Studio and Indie Moguls DiscussMerits of Best Picture Oscars ® forTentpoles vs. Indie FilmsFor years, one of the main debates regarding the Oscars ® , especially for the bestpicture, has been the divide over tentpole crowd pleasers from the major studiosand more specialized films with their roots in art houses.32 The Awards Edition <strong>2011</strong>-<strong>2012</strong> Issue 07The Academy leans to the former sometimes – think top prizesfor Forrest Gump, Titanic or The Lord of the Rings:Return of the King – and other times in the direction of suchsmaller films as No Country for Old Men, Crash or, morerecently, The Hurt Locker.That film performed particularly well at the Oscars ® that year,winning six statuettes in total, including best director for KathrynBigelow, whose victory over her ex-husband James Cameron gavethe contest an extra level of resonance. For Fox and its chairman-CEO, whose hopes were riding on Avatar, the highest-grossingfilm of all time, the loss was bitter, but Tom Rothman found away to find comfort in defeat.TOM ROTHMAN: Robbie [Hurt Locker’s distributor, Summit EntertainmentCo-Chairman Rob Friedman] and I foundourselves waiting for our cars by the heater that nightafterwards, and I congratulated him mightily becauseThe Hurt Locker had won, but I made my career beinghonest, and if I said I wasn’t brutally disappointed, itwould be an understatement. I think it is a commonproblem that that happens, David and Goliath is a verygood narrative, and like anyone else, it is easy to root forthe little guy, I understand that emotionally. I’m actuallyglad overall of the good that comes to a movie like TheHurt Locker, because I think it was the year before thatFox Searchlight had the good fortune to win with SlumdogMillionaire. The Academy giveth, and the Academytaketh away. I will say we had good fortune with BlackSwan for best actress, so those things happen.But, I do think the craftsmanship and artistry that’sinvolved in what is thought of as commercial cinema is notgiven its proper place in the Academy. So at the end ofthe day, I think [deciding that] Hurt Locker was the ultimatebetter picture of the year, over Avatar – I can understandthat. But when you look down categories of sound, thingslike that, I was surprised and also disappointed, that a lotof the people who were working on crafts for Avatar, solong and so hard, were not recognized.At Warner Bros., too, there is a feeling that tentpole pictures areunfairly overlooked, a fate the studio’s president anticipated in earlyDecember, at The Contenders event.JEFF ROBINOV: I think the quality of Harry Potter, for thelast few pictures, has been somewhat discounted. And todeliver the movie that we delivered for the final movie,the quality of the last one, the visuals, I really feel that itdeserves a fair chance, the reviews that it received wereconsiderable. It feels like the kind of movie that traditionallywould receive some Oscar ® attention [the final film inthe series was nominated for three Oscars: achievement in makeup,visual effects and art direction]. And for me there is also theBatman franchise. Obviously Heath Ledger won an awardposthumously, but I think what Chris [Nolan] has donewith Batman, and in a way with Inception – that was a verybold movie for a studio to make, I don’t think the studiowas necessarily rewarded for risk taking, particularly onthe scale that was needed. I do think there is some biasagainst Hollywood and the resources that it has, the scaleon which it delivers, and I think it’s nice when a movie likeTitanic actually gets the recognition it deserves and deliversfor being such a groundbreaking, risk-taking movie.HARVEY WEINSTEIN: Harry Potter is a seminal movie, a seminalfranchise, I’m going to go see that because I think so manykids, my own included, loved those books and were incrediblyentertained by the movie, and I agree with Jeff,that franchise is not getting the respect that it should, especiallysince an entire generation grew on with those films.For my kids, and me, the last movie was a seminal experiencein saying goodbye.ROBINOV: I do think that quality is ultimately the key. Youhave to see the movies, people have to recognize it andunderstand it, but there are a lot of movies coming outof the studios that are really quality films, and really risktakingfilms. They are inspired by the type of movies thatHarvey makes, and they are inspired by the studios’ realthe hurt lockerbelief in filmmakers and good quality and a real desire toput out exciting, different movies.ROTHMAN: I happen to believe that audiences just don’t carewhat a movie costs, they care how it makes them feel. Butthey do respond to how it’s presented to them. So big traditionalcommercial movies, like Harry Potter, The Rise ofthe Planet of the Apes[the film was nominated for achievementin visual effects], that make a splash, they go out high,wide and handsome with millions in TV advertising, thatis one entire system of distribution. Then there is a wholeother set of movies, Coriolanus, Shame, Win/Win, moviesthat are challenging, that don’t submit easily to a 30-secondtelevision spot. Those films need to be nurtured, theyneed to be distributed with true patience and commitmentfor the long haul. We’ve got something happeningnow that is very fortunate with The Descendants.STACEY SNIDER: I agree that smaller films do have to be nurtured,but I do think that the little/big, independent/studio is a thing of the past. At the end of the day [thatdoesn’t mean] studios can’t also bring love of storytelling,attention to quality but not be penalized becausefor the fact that they are availing themselves [of bigmarketing budgets].
Best Pic Oscars ® : Is 10 Too many? Are5 Too Few… And is the Season TooLong? Studio Chiefs DisagreeGet studio honchos together to talk about what’s best for the Oscar ® season andthe conversation about the wisdom of expanding the best picture category to10 films can sound like Goldilocks in the home of the three bears: for some, 10 is toomany, for others five is not enough (this year, of course, nine is just right).The moguls at Deadline Hollywood’s The Contenders event onDec. 10 and 11 scarfed down the topic. And DreamWorks AnimationCEO Jeffrey Katzenberg had an even more radical – albeit tonguein-cheek- idea about how to restructure the whole awards season.TOM ROTHMAN: I think it was a big mistake to increase thenumber of nominees to 10. It used to be “Live, from theDorothy Chandler Pavilion,” and there were five bestfilms, and let me tell you, in retrospect, when [Fox's] Castawaywasn’t one of the five best films of that year, it wasone of the best films I ever worked on, but it didn’t makeit. That was valuable precisely because it was rare, preciselybecause it was large, precisely because sometimesinjustices happen. So I wish we could go back to it beingincredibly valuable. I also think that would help to distinguishit from all the other awards ceremonies because itwas smaller, it was harder. Lots of them had 10, NationalBoard of Review. It’s meant to be rare, and the highest ofthe high, we should stop worrying about the ratings andstart worrying about what the awards mean.JEFF ROBINOV: [The category was expanded for] movies likeBatman [specifically, The Dark Knight] that missed the cut.The film was, from an audience perspective, not just acritical perspective, an extraordinary film. And it didn’thave the opportunity to be one of the selected films.Structurally, there is a difference in the methodology inContinued on p34the dark knight rises
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