The annual Oscar madness seems to get bigger and nastier each year.
Just as our political races have degenerated into negative campaigning orgies, the movie studios in recent races have spent as much time destroying their opposition as they have promoting their award worthy fare.
The final ballots for the Feb. 22 ceremony went out this week. Today the Los Angeles Times carried a story about the nasty negative campaign that is being waged against “Slumdog Millionaire,” a movie that was the sleeper/darling of the industry and the press just a few weeks ago.
Everyone’s favorite “underdog” has turned into a front-runner, however, because none of the other four best-picture nominees has garnered as many enthusiastic feature stories and reviews.
Pete Hammond of the Times wrote today that reports of Indian criticism of the Mumbai-based film just started circulating in Hollywood, along with old stories that the child actors in the film were paid “dirt cheap wages.”
Director Danny Boyle, producer Christian Colson and Fox Searchlight immediately denied these charges.
“It wasn’t so much the story (it almost never is) but the suspicious circumstances around its re-emergence on the very day Oscar ballots were being mailed,” Hammond writes. “Impressively taking a cue from the Obama campaign, Fox Searchlight strategists immediately got control of the story putting a statement out that carefully answered each allegation…they took an aggressive stance to crush the story in its tracks before it could do serious damage or be misinterpreted by the Academy.”
Hammond points out that similar covert campaigns were waged against “The Hurricane” in 1999 and Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind” two years later. In the case of the Norman Jewison boxing movie the campaign was successful, with Denzel Washington going from a best actor favorite to an also-ran. The Howard film rose above the negative spinners, taking the best picture and best director prizes on Oscar night.
It is a bizarre sign of the Danny Boyle film’s growing popularity that the opposition has started this nasty whispering campaign.
“‘Slumdog’ is now in the enviable position of having the wind at its back,” Hammond concludes. “And just WHO wants to be a ‘Millionaire’? The other four contenders of course, all looking for any way to ward off what increasingly seems to be a done deal.”
Academy voters have until Feb. 17 to return their ballots — that’s five days before the awards ceremony.
