January 23, 2004

Sorry you got sick of looking at Jeff Wells’ imaginary toilet… and I hope you were reading (and maybe even enjoying) the Sundance coverage on MCN.

I’m back in the THB saddle, though MCN’s Sundance coverage is far from over and our awards coverage is about to go into overdrive. I finally decided that I had to read Peter Biskind’s book, Down & Dirty Pictures. So far, my take swings from ire about Biskind’s shortcuts to ire about the media’s simplification of Biskind’s book into simplistic gossip to some admiration for the parts of the book that do have multiple sources and real historic value.

The many, many, many small factual errors are bothersome. He manages to make multiple errors in just one sentence about Waterworld, for instance. Some things are hard to fact check. This was not. And it speaks to Biskind’s fast & loose style of truth telling. But so far, not enough to really distract me for long. I’m much more concerned with Biskind’s occasional efforts to prove his hypotheses instead of doing real reporting.

More on that on Monday…

Win A Date With Tad Hamilton is heading into theaters today. Tracking has the film in the low teens, which has to be a bit of a disappointment after Along Came Polly’s $28 million 3-day start. Then again, noone had Polly tracking quite that high. So Friday night will be an interesting tale to read come Saturday morning.

FINALLY – I got a note from a colleague on Thursday theorizing about the Golden Globes having a significant effect this year on the final outcome of the Academy Awards. I disputed the motion and the more we went back and forth, the more convinced I became that come Tuesday, we will only hear about the Globes in commercials for the winners. My e-mails to that end follow…

“I think you've been caught in a false presumption of how the Globes effects the Oscars. The Globes has never been a clear influencer of winners, beyond the fact that their winners always get nominated. In recent years, BFCA actually has a better track record... and only this year will the group be able to pretend it is a real influencer. And of course, HFPA has two bites to the one Oscar apple each year.

The media, of course, has the power to help perpetuate the myth of the Globes. Or not.

Last year, Nicholson and Gere won the Globe and lost the Oscar... Gere wasn't even nominated. Kidman, Streep & Zellweger won Globes and only one of the three won an Oscar. Roman Polanski wasn't nominated. The Pianist wasn't nominated for Screenplay and HFPA's winner, About Schmidt, wasn't even nominated for Oscar... and Almodovar, a foreigner, was not nominated by the HFPA.

Was Hilary Swank really helped to an Oscar win by the HFPA? She was always odds on favorite to win, just as Charlize Theron is this year.

And that was all with the Globes being awarded BEFORE the Oscar nominations closed.

The last two years, I wrote that Chicago and A Beautiful Mind would win months before they were released? Was it really that complicated to see that? Cinderella Man will fight The Aviator for Best Picture next year... don't ya think? Scorsese with a non-violent picture vs. Ron Howard tough man epic, with Oscar faves Crowe and Zelleger? For it to be anything else, they have to screw those two films up somehow.

The history of the Globes, when they had the advantage of casting a real shadow, was that they could pick the favorites and be right - and they had the advantage of having twice the winners. The only real influence this year will be that their nominations might keep Cold Mountain in the Oscar nominations race... if that film fails to get a Best Picture nod, you can expect the globes to move to early January next year. And if it does, it will because of the millions and millions spent by Miramax positioning Cold Mountain- falsely - as "the most nominated film of the year," for which the Globes only deserve an assist.

The genius of the Oscar nominations announcement date is that they have positioned themselves to obliterate all conversation about the Globes just two days after the awards show. I expect them to get some right matches - Rings, Robbins, Theron, probably Penn, maybe Brian Helgeland or the Sheridans, maybe Peter Jackson. But all of us know the same... does that make the Globes a key influencer of you... or the Academy? I don't think so.

Of course, neither of us can know how things will play out, given there is no history here at all. I just know that the Globes have always been over-weighted as a prognosticator of winners and that its real influence, on forcing Oscar nominations, is gone with the wind. So..."

NEXT E-MAIL: "I don't see any real effect at all because of the timing. Once Oscar nominations are in, voters will see all of the major films and performances they haven't seen and make a choice for themselves. Do you really believe they are so pliable as to just vote for anyone the HFPA votes for?

Like I say, The HFPA is smart enough to see the Theron writing on the wall... and Rings.... etc. So how does one prove (or disprove) influence in that situation?"

FINAL E-MAIL: "As I wrote in the first response... historically, the HFPA influence is on nominations, not wins.

The main reason for moving the Oscars was smushing the perception of Globe influence. They thought long and hard about how to best do it and the release of nominations two days after the Globes was meant to do just that. Maybe you are right and it will somehow backfire on them. But I really think you have underestimated the Academy membership on this one.

More to the point, the power of the Globes was to give ammo to marketers who were laying heavy on those wins, much as Miramax is doing right now with Cold Mountains noms. The lack of time also means less time for journalists to narrow our feature writing down because we believe in the Globes myth. And it is the media's shift of attention, I believe, that was always the main influencer. Academy voters like to back winners, the same as everyone else. But that month of time was the opportunity for Weinstein and others to build false notions, like that it is a race between Cold Mountain and Rings. They won't have that time this year. And to my eye, that is a much bigger loss to the manipulation than the tightness is a win."

READER OF THE DAY: GET BACK JOE JOE writes: “In the opening chapter of his "Down and Dirty Pictures" book -- specifically, on page 11-12 -- Peter Biskind writes about Harvey Weinstein in 1979: "Harvey could always be found with a Diet Coke in one hand... The assistants learned to buy Coke by the case... Harvey in those days ate lunches that consisted of a tunafish salad sandwich on rye, toasted, a slice of American cheese, and the inevitable Diet Coke." Lots of nice, colorful detail. There's just one problem: Diet Coke wasn't introduced until 1982. (Why do I remember this? Because I used to drink Tab, which got yanked out of vending machines everywhere to make room for Diet Coke.) I can only assume that the rest of the book is better-researched.”

E ME: What have you been saving up for the last 10 days… time to start pushing the old hot button again.