Beating a Dead Doc Horse

A bit more on this morning's Oscar nominations and my ultimately unsuccessful effort to have the documentary feature nominations announced on TV.

One of the things that Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis wrote in his letter to me was that in the short time they had on television, they had to concentrate on films that most of the public was familiar with or had seen:

     "...That doesn't, alas, mean that as many as 3% of
     the viewers of 'Good Morning America' or 'The Today
     Show' will have heard of any of them. (Well,
     depending on how the voting goes, maybe one.)"

Clearly, a reference to the megahit March of the Penguins, which was nominated this morning. Well, particularly this year, in which none of the Best Picture nominees has topped 100 million at the box office (probably only Brokeback Mountain will have a chance to do that), I wanted to note that, as of today, March of the Penguins has outgrossed all five nominated films in each of the following categories, all of which were announced this morning live on television:

Best Picture
Best Director
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best Foreign Language Film
Best Animated Feature Film
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay

In fact, save for the performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, March of the Penguins outgrossed every film in the lead actor categories.

Sure, you could argue that March is an aberration, just as you could have said Fahrenheit 9/11 was a fluke. But the argument that more people have seen nominees in the other categories is just flat wrong, particularly this year and particularly if the goal of the Academy is to reach folks outside the major media markets.

And so, we begin the campaign for next year...

Update February 13 - A new post on this topic illustrates the problem with the Academy may be more pervasive than first thought.

Comments

[Jonny Leahan]

go AJ! i shall join your campaign next year. the academy has such a poor history in regards to "getting" docs... but hopefully one day that will change.

[AJ Schnack]

thanks for the support Jonny. slow and steady wins the race, a cartoon once told me...

[Sujewa Ekanayake]

Keep up the nobel quest, I think it is only a matter of time before docs get more press from the Academy. Penguins & Grizzly Man were two of the best (and of course in the case of Penguins one of the most popular) films of last year.

In other notes, I loved The Tale of Two Johns (title?) - TMBG rocks. Was just thinking about their song about the sun this morning.

Nice blog, will add it to my links at my blog Filmmaking for the Poor:
http://www.filmmakingforthepoor.blogspot.com/

Later on.

Sujewa Ekanayake
Director, "Date Number One"
http://www.wilddiner.com/

[AJ Schnack]

Thanks Sujewa - I dig your blog a lot. Many docs are made one-man-band style and it's great to see people supporting low budget and nonfiction filmmaking. And thanks for the Gigantic props.
Your pal,
AJ