The Hot Blog: Oscar Bump Redux

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February 16, 2009

Oscar Bump Redux

Thanks to Patrick Goldstein for waiting two full weeks before rewriting my piece on the extreme lack of an Oscar bump this year. Looks like he read the blog on Saturday for even more detail about what films have done what so far.

Unfortunately, he didn't read carefully enough and decided, in his wisdom, to completely overlook the details and to keep selling the load of crap he loves about the marketplace instead of putting the responsibility in the places it so obviously is.

Specifically... you can't get an Oscar bump unless you market your movie when you expand... and oh yeah, you have to expand.

Patrick is busy selling his "One big factor in the evaporation of the Oscar bounce has less to do with the Oscars and more to do with the commercial marketplace" theory.

And what is profoundly flawed about this - and it is not just about this, but it stands as the biggest misunderstanding of journalists covering this industry, year in and year out - is this notion that the movie business operates on some sort of continuum that is general and not deadly specific.

Of COURSE it was the actual movies - and their studios' unwillingness to chase an Oscar bump - that didn't make more money. There is no way to explain this away. People, whether we think they are brilliant or idiots, make choices. They are not automatons. They are no without will. They are, in the end, just like you and me, the dumbest and the smartest among us… they buy what they like. And why they like something is both simple and complex. But it is not ever a slam dunk. You can, most often, push out product that gets a response on the level of your push. But you cannot buy the gross you want in this business.

In other words, a studio spending $40 million or more on an opening week will almost always get that opening over $8 million. But the difference between the same money spent and the opening at $8 million or $40 million is the audience and, indeed, how interested your marketing is about to get them in the material. (There are other factors, like built-in interest… but that is only an issue for 20% or so of the product being brought to market by studios each year.)

The problem with hindsight is that ALL the theories can be true, whether it is the theory that ends up sticking (and one always does) or one that no one thinks is possible.

Why has Frost/Nixon died an ignoble death, even by indie division standards for an Oscar nominee? Well, there are a bunch of answers that have credence.

1. The interest in politics at the movies is slight.
2. Nixon himself is a turn off.
3. The real election ended up eating all the interest.
4. The studio held it in limited for too long.
5. Frank Langella didn’t do enough media going in.
6. Michael Sheen got marginalized.
7. The studio shot its marketing wad before the nomination, so when it came time to push it out wide after the nomination, they were too gun shy to spend like it was a wide release.
8. The wrong focus was chosen for the advertising.
9. There was an inherent lack of drama that could be converted to ads.
10. Two non-openers in the leads.

You can come up with more. Many studios execs around town already have.

And many of these things can be converted to cover the other films as well.

What was the genius of the Doubt campaign? They sold it like a clash of the titans. It’s still only $30 million, but it is a good number for that material.

What about Revolutionary Road? Leo & Kate, together again… $20 million so far. Good or bad?

Defiance, from the same marketing group, has done $6 million more in a shorter release window? Why? Because they sold it as Bond v The Nazis instead of as complex moral tale of four brothers faced with a life and death dilemma.

They, of course, got that campaign from Terry Press and Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise movie that was sure to be slaughtered, but which did $82 million in the US because they sold the drama about a coup led by a one-eyed, one-armed man as Tom Cruise vs The Nazis!!! (He may even end up killing Hitler! Really!) Of course, the big question mark there is whether Ms. Press spent well over $50 million to get that $45 million in rentals for MGM.

And back to January… if it was so easy to be commercial in January, the same marketing group at Sony wouldn’t have just had Paul Blart succeed, but would have also made an easy smash of the Pink Panther sequel and The International.

How does it work, in this “easy” world of obvious, commercial January, that Push opens to more than The International? (Neither being a very happy event.) Or that Taken , a retro-fitted Euro-pick-up from Team Besson, starring that mega-opener Liam Neeson (whose only career openings to do better were The Bat, The Vader, and amazingly, The Haunting), opens to 2.5 times as much as The International?

In the first seven weeks of 2009, there have been fifteen $10 million openers… four more than last year (11)… eight more than the year before (7)… and four more than in 2006 (11). Great.

But in all of those commercial films - heck, let’s include ALL films that have opened to over $1 million (that’s only four more titles) – can you find ANY titles that actually appeal to what would otherwise be the Oscar movie market, aka adults? I will list the ones I think might: The International, New in Town, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Bride Wars, He’s Not That Into You.

Okay… now… that is a generous list, no? And is there one film that you might consider serious? Is there one film that actually appeals to the same moviegoing instinct that takes you to a serious drama?

OF COURSE, Slumdog is the only one doing business… it is the only real and obvious movie entertainment of the four nominees. That is not to say the other films are not entertaining or completely worthy of your money. Frost/Nixon is a ton more entertaining than people get from the ads. Milk is weighty and, in some ways, a feel good film, even with a double murder at its center. Ben Button had its shot, made its money, and got iffy-to-bad word of mouth, which has hamstrung it at the box office ever since.

This brings us, inevitably, to the other Great Theory of the lack of a bump… people want to escape.

And there is probably some truth in that in the success of the films that are doing better. But in the end, movies have a commercial life of their own. It is likely that, in the end, more Americans will see The Reader than Milk or Frost/Nixon. What’s so uplifting about that film?

Nothing.

But people are intrigued by the storyline, the awards buzz has pushed it along, even though The Weinstein Company hasn’t spent a ton of money, and if it doesn’t pass Milk (F?N is already in the rear view), it will be almost the same domestic box office total.

Explain that away…

Every movie has its own story. Trend pieces are bullshit. The Continuum is bullshit. All of us who theorize about this business need to accept that there are many, many things for which there will never be a clear, specific, detailed ANSWER that makes us feel smarter than everyone else because we KNOW something.

If people knew, people would act accordingly.

It is wrong to think that the people who have risen to the top in this town are a bunch of idiots who know nothing. They know a lot. They are, in most cases, professionals. But like professional athletes, they also know – though they dearly don’t want to admit it – that they will be wrong at least a third of the time... and that will make them superstars. And when they are wrong two-thirds of the time for two years in a row, they are (usually) out of a job.

Journalists have the luxury of never having to be right… they just have to tell you what other people say is true. Of course, that is changing as we continue into the era (or error) of journalist as expert. But like the pros, when you find someone who gets it right 50% of the time, you have struck a rare vein (or vain) indeed.

But each journalist has their own story…

Posted by dpoland at February 16, 2009 02:04 PM

Comments

You know, seriously: Just today, a friend and I were talking about Oscar contenders, and she raised a point so obvious that, of course, I'd never thought about it before: Maybe Frost/Nixon is a box-office under-achiever partly because not many Americans under the age of 35 know or recall who David Frost is. Reason No. 11, David?

Posted by: Joe Leydon at February 16, 2009 04:26 PM

I think we can safely conclude that the lousy performance of Frost/Nixon is overdetermined.

Posted by: Blackcloud at February 16, 2009 05:26 PM

Joe: I am under 35 and would not know who David Frost is if not for the play and movie.

However, I think Frost/Nixon probably didn't do very well because it's not a very good movie. The performances are fine but just a bit too studied. But it's the storytelling that falters: the movie doesn't really know what its own message is and it's so desperate to tell us the events it depicts are important that it actually resorts to on-camera pseudointerviews with its cast. Weak, weak, weak.

Posted by: Eric at February 16, 2009 05:31 PM

I'm over 35, and I didn't know who David Frost is.

To me, the movie just look like something I'd enjoy, so I haven't watched it, even though I've had a DVD screener sitting on top of my TV for over a month or so.

Posted by: RDP at February 16, 2009 08:20 PM

That obviously should say "the movie just DIDN'T look like something I'd enjoy"

Posted by: RDP at February 16, 2009 08:50 PM

"the movie doesn't really know what its own message is and it's so desperate to tell us the events it depicts are important that it actually resorts to on-camera pseudointerviews with its cast. Weak, weak, weak."

Exactly right. If you have to have characters repeatedly espousing how important the story is, then it probably isn't.

I'm under 35 and I'd heard of David Frost before seeing this but I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup.

Posted by: PastePotPete at February 16, 2009 09:35 PM

To coin a phrase that's around at the moment:

Maybe people just aren't into these movies.

Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at February 17, 2009 03:26 AM

I am a hair over 35 and until hearing about this property as a play, I thought David Frost wrote poetry.

Posted by: hcat at February 17, 2009 06:11 AM

I don't know if I've ever seen a commercial for this movie either. Maybe one.

Posted by: The Big Perm at February 17, 2009 06:14 AM

The Weinstein Company DOES spend a ton of money ... buying awards. Why else did "The Reader" get so much love from AMPAS?

As for the rest it's not that hard to figure: "Milk" over "Gran Torino", "Doubt" over "Twilight", "Frost/Nixon" over "W." The Oscar noms mean AMPAS thinks only of themselves and their cronies.

Posted by: Chucky in Jersey at February 17, 2009 09:12 AM

Doubt over...Twilight!?

Anyway, your grade in logical reasoning is an F-.

It may well be that the Weinstein Company spends a lot of money on campaigning for awards. I think it is. But the evidence for that is NOT "well, The Reader got nominated." C'mon. SOMETHING has to get nominated. It doesn't automatically mean that a lot of money was spent.

And a LOT of money gets spent trying to buy nominations that ultimately do not pan out. It happens many times every single year.

In other words, spending money is not a *sufficient* condition for getting nominations, even if you manage to successfully argue that it is a *necessary* condition.

In other other words, whether or not money is spent, there has to be something ELSE AS WELL to clinch the nominations.

You ask "Why else did The Reader get so much love from AMPAS?"

THEY LIKED THE MOVIE.

Posted by: Sam at February 17, 2009 10:33 AM

Wrong, Sam. Harvey Weinstein has a history of buying awards -- in fact, he got called out on it one year at ShoWest. The awards-to-box-office ratio for Weinstein Company and for Miramax before that is very telling.

The other examples I cited: homosexual martyr/heterosexual martyr, Catholic/Mormon, dead politician/living politician. (For the record I was not aware Stephenie Meyer was Mormon until after "Twilight" was released.)

Posted by: Chucky in Jersey at February 17, 2009 11:06 AM

"The Oscar noms mean AMPAS thinks only of themselves and their cronies."

So therefore, the AMPAS preference for the films you mentioned above - Milk, Doubt, and Frost/Nixon - mean that AMPAS and their cronies are mostly a bunch of dead gay Catholics?

Posted by: jeffmcm at February 17, 2009 12:56 PM

Wrong, Chucky.

You didn't even read my post. I wasn't arguing that Harvey Weinstein doesn't spend a LOT of money on awards. Certainly he did in Miramax's days [though note that with the most infamous example, Shakespeare In Love, DreamWorks actually spent *more* money trying to sell Saving Private Ryan to the Academy and still came up short for the big one]. I wouldn't contest that Weinstein still does today.

But here's my point, which you totally missed: money isn't enough. To "buy" a nomination, the Academy has to be agree to the sale. And yes, often they bite, but often they DON'T. There has been a lot of nominations that Weinstein and others have TRIED to "buy" but failed to secure.

So yeah, money was spent. But the nomination for The Reader couldn't have happened unless a lot of individual Academy members ALSO genuinely liked the film.

jeffmcm: No, don't be silly. AMPAS consists entirely of dead gay Catholic *political martyrs*.

Posted by: Sam at February 17, 2009 01:45 PM

"As for the rest it's not that hard to figure: "Milk" over "Gran Torino", "Doubt" over "Twilight", "Frost/Nixon" over "W." The Oscar noms mean AMPAS thinks only of themselves and their cronies."

Making the claim that "Doubt" got a nom over "Twilight" as proof of an AMPAS bias is cashews, pistacchios, almonds, pecans and macadamians. There ought to be a Planters factory stalking you right now.

Posted by: Hallick at February 17, 2009 07:59 PM

Y'all read everything too literally. To get an Oscar nomination thou shalt be Politically Correct.

You can take your tinfoil hats off now if you wish.

Posted by: Chucky in Jersey at February 18, 2009 07:11 AM

God, it's irritating when crazy people pretend to be the sane ones.

So "Catholic" is now a "politically correct" category? Bashing George W. Bush is "politically incorrect"?

These kind of bizarre distortions typically occur when you try to backfill justifications into muddled and irrational theories.

Posted by: jeffmcm at February 18, 2009 10:45 PM

The Hot Blog

February 16, 2009

Oscar Bump Redux

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