By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
9 Days To Go The Ten Rules Of The Season, Pt 2
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More rules… [The first five are here.]
Timing Is As Important As The Film
It’s one of the lessons that we learn again every season. Timing matters as much as any other element of the process.
Can a summer release be nominated in January? Of course. Or March? Sure. The biggest problem with spring releases has become the short DVD window. With tens of millions now going into DVD campaigns, the DVD launch is an excellent opportunity for an awards campaign to piggyback on costs and to aggressively remind voters about a movie they loved early in the year. But not if you are releasing your DVD in August…
Even a July movie now gets an October DVD release, which means that a studio will have to keep selling the movie with a separate and expensive Oscar campaign in November and December if the film is going to have a shot.
Conversely, December has become a treacherous time to release an Oscar hopeful. Unless you start showing your movie by early November, you are fighting an uphill battle, as all the pre-Oscar awarding groups are gearing up to make choices in the first two weeks of December. Some movies still get away with it, There Will Be Blood being this year’s example (though it still showed in the first half of November). But while a brilliant campaign was run and earlier exposure may well have killed the film in the season, there was still a degree of good fortune in the timing. As much as the film earned its position, it also benefited from a dearth of serious contenders… a parade of wannabes falling short when push came to shove.
American Gangster set itself up just right… but the movie wasn’t strong enough. TWBB, conversely, was by far the lowest grossing film of the nominated group when it was nominated… but drew the kind of unrestrained passion that got it a nomination.
Juno’s timing was perfection, as it danced away from the “too successful” problem that comedies and many bigger studio films have, staying “this year’s Little Miss Sunshine” for its supporters. Besides comedies having a hard time getting in, that perception of it being “the little movie that could” is key… and the key to that is timing. Searchlight pushed it further by being a little disingenuous. When the film opened at Telluride, it was a “TBA,” with the claim that the studio wasn’t sure whether it would be ready. By the time it hit Toronto, four days later, there was plenty of advertising in Toronto’s streets… consumer ads, wild postings, etc… that had not been conceived overnight (no pun intended) and which represented what turned out to be the campaign for the film from that day until now. At the same time, Juno was on screens long enough and on enough screens to qualify before nomination voting as a clear hit, which was also key timing in making voters feel that a vote for the film would not be wasted.
As I have written before, Atonement used the Brokeback Mountain strategy, showing at the September fests, where it got its sails full of wind. Then it was held back from much screening until mid-November. Then it was re-unleashed. The difference was that the public embrace of the film was far more muted than that of Brokeback. Still, the Women’s Vote was enough to get the only major costume drama of the season into the nominee’s luncheon.
And both Michael Clayton and No Country For Old Men – the two films that have a shot to win, with Old Men well in the lead and Clayton mostly a possible spoiler if TWBB eats enough of No country’s votes – opened in October… and lingered. They lingered the way that only well-liked, intelligent, challenging films do. The two stylists of the “let them stew” campaigns, Cynthia Swartz and Michelle Robertson, have very different styles of pushing these October releases along.
The Robertson-consulted The Departed won last year, as Swartz’s No Country is likely to win this year. Swartz used a similar strategy on The Queen last year even with a May release, again with Crash a few years back… which upset Robertson’s Brokeback Mountain. Robertson almost upset a more aggressive Swartz and Lundberg and the Weinstein Machine on Chicago with a low-key run of The Pianist a few years back. Of course, both of these talented women work for marketing departments and studios that are very involved in the work and also have other consultants and allies of many stripes in the process. Neither would suggest otherwise. But it is not a coincidence that these two masters of timing and patience are in the race every year.
Nancy Utley’s team at Fox Searchlight – which, not coincidentally, had Paramount Vantage’s Oscar leader, Megan Collagen, on board as they figured out the territory – has figured out their methodology as well, getting more skilled every year since they flopped with Antoine Fisher and refused to push In America, which was finished and more of the moment the year before it was released, into the Oscar race. These days, they would throw both out into the pond and see which floated. Searchlight has clearly taken a page from the old Weinstein book, going five deep with “Oscar movies” and then weeding them out as they go along. Of course, some movies, like Margot At The Wedding, were never going to race. Others, like The Savages, get caught in a ringer when a movie like Juno emerges and becomes the home team favorite. In an odd way, The Savages timing was bad internally, as the film was “that good,” but while it sat for a year before its release, Juno was not the only golden child that got more notice. Even Waitress and Once, picked up at the same Sundance where The Savages got a stronger reception that either, was given the red carpet, while The Savages was all but bum rushed.
That brings us to…
Get Lucky
It’s no joke. Not everything can be planned. Luck has a lot to do with it.
You can never just lay back and wait for luck. But with few exceptions, you need to get some breaks. Chicago was the Hillary Clinton of its Oscar year… and The Obama-nist almost caught up. Would the wave for The Pianist have started a few weeks early and overcome Chicago if the premiere in L.A. hadn’t left 1000 people not seeing the film that night?
How much of The Departed winning last year was a failure of the other movies to catch or maintain their fire?
Was part of Crash’s win people who didn’t like or want to see a win for Brokeback Mountain too uncomfortable to talk about it publicly, therefore never exposing their interest in Crash to the brickbats thrown at the film after it won?
Speaking of Crash…
Phase II Matters
This is becoming one of my pet peeves in experiencing each Oscar season. People go nuts trying to get a nomination and then relax once they get it. Ad budgets – for most – get reduced, publicity efforts are less intense, and there is a vague sense that once the nominations are set, the campaign is over and it’s about the movies.
But it’s not true.
I can understand if this makes some people want to kill me about now. But as we see in the political primaries, resting on your laurels is dangerous stuff… if you care about winning.
In an odd way, I think that pushing for a nomination feels safer for most studios and filmmakers than pushing for the win does. To repeat last week’s analogy, it’s like pushing for the Pro Bowl if you are a football player. Or closer to home, in the years of being a columnist and site editor, I have decided that I really am not interested in chasing any awards for which I have to submit the work (and usually pay) to be in the running. It’s just not very dignified. If the work is good enough, it should find its place. And if I have to tell you that I am worthy of an award, I’m not all that worthy.
In any case… it’s not that all efforts stop for all movies the day after nominations are had… but the is an increased restraint and a greater emphasis on things that can done without exposing the talent. The most famous decision (and most debated in regards to whose idea it really was) was the DVD dump by Crash. I would argue, as I did then, that the dump itself was a show of desire and that was enough to win the day when there was a quiet Brokeback backlash and no other film showing its ass in an effort to win.
There are, actually, more efforts made on behalf of the creative guilds for their nominees… lots and lots of events.
Maybe asking for it and losing anyway is just too painful to consider. But asking is a powerful force in the Oscar season. And if you don’t ask, you better have some mighty wave of energy working for you without you asking.
One of those energy sources…
Make Money
No one likes to believe that money matters to Oscar.
But money matters to Oscar.
Too much can knock you out as “too commercial.” Too little and you’re “too obscure.”
The last time the Best Picture winner had less than $50 million in the domestic bank when it was voted in for the win was 1987… 20 years ago.
In the last decade, the #1 or #2 grosser at the time final voting closed won 8 of 10… and the other 2 wins went to #3. If you are #4 or #5, you are out of luck. (This year, that means No Country or the unlikely Juno – too successful and a comedy – with Michael Clayton as the outside shot.)
People love a winner… so you have to win enough to get that love.
And finally…
Don’t Give Up
It’s that simple.
Studios give up in all kinds of ways. And we, in the media and in the caring world, can smell it like a drug dog can smell Woody Harrelson… miles and miles away.
You can flail and you can fail and you can not have the tools… but giving up is the one sure way of killing off your movie.
I don’t want to call out the films and studios that gave up this year. (You know who you are.) Too mean for no reason. And there are plenty of players who failed for other reasons.
But the long run is rough and tumble and not for the faint of heart. Surprising success comes to those with patience and foresight… and an ad budget.
Maybe giving up is the right thing, sometimes. But as the old ad said, you gotta be in it to win it.
And this year, the winning is just around the corner.
