Courting the Academy

The way the producers of “Stand and Deliver” figure it, Edward James Olmos deserves more exposure in the Oscar race.

Olmos’ portrayal of a barrio high school teacher in that film earned him some critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination. But when it came to the annual ritual of studio campaigning for Oscar nominations, Warner Bros. bought only a handful of advertisements in the Hollywood trade papers.

A Warners spokesman insists the film received the same treatment as the studio’s other Oscar contenders. But Olmos’ agent, Jim Cota, takes a different view. “We got absolutely no support from the studio--it’s terrible,” Cota said.

So Cota, the film’s investors (who sold “Stand and Deliver” to Warners in a pick-up deal) and Olmos are pooling their own money to buy ads in the trade papers, asking members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider Olmos for a best actor Oscar. “We had to beat up Eddie over the head to do this,” Cota said.

That “Stand and Deliver’s” supporters are dipping into their own pockets to the tune of several thousand dollars is a sign of how important marketing campaigns have become in the race for Oscar nominations.

True, the Academy warns members about “advertisements, promotional gifts and other lobbying tactics,” and Academy members love to expound at length about the integrity of their voting process. But many Hollywood insiders also concede that marketing campaigns do help shape the thinking of Academy members--though not always in the manner that the studios intend.

This year, for example, Cannon has launched an aggressive campaign for its critically acclaimed “Little Dorrit,” prompting some Oscar race veterans to snipe that the studio’s “garish” advertisements work against the picture. Universal’s marketers thought Academy members would enjoy an elegant dinner before the studio’s free screenings, but others say that strategy could backfire. “If (promotion) gets too elaborate,” one producer said, “people are going to feel like you’re trying to buy their vote.”

In contrast, Warners’ decision to hold back on its campaign for Olmos could actually aid his Oscar race. “This casts him as the underdog,” explained Gabe Sumner, executive

producer for Odyssey Entertainment Ltd. “Fellow actors might be more receptive to nominate him. They would probably appreciate (his situation).” Indeed, Sumner purposely positioned “Rocky” as an underdog candidate in 1976, when that film won the best picture Oscar.

Marketing campaigns are especially important this year, which appears to be short on front-runners. In contrast to past years, there has been a notable lack of agreement among the various critics’ groups that bestow their own awards in advance of the Oscars, including the Hollywood foreign press, which handed out its Golden Globes awards on Saturday. “When there are no shoo-ins, it’s open season for every studio’s publicity department to spend lots of money,” said producer Robert Radnitz.

Since November, the 4,632 voting members of the Academy have been bombarded by advertisements in the trade papers (principally Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter), gold-embossed letters in their mailboxes, and sound tracks passed out at screenings. Once the nominees are announced on Feb. 15, the volume of advertising will increase even further until the winners are announced March 29.

Like the presidential primary, the Oscar season only gets longer and longer. “Every year they seem to start the campaign earlier,” said Lynne Segall, marketing and sales director for the Hollywood Reporter. Prime advertising spots in that paper are locked up beginning in August.

Compared to 1960, though, when an Oscar campaign for John Wayne’s “The Alamo” equated a best picture vote with patriotism, studio strategies for seeking Oscar nominations are downright tame. So tame, in fact, that the Academy even plans to tone down its written warning to members about “crude and excessive solicitations,” an Academy spokesman said.

Watching the studio’s marketing moves can be almost as entertaining as the Oscar race itself. Here’s a look at some of this year’s strategies:

The resurrection strategy: “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” faces unbearable odds: Nearly 80% of the films that have gone on to win a best picture Oscar in the past 54 years were released in the second half of the year. “Unbearable Lightness” was released in February last year, and it didn’t survive at the box office for long.

So producer Saul Zaentz, together with the film’s distributor, Orion, mounted a major advertising campaign, hiring Lloyd Leipzig, who had conducted the successful Academy Award campaign for Zaentz’s “Amadeus.” Leipzig and the Davis & Grimaldi agency began routinely reminding Academy members about “Unbearable Lightness” back when most people in Hollywood were still talking about the Thanksgiving box office results. A rough survey of the trades shows that, so far, “Unbearable Lightness” is the most advertised film in the race.

The bottom-line strategy: “Rain Man” is already considered a top contender for an Oscar nomination. But MGM/UA isn’t taking any chances: Colorful, poignant scenes from the film regularly fill up two-page ad space in the trade papers, and the studio is running a lengthy commercial about the making of “Rain Man” on Los Angeles cable systems.

MGM/UA is hoping that a few nominations will help “Rain Man’s” prospects at the box office when it is released overseas in late February or early March. That same strategy worked wonders when “Moonstruck” collected a satchel of nominations before going overseas last year.

The re-release strategy: One key to any Oscar campaign is to get voters to see the film. “The problem gets worse and worse,” says producer Jere Henshaw, a 30-year Academy member. “How do you get people out of the house and in to see the picture?” This year, in addition to free, private screenings for Academy members, studios are re-releasing films in commercial theaters close to Academy members’ neighborhoods--”Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “A Cry in the Dark,” “Bird,” “Running on Empty” are among the re-releases. Some films, like “Unbearable Lightness” are also available on videocassette.

The quotable critics strategy: Any film critics left out of the campaign for Clint Eastwood’s “Bird” must be feeling pretty lonely. In one Daily Variety ad alone, critics from 30 different outlets were quoted--ranging from Newsweek and NBC’s “Today” show to the University of Texas’ student newspaper, the Daily Texan. That contrasts with Weintraub’s campaign for the less-than-critically acclaimed “My Stepmother is an Alien,” which had to resort to filling up its advertising space by reprinting two entire reviews.