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July 15, 2009

Lipsky Vs The Academy

Oh that Mark Lipsky...

I'm not sure why he decided that Nikki Finke would be his outlet for raging against The Academy, but in the wake of Nikki's inevitable hysteria, he has made an interesting argument into a "must avoid" for the media and others who actually might be serious about his goals of opening up The Academy to digital distribution as a legitimate form of releasing a Movie.

Here was his letter to The Academy and then, the response and his response to their response.

All of this mess - part of the drama includes the claim that The Academy ignored Lipsky's letter, published by Lipsky through Nikki on the 14th, though the Academy response is dated the 9th - misses the basic point of both Lipsky and The Academy.

Lipsky's argument is that the economics of documentaries requires new, more aggressive, multi-platform distribution from the first day that a distributor is going to spend dollar one on a doc release that includes the heavy costs of a theatrical run.

The Academy rules demand a 60 day window after a qualifying theatrical run for any kind of online or television release of the film. (It was 9 months until 2006, by the way.) To quote the branch chair, Michael Apted, about changing the rules last year (which led to another controversy about NY qualifying runs), ""By eliminating the multi-city rollout requirements we have significantly simplified the Academy rules while still retaining the core intent to ensure that we honor nonfiction work created for theatrical distribution. We believe the new rules will successfully eliminate from consideration documentaries made principally for television, the Internet or anywhere else."

So, once you get past all the Nikki/Lipsky drama, there is a serious conversation to be had.

What is a Motion Picture in 2009? Is the theatrical platform God or should there be more of an embrace by The Academy of more experimental release patterns?

Of course, this argument has been had in a variety of ways every year. Should Academy members be forced to see movies only on movie screens... aka The Way They Were Meant To Be Seen? (Docs and Foreign Language films already bear an inequitable weight against them as the final voting can only be done by on-screen viewers, with DVD viewing verboten, except, ironically, for the nominating committees, who may see projected DVD during that round.)

Academy tradition would say, "God bless HBO, PBS, Discovery, and others and the great work they do in documentary, but The Academy is a THEATRICAL FILM institution."

Of course, this was the argument of the Television Academy back when cable television was not included in the Emmys. (Remember the Cable Ace Awards?) Once HBO quality and mainstreaming made it an annual discussion and a bit of an embarrassment, things changed.

Things can change, in time, at The Academy, but I would suggest that we will have to go back to go forward... as in, wider theatrical releases to show that a film is serious about theatrical and not just tipping its hat in order to Oscar qualify.

Of course, that takes us back to the old problem, that really good docs were being forced to spend a lot of money (for a doc) in order to Oscar qualify. it used to be "a minimum of 25 commercial exhibitions for paid admission in motion picture theaters in 15 states, each exhibition to be at least two consecutive days... festivals don't count.

But without a distinction between theatrical and online/tv docs, we are stuck with what I call The Jack Valenti X-Rating Rule, which was his argument that an adult rating (CARA never owned the "X") was a problem because there was no legal way of distinguishing a porn film and a serious drama with graphic sex in it, so any porn film would be eligible for a legitimizing CARA rating. Of course, with the NC-17, we have seen that The Studios don't want to be in that business and that the high cost of applying for a rating keeps porn films from seeking a rating.

That said, the core point was that once you lower the bar, everyone can come in, not just serious documentarians with distribution from companies like Gigantic. And in the case of The Academy, there is an even bigger problem, because there is a lower wall holding back the tide. Every documentary, whatever the intended release target, can four-wall in NY and LA for a week, two showings a day (the current standard) for under $40,000. (I'm not even taking ticket revenue into consideration.)

And there is an ongoing conflict about what a theatrical release is, above and beyond docs. Movies are "dumped" all the time because there is a theatrical obligation in the contract or even a minor theatrical triggers upscaling in DVD and pay-tv rates.

But the truth is, the doc and foreign process has been a problem and has been gamed by the players for years. So long as The Academy creates different rules for these films than for the films that qualify for Best Picture, there will be benefits (you don’t actually have to do a real release before you have that Oscar nod or win in your pocket) and problems, as Lipsky lays out.

When Magnolia, which is front-and-center on day-n-date on all three platforms, decided to buy and run with Man On Wire (produced by a cable network, by the way), they skipped what would have been their normal plans and played by Academy rules.

When Waltz With Bashir could not qualify as an Oscar doc without playing NY for a week last summer and the NY Film Festival would not have the film, even understanding the problem, after a NY qualifying run, Sony Classics had to decide whether the NYFF was a more valuable opportunity than a potential Oscar nomination. (They chose NYFF.)

Many quality docs made outside of the US, which were not domestic theatricals before they played on television outside of this country, not knowing this would be a future impediment, have had no choice and started their lives in America already disqualified (whether they knew it or not).

But what is the alternative when so many documentaries are now made every year and domestic distribution is such a low-margin business?

One alternative is that The Academy, with 10 nominee slots for Best Picture, dumps the Doc award, the Foreign Language award, and the Animation award (the last already hanging by a thread) altogether, allowing those films to swim in the big waters with only natural capitalism to move them along. I don’t think Lipsky would much care for that, though it would probably work out well for bigger distributors like Sony Classics and Fox Searchlight.

Or The Academy could just dump the nominating committees, but keep the specific awards, and let the market drive nominations… as it does for Best Picture.

Another alternative is another set of guidelines to guide these areas, whether it means deeper distribution in fewer markets or back to the double-digit city count.

I’m sure there are many good ideas out there… and there are probably fairness holes on the side of The Academy or The Filmmakers or both in every single one.

But trying to embarrass The Academy into change? Nah.

Finally… what is the real moment of change? If major studios ever go day-n-date for their mainstream product (which I believe is economic suicide… but that’s another column), then day-n-date will become The Academy standard overnight. Let’s hope not.

Posted by dpoland at July 15, 2009 11:39 AM

Comments

Posted by: errolmorrisfan at July 15, 2009 02:13 PM

Posted by: mutinyco at July 15, 2009 03:01 PM

Posted by: caligal83 at July 16, 2009 12:55 AM

Posted by: LexG at July 16, 2009 03:57 AM

Posted by: errolmorrisfan at July 16, 2009 09:39 PM

Posted by: caligal83 at July 17, 2009 08:14 PM

Posted by: errolmorrisfan at July 17, 2009 11:55 PM

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