Academy hands new Oscars rules to Leslie and everybody else
The Oscars don’t want some little, celeb-backed movie ruining the fair and earnest Oscar campaigns
Aux News Leslie
As we all know, the small, character-actor-populated drama, To Leslie broke the Oscars last year. Reportedly costing less than $1 million to produce, the movie follows an alcoholic single mother who wins the lottery and blows it all before finding a second chance by running a motel. But the film’s content wasn’t the issue. A little character drama starring a respected actor like Andrea Riseborough won’t be the first to get some Oscar love. Unfortunately, her friends were the problem, raising the obvious question: If all your friends nominated To Leslie, would you nominate To Leslie, too? Campaigning on the film’s behalf, celebrities and Oscar winners Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet puffed up the film, hosting screenings and plugging it on the red carpet. It raised To Leslie’s profile enough to earn Riseborough a last-minute Best Actress nomination, causing everyone who spent millions on billboards, screeners, and all the other Oscar pollution that comes with awards season to lose their collective minds.
So the Oscars intervened. Earlier today, the Academy pulled a Bill Maher and released new rules for next year’s ceremonies to prevent another To Leslie from spoiling a slot meant for Mia Goth’s performance in Pearl. The main issues were social media and screenings. While the Academy reviewed To Leslie’s online campaign, they ultimately decided it was above board. Still, the Academy laid out more explicit rules about campaigning on behalf of films. Now, voters cannot “encourage” or “lobby” other members “outside of the scope of these promotion regulations to advance a motion picture, performance, or achievement,” putting even more weight on the words “for your consideration.”
Screenings received more concrete regulations, too. Celebrities like Paltrow can throw a maximum of four screenings in a film’s honor before nominations and zero after. These For Your Consideration (FYC) screenings “may not be paid for or promoted as being affiliated with third parties, brands, or sponsors—this includes third party, brand, or sponsor mentions on invitations.” However, “private events” not branded as functions are totally kosher. As long as the host isn’t sending them out through the Academy’s mailing houses and no movie company is sponsoring the event, Paltrow can throw as many To Leslie parties as she damn well pleases.
Panels and Q&As were also up for a refresh. Rather than hammering home the banishment of the phrase as “this is more of a comment than a question,” the new rules forbid Academy members not “directly associated” with the film from moderating panels after nominations. The rules continue, “At no time during the awards process may Academy Governors host screenings or moderate a Q&A or panel discussion unless directly associated with the motion picture or the Q&A or panel discussion is produced or hosted by the Academy.”
The new rules also seemingly end the yearly cycle of interviews with anonymous voters where they say mean things about the nominees, which, to be fair, is our job. “You may not share your voting decisions at any point. You may not discuss your voting preferences and other members’ voting preferences in a public forum,” the rules state. “This includes comparing or ranking motion pictures, performances, or achievements in relation to voting. This also includes speaking with press anonymously.”
So ends To Leslie’s reign of terror. It’s a scary thing when voting members of the Academy band together to champion a movie that cost less than a million dollars. That’s enough of that, then.
36 Comments
Yeah, and a good thing too.I know it’s fashionable round these parts to look at this as some sort of David v Goliath struggle of the indie artist against the corporate campaign. But it’s really not. It’s just a fairly normal and decent attempt to prevent the acrimony and bitterness that can arise from colleagues feeling pressured to vote one way or another by their friends and sometime coworkers.
Hahaha! What!?! That’s not that not what these new “rules” are meant to combat at all. The complete opposite actually. The Academy was pissed that private screening were being held rather than through there FYC streaming service, and PR companies that millions trying to get Oscar noms, and I’m sure their clients, were equally pissed that a relatively cheap grassroots campaign got Riseborough a nom.
The Academy does not even have one unified FYC streaming platform, what are you talking about?
It wasn’t a “grassroots campaign” that won Riseborough the nomination.It was more like a Chili Cook-Off where everyone who attends can vote—rather than having some judges decide a winner. It’s a problem becuase the people that do the best, or are most likely to win, are those that bring the biggest amount of friends and family to have them vote for their own chili.That literally happens all the time in a chili competition in my home town… For one year, they decided to go with some judges, but then a whole bunch of people chose not to compete (because they couldn’t stack the odds of winning), and that kinda sucked… So next year, they went back to just letting everyone have a vote, so that the winner would once again be decided by a circle of popularity—rather than the merits of having the best tasting chili.
Not to mention, there was some shady campaigning going on in the socials, including one celeb who used their social to argue for Riseborough to the detriment of several other candidates, by arguing that because Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis were “locks” for noms, she was throwing her support to Riseborough. While this didn’t rise to the level of campaigning against someone, it apparently convinced enough people to bump one or the other from their picks in favor of Riseborough, with the end result being both Davis and Deadwyler were shut out, and you wound up with another “#Oscarsbesowhite narrative (nevermind Michelle Yeoh being a nominee). The irony is wound up being pyrrhic victory for Riseborough, who wound up the butt of a lot of jokes, the object of score, and a whole lot of furrowed brows as people tried to figure out who she was and just what the hell did she star in. It did very little to boost the profile of the film, and I dare say she may have alienated more than a few people who were put off by her methods. Better to have not been nominated, and be talked about someone who was overlooked and deserving (shades of the Academy’s notorious exclusion of Jennifer Jason Leigh for in 1996 for “Georgia.”)
it apparently convinced enough people to bump one or the other from their picks in favor of RiseboroughDo you have a source for this? I’m not trying to imply you’re wrong, but I keep seeing people repeat this claim as if there’s a vote tally somewhere that shows that 1) it was Riseborough that definitely came in fifth place (rather than, say Ana de Armas or Michelle Williams) and 2) Riseborough *just barely* beat out Davis and Deadwyler—enough for a grassroots campaign and one C-list celeb’s bullshit tweet to swing things—as opposed to *whoever* came in fifth had a comfortable lead over *whoever* came in sixth. So is there a vote tally somewhere? I’m sincerely asking.
Only a handful of people from the accountancy firm (might still be Price Waterhouse Cooper) ever know the voting tallies from the Academy Awards (for nominations and then the voting for the winner after that’s decided). We will never see them officially publicly released.
That has always been my understanding. If indeed true, then it seems to me that there is no evidence that somebody that most people have never heard of (and whose influence was thus probably negligible at best) declaring on social media that Davis and Deadwyler were “locks” had any actual impact on the results as far as anybody knows. Riseborough might have had more votes that Williams and de Armas. We don’t know. Whoever was fifth might have had a substantially greater number of votes that whoever was sixth. We don’t know that, either. We don’t even know if Davis or Deadwyler came in sixth.All we know is that we’re outraged, but instead of being rightly angered by Hollywood’s systemic racism, we’re scapegoating one actor whose grassroots campaign itself beat out the Hollywood system.
The Academy uses a preferential voting system. So as long as Riseborough sat atop enough ballots she would earn the points to win. The LA Times story from January breaks it down pretty well:
How much support did she need? The academy’s actors branch has 1,336 members, meaning that if every one of them voted, Riseborough would require around 200 or so mentions. But in the Oscars’ preferential voting system, where members rank their choices, a passionate core of first-place votes can catapult a nominee higher in the race. I’m no expert in math, but, given the low visibility of “To Leslie,” Riseborough must have sat atop a great many ballots.— Glenn Whipp, LA TimesAnd remember this is a movie that screened at one theater for five days and made $27k at the box office.
Only a handful of people from the accountancy firm (might still be Price Waterhouse Cooper) ever know the voting tallies from the Academy Awards (for nominations and then the voting for the winner after that’s decided). We will never see them officially publicly released.
And let’s not gloss over the big factor in this whole controversy (which the author did) — it wasn’t a mere “friend” who spearheaded this campaign, it was Mary McCormack, a well-connected actor and wife of the film’s director who was behind the campaign. Many of those who were hyping performance were doing so as a favor to McCormack and without, you know, actually seeing the film.
Oh yes no doubt, it was an astroturf campaign waged by a few with powerful social media followings who were shilling for the film like it was an energy supplement or beauty cream. It was embarrassing and shameless.
Idk. I was looking for a perspective on why the To Leslie thing was so bad, so I was interested to read this, but this doesn’t sound reasonable. First of all, isn’t voting anonymous? So why would there be “acrimony and bitterness” because it’s not as if anyone knows who you voted for. Second of all, this doesn’t stop people from talking privately about the films, and Gwyneth can still call up her friends and be like oh by the way have you heard of this movie, you should vote for it. Third or all, why would the Academy be *this* invested in preventing “acrimony and bitterness” among adults who can’t handle their emotions?
The problem is not who wins.The problem is having to endure a hard sales pitch at semi-official work/personal party. And sure, Gwyneth could just call her friends. But then with these rules and general understanding in place, those “friends” can push back by pointing out that she isn’t supposed to be doing that. And they can point to the rules as the excuse to absolve themselves personally.It’s the sort of rule that is pretty common among a peer group that is also a business community, to avoid bringing business into personal discussions.
“But then with these rules and general understanding in place, those ‘friends’ can push back by pointing out that she isn’t supposed to be doing that.”So I suppose that’s true, but if they’re backboned enough to do that, wouldn’t they be backboned enough to just say “Hey, I don’t really like being sold like this”? I feel like if they couldn’t do the latter, they wouldn’t do the former. And what would they be absolving themselves of? If Gwyneth calls me and says “hey you should vote for this movie,” even if I say “you’re not supposed to do that,” have I absolved myself from voting for the movie? She still knows that I know she expects me to vote for the movie, and we got the *wink wink* of “the rules” out of the way.And, moreover, I still don’t think any of that is the kind of thing the academy cares about. It doesn’t strike me as an organization that cares that much about the feelings of its members.
It’s just easier to point to a general rule against campaigning than to try to point out when a specific person is being rude and annoying about it. Especially when you still have to work with them sometime. And there will always be that person. Worse, people will disagree about whether that guy is being unreasonable and that just makes it even worse. The wink wink is useful here because it means nobody has to definitively refuse.Take this scenario. Chazz Producerman makes a crap movie. He calls up Steve Newactor and says “hey, you should watch Crap Movie. It’s good, deserves a Best Picture”. With that layer of wink wink, Steve can agree and then just not vote for it without lying. Without the rules, Chazz can just say “hey Steve, you voted for Crap Movie for Best Picture right?” With the rules, Steve can respond with “hey man, we’re not supposed to talk about that” and then change the conversation. Generally people don’t like having to lie, so having rules that defuse or just outright prevent awkward social situations is nice.“And, moreover, I still don’t think any of that is the kind of thing the academy cares about.”But it apparently is, since (a) the rule already existed, and (b) the new updates are simply clarifying that existing rule.And again, this sort of rule is not that out of the ordinary.
“But it apparently is, since (a) the rule already existed, and (b) the new updates are simply clarifying that existing rule.”That doesn’t prove that it’s about their feelings, which is what I’m saying. I think it’s more likely to be because they don’t want low-budget movies to be able to use this kind of grassroots marketing and end up beating out the big-budget movies that line the Academy members’ pockets.
My point is that the rule predates this one exceptional situation of grassroots marketing and I’m fairly certain even predates the big budget campaigns.And maybe it would be helpful to actually read the new clarification to the rules. It doesn’t actually ban “grassroots” campaigns. If someone wants to start a viral social media campaign to promote their movie, they’re just as free to do so now as they were before. What it actually bans is either pointing that campaign directly at members of the Academy or talking shit about the competition (who are also members of the Academy). It is purely about members of the Academy not wanting to get harassed, insulted, or forced by peer pressure.
You’re going to be fairly disappointed to find out the methods of campaigning which are typically allowed.
the Academy pulled a Bill Maher
Wut?
please dont ever refer to anything as that. I know what it means, but given Bill Maher….It could mean literally anything.
I still don’t know what it means.
The Academy used the n-word?!
I would never pull Bill Maher.
The most I would do is mar Bill Pullman.
I haven’t watched him in years, but doesn’t he have a “New Rules” segment where he can be aggressively centrist in the douchiest way possible?
Superhead, tell Bill Maher ‘I’m coming for you, baby!’
Maher has a closing segment called New Rules at the end of Real Time
Any new rules to ensure that films under consideration are readily available to the viewing public? Or anything to prevent the obvious chicanery where Diane Warren gets nominated for Original Song every year for movies that barely meet the minimum definition of “film?” No? Well, look forward to more fuckery next year.
This is what happens when one group of rich people thinks another group of rich people is doing it wrong.Do it right, rich people, gosh!
The sanctimonious tone of this article is infuriating. The nomination the Andrea Risborough received should have gone to Danielle Deadwyler. Remember her? The lead actress from Till that received acknowledgement for her work from: The Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, Gotham, New York Film Critics just to name a few. Shame on you!
The real question of import is…how does Riseborough keep her left ear attached to her body, it can’t be structurally sound.
Looks like it might be stapled on…
Anyone else’s header image have a massive blank grey space below it?
Man, I wish the coverage of this story was a bit more knowledgable or informative about the Oscar campaigning process, because the methods Riseborough are not very far off from the money-and-fame-driven standards of Oscar campaigning. It’s a pretty fucked system on its face; she’s coloring slightly outside the lines.
Oscar has such “flexible” standards when it comes to movies. Decades ago, James Whitmore, a great veteran character actor, was nominated for Best Actor in Give ‘Em Hell Harry , which was a stage play that was videotaped for Oscar consideration. Video may have been state of the art in the 70s, but nowadays it looks like they used a 50 buck handycam. Where do you draw the line in this case, since obviously it wasn’t a traditional film production?