ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997 TAG: 9703250047
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK LANDLER N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Disney's deep pockets help push this independent studio's films at Oscar time.
Predicting the Academy Award winners is a fool's game, as any oracle of the Oscars will tell you. For every sure bet, like ``Schindler's List,'' there is a Marisa Tomei in ``My Cousin Vinny.''
But if Miramax Films does not cart home an armful of Oscars from the 69th Academy Awards this evening, much of Hollywood will be genuinely stunned. Miramax, an independent studio owned by the Walt Disney Co., won more nominations, 20, than anyone else in the industry. And as in previous years, with ``Il Postino'' (``The Postman''), 1995, and ``Pulp Fiction,'' 1994, the studio has been lobbying relentlessly to turn every one of those nominations into a statuette.
``The amount of nominations they got was truly astonishing,'' said Bingham Ray, co-managing executive of October Films, which racked up six nominations of its own this year for ``Secrets and Lies'' and ``Breaking the Waves.''
Much of Miramax's good fortune is due to an unusually powerful slate of films. The studio burnished its reputation for critically acclaimed, offbeat films with 1996 releases such as ``Trainspotting'' and ``Sling Blade.'' It drew a stellar performance out of Diane Keaton in ``Marvin's Room.'' And it delivered an old-style epic, ``The English Patient,'' which is the favorite to win best picture.
But when it comes to pushing films for the Academy Awards, nobody in the film industry is more zealous than Miramax. Three months before the Oscar nominations were announced on Feb. 11, the studio began a marketing blitz that mixed the hoopla of a new product introduction with the backroom dealing of a Washington Beltway lobbying campaign.
``Miramax devotes an awful lot of time and money to the Oscars,'' said Lloyd Leipzig, a longtime film marketer who is coordinating Columbia Picture's Academy Award campaign for ``The People vs. Larry Flynt,'' which received nominations for best actor (Woody Harrelson) and best director (Milos Forman). ``They spend infinitely more on this than other studios spend.''
Miramax's effort has included a huge advertising campaign in the industry's trade publications, an exhaustive schedule of screenings for academy members, a rash of television and radio shows about the making of Miramax movies, a series of cultural events tied to films and a telephone campaign in which Miramax employees called hundreds of academy members to plug lesser-known films such as ``Sling Blade."
The goal is simple: To convince the 5,173 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that a handful of Miramax films should be plucked from the list of 248 eligible movies. And while other studios also work hard at Oscar time, not one devotes the resources and energy to the season that Miramax does, thanks to Disney's deep pockets.
During the nominating period, it worked wonders. Not only did Miramax reap 12 nominations for ``The English Patient,'' but it won best actor and best adapted screenplay nominations for Billy Bob Thornton in ``Sling Blade,'' which had grossed just $550,000 and had barely played outside New York and Los Angeles when it was honored. Of the films that Miramax pushed hard, only ``Emma,'' its adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, failed to win a nomination for Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role, though it did get nominations for best costume and best musical or comedy score.
Despite their success, executives at Miramax are soft-pedaling their Oscar campaign. Mark Gill, the president for marketing, said Miramax's budget for the Academy Awards was one-quarter the size of those at major studios. (Gill, who used to be at Columbia, declined to give figures.)
Gill said Miramax was hustling to draw the widest possible audience to its films, not to bag the most awards. ``Campaigns don't win Oscars; movies win Oscars,'' he said.
Every movie company in Hollywood takes out glossy trade ads. Most also mail videocassettes to academy members, so they can watch the movies in the comfort of their living rooms.
Fine Line Features, a division of New Line Cinema, pulled out all the stops this year to promote ``Shine,'' its drama about the pianist David Helfgott, which was nominated for seven Oscars. The studio called 2,500 academy members to urge them to watch ``Shine,'' and with the videocassette it mailed a full-color pamphlet that ran afoul of the academy's rules on what studios can send to members.
Miramax has been particularly eager to win awards because the recognition can vault its lower-profile films to a much broader audience. Since being nominated for 12 Oscars, for example, ``The English Patient'' has gone from $42 million to $60 million in box-office grosses, and ``Sling Blade'' has jumped from $550,000 to $8.4 million.
``Six weeks ago, nobody in America knew Billy Bob Thornton's name; now, everybody does,'' said Harvey Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax.
Weinstein said Miramax's reputation for scorched-earth marketing was being unfairly propagated by jealous competitors.In an interview the other day at a coffee shop near Miramax's offices in TriBeCa, in New York City, several of the studio's top marketing executives maintained that their Oscar campaign was created largely to make sure that academy members had received cassettes of the movies and were aware of them.
``We did send out a mailing, and we made some phone calls to people we felt were out of the loop,'' said Cynthia Swartz, the company's senior vice president for special projects. Swartz estimated that Miramax executives had called no more than 100 academy members; executives at competing studios said the number was much higher.
To hear some members of the academy tell it, Miramax called early and often. John Ericson, a retired actor who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., said he was called several times by a representative from the studio. In the first call, this person asked Ericson if he had received ``Sling Blade.''
A few days later, the representative called back to gauge Ericson's reaction. The caller also promoted the performance of Billy Bob Thornton, a relative newcomer who wrote, directed and starred in this film about a man who is released from a hospital for the criminally insane 25 years after he murdered his mother and her lover.
``He said: `Didn't you think he was wonderful? I hope it will be something worthy of a nomination,''' Ericson recalled.
Miramax's one-on-one lobbying proved successful. Ericson nominated Thornton for best actor, even though he had, until then, never heard of ``Sling Blade'' and originally assumed it was a Sylvester Stallone movie.Nor did Miramax's wooing of Ericson end there. Knowing that there are a handful of other academy members in Santa Fe, Miramax scheduled a screening for academy members there in early February. Ericson and others were able to see ``Marvin's Room,'' ``Sling Blade'' and the Woody Allen comedy ``Everyone Says I Love You'' on the big screen at their local cinema. Ms. Swartz confirmed that Miramax had held screenings in other towns outside the New York-Los Angeles circuit.
Tina Louise, best known for playing the silky-voiced Ginger in ``Gilligan's Island,'' was also called by Miramax and encouraged to watch ``Sling Blade.'' She said she appreciated the tip, if only because academy members were typically swamped with videocassettes during Oscar season.
``If you are made aware of a particular performance, that's fine with me,'' she said. ``But it's not going to make a difference in who I vote for.''
The academy has been sensitive to charges of vote swaying ever since the studios began mailing out videocassettes. After some companies began sending the cassettes in elaborate packaging, the academy clamped down. This year, Fine Line, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Universal Pictures have been rapped by the academy for dispensing overly promotional material.
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Billy Bob Thornton is director, writer and star ofby CNB``Sling Blade,'' one of Miramax's Oscar hopefuls. color