Saturday, November 18, 2006

THINKOscar


I read Biskind's book about Indy film in the 90s, the whole Miramax Oscars thing and up until a few years ago, it used to be true. The Oscars crazyiness and the gimmicks, I thought, were dying down and the Weinstein monkeys had truly backed off. Its more like every single organization got their own monkeys out and so its all level. But its still staggering.

The last couple of days at THINKfilm, I've just been watching these guys do their campaigning for Ryan Gosling's turn in Half Nelson and boy, its a lot of work. Just yesterday they sent out about what seemed like 300 packages to every major critics circle in the country so they could get him and the film nominated in the Critics honors and raise word about him. The Prez hand signed a zillion letters to members of the Academy about the performance. Apparently Benicio del Toro and Walter Salles loved the film and so hosted a screening of the film and these guys were sending postcards out. Screener DVDs go out to every single Academy member and there's an entire agency that takes the contract for just that. I know because 100s of mail comes back to our office from people who have moved and didn't provide a forwarding address. So the database keeps updating itself every year and bajillions of DVDs keep going out.

Ryan isn't Jamie Foxx either. I'm sure every single person out there now knows about his grandmother. Boy, he milked that! Gosling isn't awards crazy... I can almost hear every film student go: Nicceeee! But thats not what helps a distributor out. The Oscar will let more copies of Half Nelson be sold and more movies of that type be made. Gosling will also be able to hand pick his projects, whatever bla bla bla. Its not entirely about ego.

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