Late last month, the indie film community and a number of film writers and bloggers took notice when Marina Zenovich's ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED, the Sundance hit that was acquired by HBO, played an undercover Oscar qualifying run at NYC's Colliseum Cinemas on West 181st Street.
More attention was drawn when the NY Times film critic Manohla Dargis ran a review of the film, effectively shining a large spotlight on HBO's strategy.
But while the POLANSKI screening and review stories made news for a few days, most did not anticipate that Dargis' review would signal potentially huge changes for the way distributors and filmmakers plan their Oscar qualifying strategies.
In the Oscar rule changes intitiated last fall, the Academy dropped their requirement of a qualifying run in LA or NYC (followed by a 14 city, 10 state rollout) in favor of a mandate that film must play for a week in the County of Los Angeles and the Burrough of Manhattan. Since then, it was unclear whether the new rules would have any specific affect on the qualifying process.
But the Times review of POLANSKI put the Manhattan requirement in an altogether new light. What if POLANSKI wasn't an aberration, the case of a popular Sundance title and a big name TV network. What if any documentary that was trying to qualify for the Oscars in an underground fashion (weeks or perhaps months before any potential theatrical release or distribution deal) was risking a NY Times review.
Why risk you ask? Because if filmmakers tried to qualify early, then the Times review would come weeks if not months prior to an actual theatrical release, perhaps prior to a film's distribution deal (since so many seem inclined to use the Academy Shortlist process as a route to a theatrical deal, despite lack of evidence that the approach works) or even prior to the film's world premiere (as at least five titles bound for Toronto did last year).
Considering that a number of NY papers are dropping reviews of documentaries from their pages entirely, the loss of a Times review could depress box office and the potential for a wider roll-out.
In an email exchange the week after her review, Dargis said that while this specific issue had not been officially discussed internally at the Times, it was the newspaper's policy to review every film that opened commercially for a week in Manhattan. She added that she couldn't see the Times changing or altering this policy for Academy qualifying.
And unlike POLANSKI, which Dargis had seen at Sundance and which she re-watched on a Saturday afternoon in Pasadena, future films may not be reviewed by one of the Times' top critics.
Earlier this month at the Full Frame Film Festival, HBO's Nancy Abraham told me that the network wasn't terribly bothered by the Times review. "It kind of shows that they are interested in the film," she said.
Abraham acknowledged that getting a theatrical review for the film probably ends any chance for the film to get a television review when it premieres on HBO, but suggested that the paper would likely run feature articles about the film. She added that she can't see HBO changing its strategy for future Oscar qualifying runs, even knowing that an early NY Times review may be in the offing. "If you think (a film) has a shot at the Academy Award, you have to do a qualifying run. What can you do?"
(Note: Since Full Frame, the Cannes Film Festival has announced that they will screen POLANSKI as a special event.)
But Tom Quinn of Magnolia Pictures, which will likely mount a big Academy campaign for James Marsh's MAN ON WIRE, offered a more concerned take. "It's a difficult position to be in. I mean, seriously. You're working under guidelines mandated by the Academy. To also work within additional restrictions (brought on by a) NY Times review?"
A&E IndieFilms' Molly Thompson, whose recent titles JESUS CAMP (which was nominated) and MY KID COULD PAINT THAT had qualifying engagements prior to their theatrical releases said the POLANSKI review was a kind of warning shot to anyone who hoped to qualify without any attention. Thompson's latest film - AMERICAN TEEN - will be in theaters long before the Academy cutoff and won't need to do an underground qualifying run.
When I asked Magnolia's Quinn if any of his titles might have to change it's strategy, Quinn mentioned an unnamed film that Magnolia had hoped to debut at Toronto while doing a qualifying run in August.
The issue of the Toronto Film Festival is particularly touchy. The festival's documentary programmer Thom Powers (who is, full disclosure, my partner at the Cinema Eye Honors) has attempted for the past several years to get the Academy to shift its qualifying deadline so that it would fall after the festival.
Former Academy documentary branch chair Freida Lee Mock has told me in the past that such a shift would be impossible for the Academy, as it must name it's shortlist just 2 months later. This year, should films follow the lead of 2007's BODY OF WAR or JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS, we could be seeing NY Times reviews for films that are scheduled to have their world premieres a month later in Toronto.
"It’s a shame that the Academy rules have the doc qualification deadline right before the festival because it adds an extra burden to doc makers who want to experience the same advantage as fiction films at TIFF," Powers told me. "When it comes to TIFF docs trying to qualify beforehand, the festival has always treated them on a case by case basis to make it work best for everyone."
When asked if TIFF would have to rethink including films that had already effectively "opened" in NYC, Powers said, "The specific case of POLANSKI being reviewed in its qualification run seems very rare to me. If I’m ever presented with an exception, I’ll deal with it then."
That uncertainty was reflected by other industry figures. IDA Executive Director Sandra Ruch said that a potential NY Times review would likely not effect her organization's DocuWeek Oscar qualifying program. "They always had the possibilty of being reviewed. There have been short reviews in the LA Weekly. It's open to the public. It's a theatrical rollout."
But a short review in the LA Weekly doesn't preclude a larger review (by a better or different critic) when your theatrical comes out. With the Times, it's one and you're done, something that Ruch acknowledged.
"It won't affect the IDA but it could affect the filmmakers," Ruch said. If they don't have a Times review when their film is released, "they're going to have to do a lot of viral marketing. It's going to be more responsibility on the filmmakers and on the distributor to get the message out that the film is playing."
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