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

17 Weeks To Go
The Drip, Drip, Drip

The main variation in the 2009/10 Oscar season that keeps getting discussed is the change to 10 nominees.

And it's not insignificant.

But as the Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times."

As the Academy made this change, the economy of the film business started to bottom out. (Sadly, I don't think we've quite reached bottom yet, though many businesses have started 12-step.)

The Dependents went from being seven strong (as MGM is still officially a major, according to its membership in MPAA) to three divisions really in business (as opposed to being a placeholder for loose end projects and Home Entertainment libraries).

The True Indies continue to be in the game, though there is a real question of what Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company will look like when next year's season rolls around and Summit hasn't yet shown itself to be more than the sum of its vampires. Overture, Magnolia, Freestyle, Roadside Attractions, IFC, Apparition, and Oscilliscope (in order of 2009 domestic box office grosses) all continue to show interest in the season and an inability to get a hold of the voting imaginations of the Academy ... at least in the top categories.

Media noise - amplified by a combination of ad budgets being slashed thus making publicity more important again, a wave of new online businesses trying to sell themselves and their ads, and old media flailing about, trying to get attention, also in fear of their own demise - is more relentless and less thoughtful than ever.

And in the midst of all of this, we are in a season that - in no small part because of 10 nominees - has seen most of its eventual Best Picture nominees being chewed on and chewed on and chewed on with just a few titles daring to hold out until the end, hoping to catch the late wave.

I guess what I am saying is that this season may be the most mouth-breathing, desperate, media awards season ever. Yet, the lessons learned are going to be the least informative ever.

Do not plan on learning anything you can hang onto this year ... except for who wins and who loses. Plenty of noise will be made as endless Reverse Analysis will prove that hindsight is not always 20/20. But for all the micro-obsessing, it is unlikely that there will ever be a year quite like this again.

The Nikki Finke of it alone, as Academy press releases are fed to Her Craziness hours before release so she can pretend she reported breaking news, is a sign of change (not to mention the Apocalypse). The infantile desperation of the powerful men and women who bow and scrape to avoid a third screaming call from Queen Hysteria on a Sunday seems to be reaching a tipping point. But in the meanwhile, "mean and disinterested in the truth" has become entertainment media's new standard for wannabes, including a number of Old Media players who are so afraid of not being the first to get a press release from someone selling their lie that they are willing to burn long standing relationships that might have, someday, again led to actual journalism.

The converse, of course, is a long list of "reporters" who don't seem to realize that a press release in their inbox is not an EXCLUSIVE because they converted it to html faster than others. Studios seem to be making more one-sheets and releasing more images from film sets than ever so yet another outlet can fall over itself to run yet another insubstantial EXCLUSIVE.

The Hollywood Reporter is about to be sold and has to change to fight off Variety, which they are also trying to sell. Meanwhile, both trades have lost any significance other than actually reporting on things that the mob doesn't much care about ... like in the old days. And looking at the pages of their dot-coms, expect more budget cuts in the spring ... or earlier.

The Los Angeles Times has actually stepped up content in the previously unreadable The Envelope, thickening it with a lot more content and a lot less gimmick. Unfortunately, they are running the same interviews that anywhere from 10 to 25 outlets are running and in that blur, nothing seems very special anymore. It almost makes me feel sympathy for Patrick Goldstein to see him spin his head between "I am not really a critic" to "look at how important my opinion of this film is ... they are launching posters on my blog now after I rave a film!"

But studios just don't seem to know how to maneuver the boats this year. There is more lying about what is screening when than I ever remember. And on personal level, I am less interested in tracking what is screening when than ever. I'm not even asking much anymore. "We want you to be the first to see it ... after SAG and DGA and HFPA and NBR and the long leads and that bag lady who likes to pee on the corner of Third and Fairfax to welcome people to The Grove."

I have always been a great believer that these films belong to the distributors and filmmakers and that their choices about when and how they will show their films is truly up to them. But don't spin, fold, and mutilate my trust while making that call. If you don't want to get caught up in the race in ways that don't allow you all the control you would like, fine. I get it. The era in which you could screen quietly is over, so expect blowback if you sneak it to major groups and make me listen to the buzz that emerges. I know it's completely unreliable, but if I have to listen to it, I can't say that I won't take it into consideration. But really, whatever the truth is, just tell me, listen to a little whining (in some cases), and get back to your job. If you lie to me, my wrath will not be for your movie or when I am seeing it, but for the insult of having been misled.

The blur of this season is also all those EXCLUSIVES and even just bland, minor news stories. There is this gaping media maw out there ... nothing close to a real amount of content to fill it ... and a complete loss of comfort about where a flag can be planted and seen. It's clear that stealing the Academy list of another media outlet by hiring people from the other outlet is not enough to become a must-read stop for voters or anyone else. indieWIRE is suddenly an Oscar site when just a couple of years ago, our inclusion of the bright and beautiful Eugene Hernandez in Gurus o' Gold was considered iffy by Oscar publicists. (I have always believed that having a voice who is mostly indie focused offers important perspective on a list like that ... as have Canadians, web-only writers, and the mainstreamiest of the mainstream, the USA Today team.) HitFix, The Wrap, HuffPo, Finkebaugh, Defamer, Movieline, The Daily Beast and God knows who else are chasing Oscar dollars like lost children, joining more defined sites like Awards Daily and In Contention.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has basically taken themselves out of the awards season by letting The Bagger go free of his Oscar distraction and not even launching their new voice onto the world until December.

Of course, they kinda get it. The more noise, the less important the noise. As Oscar consultants are forced to worry about more and more voices out there who KNOW EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, there is the very basic truth ... the group of people who could care less about all this coverage could dance on the head of a pin. Studios know it more and more. The New York Times knows it.

And this is not just an Oscar season issue. The face of the industry has changed, led initially by Ain't It Cool News, but pushed well beyond the worst behavior of what was once a basement circle-jerk that has since turned niche media leader and mainstream site. It's all very convenient that The Media likes to claim that Twitter and Facebook matter. It frees us all of responsibility for our own silliness. But these delivery systems are just delivery systems. The responsibility is on the spout and the bucket both ... only the water is relatively innocent.

And this week, the studios are ramping it up. UPS and FedEx must be sighing in relief as the screeners start flying out. Still, no one has been clever enough to send out both Blu-ray and traditional DVDs, if for nothing else than to promote the new, higher priced format for the price of 20,000 discs, even if 80% of them are never watched in that format.

Every movie except Avatar will be screened for media and voting groups by the weekend after Thanksgiving. I feel like I need to put my head down, survive the next 10 days, and wait for that great moment when it becomes about the movies again. And that is when the 10 nomination thing will mean something. It's too big a field to be about everything other than the movie.

The question for all of us, studio or media, is how to differentiate in such an overloaded marketplace. For many reasons - mostly $s - almost everyone is choosing to make this into a scrum. So I guess we just have to keep whispering the mantra, "It's about the movies ... It's about the movies ... . It's about the movies ... "

It's about the movies we love ... the movies we hate ... the movies we lose ourselves in for a couple of hours ... the movies that lead to fights over dinner ... the movies we cannot forget ... the actors whose names we cannot remember, but who blow us away with just moments of time on screen ... it's about the joy of the shared dark, our collectve unconcious collected.

We can' t just pretend there is no clutter, no race, no silliness. But if we forget that in the end, most of this experience will be about people seeing the movies and feeling the movies, we are fooling no one but ourselves. Results are great. But for the love of Pete (you can quote him!), let's enjoy the journey.

The Charts
Best Picture
Actor | Supporting Actor
Actress | Supporting Actress

November 19, 2009
- by David Poland

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Previous Columns
November 12, 2009
October 30, 2009
September 30, 2009
July 1, 2009

2009 Oscars | 2008 Oscars | 2007 Oscars | 2006 Oscars | 2005 Oscars

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