Love was better than the searing, brutal and uber-American Saving Private Ryan.
Scottish producer and head of Ecosse Films, Douglas Rae, was privy to Weinstein’s methods in 1997 when his début, Mrs Brown, was nominated for two Oscars, including Dame Judi Dench for Best Actress. Weinstein took Rae and director John Madden to LA for two months of intensive campaigning.
“It was a wonderful whirlwind experience,” said Rae. “Harvey is a master of the Oscars. He works the system brilliantly. He is an old-fashioned mogul. When he is passionate about a movie, my God, does he get behind it. So suddenly we were mixing with Jack Nicholson and Robin Williams.
“We went to all those last-minute parties, including one held by Allan Scott, the Scottish writer who wrote the screenplay for Don’t Look Now. All the Brits in Hollywood were there to support us. I’ve never been a politician, but I guess its kind of like trying to get elected. You press the flesh, you hold screenings, you hold parties. You circulate with everyone who is a member.”
According to Rae, Weinstein has a party piece he regularly wheels out to seduce the academy. He holds a party a few days before the Oscars in honour of the film he is backing that year and enlists a famous friend to act out the key part. When he was championing Mrs Brown, Robin Williams played Judi Dench as Queen Victoria.
“It was great fun,” said Rae. “Harvey makes sure all the key people are invited. It might be seen as a relaxed, entertaining evening, but the purpose is obviously to curry favour.”
This year The Weinstein Company is behind The King’s Speech. Its main rival for Best Picture is The Social Network. Terry Press is that film’s chief lobbyist – and the man who ran the campaign for Saving Private Ryan in 1999. The old feud is played out again.
Weinstein stresses his movie’s “timelessness”, its ability to float above the zeitgeist, a thinly veiled swipe at the much-touted relevance of The Social Network. He plays the little guy card too. For its size and vaingloriousness, Hollywood still wants to believe it is the champion of the underdog. Weinstein makes it feel that voting for his film reinforces that myth: The Social Network is a glamorous studio picture; his cost $14m and stars Brits with bad teeth.
Whispering campaigns are not unknown, usually involving anti-Semitism. As every good Hollywood publicist, and Mel Gibson, knows, such a thing is the death knell in Hollywood.
This year, an article by Christopher Hitchens criticised The King’s Speech for omitting George VI’s support for appeasing Hitler. This has mutated online into accusations of supporting the Holocaust. All of which is now academic. Tuxedos are being pressed, designer dresses unpacked, the red carpet ironed. The time for campaigning is over. The votes are in. Now it is time to see who truly ran the best race.
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