“Why aren’t these Oscar movies in more theaters?!?!”

New York Times… Variety… LA Times… yadda, yadda, yadda..

Worst of all, these are all veteran reporters who, if they don’t know it like the back of their hand as factual detail, should at least be able to smell the absurdity reeking from these stories.

It’s the marketing, stupid.

Year after year after year, we see the Oscar release strategy play out. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it fails. Sometimes the movies would have been better not being so precious. Sometimes the movies would die in a bloody heap if they tried to roll out any other way. Harvey Weinstein (and his now-42 West cohorts) were the best ever at it. But it has worked for others.

The massive disconnect, in my view, is that strategy is based on some specific goals… and then, journalists take a position on the tactics that come from the strategy without remotely considering what the real strategy is.

Why is Frost/Nixon still on just 205 screens? Because Universal knows that it may not become a big commercial hit and that anything that allows others to claim that it is, in any way “a failure” (fairly or not) could be damaging to the Oscar nomination that it is counting on for its wider release.

Of course, these strategies do change. But why would anyone change their strategy when it is working.

Why was Revolutionary Road held until Christmas? Well, the box office lightness of that film was a given under virtually any circumstance other than as an awards contender. So they waited until late and created a hammock story with that per-screen average scam. There was no better choice. What? Release the movie for Thanksgiving and see it gone by now both in theaters and in the awards push? Even the Golden Globes nods would have been threatened by weak box office and soft reviews in November or October.

The thing about releasing an awards chaser in September or October is that you have to be one of The Ones (No Country For Old Men/The Queen/Lost in Translation) or you have to have the undeniable muscle of a major star who is willing to work for four whole months for the film (Clooney) or you need to be a straight-forward box office success that then moves into awards contention (The Departed).

Miramax has owned the October awards release for the last couple of years. So why do you think Doubt launched in mid-December? Because it wasn’t that kind of movie. It was the kind of movie that might have gotten lost in the mix… just an actor’s movie… etc.

I’m not saying there is something wrong with Doubt by pointing this all out. All I am saying is that once you know what kind of cards you have in your hand, you know whether you have to play the cards or play the other people at the table. This year, Miramax is playing the table. Wait… plot… what’s vulnerable… what movie is slipping in December when they do their limited release… do people over 50 really want to vote for The Dark Knight… or do they want to vote for the movie about morality with two Oscar winners and both a once and future nominee?

Slumdog Millionaire got to $20 million on Monday. They are still on 614 screens. Searchlight has slowly rolled out into the places where a foreign language film with no stars is a problem. Some have worked. Some less so. But that $20 million mark puts them behind only Benjamin Button at the box office as the voters settle in. And they will surely use the Oscar nom to expand to a real wide release… just as they did with Sideways. But they are already wider than Sideways was pre-nom… and way ahead at the box office. The hope, I suspect, is that they will be over $30 million when the nominations come in and then expand and ride the wave to the second $100 million domestic film of Searchlight’s history… and the first Oscar win.

And what will be the big challenge of Phase II for Slumdog? Getting every Academy member to see the film in a good movie theater. They have The Great Movie, but now they have to fight off “not as great as I heard” and, though the film plays well on DVD, voters who are easily distracted on their couches.

In so many ways, Slumdog is this year’s The Departed… the popular favorite. The Departed’s vulnerability was that it was so violent. But its advantage was that it was popular, so a large percentage of Academy members had seen the film in theaters before the hardcore awards season had ever began. Slumdog doesn’t have that advantage. DVDs were in people’s mailboxes before theatrical release. It’s a movie without known stars. It’s a time shifter. It’s flashy. So the concentrated focus of being in a movie theater is an enormous benefit to the enjoyment of the film.

By the way… here are the nominees from the last four seasons that rolled out cautiously… same as this year…

Title – Release- Date it cracked 1000 screens

2007
There Will Be Blood – Dec 26 – Feb 1
Atonement – Dec 7 – January 18

2006
Letters from Iwo Jima – Dec 22 – never over 781 screens

2005
Capote – Sept 30 – Feb 3 (and only for one week)
Munich – Dec 23 – Jan 6
Brokeback Mountain – Dec 9 – Jan 20
Good Night, And Good Luck – Oct 7 – never over 1000 (803 screen top on Nov 18, lost 183 screens the next week and 929 for one week on February 3, lost 244 screens the next week)

2004
Sideways – Oct 22 – Jan 28
Million Dollar Baby – Dec 17- Jan 28
Finding Neverland – Nov 12 – Dec 31

Babel is another fascinating roll out. In it’s first 11 weeks, it went from 7 screens and a $55,621 per-screen to 35/$26,263 to wide on 1251 screens… and the one $5 million week of the film’s domestic life. The next week, it dropped almost 50% and started losing screens. By four weeks later, they were on under 250 screens, grossing under $500,000 a week, and would stay there until a post-nom expansion six weeks later. The film picked up about $13.5 million more on top of the $21.5 million that was already in the bank. But even with the nod and relatively few screens, they never saw a $2500 per-screen week after Weekend 3, aka the first wide expansion.

Also… there are a couple of big issues other than pure awards strategy in play… Money… and Ego.

As Babel shows above, it can be a long slog. And the reason why a per-screen of under $2500 for a movie making such a small gross is that it is expensive to maintain. Yet, if you have any hope of winning, you need to appear ongoingly “successfully.” So studios have learned to try to ride that wave instead of fighting it. We are seeing a wide variety of detailed strategies within that idea this year.

This brings me to the one movie that really does defy my basic notion of sane strategy in this season – which is not to say that I think all the others will work out well… just that they have a clear, reasonable logic – and that is Gran Torino. Warners is spending like it’s a wide release. The movie plays like a wide release. Yet, they are playing the release like an Awards-Only play. You may note that both of Eastwood’s last nominees used a similar strategy. However, this movie is not like either of the last two films, whatever you think of the films themselves. This is a Clint Eastwood movie, writ large. It’s his growl. It’s his stardom in play.

I went back to look at Unforgiven. It was an August release and cracked $70 million domestic in its first seven weeks. A commercial success, circa 1992. That is the strategy that Warners should have been using on Gran Torino. You can smell how much money they know is there in the ads. And they will go wide… a week from Friday. Huh?

The reality is that Clint Eastwood tells Warners how they are going to roll out his films. They don’t really get in his way. So I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some in the studio were begging to go wide last week or earlier. When it does go wide, it will be probably be the #2 film for the weekend, behind Bride Wars, and probably close to the holdover number for Marley & Me. But my sad guess is that Eastwood left as much as $40 million on the table by holding out the film over the holidays. And while he may, somehow, find his way to a lifetime-achievement Oscar nod for one of his weaker performances, the film has zero chance at Best Picture. So… ego.

And with due respect to Ed Zwick, Defiance could have been a commercial movie. James Bond fighting Nazis – which is not the reality of the film, but like Valkyrie, could have been sold that way – has some box office weight. But not dumped out by an overtaxed, budget-nervous studio forced to release your film in time for awards. Defiance would have been a movie that could have benefited from the slot that Valkyrie was once moved into, President’s Day weekend. Strong marketing. Limited distractions at the studio. And heavy on Bond in the woods.

But Zwick has had big success, commercially, in the awards slot… the last time with Mr. Cruise as The Last Samurai. And once he and his team thought they were scheduled into the awards season, being pushed out must have felt, understandably, like a slap in the face. I get that. As with all things, the strategy is given by the goal. And the goal of that last minute release… as much not being slapped in the face and not wanting to sell the movie as something it is not as anything else, I suspect.

I know there are people who want to see the buzzed movies. Even when they are in towns beyond the biggest cities, they are often on a very limited number of screens, making them harder to see even when they seen nearby.

This Week’s Charts To Come…

– David Poland
December 31, 2008

Every year, I quote Bill Condon’s notion – which has more resonance with his Oscar gig this year … and less – of The Great Settling.

All the critics’ awards and nominations are laid out. Screeners are in every Oscar voter’s stockings. People go on their annual big vacations to wherever with the family and the discs in tow. And as the pressures from the hard push of the studios and press are relieved, cooling the situation, the films themselves creep into perspective. Nomination ballots go out right at Christmas and are returned en masse when people get back from their holiday to their lives.

But this year … not so much.

This year, if there are any surprises, they will be a lot like a whoopi cushion on a desk chair … ha ha … pick it up … look at it … hand it back to the joker … get on with your day.

Yes, lives will be changed. And that is the ongoing irony of all this mess. It really does matter to people when they are embraced by their peers. Winning is nice. Being nominated is nice. And when you are nominated, for instance, by 88 semi-credentialed star-f*#kers who are mostly hoping you will say something embarrassing enough to be talked about for months to come, you don’t think about those details … you graciously think about how wonderful it is to be loved by your community … especially that person who put their hand on your ass during the photo … oh, never mind.

The illusion that there are a lot of choices is just that. The Top Five that seems to be continually cementing in are Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, Ben Button, Milk, and The Dark Knight.

Of course, Doubt, Revolutionary Road, Rachel Getting Married, and Wall-E are still out there, kicking. But Wall-E is really settling back into the now-classic animation win mode. Rachel doesn’t seem to be getting the small signals that it is really in the Best Picture race. And the only group that seems to be showing love to Revolutionary Road is HFPA … and those mooks left out Michael Shannon as they kept stacking the red carpet.

Even our Gurus o’ Gold voting … we ask for 1-10 … and aside from Revolutionary Road getting four #5s and one #4, there was only one top Five vote after the Globes announced last week for anything else out of the Cementing Five mentioned above. That’s 90 Top 5 votes … 84 for the same five movies.

There is a little shifting that can be anticipated. Amy Adams suddenly has a little nomination momentum, though she was the least well reviewed of the Doubt trio. Kate Winslet’s lead performance in The Reader continues to get Supporting nods, so she gets stronger. The “foreigners” are almost always shorted by the HFPA and SAG, so don’t be surprised by bouncebacks by Kristin Scott Thomas and/or Sally Hawkins.

There are very few real questions left that count.

Will Clint Eastwood get a nomination for being Clint Eastwood?

Will Dev Patel get in as Supporting for his Lead in Slumdog on the weight of the movie?

Is there another gear for Doubt to get into that can push it past Batman, a movie that is actually getting helped by critics’ groups?

Will DGA turn the Che boat around or is January 8 just too late to matter?

Will a single kid tune in to watch The Dark Knight lose and Heath Ledger win?

Will we all be so bored of the same five films in the end that we stop worrying and learn to love the Oscars?

It’s not unlike Election Night 2008. We all kinda knew what was coming. The odds against Obama losing were long. But in the end, there are enough Republican-locked states that it couldn’t be too much of a blowout. So we waited for Pennsylvania. And we waited for North Carolina. And we waited for Colorado. And little by little, we grew confident and the McCain camp wrote concessions. The race really ended at 7pm pst on November 4. The networks wouldn’t call it until an hour later because they were cautious … and playing the string out. One more victory lap for everyone associated with the event … one more night of single-focused ratings … one more chance to be the one to say something that others would remember.

Who gets nominated at 5:35a pst January 22 will matter to Michael Shannon or Robert Downey, Jr. A lot. More than either realizes right now. So I don’t want to minimize the small victories and losses still to come.

But in the big picture, the entire season is already down to whether we tip 15%, 18% or 22%. Was it double the sales tax? What is the sales tax here? Is Ahnuld taxing expensive pizza at Mozza more than cheap pizza from Domino’s? Hey … did that Domino’s guy support Prop 8? It’s safe to go get Mexican food again. Too bad about Rich Raddon … he was a good guy … I mean, is a good guy. So Sundance is leaving the “Yes on Prop 8” theater as a press screening room. Nice. Really? They are only sending up two people for 5 days? Times is hard.

You get the idea.

You know you should watch Serious Movie 8 … but you really want to pop in Mamma Mia! again … you really want to enjoy Slumdog again … you really want to see the Blu-ray of The Dark Knight, even if you don’t have Blu-ray in your $3000 a night bungalow …

A nice jolt to the system is always amusing … but really, sign the paper … get it over with … hand Kate Winslet her first Oscar … you know you want to … did you see her ass in Vanity Fair … well it was the side of her ass … I mean, airbrushed, of course … but she has kids and everything …

Settled.

– David Poland
December 18, 2008

I held off writing this week’s column until after the Golden Globes nominations… and then… well… who cares?

Every year, we all beat the heck out of the HFPA members and then mine their nominations like we are going to find nuggets that matter. But we’re seeking fool’s gold… and get what we deserve.

Can HFPA help cement in a nominee here and there? Sure. But history tells us that the group’s nominations are no more influential than anyone else’s. There are just network TV lights when they give out their awards.

What really strikes me today is that it is time for someone, somewhere to start a No Awards awards show.

Would it really be so bad to have a night to celebrate the great work of a year without worrying about the detail work of who won in what category, but to actively celebrate the movies of the year?

What is there… 42 minutes in a network hour? So three hours – perhaps not all in one shot – leaving 126 minutes of time to celebrate the great movies of the year.

Do it like the BCS… “coaches” (critics) votes, seeding by way of “conferences” (genres or specific criteria, like highest grossing film of the year, top animated film, top foreign language film, top true indie), computer rankings based on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, etc.

Send out a man-on-the-street crew to talk to real people about why they love these movies.

Show clips that are not the standard clips everyone has seen over and over and over again.

Deconstruct one scene from each film with the director and cast.

Have some fun, celebrate what is great with a broad enough brush but a sophisticated enough palette to make it compelling for a lot of people who will be pleased to know more about movies they really like than they ever knew they wanted to know.

Wouldn’t it be fun to just celebrate the movies instead of narrowing it all down to a niche that we can argue until the end of time… or worse, not argue for very long at all?

Honestly, I am rather bored with deconstructing whether The Dark Knight or Wall-E should be nominated for this or that… or if Rachel Getting Married is too inaccessible for a bigger audience… or if Waltz With Bashir is a doc or an animation or a foreign feature… etc.

We should be celebrating them all. Che is a landmark, whether Academy members are willing to sit through 4.5 hours or if HFPAers don’t see the celebrity value. Wendy & Lucy deserves a place at the table for its own little, intimate, oddball world. And is Man on Wire really any less important… any less thrilling… than The Dark Knight?

We all love movies. So why slice and dice and parse and farce? Why not find a way to love W. and Tyler Perry and right wing docs and the overlooked films and the massive machine films that work. Can’t we love Robert Downey, Jr. without pretending that he deserves an Oscar for Tropic Thunder?

And yes, let’s include all of those Oscar nominees to be! What the heck? Let’s give them a break!

When I talk to people about this industry – people who are not lawyers or accountants – I often find myself saying that if they don’t love the work they aspire to do that they should not get into the industry to chase the benefits that come from success in that work. Of course, some get the brass ring. Others are the brass ring. But mostly, it is work… hard work… lots of hard work. What I respect is someone who gets so much out of what they do that the work is enough.

Shouldn’t we aspire to at least one moment like that during the year-end awards season? To just saying, “Yay.” To celebrating the form and all the small pieces that come together to make the whole?

That’s what I got out of the Golden Globes nods this morning… that more and more it is less and less about loving movies. And, my friends (and foes), that is why I am here.

There is no award for that… the experience is its own reward.

– David Poland
December 11, 2008