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October 07, 2008
Doc Boo-Hoo
I find The Academy’s handling of documentaries and foreign films as screwy as everyone else. The effort to make these two categories, in particular, nominations by committee, is, like so many poorly executed well-intended ideas, meant to both be supportive and fair. But instead, they have made the committees too powerful, the choices to narrow, and the rules for entrance too odd.
That said, the examples offered in the Hollywood Reporter story are way off the mark about what's important.
The central movie cited in the piece, the great Waltz With Bashir (likely, by the way, to be a Best Foreign Language nominee, having been nominated by Israel), deserves to be nominated for FL, and Doc, and Animation, make no mistake. But if Sony Classics didn’t do a qualifying run in NY, they screwed up… and cannot fairly blame it on the Oscar Doc rules.
For starters, Waltz opened in Cannes, where SPC bought it. Manohla Dargis wrote graphs about the film there. And even more significantly, the film is at the danged NY Film Festival, where it is getting the full press push. But you see the whining about the press getting out ahead of a December release.
Of course, that is the REAL issue here… and it has NOTHING to do with the Academy rules. The HR piece acknowledges it, but while pounding away on this not-very-smart example of a film that was hurt by the rule, it just drops in: “If a film opens in New York for a qualifying run during the first half of the year, then the prestigious New York Film Festival, which insists on screening New York premieres, won't program it.”
So the real organization victimizing Waltz With Bashir in its Oscar Doc ambitions is the New York Time festival… period. That, and Sony Classics feeling that a NY Film Fest berth, after Cannes and Toronto, means so much that they would, literally, throw away their doc qualification with the short-list landing shortly before the intended theatrical release.
The other doc that is inaccurately written about is Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired, which apparently want to pretend, in a history dump, that, “ThinkFilm/HBO Docs unsuccessful(ly) tried to sneak "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" into Manhattan in March.”
Again… intentionally misleading stuff. If RP:W&D is actually Oscar qualified, it is only because HBO and Think conspired to go around the actual Oscar rules. The film premiered at Sundance to a ton on publicity and reviews… perhaps more than any other movie at the festival. The movie ran on HBO in June. And the film had a theatrical release in July.
So assuming that THR is accurate about the March qualifying run in NY, the film was clearly trying to skirt the no-TV-until-60-days-after-qualifying rule by sneaking into NY and LA just in time to beat the HBO release and before an actually theatrical distribution by Think, which was not announced until April.
It’s a good movie, but the truth is, it is exactly the kind of situation that The Academy rules are meant to disqualify. If HBO wanted Polanski to be a true theatrical release, it should have held the TV release until next year… just as it has with so many of its eventual Oscar nominees.
The core problem with this whole article is that it focuses on the one group that is NOT a victim of The Academy… major doc distributors. They know the rules. They have money. They have easy access to qualifying runs.
And for everything that’s wrong about the Doc Qualifying rules, the good part shows up every year when the short list comes out and no one but the most doc-involved industry folks know much about at least a third of the docs. Those are the films that need the support of Academy rules.
With due respect to the guys at Sony Classics – and America-Beyond-NY/LA would have little chance to see Waltz with Bashir or Persepolis or many others without them and their status with Sony – their little fights with the NY Film Festival are a non-issue for the documentarians who really struggle with the rules… who don’t have the ready cash to 4-wall in NY and LA to qualify… who struggle to hire one of the excellent awards publicists who handle small docs and shepherd them through opportunities like DocWeek…
The problem with Thom Powers’ suggestion - screeners would be submitted by the end of August, but the actual qualifying runs could take place later than that – is that it would overqualify… so many film would be submitted to the doc committee that there would be no way to give all of them a proper viewing. And since most doc distributors try to use Oscar, nominations or wins, to propel their films to box office success AFTER the awards and certainly AFTER the nominations, the idea of “qualifying later” begs the question, “When?” After the NY Film Fest? Is that what this is really all about?
It’s not easy to find a good working solution to this and it is way to easy to criticize ideas (and that includes this piece). But docs do deserve better. My thought is that it would make sense for The Academy to consider the idea of qualifying festivals and, perhaps, some qualifying level within those festivals… eliminate all of the dancing with distribution.
Make a TV rule that is really simple… no TV in America before January 1 of the Oscar year without 100 days of theatrical screenings, including at least 40 in NY or LA. (In other words, if you are a TV doc, be a TV doc… if you are a theatrical doc, that is what the Oscars reward and you have to be invested in that effort before going to TV.)
Pick 10 film festivals - including Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, and Toronto – and let each submit 10 of the films of the hundreds they have plowed through to the Academy doc committee. Figure out a way to include one ad hoc submission from each board member. And then start watching movies.
The whole point of the exercise is to give the little ones a chance like the bigger ones have, not, with due respect, to get Waltz With Bashir a third shot at an Oscar nomination (which, again, it deserves). The goal is not to be a clearing house for marketing HBO or PBS docs, even if they are the major funders of docs these days.
And remember, The Oscars are about MOVIES. And not every doc made is a theatrical doc. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And apologies to Sony Classics, which did a really nice job of getting The Hollywood Reporter to carry their water on this one... but the most powerful distributor left in the "true indie" came (to be clear, SPC is a Dependent, but they are the only one consistently distributing the smaller films, foreign and docs in particular) makes a pretty poor candidate for Whipping Boy of 2008.
ADD, 3:45p - After a few conversations, I believe that the example of Waltz With Bashir became too much the central focus of Steven Zeitchik Hollywood Reporter piece. Obviously, Sony Classics made this decision with full knowledge of the Academy rules back in July/August. So it owuld be fair to say that the choice not to qualify was not a "screw up," but a choice. Like so many other companies that are promoting high-end films, they balanced the pros and cons of choosing the NY Film Fest and its inherent limitations, as set by Richard Pena. So maybe the SPCers didn't get THR to carry their water... perhaps it was the other way around.
Posted by dpoland at October 7, 2008 10:40 AM
Comments
The simple solution to this is just to treat the docs and foreign films the exact same way the Academy treats every other film. You have to open theatrically before December 31st and then it's up to the voting members to decide which films to nominate. Period.
Sure, this doesn't give a shot in hell to Autism: The Musical or Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?, but their narrative equivalents have no shot at Best Picture either. Why are they making sure to give a fair shake to every tiny doc or foreign title, but not tiny narratives? It makes no sense.
Why does one, in order to vote for Best Documentary, have to see all five nominees in an "Academy approved" theatrical screening (which, btw, means about 200 people vote for Best Doc each year), when they can vote for Best Picture without having to verify that they've seen any of the five nominees? Best Picture is actually a category that means millions of dollars in increased revenue! Why are its voting requirements so less stringent?
Posted by: errolmorrisfan ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 7, 2008 05:05 PM
The International Documentary Association has come up with a solution for the "little guys" with DocuWeek, which they call a Theatrical Documentary Showcase instead of a Festival, though they apparently take submissions. Then the films they select get the NY and LA theatrical runs in August that they need to be Oscar eligible. Apparently Taxi to the Dark Side played DocuWeek last year. The films that played this year:
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), Dear Zachary: A letter to a Son About His Father, Fire Under the Snow, FLOW, The Forgotten Woman, GLASS: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, The Matador, Of Time and the City, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Project Kashmir, Spirit of the Marathon, War Child, An Unlikely Weapon, and Yodok Stories.
Posted by: djk813 at October 7, 2008 06:05 PM
Hate to boo-hoo on your love for Waltz With Bashir, but having seen it, I will say it's a finely crafted film, but given it's often dream-like qualities and re-enactments, does it really classify as a documentary?
Posted by: Aladdin Sane at October 7, 2008 10:58 PM
Waltz with Bashir isn't even a proper documentary. Nor will it be nominated for Foreign Language film. It's best shot is Animated Film, and even then could the animation branch be turned off by it's web flash visuals?
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at October 8, 2008 03:26 AM
"Nor will it be nominated for Foreign Language film."
Wanna bet?
"It's best shot is Animated Film,"
It would have an easier time getting a nom there, yes.
"and even then could the animation branch be turned off by it's web flash visuals?"
Probably not enough to deny it a nomination.
Posted by: Roman at October 8, 2008 03:46 PM
Re: DocuWeek. djk, you neglected to list "The Wrecking Crew," which managed to do something few, if any DocuWeek films do: It actually drew an audience of more than 25 people for its screenings. One IDA staffer/board member? remarked that they couldn't remember a film that had that many attendees over the week. Indeed, we were surprised to see it full for the midweek, evening screening we attended.
I'm still the undecided Ohio voter when it comes to DocuWeek's relevance over a classic four-wall. Friends who've had films play in the past bemoaned the lack of attendance and folks, it isn't exactly free to have your film play there. And it ain't cheap either.
Posted by: Joe Bag O' Malasadas at October 8, 2008 03:55 PM
DocuWeek is great... and is also political... and also limited in how many films it can qualify.
And I don't disagree that Bashir was an iffy get in doc... but being iffy and being dq'ed are different issues.
Posted by: David Poland at October 8, 2008 04:55 PM
Roman, considering Persepolis - a much more praised and well-liked film - didn't even get into the shortlist for foreign language film, I don't think the branch will be able to steer itself away from European dramas about WWII or involving children long enough to get behind something like Waltz with Bashir. As we all know (because the Academy has told us so) animation is a lesser form of filmmaking.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at October 8, 2008 11:08 PM
"Roman, considering Persepolis - a much more praised and well-liked film"
Too early for that kind of conlcusions. Persepolis was about as (or even less) liked as Bashir is by this point last year.
What you are saying kind of supports by argument though. While Persepolis wasn't nominated, the talk surrounding it created a precedent which may help Bashir this year.
I'm not saying Bashir is a shoe-in but I think it stands a solid enough chance to get in.
Posted by: Roman at October 9, 2008 12:53 PM
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