David D'Arcy - The Press and the Oscars

It's Oscar weekend and those little gold statuettes will finally be handed out. It's the culmination of a battle for votes that has reached epic proportions this year as the studios slug it out.

On the Media's David D'Arcy reports.

Last Thursday night, ABC television ran a prime-time Oscars special. Part of the show was an interview between the network's critic, Joel Siegel, and Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax Films. After listening sympathetically as Weinstein talked about fighting the power of the major studios, Siegel stated that the race for best picture was down to three films, "Saving Private Ryan" from Dreamworks, and two films distributed by Miramax, "Shakespeare in Love" and the Holocaust comedy: "Life Is Beautiful." It was typical of what TV network film coverage had become-a "critic" was handicapping the Oscar race the way a pundit might track a political campaign, and the tone was friendly, if not just flattering. But there was more to it. The interview promoting Miramax was airing as news on ABC, a network owned by Miramax's parent company, Disney, a major movie studio.

So far, Miramax has spent a record $15 million in advertising to sway the Oscar vote, Finke says. She also says that the company executives have lobbied critics against the Oscar frontrunner, "Saving Private Ryan," which Miramax staff deny. And when "New York Magazine" published an investigative piece about the firm's Oscar campaigns, Miramax threatened revenge.

But the campaign is not just cash and strong-arming. It also involves courting the press to influence Oscar voters. The process presumes that most Academy members are old (which the Academy won't document). They don't see many movies - especially not subtitled movies - and the ones they do see, like "Thin Red Line" and "Saving Private Ryan," they see on video tapes sent to them by the studios. They read - or more likely watch - reviews (like everyone else) to find out what's good or bad, and since most of them live around Hollywood, where they've worked, their tastes are likely to favor mainstream commercial movies. These are not OJ jurors sworn to disregard all information about what they're judging. So, according to John Anderson, film critic for "Newsday," press lobbying is a crucial part of any Oscar strategy.

ANDERSON: The critical community is striated, to put it nicely. There are people who are buyable. There are people who are more than happy to have their names in movie ads, saying the most outrageous things about the most feeble movies. So the fact that a movie company head would meet with critics and try to convince them - not to vote, obviously, but to give coverage to his movie over someone else's - is hardly surprising, nor is the fact that they would do it.
And if that works, Anderson says, a movie earns what should be hardest to buy, credibility.

Sometimes that risks backfiring, in unforeseen ways. Last year, before "Life Is Beautiful" opened in the United States, Miramax invited "New Yorker" cartoonist Art Spiegelman to a special screening of the film. Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for his comic book "Maus" about his father's survival in Auschwitz. Miramax wanted Spiegelman to create the poster for "Life Is Beautiful," perhaps hoping that a serious artist and his association with the "New Yorker" might bring credibility to a Holocaust comedy.

Just last week, Spiegelman weighed in with a full-page drawing that showed an emaciated death camp inmate behind barbed wire holding a gold Oscar statue. The caption read, "Be a part of history and the most successful foreign film of all time." Soon Spiegelman himself was under attack from Italy, says "Village Voice" critic, Jim Hoberman.

Outrage in Italy over criticism of the film led the daily "La Stampa" to cancel running Spiegelman's cartoon. If, as charged, an American conspiracy or a Jewish conspiracy or a press conspiracy is at work against "Life Is Beautiful," it certainly is not reflected in the film's reviews or its revenues. Yet the charge that "Life Is Beautiful," - which has made more than $30 million at the US box office is a victim of persecution does echo the Miramax portrayal of itself as an underdog company defending small films against the overwhelming power of the Hollywood studios.

Has the press fallen for any of this? Will the awards be swayed by it? We'll know after the ceremony. Oscar voters, like voters in elections, tend to vote for what they know and for frontrunners, and what they know tends to come from advertising and television. It reflects the way the movie audience breaks down these days. There's a hint of indignation among a small circle of those who report on and care about films, and a celebration of the stars, the dollars, and the dresses among just about everyone else.

For On the Media, I'm David D'Arcy.