Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1616: Oscar Nomination Secret Battle

"I don't think the Academy is as predictable and conservative as people think it is," Leonard Maltin, a film historian and critic, also wrote in the newspaper. "Whenever a movie like 'Platoon,' or 'Midnight Cowboy,' is successful at the box office or wins an Oscar, people call it a precedent-breaking one.

That’s the kind of condescending attitude that permeates the industry. They don’t want to believe that people will go see serious films, when, in fact, they will.”

United Artists' $2 million public relations budget had a very quick effect on a serious art film.

Some industry experts invited by United Artists also accepted interviews and expressed their opinions, saying that the Oscars are not a kitsch award as misunderstood, and that the judges have enough aesthetics and taste to appreciate such serious and independent films.

United Artists was very skillful in keeping the dispute within a manageable scale. It neither allowed the impact to rise to an open war of words, nor did it let the heat die down. Instead, it continued to engage in a clash of opinions in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times.

In this way, the two sides exchanged opinions, and some fans who loved art films watched it with great interest, and even the sales of the Los Angeles Times increased slightly.

"Ang, do you want some over there, too?"

To be on the safe side, Ronald also contacted the producers of "Sense and Sensibility" and learned that it was not them who were doing black PR in the newspapers to compete with "Leaving Las Vegas" for nominations for the year-end awards.

Sidney Pollack told Ronald that they would mainly take the traditional public relations route and would not engage in such a war of words in newspapers.

This outstanding director of the last era still has some gentlemanly manners that are rare in Hollywood. When hedging for awards, he would mail videotapes, show his films to judges at nursing homes, or write articles in newspapers criticizing his competitors for such despicable behavior.

However, the Oscars of this era already have thousands of judges, and are not the kind of judges that were generally composed of professionals in the past. Not many of these people will seriously watch the movies to determine the nominations.

Calling a friend to copy the nomination, asking the servants to write the nomination list, or even voting for a friend just because he plays a role in a movie. This nomination method has gradually become popular among many judges.

Therefore, according to the standards of this new era, it is still necessary to continue to speak out in the media at the critical moment of determining the nominations. In this way, when these judges fill out the nomination list, they will involuntarily think of the movie they hear the name of every day, although it is likely that they have not seen it themselves.

However, Ronald's United Artists has a set of public relations strategies, waiting to cooperate with the interviews with actors and directors, as well as expand the screenings.

If reason and emotion are not involved, then a lot of attention will be focused on Leaving Las Vegas and its competitors.

In public relations, if the top two contestants are constantly arguing to attract everyone's attention, then the competitors after the third place will most likely be forgotten by everyone.

"Well, you know, I don't quite know how to accept interviews with reporters..." Ang Lee's big problem is that his language is not very good. When directing a movie, there will also be problems in communicating with actors.

According to rumors, when filming Sense and Sensibility in England, it was difficult to communicate with the actors about their positions, so they used a more static camera and medium shots. In this way, they only needed to set up the camera and let the actors walk around in the shot.

At this time, he can accept an interview and talk about his general views on movies. That's fine. But if we want to discuss the competition between independent production of Hollywood art films and commercial films of big studios, then it may really be inadequate to express the meaning.

In this case, Ronald did not force it and invested the public relations budget for leaving Las Vegas on his own.

If the USC professor continues to focus his firepower on criticizing the artistic standards of Leaving Las Vegas, it will be hard to tell who is behind him financially.

But perhaps the rebuttal by the experts here at United Artists was too righteous. A few years ago, The Silence of the Lambs, a movie like this, did not have a happy ending either. The whole movie was very depressing, but it won five awards.

The argument that this movie was too melancholy, too bleak, too negative to win an Oscar is completely untenable.

So the black PR began to shift the debate. His new argument became:

Oscars should reward truly excellent films that are loved by the audience, rather than films that are liked by a few film critics or a small group of art film audiences. This year, there are many films that are independently produced by small and medium-sized companies, but they are very popular with the audience.

Among the examples she cited, she specifically mentioned Death Row, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, and directed by her boyfriend Tim Robbins.

This movie is the directorial debut of Ding Robbins, and it has many big names, but it only cost $1100 million to make. Because the whole movie has no special effects and special set effects, it is an art film that relies on plot, lines, and actor performances to win.

This movie is actually a movie without any special dramatic conflict. The whole movie tells the story of a nun named Helen Prejean who goes to prison to visit Matthew Poncelet, a prisoner sentenced to death for murdering and raping a teenage couple. He has been on death row in Louisiana Prison for six years.

Sister Helen told Poncelet that he could only be redeemed if he took responsibility for what he had done. Before he was taken out of his cell, Poncelet confessed his crimes to the nun and was executed.

The film was produced by a British production company. Although it is also a so-called independent film production, they did not use 16mm film, compose music and edit it by themselves like Mike Figgis did, but used a full set of Hollywood team.

In addition to the performances of two big stars, Richard Jewell, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, also gave special praise: such independent films are serious works that add brilliance to the art of film.

The movie "Dead Man Walking" was funded by PolyGram Films and distributed in the United States by Gramercy Films, a joint venture between PolyGram and Universal. With a formal distribution team, they also specially prepared to release it after Christmas at the end of the year to hit a blank time window.

He also specifically criticized Leaving Las Vegas, saying it was a movie made specifically for the purpose of winning awards. It was only shown in a few theaters, and in the end only some insiders saw it, and the real audience had never heard of it...

Movies should be allowed to return to the audience. He also suggested that the Oscars should set a threshold. If the total box office of a movie is lower than a certain number, it will lose the eligibility for the award.

Richard Jewell also specifically called on the audience to support art films that truly reflect serious social issues.

To be honest, Ronald was not really disgusted by such opinions. It was just that they had made a wrong decision. Leaving Las Vegas had not received support from United Artists in the early stages. The box office performance was good for two consecutive weeks, and they had already made full preparations for expanding the scale of screening.

……

It's winter now, and it's snowing in New York, but the temperature in Los Angeles is still very pleasant. It's only a few weeks until Christmas, and Leaving Las Vegas will be released in 200 theaters across the country.

After all, it was a movie about alcoholics shot on 16mm film. Although the reviews were good, most cinemas still had concerns. In order to get 160 cinemas, the distribution team of United Artists made a lot of phone calls. In the end, it was the Hollywood Cinemas, in which Ronald had a stake, that took over and made it happen.

The marketing of the film was mainly through advertisements and soft articles in some magazines. This was also the cheapest channel for film advertising that could be found. The distribution team also spent a lot of energy negotiating a discount price with them, and finally agreed to some harsh terms, with no restrictions on the layout and time, and could insert any time, before finding a suitable price quote.

However, all the hard work paid off. In the first two weeks, the word-of-mouth effect of those who had already seen the movie could not be ignored. In the first week, the box office performance of large-scale screenings exceeded 150 million US dollars, and the average box office per theater was only slightly lower than the small-scale screenings in the previous two weeks, just a little short of US dollars.

This achievement made the newly formed distribution team of United Artists very happy, and they cheered in the office.

Ronald was also very happy. Winning this public relations battle gave him great face as the newly acquired United Artists. He immediately promised to pay two months' salary to the distribution team and give everyone a Christmas gift package. In addition to some popular Christmas gifts and food discount coupons, there were also Aunt Karen's famous baked cookies and two large turkeys per person, which could be received before Christmas.

Ronald was in a good mood because of the good box office results, because the counterattack issued by the public relations team of United Artists on Monday morning was pleasing.

This time, the PR team of United Artists also invited a person from the academic circle to speak: Howard Suber, co-chair of the Independent Producer Program at the UCLA Film School.

He expressed his approval of the so-called Oscar movie box office theory. However, as an expert in independent film production, he said that movie box office may not be strongly related to the quality of the movie itself.

For an art film with excellent artistic quality and outstanding performances by actors, how to market it and how to attract audiences are more important issues.

Because the quality of a movie can only determine the reputation of the audience after watching it, and how many theaters it can be shown in and how many first-time audiences it can attract to the theaters to spread this reputation depends entirely on the investment of the distributor.

United Artists, which has regained its independence, has undoubtedly done a Hollywood-style distribution job on the film Leaving Las Vegas.

The fact that United Artists invested so much distribution resources in such a small production with a production cost of less than 400 million US dollars, its first distribution project, reminds people of the glory of United Artists in the Chaplin era.

"There is no evidence that the gloomy content of a film itself will prevent the Academy from nominating a film or even awarding it the Best Picture Award. It is the failure in the market that will. All nominees must have gone through the test of the box office before they can be recognized by the judges. I have talked to many people in the industry, and they all said that this film deserves their nomination votes. Those films that want to speculate on the release at the end of the year and meet the minimum screening requirements for nominations should change their mindset and regard movies as an art of entertaining the audience, rather than a small circle of people entertaining themselves."

The producers of "Dead Man Walking", choked by the outrageous box office of "Leaving Las Vegas", had to play ostrich and pretend that they could not see or hear anything and were busy with their own distribution and marketing. They no longer dared to talk back, for fear that their box office performance would not be as good as that of the other party. If such a shameful thing was caught and reported by the media, it would be very embarrassing in the Oscar nomination battle.

United Arts did not take the initiative to provoke a war, but other competitors would not let Death Row Walk go.

Another film that worked hard on PR in the nomination battle is "Il Postino: The Postman", which comes from Italian production company Cecchi Gori Films. The owner, Mario Cecchi Gori, not only makes movies, but is also the owner of the Italian Serie A football club Fiorentina.

However, the boss died of a cerebral hemorrhage two years ago. Now his son Vittorio Cecchi has taken over his production business and football club.

Because Mario had already confirmed the project of "The Postman" before his death, his name is still on the producer column. If the film is nominated, he will become a posthumous nominee.

This is not the only person who unfortunately died in this film. The lead actor and screenwriter Massimo Trossi played a postman named Mario who begged the famous Chilean poet Neruda, who was exiled to an island in Italy, to help him write love letters to pursue girls.

After successfully pursuing his beloved, Neruda was almost not allowed to attend Mario's wedding due to the political persecution of Neruda by the Chilean government. In the end, he was allowed to attend the wedding because of the consent of local politicians, and Neruda received the good news that he was no longer exiled and could return to Chile.

Unexpectedly, five years later, when Neruda revisited the place, he found that Mario had been killed for participating in a left-wing demonstration and reciting Neruda's poems. He only saw his wife and children.

The actor and screenwriter Massimo Trosi postponed heart surgery because he wanted to play the leading role in his own work. Unfortunately, he suffered a heart attack and died the day after principal photography was completed.

Generally speaking, the Oscars rarely posthumously honor people who died before being nominated. The various actions of "The Postman" crew made competitors nervous because such a tragedy can easily attract media coverage and page space.

There were some questions about "Dead Man Walking," especially about producer Mario Cecchi Gori, who died before filming began...

Who knows that the Italians don't give a shit, they immediately hit back, questioning that "Dead Man Walking" was released after Christmas at the end of the year and failed to meet the requirement of at least two weeks of screening. Most of the screenings will be in 1996, so this movie should participate in the 69th Academy Awards next year.

For a while, both sides were fierce in their attacks. After all, this was not a relatively conservative public relations war like the one involving the publisher United Artists that was Leaving Las Vegas. Both sides were aiming to cancel the other's nomination.