Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1626: Continuous Attacks at All Means

Upon learning that his telemarketing team had gotten into trouble, Harvey Weinstein quickly improved his approach by removing from the list those judges whose husbands, boyfriends, or parents were powerful people, and forbidding them to make harassing phone calls again.

Weinstein also wanted to call Ronald to apologize, but Ronald did not answer his call. He just told him through his agent to take care of himself and not do anything that would make the industry unhappy.

Weinstein certainly didn't care. Although the Academy had set some rules for the Oscars, such as no public canvassing, no public canvassing ads, etc., who in the industry wouldn't try to skirt the rules? Even Ronald himself had come up with the idea of ​​mailing videotapes, and he had only improved on his idea and adopted a more efficient method.

In fact, most of the judges are not even interested in watching the videotapes. What they like most is that someone tells them which movie they should vote for, and even helps them think of the reasons for voting...

Weinstein's PR tactics just met their needs. They didn't even need to watch the movie. As long as they memorized the reasons he used in his telemarketing, they would have something to talk about at various parties.

You know, in the Hollywood actor circle, having your own analysis of the Oscar nominations is a very prestigious thing. If the judges who were hit by Weinstein's PR rhetoric spread it widely in the circle, soon his argument would become the so-called "mainstream" opinion in the circle...

Ronald found several producers of award-winning films and they discussed it. They decided that the most important thing at the moment was to stop Weinstein's behavior.

On the one hand, several people protested to the college, stating that this behavior violated the college's regulations. On the other hand, everyone had no other choice but to increase some of the public relations budget, adopt an offensive approach, and also began to amplify their own voices.

Braveheart began to release a series of PR articles, saying that this is a movie that conforms to universal values. The end of the Cold War with the victory of America is also the victory of this spirit of resisting tyranny and pursuing freedom.

How profound is the final roar of "freedom" uttered by Wallace, played by Mel Gibson.

Sense and Sensibility began to tout Emma Thompson's talent. She had already won an Oscar for her acting, and this film allowed her to showcase her writing skills.

It has been a long time since America has seen such a talented actress in Hollywood. She was able to adapt Jane Austen's works and turn a long novel into a movie of more than 100 minutes, retaining all the Regency style, and the arrangement and deletion of the plot can be said to be a master's style.

After leaving Las Vegas, the crew began to tell the story of an actor doing his best to achieve the pinnacle of acting.

Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue have been interviewed on various radio and television shows. Cage has been telling stories about his two-week experience as a drunkard, and Shue has been talking about her interactions with real Las Vegas streetwalkers and her understanding of their inner thoughts about doing this job.

These PR tactics were also in response to Miramax’s malicious PR. They also gave some reasons why the actors or directors won awards, but they were released in a traditional PR way, without using Weinstein’s telemarketing team.

After all, telemarketing is still a very offensive method. If someone in the industry asks you where your information comes from, it is not convenient to make it public. You can't say that I heard this gossip from telemarketing.

The PR channels used by these three films are all well-known media reports. Whether it is telling a clip of an interview you accidentally heard on the radio, or an interview in a professional newspaper such as Variety Show or The Hollywood Reporter, it is a very convenient channel for insiders to gossip. When people see that you can read a newspaper interview of several hundred words in its entirety, they will think that you must have graduated from high school and will always look up to you.

……

Although these measures are effective, they also cost a lot of money. If Weinstein hadn't used a lot of tricks, there would be no extra expenses. The best way is to let the academy ban these dirty tricks.

After receiving the complaint, the college did some private investigations, but they were unable to issue a ban due to two obstacles.

One obstacle is that the tactics Weinstein used, while unpleasant to hear, are not fundamentally different from traditional methods such as advertising in newspapers and private canvassing parties.

It is not possible to say that one movie is in violation because it uses annoying telemarketing, while another movie is not in violation because it uses an expensive "Please Consider X for an Oscar" ad in Variety magazine, even if the content of the PR for both movies is the same.

Another obstacle that the Academy is not willing to talk about is perhaps even more important: the Academy needs such a public relations war to highlight the value of the Oscars.

As the largest and most prestigious award ceremony in Hollywood, the more money is spent on pre-public relations, the more valuable the award is. This pre-award hype helps the audience to have suspense about the final list of winners, and they want to see who will win the golden man.

"It seems that they will not issue any bans unless they experience a huge scandal..."

Ronald's personal lawyer, Lindsay Doll, is trying to help him out. The Academy is not an organization with legislative power, and unless Weinstein's actions violate federal law, the Academy has no power to prohibit or punish some of their practices.

Any regulation will always lag behind business practices. The previous series of bans on awards, such as not canvassing for votes publicly and not giving gifts in exchange for votes, were also issued after a major scandal at the Oscars, which aroused the anger of Hollywood unions. The unions put pressure on the Academy to issue the ban.

Historically, the Academy and the union were competing organizations for a while. The union represented the interests of labor, while the Academy represented the interests of capital. There were many conflicts between the two sides, so much so that in some years, members of the Screen Actors Guild did not attend the awards ceremony because of the union's boycott.

Later, the academy changed its course and cancelled the function of mediating labor-capital conflicts, focusing on awarding prizes and training the industry. Only then did the conflicts between the two disappear. The union and the academy also became a community of interests, and the list of judges was mainly drawn from the unions of various industries.

However, the number of union members is much higher than the number of people who have the power to vote for the Oscars. To become an Oscar judge, one must either be nominated for a certain award or work in a certain category of Hollywood movies for a certain number of years before being eligible to vote.

Therefore, on average, less than 10% of union members are eligible to vote in the college. These people are often union members with longer tenure.

Weinstein is now using this ratio to make a fuss. He mainly targets these older members and spends a lot of money on public relations. The average public relations fee spent on these voting judges is several thousand dollars.

However, 90% of the members cannot receive these benefits and can only envy their predecessors for being able to vote and hope that they will have the opportunity to be among these judges.

This is also the reason why Ron Howard won the Directors Guild Best Director Award but was not even nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director.

Weinstein's intensive public relations efforts for the fewer than 500 directors who voted in the awards, which all directors have a chance to vote on, derailed them from the thousands of members of the Directors Guild.

Not only did Weinstein allow people in his projects to get nominated, but Ronald suspected that some people who were not in his projects also got some free PR.

Take the nominations for the Best Director Award for example, Ron Howard did not get a nomination, but the directors of Baby Pig and A Row did. This means that the director of The Postman, which was released by Miramax, has a much higher chance of winning.

After all, the director of Baby Pig is Australian and it was his first time to make a movie released in America. The director of The Postman was not well-known in America before. Their connections and accumulated goodwill did not allow them to win awards.

On the contrary, if Ron Howard is nominated, his chances of winning are much higher. Ron Howard first became famous for starring in George Lucas's "American Graffiti". Later, he got the opportunity to be a director from Roger Corman and successfully transformed.

His baldness limited his acting career, but as a director, there was no problem with his appearance. In addition, he had shot a series of relatively successful movies, and many actors in the industry were looking forward to working with him.

In any case, it is much cheaper to influence 500 people who decide the nominations for the Director Award than to influence tens of thousands of people who decide the winners of the Director Award. Through this targeted blasting, Weinstein's Miramax eliminated some competitive opponents in certain awards.

After confirming the nominees for the awards, Miramax started to make a fuss about it.

For example, Apollo 13 received nine nominations, including the more important Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, etc.

These awards are in conflict with Miramax's nominations, and in the current public relations release, you can see some remarks saying that Apollo 13 won the Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and it would be difficult for it to win the Best Supporting Actor and Actress because it did not receive the most important nomination for Best Director.

Therefore, the possibility of it winning these awards is very small. After all, the director is the most important person in artistic expression. If he is not shortlisted, it shows that the other nominations are also average and not very competitive.

On the contrary, The Postman is the first foreign language film to be nominated for Best Picture in 26 years, which is a historic achievement worth remembering. The fact that a foreign language film can be nominated for Best Director shows that the audience and other judges highly recognize the artistic level of this film. Otherwise, who would care about a foreign language film that needs to be subtitled?
“This is reuse…”

Seeing this kind of evaluation, Ronald also felt that it was too much. Ron Howard was not happy about not getting nominated for Best Director, and now he was using his failure to be nominated to attack the other nominations for Apollo 13...

Unfortunately, Ronald has no way to respond to such behavior. This is not his company's movie, so it is inappropriate to speak out. Moreover, most people in Hollywood flatter the successful and look down on the losers.

Going on TV shows to speak up for Ron Howard now will likely lead to him continuing to be ridiculed, which will lead to even more unequal consequences for the Oscar selection process.

"Forget it. I'm not a person who upholds justice. Just wait and see. One day, a big scandal will break out."