Wow Lyle, it seems as though you should at least acknowledge my contribution as that of a Varro type Muse.
While I may be only “striking at air”, what exquisite sound it has elicited!
Your rebuttal is excellent, and I admire your passion and certainly your tenacity.
With all due respect, however, the evidence you cite might still be considered circumstantial, hearsay, and anecdotal.
The fact that it comes from such fine people as Kenneth Tynan, Michael Jensen, Mckellan, Sandler, Diana Ossana or two girls whose father is an eligible voter, does not raise the “evidence” above the level of opinion. (with the exception of the girls who I am sure were not lying).
Gary,
I do acknowledge your contributions! They make me want to write a great
deal! But of course, you know I disagree with some of your points! (Are you
surprised?)
In this day of the CSI shows, judges have written articles about how juries
are less and less inclined to bring guilty verdicts based on circumstantial
evidence or reasonable doubt.
Evidence might be circumstantial in trials, but you used to get convicted
on it more often than not. Nowadays people want the smoking gun. Well,
actors going on tv badmouthing a film they haven't seen and stating they
don't want to see it is one smoking gun in my opinion. The fact that
journalists wrote about it beforehand is another. The Watergate articles
could have been considered hearsay without the sources being published.
In this day of internet blogs I think you have to consider the sources more
than ever. Those people who come from the sources (the academy) are
people's opinions I wouldn't dismiss so easily. When people often say
one person's opinion is as valid as anothers, that is laughable. If you're
asking someone about how to put out a fire, would you trust a fireman or
a doctor's opinion as the most valid?
As for Lionsgate's Oscar campaign, this is a smokescreen. All films get
Oscar campaigns, even Brokeback Mountain had one. The reason I say it is
a smokescreen is this: If there wasn't a chance for it to win, and you have to
ask why they thought there was based on its performance and reception.
Any other film that even the director called a "mediocre first effort" wouldn't
have been thought worthy of spending more than the film cost to make on an
oscar campaign.
A decision to make a run for the Oscar was not solidified, however,
until August when it was determined, right or wrong, that there might not be a
clear front runner for Best Pic.
I don't know where you got this information, but it doesn't make any
sense. Who would make a decision in August to run an oscar campaign
for a film with reviews that at least indicated it wouldn't garner an across the
board support to win, and especially when no one had seen many of the other
films that were highly touted for the end of the year.
In Hollywood, everyone thinks about making a run for the oscar, but
setting a plan in motion in August doesn't make sense to me. Even if
they did do this, by the beginning of December, Cinderella Man had more
oscar buzz than Crash did.
And something you cannot dispute. Brokeback Mountain was THE film to
beat. An unprecedented amount of support from critics, the public, guilds and actual awards. You cite Oprah and Al Sharpton as promoting the film. Isn't
that a bit obvious? Wouldn't you expect them to? They are black? Don't forget
Tavis Smiley's two part crash-a-thon on PBS. There's no denying that black
people have an interest in promoting black themed films and talking about
racism, but how many shows do you see anyone doing about homophobia?
Any other film that was as talked about as Brokeback Mountain would have
had shows done about their themes during or after awards season. Last
year, for example, I saw news reports dealing with Indian music, fashion, the
aspect of Indians living in poverty, all because of Slumdog Millionaire.
But where were the shows dealing with being in the closet or homophobia
or any of the other aspects that Brokeback Mountain brought up. Besides the
actors promoting the film, I saw exactly one--and it was an episode of Tyra
Banks, of all shows (and good for her).
You cannot just say that a good Karl Rove type marketed crash to its best
picture win without also at least wondering why a company would market
a film like that, a film with the least good reviews of all five nominees,
according to critics compilation lists published in places like Premiere and
EW (fact), a film that had already played out its theatrical run and was on
dvd and had disappeared from public consciousness (fact), a film that
wasn't on anyone's radar as even a possible nominee for best film in
December--see MCN's charts (fact), a film that after the awards was
listed in at least two separate articles (Premiere and L.A. Times) as one
of the ten worst best picture winners ever (fact), when Haggis himself was
quoted as saying Brokeback Mountain should be the winner (fact), when
before the SAG nominations were even out Brokeback Mountain had won
more Best Picture Awards by at least triple than any other film that year (fact).
Even Munich and A History of Violence had more than crash (fact).
I am beginning to wonder if people even think there is such a thing as
homophobia as a premise to start off with in the first place. I mean, when
crash won the NAACP image award for best film the headline in the L.A. Times
film section was: 'Crash' Wins Image Award for Best Film. When Brokeback
Mountain won the film award from GLAAD, the headline was: "Brokeback
Wins Gay Film Award. Duh." The same sentiment was echoed in some
places when San Francisco film critics named it Best Picture. As though
San Francisco=Gay so there wasn't even a consideration of it actually being
the best film. Not that dozens of cities and groups from Iowa to Vancouver
did the same thing.
But with all of this I just wrote, don't you wonder why Lionsgate would
spend all this money on a film with so little, especially even in Jan., chance
of winning? Could the notion of homophobia even be a slight answer? To
me that is a "duh." If my computer had not crashed one time, I could give you
the article I had where a Lionsgate executive admitted that they pounced on
the idea to go full steam ahead on their campaign when they detected alot
of uncomfortableness around the notion of Brokeback Mountain for best
picture. As I worte before, uncomfortableness why? What is uncomfortable
about it, except anything to do with being gay themed?
At the time I looked upon the incessant humor about Brokeback Mountain
as because it was a film people really liked and therefore, the humor flowed
from that place. Some of that was true, but it was also true, especially on
hindsight, I discovered that a lot of the humor came from people who hadn't
even seen the film. They were using the very fact of the film as a vehicle to
display there distinct discomfort with anything gay related. Usually these
jokes were sexual in nature. A very low point for me came when the show
ELLEN decided to do a week long series of sketches for each of the best film
nominees and of course they found plenty to laugh about with Brokeback
Mountain, and two more--Capote--sure, make fun of Capote. Good Night and
Good Luck was also lampooned (remember the Liberace segment in that
one), but the 4th day Ellen came out and said that Crash and Munich had
too serious a theme to be made fun of, so they weren't going to do those.
They'd just do some generic oscar skits instead. WHAT THE FUCK?
And Ellen is gay! Who told her they shouldn't do jokes about Crash or Munich?
Don't want to offend black or Jewish people. Gay people? Go right ahead.
The facts are that Lionsgate purchased Crash for a measly $3.5 million
dollars in September of 2004 at the Toronto festival. Far from “sitting on the
shelf”, the studio made a conscious decision not to release until May just
prior to the Summer blockbuster season.
They purchased it for a measly sum because no one wanted it. If they
thought it had any prospects for a nomination for Best Picture, they
certainly would have had it out in 2004, during the time of year that
most best picture films are released (fact). Just like Warners did with
Million Dollar Baby which was originally to have opened in the spring of
'05. Crash would've been up against that film, The Aviator, Ray, Sideways
and Finding Neverland. They wouldn't have known the next year to be
any less competitive. (Interesting to speculate if it had been released in
the fall of 2004, would it have been a nominee instead of one of those
others? What would have replaced it in 2005? Cinderella Man, The
Constant Gardner, Walk the Line, King Kong or a History of Violence?)
Quibbles:
The initial reviews were surprisingly positive
I see them as mixed.
and the film made about $54 million and sold several million
DVD’’s returning $35 million to Lionsgate.
I thought it was 45, I guess I had a dyslexic moment.
AND, like Karl Rove in Ohio, he may even have played to the
homophobic prejudices of certain voters “offering ‘ them a seemingly viable
alternative to that “gay cowboy movie”.
This was the impetus in the first place--I wish I had that link.
He targeted Los Angeles actors, the niche needed to build a voting base.
Does make you wonder why Brokeback Mountain got more SAG nominations
than crash did then. Even crash only got one acting oscar nomination and
Brokeback Mountain had three, if the actors indeed liked it so much. Even
BAFTA gave it two nominations in the acting categories.
He simply ignored the growing noise bouncing off BBM.
I think he tuned in to the "uncomfortable" noise.
Remember: Uncomfortable=homophobia.
I'm sorry, but when it comes down to the "business" of running an
Oscar campaign, marketers know that BAFTA and the Globes and especially
major market critics and "foo-foo" film festivals can be overcome.
Name an instance this has happened. When has the favorite to win
Best Picture been overcome by an oscar campaign against the frontrunner?
None of the other nominees received this level of support designed specifically for the Oscar race.
If by support you mean people going on television to publicly
state they wouldn't see Brokeback Mountain and even demean
it in public and make incessant and many homophobic jokes about
it, if you mean people like Quentin Tarantino and Jimmy Kimmel
ridiculing the film and calling it names, if you mean sports announcers
interviewing basketball players on tv each night what there choice for
best picture would be and daring them to say Brokeback Mountain, if
you mean comedy segments on the nightly shows that, for amusement,
would go out and ask straight men if they'd seen Brokeback Mountain,
and even if they had would not say yes because I guess if you see
a film like that you must be gay, if you mean all those homophobic
things that made ampas voters even more uncomfortable about
voting for it, I guess you have a point.
Crucial to Ortenberg’s campaign was the decision to mail out 130,000
DVDs, including about 110,000 sent to actors. Not all recipients were Oscar
voters.
It was written that Lionsgate sent out enough screeners that, with the
overlapping guilds, each member of the audience in the Kodak theatre
could have had 3.5 copies. (Currently SAG has 90,000 members)
But "Crash" nonetheless won the best movie ensemble award from the Screen Actors Guild, an early tip-off that it might also have Oscar legs and that the strategy to target actors was viable.
No one ever regarded what SAG chose for the ensemble award as a
precursor or tip-off to what might win the best pic oscar UNTIL this year of
2005. Why this year? Over the years they picked Little Miss Sunshine,
Gosford Park, Sideways, Traffic and The Birdcage for ensemble wins and
no one thought those were contenders. In fact most people thought crash
"would" win this one, including me. Specifically because there is a huge
ethnic component to SAG that is not as prevalent in ampas. This was not
news. It was MADE to be news. Why? Some excitement to stir up for
journalists who thought it was a Slumdog Millionaire type slam dunk.
Why did a lot want to buy into it and keep it up though? They didn't want
Brokeback Mountain to win. (Homophobia?)
There were other early hints that "Crash" might go the distance.
In the awards issued by Hollywood's directing, producing, art directing and
writing guilds, "Crash" roughly held its own with "Brokeback" in nominations
and wins.
Not wins for Best Picture and many other of the nominees were in
those nominations as well, Capote and The Constant Gardener.
Crash was nominated by all four guilds and won art direction and original script.
And Brokeback won the script, producers, and director (nearly always the
director award goes hand in hand with best picture--in fact with all of BBM's
best picture wins in 2005, ONLY ampas split that...fact) Also, the art
director's guild has more than one cateogry, unlike the oscars, so a better
chance to win.
BBM did not receive any kind of recognition from the art directors guild but did receive director, producer, and adapted screenplay wins.
Big wins to be sure but not overwhelmingly influential with actors.
Actors are not the end all and be all of influence. There was a huge
cast of known actors in crash and capote and good night and good luck.
The actors in Brokeback Mountain were more well known than in Munich.
If anything this idea would split the actor votes for best picture. You mentioned
the Brokeback actors might not have even been able to vote for themselves
or the picture (ampas), but I doubt 90% of those actors in crash could either.
You might insist that the content of the campaign was homophobic
but I can find no evidence that was the case.
Throws hands up!
You want smoking guns.
The whole basis of the campaign was based on that
perceived discomfort of Brokeback Mountain winning
right from the start.
(By the way. If this campaign for crash was so successful,
it didn't show in nomination totals (6) or wins (3) -- they
couldn't even get the song win, which was thought to be a lock.)
I can imagine a scenario where all three of the above played a
combined role in putting Crash over the top. You see homophobic prejudice
as being the key contributor.
Yes, because those other two are in play EVERY year.
Gay themed winning films are not.
Either way, I do believe the Lionsgate strategy of building a
strong base of votes from the actors AMPAS membership played
a significant role in the final tally.
Then why didn't that work for films that tried the same thing
the following year with Little Miss Sunshine and Babel? Both
flooding with screeners and awards nominations.
The following year was back to normal. I predicted that
The Departed would win all 4 awards it got. The previous
award indicators have worked ever since. No upsets.
The expected wins. Milk wasn't expected to. It didn't.
Homophobia doesn't have to be gay bashingly obvious.
It can be subtle, just as racism can be or anti-semitism.
But no one would argue with a black person who recognizes
it or a Jewish person who experiences it, so why does
something that doesn't pass the smell test, as Jess Jackson
would say, with at least some evidence, whether you consider
it factual, circumstantial or hearsay, by people who are IN the
business and live in the city of the scene of the crime and who
Annie Proulx herslef recognized in one night here; why is that
not deemed, at the very least, plausible. Why is it excused?
I have to ask what would you need to believe it as I see it?