..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

10 WEEKS TO GO
It Ain't Broke…
But You Still Better Fix It

Brokeback Mountain is the most beloved quality film in America. Accolades are coming around ever corner. It's not only good, it's revolutionary!

All of this is great… a dream. Unfortunately, when you wake up and look at the calendar, it's December 22, not March 6.

And so goes the dangerous path of Brokeback Mountain over the next ten weeks. There is a reason why no one wants to be the frontrunner in the Oscar race until a week or two before the final voting is being done. Of course, hopefuls have to balance that wish out with the need to actually get a nomination.

Last year, Million Dollar Baby managed to put The Aviator in its rear view mirror even before The Aviator was shown. Chicago was the leader most of its season, but The Pianist came on strong after a troubled launch and many still believe that a few more weeks would have left the holocaust drama with the big prize. A Beautiful Mind was an obvious leader, but was slowed by attacks on its legitimacy… which may well have worked in its favor, slowing the fever until it was time to be unleashed. And Gladiator had none of the heat going in December, with Traffic and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as legitimate phenoms and the Julia Roberts performance in Erin Brockovich driving passions for that film, slow and solid won that race.

It's a little different every time. But outside of Lord Of The Rings: Return of The King, it's been a while since the race felt wrapped up early. And this year is no different.

We in the media forget that what we embrace does not necessarily match what Academy members will embrace. There are movies that are the most beloved that are not even legitimately in the Best Picture race (See: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). And it is easy to forget that when "we" have all seen a movie, that does not mean that "they," the Academy members, have seen it.

Brokeback Mountain has gotten past two of the early hurdles. It has won a majority of the top critics awards so far and it is a sure bet to be seen by a very high percentage of Academy voters. But precursors can be curses too. The last time winning the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion turned out to be a precursor of an Oscar Best Picture nomination was 1980, when Atlantic City took the Golden Lion. No Venice winner has ever won Best Picture. But records are made to be broken. Only a few years ago, 61 home runs was an impossible goal.

Munich is also sure to be seen by a vast majority of the Academy members. But every other one of the contending pictures will continue to have to fight to be seen by most voters.

King Kong skews a little young, so the negative box office reportage will have an effect on how many of the generally-over-50 Academy members see the film.

Good Night, And Good Luck is likely to be seen mostly on DVD, though in that case, it is not much of a hindrance. The movie should play better on a small screen, though if it plays too well, people might write it off as too small.

Munich, on the other hand, will not be well served by first-time TV viewing. It is a movie that at-home distractions could well hurt. A second viewing at home is probably in its favor, however. An unusual challenge for Universal strategists.

One of the downsides for The Constant Gardener is its early release date. Many Academy members may have seen the film when it was first released in late August. And they will use the DVD as a reminder. But members seeing the visually complex film for the first and only time on DVD may not feel its full power.

Which brings us back to Brokeback Mountain, which starts as an upstream swimmer. No matter how much some people adore the film, it has the popularity boundaries of most Ang Lee movies. It is deliberate. It is languorous at times. The characters are not terribly verbal. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at, but the last visual feast to win Best Picture was The English Patient, a decade ago.

And like it or not, there is a significant percentage of Academy voters who really aren't interested in a gay love story. But forget about "gay" for a moment. Once you get past Shakespeare in Love, which was driven more by being a show biz piece than a romance, and you have to go all the way back to Casablanca to find a Best Picture winner that centered on a great romance.

Frankly, that statistic blew me away. I didn't expect to roll through more than 60 Oscar winners before finding a true romance. (Yes, Titanic was romantic… but it was a phenomenon beyond that romance.)

The film is a landmark in cinema, certain to be the most successful drama featuring sexually active gay characters at its center. As such, it is a statement film. But you have to go back more than a decade to find statement films that won: Deer Hunter (1978), Kramer vs Kramer (1979), Platoon (1986), Dances With Wolves (1990), and Schindler's List (1993). Then you have to go all the way back to In The Heat of The Night (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), and Patton (1970).

Five of these eight titles are directly tied to wars. Kramer vs Kramer was the first great divorce movie. (An Unmarried Woman was nominated the year before, but Kramer won as An Unmarried Family.) In The Heat of The Night was the race relations winner, beating out Guess Who's Coming To Dinner that same year. And Midnight Cowboy… it was phenom of its own… and beat out the more political Z for the Best Picture Oscar that year.

In an interesting way, the analogy of Midnight Cowboy to Brokeback Mountain and Munich to Z is the most reasonable historic one I've come across. The big question is, will enough people find that Brokeback Mountain sticks with them the way Midnight Cowboy did back then. And if Z was directed by an American directing icon, would it have won that year?

Brokeback Mountain has another major problem at this date… too much love. Nothing ruins a movie experience more than dramatically heightened expectations. And sure enough, I have not heard from one person who has seen the movie for the first time since Dec1 or so who expresses anything like the passion coming out of Telluride or Toronto. I'm sure they are out there. And I have conveniently left out the last two weeks of November, when the media got their chance to see the film in a rush after hearing the raves out of Venice, Telluride and Toronto. But still…

Another problem is that supporters of Brokeback Mountain are understandably unsure whether "their film" can win the Oscar. And the tone of the discourse about it seems to be getting a wee bit strident. If there is one thing you can be sure of with Academy members, they do not want to be lectured about doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that they won't fall into line. But never let them see you finger wag.

Munich has the same problem. Early reviews seemed angered by the various critics' notion that Spielberg was lecturing the room on morality. And the land mines Universal and the Spielberg camp has to navigate right now are ones of overreaction to the heat. The movie does need a push. Someone needs to start the conversation. But too hard a push can be equally deadly.

Of course, all this is a bit premature. The nominations-to-Oscars period is another race altogether. And if there is one movie in the greatest danger of not making it into the nominations that the media has positioned as a sure bet, it's Good Night, And Good Luck. The precursors don't indicate that GN&GL should be considered one of the sure bets. And David Strathairn has enjoyed no more success than Terrence Howard or Russell Crowe so far… all three have gotten Globes and Critics' Choice nominations, and nothing else. It's not that the film and the actor don't have a chance. But it's one of those funny moments when the media has made a decision about a frontrunner that hasn't gotten enormous support. The Constant Gardener and A History Of Violence both did about 50% more than Good Night at the box office. But neither one is (head scratch) about a journalist. Hmmm….

Every year, the reality of this process seems to evade us… even the most cynical of us. The Academy is its own unique group of people. It is not the media. It is not critics groups. It is thousands of industry pros who have their own unique demographic realities. The Academy doesn't give us those demographics to work with… and that is a great part of the mystique. And as silly as it may seem, servicing that demo's preferences is the entire goal of all this Oscar racing.

So saddle up, slow it down and try to avoid telling anyone that a vote against Brokeback is a vote for homophobia and hate. Love your movie and act accordingly… and respectfully. It really is all you can really do.

This Week's Oscar Charts
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2004 Oscar Columns

- Email David Poland