News
February 18, 2016
NABET 700-M UNIFOR's Feature Film Room is Oscar Nominated for Best Picture!
February 18, 2016 - NYTimes
LOS
ANGELES — Surprises almost never happen anymore at the Academy Awards. The
vote-mongering machinery and punditry have grown too powerful.
But
what if?
With Oscar voting
ending on Tuesday, the smallest film company in the best-picture race, A24,
backing the nominee with the smallest box office tally, “Room,” is holding out hope that maybe, just
maybe, it can pull off a“Million Dollar Baby.” Back in 2005, the favored film going
into the Oscar ceremony was “The Aviator” — that year’s steamrollering
equivalent of “The Revenant,” right down to Leonardo DiCaprio in the starring
role. But “Million Dollar Baby,” with Hilary Swank, won in a huge upset.
The A24 camp sees a similar path for Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room,” about a mother (Brie Larson, considered a lock for best actress) who makes a heroic escape with her son from long-term captivity. A punch-drunk theory born in the exhausted final days of another interminable awards season? Possibly. An example of how the longest shots keep believing until the second those envelopes are opened? Most definitely.
The “Room” hypothesis starts with vote
splitting. A bear claw behind “The Revenant,” which won the top prize at the British Academy of Film and
Television Arts awards on Sunday, are two other best-picture contenders, “The
Big Short” and “Spotlight.” In an unusual lack of cohesion, Hollywood’s most
influential guilds spread their marquee awards among the films, with the actors going
with “Spotlight,” the directors backing “The Revenant” and the producers honoring “The Big Short.”
If those films similarly divide voters from
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — there is considerable but not
complete membership overlap between the guilds and the academy — “Room” or
another candidate could slip through. (The last time the guilds disagreed to
this level, by the way, was the year “Million Dollar Baby” won for best
picture. Asterisk: “Million Dollar Baby” at least had the support
of one of the three groups, winning the big prize at the Directors Guild of
America awards in 2005.)
Room,” based on the novel by Emma Donoghue,
who also wrote the screenplay,has also started to play the gender card. A24
supporters have been quietly noting that a decade has passed since a film
carried by a female lead has won best picture, a message that could resonate
with female voters in a “Million Dollar Baby” way, especially when gender
inequality in Hollywood has come under intense scrutiny. Jodie Foster; Geena
Davis; and Sherry Lansing, a former chief executive of Paramount Pictures, have
been among the Hollywood women who have hosted voter screenings for “Room.”
At least some “Room” supporters have gone even
further, asserting that, among the eight nominees, “Room” is the only serious
contender anchored by a female performance.
Fans of “Brooklyn,” starring Saoirse Ronan, would likely argue
otherwise, although Ms. Ronan, a best actress candidate along with Ms. Larson,
has been losing most of the pre-Oscar contests. Yes, Charlize Theron cuts quite
the swath through “Mad Max: Fury Road,” but that film, with no nominations for
acting, is mostly seen as a directing feat. (Also nominated for best picture
are “The Martian,” starring Matt Damon, and “Bridge of Spies,” with Tom Hanks.)
Another stars-are-aligning thought: Chris
Rock, set to host the Academy Awards on Feb. 28, last served as the ceremony’s
master in 2005, the “Million Dollar Baby” year.
Even more than witty acceptance speeches,
Oscar watchers seem to crave surprises, and the unexpected used to happen at
the Academy Awards with some regularity. In 2006, the ensemble drama “Crash” beat that year’s front-runner,
“Brokeback Mountain.” When an in-his-prime Harvey Weinstein powered
“Shakespeare in Love” to a best-picture win in 1999, defeating “Saving Private
Ryan,” there were gasps in the auditorium.
In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” mildly surprised by snatching the best-picture award
from James Cameron’s “Avatar.” But those in the know pretty much saw it coming,
as it was an open Hollywood secret that voters were leaning into Ms. Bigelow,
who also won the directing Oscar that year, and away from Mr. Cameron, her
ex-husband, who was widely perceived as having had enough kudos.
In truth, the element of surprise nearly evaporated about a
decade ago, as scrutiny of the grinding, monthslong awards process by
professional, web-based handicappers (and Las Vegas odds makers) became
routine. Because organizers of the Academy Awards insist on a late-winter berth
for the ceremony, voters annually show their hands in the pre-Oscar guild
awards. Oscar watchers tally the results, and by awards night, there is little
left to do but dutifully check off the boxes.
This year, the acting categories were declared locked up almost
as soon as nominations were announced, with Mr. DiCaprio in particular
considered a sure thing to win best actor. “Every now and then, the town owes
you something,” said Albert S. Ruddy, a producer of “Million Dollar Baby,”
adding that he thought “The Revenant” was a fine film and that Mr. DiCaprio’s
industry peers are well aware that he spent months “going through the snow” and
worse to get the movie made.
Mr. Ruddy was sitting next to Mr. DiCaprio when “Million Dollar
Baby,” directed by Clint Eastwood, took the top prize instead of “The Aviator”
in 2005. “Don’t worry, baby, you’re going to get a hundred of these things,”
Mr. Ruddy recalled telling Leo, as he and almost everyone here refers to the
actor.
The “Million Dollar Baby” surprise, Mr. Ruddy added, had much to
do with the film’s late release, in mid-December of 2004, and deliberately slow
expansion in January. By contrast, “The Godfather,” also produced by Mr. Ruddy, was released in
March 1972, “just 10 minutes after the Academy Awards ceremony was over,” he
said. So that film, when it took the best-picture award rather than “Cabaret,”
which had eight Oscars, surprised some by surviving its long exposure.
Regardless of the outcome for “Room,” A24, founded four years
ago and only employing about 40 people, has proved itself a savvy campaigner —
a winner just by the way it has “danced the dance,” as Scott Feinberg, awards
columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, put it. “They started planting the seeds
that ‘Room’ was special way back in the summer, before the first screenings at
Telluride, and we all paid attention,” Mr. Feinberg said by phone on Monday,
referring to the Telluride
Film Festival.
Mr. Feinberg noted that A24, which takes its
name from a highway in
Italy that connects Old World cities to newer ones, has employed a canny awards
strategist, Lisa Taback, who used to work for Mr. Weinstein.
While most of Telluride’s offerings (“He Named
Me Malala,” “Steve Jobs,” “Suffragette,” “Beasts of No Nation”) quickly died on
the Oscar trail and at the box office, A24 kept “Room” alive with an
excruciatingly slow rollout in theaters. The film played in fewer than 300
locations for 13 weeks, taking in less than $1 million. Then, timed to Oscar
nominations in mid-January, A24 pounced, pushing “Room” into nearly 900
theaters. The film has sold about $12 million in tickets. “Spotlight” so far
has taken in over $37 million in domestic ticket sales and “The Big Short”
about $66 million.
Little A24, which also has a documentary
feature in contention this year, “Amy,” about the life and death of Amy
Winehouse, could not afford a blanket for-your-consideration campaign, so it
resorted to “strategic strikes,” Mr. Feinberg noted. One effort involved recreating the titular setfrom “Room” near a theater
in West Los Angeles where voters often go to see films. A24 also had to
overcome Ms. Larson’s shooting schedule for “Kong: Skull Island,” which made
her unavailable for various campaign stops.
To compensate, A24 sometimes turned to Jacob Tremblay, a rascally 9-year-old who
played the son in “Room.” Trotted out at key moments — at the Governors Awards,
at a luncheon for
nominees, on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” — Jacob in some ways turned into this
year’s version of Uggie, the terrier the
Weinstein Company successfully deployed on behalf of “The Artist” in 2012.
“Cute little Jake,” Mr. Feinberg said, “turned out to be
quite the secret weapon.”